His Plan Is Better: Julie Chen Moonves Recalls How God Guided Her Life
By Movieguide® Contributor
Though she grew up without faith, Julie Chen Moonves can now look back and identify moments when God’s hand was on her life before she was a believer.
“I’m a child of immigrant parents, Chinese immigrant parents, have two older sisters, and I have dealt with some rejection in my life. Like, my two older sisters are very smart. They went to this very impressive high school called the Bronx High School of Science. You have to take like an SAT-type test to get in,” Moonves told Candace Cameron Bure.
“I did not get in, and I took the tests twice, and now, I look back, and it was like Jesus was saying, ‘No, you’re actually going to go to St. Francis Prep,’” Moonves continued. “I would have never gone to this Catholic high school if I had gotten accepted like my two older sisters and followed in their footsteps.”
“Even then, I went to this Catholic high school the last three years of high school, but I still wasn’t taking His call,” she added. “I mean, He was right there, but I made lifelong friendships; my best friend to this day is someone I met there at age 15 who loves Jesus. So it was like He was coming at me from all angles, but I wasn’t listening.”
Nonetheless, Moonves still sees God’s hand on even more of her life. Her career path, for example, was ordained by God. After seeing an Asian news anchor on TV, she felt called to pursue that path. However, Moonves also considered pursuing the sciences with her degree when she went to college. It was only because she didn’t get into her top choices for schools that she became a news anchor instead.
“I feel like my whole career in life was dealing with rejection. That ended up landing me on the path that God had already planned. All that rejection is also character building, it allowed [me] to figure out what [I] wanted to do. To become stronger. To set [my] mind on things, I mean, you can choose not to do those things, but rejection is often one of the best things that can come in your life,” Moonves said.
She also believes that this rejection helped prepare her for the trials she would face later in life, which ultimately caused her to turn to God and begin walking with Him rather than completely giving up.
After she was let go from THE TALK, Moonves found herself in church. Movieguide® reported:
“That email prompted me to go to church that morning; it was a Thursday morning, and I dropped my son off at school that morning and I drove straight to one of the three churches not far from my house,” she added. “And it’s pretty amazing that before 9 a.m., the doors were open, and I went in, and I just was by myself, and I got down on my knees, and I started praying and opening up my heart to God asking for help.”
“I would say that darkness was a blessing in disguise,” she said. “I don’t know if I would have found my way…I find that when you do have those moments in life when we do need to find hope, [God] is the first place we usually, even if we don’t have a relationship with [Him].”
“None of us are in control of anything. That’s why we say, ‘Let go and let God.’ Trust me, His plan is going to be so much better, and you’re going to end up getting there. You could do it the hard way kicking and screaming, or you could do it the easy way with faith and hope,” Moonves added. “God will use all things for good. He can take anything and make it good, and He is sovereign. He either allowed it, or He ordained it.”
She now uses her platform to point others to Christ.
“God has blessed me with so many different jobs and…this career and so many different platforms to speak publicly that if I don’t use the gifts and blessings He gave me to publicly now speak to the whole community…then I’m not doing my part,” Moonves told Sadie Robertson Huff.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Faith-filled TV host Julie Chen Moonves shared how being let go from THE TALK helped her discover what a relationship with God truly means.
Per The Christian Post, “In 2018, Chen Moonves went through personal turmoil after her husband, Leslie Moonves, whom she wed in 2004, resigned from CBS amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Moonves, 73, has denied the allegations from multiple women. Just over a week later, Chen Moonves, who shares a son with her husband, announced her exit as moderator of THE TALK, the network’s daytime program she’d hosted since 2009.”
“I was forced out from my job THE TALK, where I was co-host and the moderator for the last eight years of my life,” she told Relevant Magazine. “When I lost that job and was forced to step down, life as I knew it was like a snow globe turned upside down. And that made me go through a ball of emotions.”
“There was a lot of anger,” she added. “There was fear of what was going to become of me, my future, who I am. I was having this identity crisis because I was so wrapped in my identity as a broadcaster. I felt lost.”
However, when she found out through an email that a friend of her aunt was praying for her, she began to turn to God.
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