Even after the fall of humanity and the entrance of nightmares into the Earth, the grace of God allows us to still experience the dreams. Read more

America, if you granted my life a value, what would it be? As a black man, am I as valuable as a white man? Read more

Tolerance. We toss the word around like a bouncy ball in a playground and offer it up as our penance for prejudice, hatred, and violence. Tolerance. We read about it in stylish op-eds and festoon our tweets with its hashtag. Tolerance. We grasp our newfound antidote to narrow-mindedness and accept anything and everything as true. Tolerance – it’s the perfect fix. When it comes to reconciling the differences among us, American pastor and theologian Tim Keller accurately sums up what... Read more

Each relationship in our lives has an account much like a bank account. Every interaction with another person can be looked at as a transaction. Where am I going with this? Why am I using such a cut and dry analogy to describe one of the most crucial aspects of the human experience? While I am a pastor, I am also an entrepreneur and sometimes breaking things down into business language helps me make the picture much more clear. Here’s... Read more

Professional actors spend their lives practicing facial expressions, voice influxes, and every other minute detail that goes into becoming a character. They do this because pretending to be something you are not, or concealing something you are, is not easy. Those watching can quickly tell when an actor has “fallen out” of character. To keep up, a person has to pay extreme attention to the specifics, and some actors have been known to even “lose themselves” in a role and... Read more

Spain, 2001. We were newlywed, Wendy and I, and fresh out of college. I had just signed a contract to play professional basketball in Córdoba, the southernmost part along the Spanish coast. Wendy, basketball, and Europe – sounds like the perfect concoction, right? But, looking back, I was still in that college mindset, perfectly content with sticking to my routine: practice, eat, siesta and repeat. But my wife? She took up flamenco dancing. She savored delicious, authentic cuisine. She traveled... Read more

We bear our beliefs like banners: Republican or Democrat. Pro-life or pro-choice. Black Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter. Feminist, socialist, libertarian, traditionalist. We scream at each other and over each other and louder and louder and louder and- Aren’t you tired? Diversity in perhaps its most divisive form is diversity of thought. When we talk to people who think differently than us, our disagreements can spring up like fences that separate. So what do we do? We charge in... Read more

If my childhood home was the United Nations, then that would have made me the British diplomat. Let me explain. Growing up, I’d make friends with people from all walks of life – affluent, lower income, athlete, musician, black, white, and everyone in between. They never interacted with each other, though, unless I’d bring them together. When I would invite my black friends to hang out at my white friends’ houses, they’d always end up doing these crazy, fearless stunts,... Read more

There are few things more satisfying to me than the hard-earned exhale of “my work here is done.” As Americans, we are bred in a culture that seeks the sweet smell of victory. We love to set our sights on a task and accomplish it. We pursue the life of the achiever; it is an indescribable high to successfully begin a project and over the course of hours, weeks, or decades see it to its final completion. However, someone once... Read more

If you have children, you’ll know what I mean when I say kids, especially your own, teach you about yourself. I have a talking mirror who follows me around – my son. He is one of the most wonderful gifts God has ever entrusted me, and he is a reflection of me (in more than just his looks). When spending time with him, I experience moments that feel as though I am talking to myself. As you can imagine, some... Read more