For Houston Rockets center Oscar Tshiebwe, Jesus is his everything.
“Jesus is my breath of life. Without Jesus, I can’t breathe,” the athlete said on the “Sports Spectrum” podcast with Jason Romano.
The center then quoted John 3:16, which reads, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
“The one thing I discovered about the world: they don’t like to give free things. They want to pay for things, so people, they don’t like free things,” the NBA player continued. “The reason why they rejected Him was that they don’t want free things. They want to work out on their own what they deserve, but there’s no such a salvation besides Christ.”
“So, Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. Without Christ, it’s like for me, I have no breath, so I can’t breathe. That’s why I have to talk about Him every single time. I have to pray. I have to spend time. I have to do everything for the Lord,” Tshiebwe emphasized.
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Tshiebwe played college basketball at the University of Kentucky. But before that, he lived in the small town of Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, nearly 7,000 miles from Kentucky.
People back in his home country encouraged him to play basketball when he started getting tall as a teenager. He would practice until four in the morning so that he could make it to America.
“Sometimes we have to know what things we’ve been praying for that God is reserving for us,” Tshiebwe told the Kentucky Kernel in 2023. “If He doesn’t give it to you then maybe He is protecting you. But the thing I was praying for, God gave to me, and now I’m in Kentucky.”
On Aug. 5, Tshiebwe started his own non-profit, the Oscar Tshiebwe Foundation, which is on a mission to strengthen “African communities through outreach programs, service initiatives, partnerships and humanitarian efforts that demonstrate God’s love in action.”
Tshiebwe held a book signing event for his book Courage in the Dark, which released in 2025, to launch the foundation.
“All proceeds from this special signing event will directly support the Foundation’s mission to serve others, provide hope for orphans, strengthen communities and create meaningful opportunities for families back home in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” the center wrote in the caption of the post. “I give all honor and glory to God for this journey and for allowing me to use the platform He has given me to make a difference in the lives of others.”
No matter what Tshiebwe may face in this life, he can persevere because Jesus is his “breath of life.”
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