Raiders QB Derek Carr credits his parents for teaching him that ‘my faith was No. 1’
Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Derek Carr praised his parents for teaching him to make his faith his first priority and said that, as a child, he wouldn’t play if a game fell on a Sunday.
“I was raised in the church. 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,” the quarterback told Tauren Wells in an interview on "The High Note" podcast.
Carr, who was born in California, said, “My mom and my dad, they taught me that my faith was number one.”
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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. And it worked out for me; I made it to the NFL. So all these moms and dads that say, ‘No, we have to go to your games at 8 years old,’ you know, ‘it’s OK to miss one.’”
Carr told Wells, who's also the worship leader at Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, that he personally accepted Jesus when he was at college and credited Pastor Mattie Montgomery from the Christian band For Today for helping him grow in his faith.
The quarterback also shared how he was recently led by God to pray for a female photographer during a golf tournament, the American Century Championship.
The quarterback also shared how God recently led him to pray for a female photographer during a golf tournament, the American Century Championship.
“I felt the Lord telling me, ‘I want you to pray for that lady,’” Carr said.
“She was limping, and I knew she was going to have to walk all day and take pictures and all this kind of stuff. 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.’
“I was like, ‘Praise God.’ Even though we had fun at golf, that was the victory that weekend.”
In 2013, Derek’s son, Dallas, underwent a successful emergency surgery at Valley Children’s Healthcare in Fresno, California. As a newborn, Dallas was born with a life-threatening abnormality called intestinal malrotation that could have caused the blood supply to his intestinal tract to be cut off.
