Courtesy of Sheilah Belle:
During the “Women Thou Art Loosed” conference featuring Bishop T.D. Jakes, one of America’s best known preachers, speaking to a crowd of women at Reliant Stadium, Thursday evening.
Paula White’s career as a pastor who helps others overcome tough times is built on life experience. Name the problem and, chances are, she’s survived it.
In her life she’s coped with suicide (her father’s), alcoholism (her mother’s), sexual abuse (her own, as a child), divorce (twice), the loss of a child (her stepdaughter) and a lengthy Senate probe of her finances (she was cleared in 2011).
If you’re a woman and can identify with even one of those things, White hopes you’ll visit her and other speakers at Bishop T.D. and Serita Jakes’ popular Woman, Thou Art Loosed conference next week at Lakewood Church. White, a best-selling author and pastor of the Without Walls International Church in Tampa, Fla., will be the keynote speaker on Friday night.
“My ministry is an out flowing of the places I’ve recovered from in life,” White said. “In a way I have never been able to before, I’m going to help them find the path. I can be a poster child that if God can do it for me, I know he can do it for you, too.”
Bishop Jakes launched WTAL – the title is drawn from Luke 13:12 – nearly 20 years ago as a Sunday school topic at his small West Virginia church. His congregation’s response was so positive it became a series that turned into a book, stage play, Grammy-nominated CD, movie and a three-day symposium that has drawn millions of participants. When the James’s brought the conference to Houston in 2003, it drew 43,000 people to Reliant Stadium.
The conference has drawn crowds during a good economy and bad, but Serita Jakes says their message is consistent: that God can “free you from anything that has you bound or tied up.”
“God speaks that word to you that there is hope,” she said. “It’s a message of liberation from anything that would keep you from reaching your potential in your education, relationship pursuits, occupational pursuits, health pursuits. It’s such a blanket message, and from the scriptures.”
