Pastor Opens Up about Losing and Rediscovering His Faith following His Father's Tragic Death
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- Updated Feb 07, 2022
Pastor Michael Phillips of the T.D. Jakes Foundation told the congregation at Jakes’ Potter’s House church in Dallas that he lost his faith after his father died.
According to The Christian Post, Phillips said his father was a full-time pastor and a part-time truck driver. His father would take him to the top of his 18-wheeler for picnics and to look at God’s creation in the sky.
His father told him that whenever he felt stuck in life, he should “look up.”
“He would tell me this because he would then say, ‘Because you don’t know that you have already been brought a mighty-long way,’” Phillips said. “When I was a little kid, I didn’t really understand that. I would just shake my head and nod.”
Later his father told him that “you have to understand that you’re moving right now, and you don’t even know it.”
Every 24 hours, his father said, the Earth makes a rotation around the sun. This means that when he lays his head down at night and wakes up the following day, the sun is up because the Earth’s spinning axis has already made a turn.
“I need somebody to understand in this room that God has already set things in motion to the point where it cannot be altered, it cannot be changed, it cannot be undone,” said Phillips, who works as the chief engagement and fulfillment officer at T.D. Jakes Foundation. “Not only are you moving at a fast velocity. … The sun’s going to be up in the morning.
But then Phillips said his father died tragically.
“Pain entered into my life at this moment, and I could no longer see the stars. I could no longer see the skies. I could no longer see the reflection of His creation in the mirror. All I could see was pain,” he said.
He said he had to learn to deal with his pain by turning back to God.
“It is human to block suffering and pain,” Phillips said. “[Nobody] wants that. … But hurt cannot be healed until it is heard. … Anger is easy to deal with more than sadness because anger allows me to omit my pain to somebody else and to project it somewhere else so that I don’t have to deal with it.
“God set you in motion already. … To deal with the pain … you got to go into weeping mode,” Phillips said. “Baby, you got to cry that out. … Get all of that out of your system. If you don’t go through weeping mode, you’ll try to fix the situation and control the circumstance and rebuke the suffering.”
Photo courtesy: ©Thinkstock
Amanda Casanova is a writer living in Dallas, Texas. She has covered news for ChristianHeadlines.com since 2014. She has also contributed to The Houston Chronicle, U.S. News and World Report and IBelieve.com. She blogs at The Migraine Runner.
