She’s been making crowds laugh now for two decades — and with clean jokes, no less. A professional stand-up comedian, author, television host, and actor, Chonda Pierce has been entertaining the masses and inspiring many with her commitment to faith.

“Growing up in the Bible Belt, I couldn’t string a whole bunch of cuss words together if I tried,” Pierce told LifeZette in an exclusive interview. “It’s not in my repertoire! It’s not like I was trying to make some public statement on why I don’t cuss. It just wasn’t my nature.”

“Some people get saved once. I got saved 342 times,” said Pierce.

The Kentucky-born star — who today lives in Tennessee — said that being a clean comic was second nature to her. “It was much later that I discovered it’s not normally done like that.”

Her success has been incredible and inspiring, especially because of her Christian mission. “I love that America is looking for good, clean entertainment,” she said.

The Emmy-nominated and best-selling comic has the most upbeat attitude you will ever come across — but her life has not come without difficulty. She suffered through depression when a number of events — the death of her mother, an estrangement with her daughter, and the loss of her husband, David, after a long battle with alcoholism — all hit her over the course of just three years. All of that came in addition to a series of other personal losses that would have crushed a lesser person — she lost both her sisters at a young age, and her father deserted the family when she was still a young woman.

Her faith is what carried her through the toughest times.

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“I really got serious about my faith in God and my spiritual life, and that bleeds over into everything in life — the way I raise my children, the way I live my life socially,” said Pierce, who has two grown children, Chera and Zach. “Even the words that come out of your mouth and how you do your job [are affected].”

“I am very grateful to have come along this path,” she added.

When it comes to her faith, she joked, “Some people get saved once — I got saved 342 times.”

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Pierce grew up knowing God and Christianity, but she had multiple reconversion moments in her life.

“For me and my house,” she said, quoting the Bible — which she says she fully believes in — “there was a real awareness [years ago] when I picked my daughter up from daycare. I realized she didn’t know any of the little Sunday school songs that I grew up with.”

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“I was sad to realize that I had not begun to build for her a foundation — that when the rubber hits the road, she would have some sort of personal comfort,” said Pierce. “That’s when I went home and told my husband, ‘We gotta get serious about this faith thing. We gotta be all in or not, ’cause we got a kid now who’s watching our every move.’ And it was that moment of responsibility that it really hit me, I think.”

Often, passing faith along to the next generation of family members is what inspires or re-inspires the faith of the parents — and that was certainly the case for Chonda Pierce.

“I wanted our home to be deeper and bigger and better and more important than living through crisis after crisis. I wanted [my children] to have a strong foundation, so that if or when life got tough for them, they would have something bigger to hang onto than even family,” she explained.

And despite all her hardships, Pierce has remained focused on faith. She is a living testament to the devoted practice of Christianity in 2016 — and has built a career on a profound dedication to those beliefs.