Rock star Gwen Stefani recently shared details from her journey in the Christian faith as part of the Lent prayer challenge on the Hallow app.

Stefani has been more outspoken about her faith of late than she has been before. Last year, she partnered with Hallow (a Catholic prayer and meditation app) for its Advent prayer challenge, a decision that drew criticism from some of her fans.

“Growing up, faith was a central part of my life,” Stefani shared on Day 16 of Hallow’s Lent prayer challenge. “My siblings and I were baptized, received our first sacraments, and were enrolled in religious education.”

“Our family went to Sunday mass together, and our mother really led our family in faith,” she said. “I’m so grateful for the foundation that came from being raised like this.”

“When I was a teenager,” Stefani continued, “my parents registered my brother and me for a Catholic retreat. And I wish I could tell you that we were excited about this, but that just wasn’t the case.”

Gwen Stefani: ‘My Faith Is What Drives Me’

Gwen Stefani is a Grammy Award-winning and -nominated artist who rose to fame as the lead singer of No Doubt, which achieved mainstream success with the band’s third album, “Tragic Kingdom.” Stefani, who has multiple solo albums, recently released the single “Still Gonna Love You” and the album “Bouquet Deluxe.”

Both Gwen Stefani and her husband Blake Shelton have publicly voiced praise for the popular series, “The Chosen,” which is based on the life of Jesus and stars Jonathan Roumie as Jesus. The first five episodes of Season 5 of the show have released in theaters, and the season’s final three episodes will come out April 11.

In December, Stefani joined Jonathan Roumie, Lauren Daigle, Bear Grylls, Kevin James, and Francis Chan for Hallow’s Pray25 Advent challenge.

Stefani’s steps to live out her faith more publicly have drawn praise and criticism. The star is also taking flak for telling Roumie on X that an interview he did with Tucker Carlson was “enlightening intelligent” and “beautiful.” In comments on an Instagram post about her newly released music, multiple people have accused the star of now being “MAGA” and supporting Trump.

In a post promoting the Lent prayer challenge, Stefani said, “Every year, i try to make this time [of Lent] more intentional…this challenge is all about deepening our faith and remembering what Jesus did for us.” Also helping to facilitate Hallow’s Lent challenge are Roumie, actor Mark Wahlberg, actor Chris Pratt, and Fr. Mike Schmitz.

As she described her faith journey, Stefani told prayer challenge participants that she and her brother were not excited about going to the Catholic camp because it was in the middle of summer, and they didn’t know anyone else who would be there. However, “it totally ended up surprising us in a good way,” she said.

At one point during her time at the camp, Stefani said she and a group of about 30 people were outside in a prayer circle.

“During the prayer, I had an experience of seeing myself and the group from above. I couldn’t see my face; I could only see the back of my head,” she said. While she couldn’t “describe it exactly…it was a spiritual experience that I will never forget.”

“It was right after that and hearing the other people in the group’s stories that I felt very connected,” said Stefani, “that this spiritual experience really cemented my faith journey.”

Stefani lived with her family until she was 26 and, during that time, she went to church with them. “But those rhythms that had always served me so well eventually faded out of my life as my music career started growing,” she explained.

The “Don’t Speak” singer left home and grew busy with her career and touring the world. “I was so busy focusing on my career. Faith was still important to me, but it was no longer the central focus of my life, and I fell away from my faith,” said Stefani. “And then came a time in my life where I felt like I was losing everything.”

“Relationships that were painful—I couldn’t function like I wanted to because of what I was going through. Everything was suffering,” Stefani said. “My emotional and my mental stress from my situation quickly turned into physical pain, like a physical illness, chronic pain that prevented me from doing daily, ordinary things, and I was so scared.”

“I was trying everything to find some sort of cure to what I was going through,” she shared. “During this time, I wasn’t as close to God as I wanted to be, and I knew he was calling me back. And it was then my prayer started again.”

“Feeling so desperate, I got on my knees,” said Stefani. “I asked God, ‘Please, please get me well. Please, use my gift of music again. Please, let me be the person I used to be.’”

“I began returning to daily prayer, trusting that God had a purpose for me, knowing that I needed to serve God,” said the singer. The result was that “a lot of amazing changes in my life have happened since then, and my faith has carried me through it all.”

Stefani acknowledged, “Sometimes, I feel like I’m in the baby phase of faith. I pray every day; I haven’t done things perfectly. I still have a long way to go, and I often worry that I don’t have enough time to grow as close to God as I want to. But today, my faith is what drives me.”

“Little by little, I have learned to look at each situation where I find myself in to seek to understand where God is at work within it,” Stefani said. “The one thing I know for sure is that he’s there in all of it, good and bad, waiting for us to respond to his love.”

Those who wish to take part in the rest of Hallow’s Lent Pray40 challenge can do so here.