Welcome to the Vood Church podcast.

Today, guest speaker Pastor Miles McPherson shares how we can honor our similarities and unite for race reconciliation in this message the third option city.

Pastor Miles lead pastor of rock church draws on biblical truths as well as personal expertise in the area of race reconciliation as an author and speaker.

We're blessed to have him with us today. Let's lean into the message together.

You ready? Hey, turn to Joshua chapter five. Joshua chapter five. Very briefly grew up in New York. Had a dream of playing NFL have two brothers and two sisters. My mother was five four foot 11 had five kids within six years. She was a monster.

My father was a police officer in New York City. I went to a division three school University New Haven in Connecticut. I was drafted to the Long Sagittarius Rams in 1982. Got cut means I got fired. Went to play for the charges play four years.

I have a brother another brother who was a high as when we run a rough 1987.

I was a quarter back of another brother who was a eighth ranked box in the world and then two sisters they weren't athletic. They they they weren't athletic. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

One day 15 years ago we were in my sister's house and my mother we were all standing around getting ready to pray for dinner and my mother starts crying.

She said this is all I ever wanted was us to be together. Because I was in California. She was in New York. My sister was in the Caribbean and then in London and we were all over the place and she just said I just want my family to be together all seven of us.

When God looks at the world. At all of diversity that he has created. The beautiful diversity he has created. Can I get amen. I was like why can't you get along.

Now I'm not even going to talk about the world today. I'm going to talk about the church because the church is just a divided as the world. We we carry the gospel.

There's this Japanese art form called Kitsugi. Kitsugi is a Japanese art form that you take broken pottery and you put it back together with with and not glue with gold.

It's it's connected by gold and the broken pottery united by gold is more valuable than the original.

The broken pottery that is united by gold and put together with gold is more valuable than the original. Imagine if the gold were the rule that we love one another.

God can bring us all together and united us all together. That our relationship would even be more glorifying. More powerful, stronger.

So I want to talk to you about that today. I grew up in a black neighborhood. I went to school in a white neighborhood. Have a very diverse family as you can see.

Can you tell me your like is he Puerto Rican? Is he Dominican? What do you add on to people? My father made the C.A.K. you add it out of the way.

They put the Dico. When I was a little kid, my father told me I was a thousand from Puerto Rico. I ain't got no Puerto Rican in my blood. My father, my white grandmother, black grandfathers, and half Chinese black grandmother. All from Jamaica, West Indies.

Ain't no Puerto Rican in there. However, on my life I'm like, I'm going to marry me a Puerto Rican girl because they fun.

So here I am in this black neighborhood, not black enough. So I got racial discrimination because there wasn't black enough. Black people.

Discrimination doesn't discriminate. I went to the white neighborhood and I got discriminated against because I wasn't white.

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