In 2025, I found myself borrowing money just to stay afloat. I was losing money faster than I could explain it. My wife had to step in and provide for our family in ways I never wanted her to have to.
And underneath all of it was a quieter, harder truth: after years of ministry — years of preaching, of titles, of doing the work — I still didn't actually know who I was.
It didn't start in 2025. Back in 2010, I stepped into entrepreneurship, believing that was who I was. I built my sense of self around that title — and carried all the stress and strain that comes with trying to live up to something you've made your identity instead of your calling.
In 2016, a mentor — a prophet in my life — spoke into me and identified a prophetic calling on my life. I began pursuing that calling. I joined Christ First Community Church, got licensed that same year, and was ordained as a minister in 2019.
But even with the titles — licensed, ordained, in ministry — I was still lost. I was performing an identity instead of resting in one. I hadn't yet learned the difference.
Between 2021 and 2023, I stopped preaching altogether. Not because I lost my faith, but because I didn't feel good enough to keep going.
I started running that year — not for fitness, but as a kind of meditation. And in that quiet, repetitive space, God began revealing my true identity in Christ. He also began showing me gifts I already had — communication, writing, a word of knowledge, a word of wisdom — gifts I had never believed I deserved.
I started receiving clear directives to start a ministry. And I resisted. I doubted I was good enough for that too.
That resistance held until September 2025, when my father prophesied over me and confirmed the call to start a ministry. That confirmation was the turning point.
Since then, I've stepped fully into the identity Christ had already given me. Disciples First Ministries was founded out of that confirmation.
That same shift brought new clarity to Be More 2 Do More, which I had actually started back in 2023 with my brother-in-law, Henry Harden III — I just hadn't yet understood what it was really for.
And The Eager Heart became the written testimony of this whole journey — proof, on paper, that I couldn't do what I was created to do until I became who I was created to be.
The written testimony of everything above — how identity in Christ has to come before anything you build on top of it.
Get the BookWhether you're building something in your field or building something in your faith — the invitation is the same one I had to accept myself: become before you do.
