Rapper-actress and veteran Hollywood super-producer Queen Latifah said that she often turns to God in prayer before big moments or decision-making to help her do the right thing.
“I pray about things before I do them,” the Grammy-winner said at a Tribeca Film Festival event. “I find that I have to stop and pray often about things because I need to get quiet about something — especially something big, something small, something nagging at me.”
“I just need to kind of get quiet and pray about it for a minute,” Latifah said.
This is not the first time that Queen Latifah, now 49, has opened up about her Christian faith and her prayer life.
After making the hit movie Last Holiday, in which she played Georgia Byrd, a reserved, church-going New Orleans department-store worker, Latifah said that she has always had a sense of God’s care for her, particularly in tough moments, like when her older brother died.
“I really believe that God had his hands on me the whole time, and my family as well, and we’ve come through it and we really probably didn’t think we could,” she told Beliefnet. “I did get some little lessons throughout this thing happening, and I just remember one of the thoughts that was planted in my mind — I think by God — was that ‘don’t let it all go’: Don’t let everything go, because you’re going to make it through this.’
Born Dana Elaine Owens, Queen Latifah was baptized a Baptist but now just considers herself “a Christian.”
Latifah says her favorite prayer — her “old faithful” — is the Our Father, but more often she speaks to God straight from the heart.
“Most of the time I just talk. I just thank God first for everything. And then we just talk about whatever’s on my mind or whatever I’m thinking about,” she said.
“Sometimes I pray when I really feel like I need God to help me with something, and sometimes we just have conversations. We just kick it. God is my homeboy. Jesus is my homeboy,” she said.
Queen Latifah said she used to tell her mother, “Ma, Jesus is a gangsta.”
“Think about it, when he’s ready to preach, he gathered up a crew,” she said. “Now, 12 dudes walking around sound like a gang to me. But it was just a gang for God, a gang for Jesus, which is all good. Of course he can relate to the poor.”
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