Las Vegas Raiders star quarterback Derek Carr talked about how growing up he was taught “faith” came number one and said he wasn’t allowed to skip church if games fell on Sunday because his parents “made the priorities, the priorities.”
During the professional football player’s recent appearance on “The High Note with Tauren Wells” podcast, the 31-year-old opened up about growing up in Texas after moving there from California when he was in his teen years and admitted it wasn’t until he was in college that he made faith his “own.”
“I was raised in the church,” Carr explained. “My grandpa was a pastor, my uncle was a pastor, my other grandpa was a deacon, my dad was a deacon, my mom’s a worship leader, my grandma is a pastor …”
“My mom and my dad, they taught me that my faith was number one,” he added. “If there was a game on Sunday, as a kid, we always told my traveling coach, ‘I’m not gonna be there, I’m gonna be at church.’ They made the priorities, the priorities.”
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“And it worked out for me – I made it to the NFL,” Carr continued. “So all these moms and dads that say, ‘No, we have to go to your games at eight years old,’ – you know, it’s okay to miss one.'”
The NFL player is outspoken about being a Christian and shared that his faith is an expression of who he is.
He talked about a recent moment where he put his faith into practice when he said he felt “the Lord telling me, ‘I want you to pray'” for a female photographer while he was at a celebrity golf tournament.
“She was limping, and I knew she was going to have to walk all day and take pictures and all this kind of stuff,” the QB shared. “And so, I shared a story about how my mom was recently healed … I said, ‘Can I just pray for you?’ And she goes ‘absolutely’ … So I prayed with her.”
“And the next day she comes back, and she’s like … ‘Hey, you prayed for me. I walked for three and a half hours, took pictures [and] I had no pain, all the pain left … I just want to say, ‘Thank you,'” he added. “I was like, ‘Praise God.’ Even though we had fun at golf, that was the victory that weekend.”