Bishop T.D. Jakes of The Potter’s House Church in Dallas knows about struggle, pain and suffering. As a young child, he watched his father suffer through chronic illness and as a result, led a childhood that was fairly self-sustaining. He learned through this experience and other life experiences that often the people who are the most successful are the ones who have been the most broken.
As a teenager, Jakes often turned to his faith to cope with problems at home. He says he would sneak his Bible into his science book to read it, and his fascination with the Bible earned him the nickname Bible Boy at school. At 19, he delivered his first sermon, and a decade later, he became a full-time preacher.
Now Potter’s House has more than 30,000 members, Jakes has written more than 40 books (including several New York Times best-sellers), his projects have earned him a Grammy Award and a Quill Award, and he has received the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Award by the Congress of Racial Equality.
And perhaps it wouldn’t have been possible without the struggles he overcame as a child.
“Entrepreneurship is a mindset. It’s a mentality. It’s thinking of something, and in order to think of something, you have to always believe that you have something inside.”
—T.D. Jakes tells SUCCESS in the July 2017 issue
