Reflecting The Hope God’s Given Us: Matt Forté & Jonnie W.
*This episode mentions violence and may be triggering for some listeners.*
Matt Forté: I just knew I had a calling on my life to be an athlete. But later on, I realized that the calling was not just to use the talent that the Lord has given me, but it was about using the platform that the NFL provides to be able to speak into other people’s lives, and most of all, to be able to glorify God in what I did and what I continue to do.
Reflecting The Hope God’s Given Us: Matt Forté & Jonnie W. – Episode #425
Narrator: Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. This week, we talk with Matt Forté, a former NFL running back who played ten years with the Chicago Bears and the New York Jets. Beyond his impressive career on the field, Matt has transitioned into roles as an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and ministry worker. Matt shares his inspiring story, from his early days in football to his work in gun violence prevention and support for at-risk families.
Later in the episode, we’ll also be joined by comedian Jonnie W., who shares why he believes in the value of laughter. Known for his unique blend of stand-up comedy and music, Jonnie’s approach to comedy is not just about making people laugh, but also about bringing light and positivity into the world.
Let’s begin with Matt’s story.
Matt Forté: My name is Matt Forté. I am a former NFL running back for the Chicago Bears and the New York Jets. I played ten years in the NFL, and now I am an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, and I work in ministry as well with professional athletes and their families, focused on stewardship of the platform that they have, stewardship of the money that the Lord has blessed them to make, and also stewardship of their marriage and their families.
I’m from Slidell, Louisiana—born in Lake Charles, but moved to Slidell and was raised there. And my childhood was a blessing. It was amazing. I was fortunate enough to grow up and have an older brother to look up to and also have both my mom and dad in the household and to have two great parents that raised us in the church. Having a good foundational upbringing as a believer in Christ, that is what I think has propelled me throughout my life in tough times and in difficulties.
Matt Falls in Love with Football
As a young man, I’ve always, since day one, seen myself as an athlete. I knew I had a special gift to run the football from an early age. I started playing at seven years old, and after the first practice that my dad brought me to, on the way home in the car, I told him I was going to be an NFL running back. I was just so sincere, and he thought it was funny, but I was dead serious. I just knew I had a calling on my life to be an athlete.
“I just knew I had a calling on my life to be an athlete.” – Matt Forté
I think it really became real to me probably in my senior year. My college was riddled with ups and downs. My freshman year, I was able to start the last four games of the season, ended up putting up over 280 all-purpose yards, and then continued a really good season after that, the last to close out the season. So my thought the next year was, Oh, this is easy. It’s going to be even better. And then my sophomore year, Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana.
Matt Faces Hurricane Katrina
And it totally decimated our area. Especially being in New Orleans at Tulane University, it decimated our college campus. We evacuated Louisiana at the last minute, we left and we went to Jackson, Mississippi. We were on the campus of Jackson State, and we were on the gym floor sleeping on these mattresses that they must have found in the dorm rooms. And there was no power, no running water. And we were stuck for a few days. And then we ended up going to Dallas and staying in a hotel, which compared to a gym floor was heaven to us. And then, after that, we had to enroll in school. So we’re all displaced, the season is delayed. And we’re all worried about our families back home who had to endure the storm and trying to find out if your home is still standing and if there’s water in it and all of those things. So football was not at the forefront of our minds. That was a tough season to have to deal with.
We had to move to Louisiana Tech University and enroll there. We also lived on campus at Louisiana Tech in a condemned dorm, they opened the dorm up and cut the chains off. And there were actually a lot of families from New Orleans that had evacuated that had nowhere else to go who were living on the first few floors. I was on the eighth floor of this dorm and there was no elevator. And so every day, marching up eight flights to get books and to go to practice and get back home, all of that really taught me never to complain about the luxuries that you get in life that we often overlook or take for granted. It taught me a lot.
“Every day, marching up eight flights to get books and to go to practice and get back home, all of that really taught me never to complain about the luxuries that you get in life that we often overlook or take for granted. It taught me a lot.” – Matt Forté
Matt’s Path to the NFL
My junior year came and we were back on campus at Tulane, and the city was being rebuilt and everybody was happy about it. I was having a great season. And then I had a knee injury and had to have surgery that ended my season as a junior. And then my senior year came up and it seemed like my hopes of going to the NFL were dwindling. But I was encouraged to continue to fight the good fight and try my best to make it. I put in the hardest off season that I had ever done. I would do a workout in the morning with the team, and I would go to work in the middle of the day after that, and then at night or in the evening, I would come back and do another workout with the team. You’re only required to do one, and I would do two. I was in the greatest shape that I could be in heading into that season. And it turns out that the Lord was faithful and blessed me to get the ball a lot. And I set a record of 2,127 yards rushing, and was put on the map as a NFL prospect.
In the midst of that season, once I started getting on ESPN and breaking records, that’s when I noticed that it could be a reality that I might get drafted and go to the NFL. I was drafted in the second round of the 2008 NFL draft by the Chicago Bears. Put in a lot of hard work, but also have faith in yourself and really have faith in God that He is a good God, that He has good plans for you as well.
“Put in a lot of hard work, but also have faith in yourself and really have faith in God that He is a good God, that He has good plans for you as well.” – Matt Forté
Tragedy Leads to a New Purpose
When I was a freshman at Tulane, one of my good friends on the team was Brandon Spencer. He was a senior and on defense. So he’s the older guy that I looked up to because I was a freshman. His senior year ended, and he was on his way to possibly getting drafted or getting picked up by an NFL team. He had his degree, he had graduated, so even if football didn’t work out or even if it did, he had a really good degree behind him to be able to continue his life and purpose.
He was sitting in his car outside his girlfriend’s apartment, and a jealous ex-boyfriend or someone came up and ended his life. That was hard to deal with because at the funeral, I saw Brandon had two children. They would never grow up to see their father do great things or be able to hug him. The future of their lives has all been changed because of gun violence. And not just his children, but his mom and his family and everyone who was there. And you see how that affects not just that person’s future, but the future and the lives of everyone who’s connected to him.
And so that really stuck with me as an immature, eighteen year old guy who’s on scholarship at Tulane. I carried that with me throughout my college career. But then when I got to the NFL, I noticed while being in Chicago that on the news there’s a lot of gun violence that they talk about each and every day or weekend, especially in the summertime. And I just kept seeing the same pattern over and over again. And knowing up close and personal what happened with Brandon Spencer at Tulane and seeing what that can do to a family, and just seeing it at large happening every day in Chicago, I wanted to use up my platform in the NFL to start a foundation that’s main goal is gun violence prevention.
A Calling to Help At-Risk Families
As I look back now, I notice how God was connecting the dots of my experiences in life to bring me to Chicago for His purpose. After I had been in Chicago for a while, I started the What’s Your Forté Foundation in 2014 in order to provide opportunities & resources to young people and their families to find out what their forte could be. Because some of these kids that I’ve been around, they don’t even know how great a potential they have.
Some of our programs and offerings that we have are we offer an aviation program—and this is all through partnership, which is the best thing that I learned was that you can’t do it all by yourself. You can’t do it all on your own. So, we have a partner with Tuskegee Next where they train high school kids to be pilots, and that is a direct need for the commercial airline industry.
And then in the culinary industry, we want to help kids get involved with different food service providers where they can do all the jobs, either hosting, being a waiter or waitress, dishwasher, or learning to cook and be chefs. So that’s another way of accessing learning skills that can allow you to provide for yourself, provide for your family, maybe get you out of the street or whatever you are doing and provide something lucrative that you can make a career out of.
We’ve seen kids who didn’t know that they were interested in these things, and now they are grown, staying out of the streets and staying out of trouble in order to make a better pathway of life for themselves. And that’s the way I wanted to use the platform the NFL has given me in order to impact gun violence, not only in this city, but across the nation. Through God’s grace, He was able to align stepping stones that I was able to be drafted and be able to come up here and make an impact.
You Never Know What Others Are Facing
You never know what somebody’s going through. You can be in a coffee line at Starbucks or somewhere and just spark up a conversation with someone. It’s always good to be able to be available to share how good God has been in your life and to tangibly realize that and recognize that. Because if someone’s going through a tough time, they may not see how God has worked in the mundane things in their lives of just waking you up and you having a bed to sleep in, or having food on a table to eat. And so I think it’s very important for us to exemplify that in its most authentic way, because had it not been for Jesus coming down and dying for our sins and living a sinless life and paying the debt for what we’ve accumulated, there would be no hope. And in return, we have to reflect the hope that He’s given us.
“Had it not been for Jesus coming down and dying for our sins and living a sinless life and paying the debt for what we’ve accumulated, there would be no hope. And in return, we have to reflect the hope that He’s given us.” – Matt Forté
This is from Jesus Listens, October 11th:
Beloved Jesus,
When the task before me looks daunting, help me to view the challenge as a privilege rather than a burdensome duty. You’ve been training me to replace my “I have to” mentality with an “I get to” approach. I’ve found that this makes all the difference in my perspective— transforming drudgery into delight. I realize this is not a magic trick; the work still has to be done. But this change in my viewpoint enables me to face the challenging chore joyfully and confidently.
I’m learning that perseverance is essential as I go about my work. If I start to grow weary or discouraged, I need to remind myself: “I get to do this!” I can thank You for giving me the strength and ability to do what needs to be done. Thankfulness clears my mind and draws me closer to You.
Please guide my mind as I’m thinking things out in Your Presence— pondering problems and seeking solutions. Whatever I do, I want to work at it with all my heart, as working for You.
In Your transforming Name,
Amen
Narrator: To learn more about Matt and his foundation, please visit https://whatsyourfortefoundation.org/. And be sure to check out his new book, My Hair Can, at your favorite retailer.
Stay tuned to Jonnie W.’s story after a brief message.
Introducing The Jesus Calling Commemorative Edition
The Jesus Calling brand has impacted more than forty-six million lives, and now, there’s a beautiful commemorative edition that celebrates Jesus Calling and the life of beloved author Sarah Young.
This special edition features a larger, deep blue hardcover with a striking gold foil design on the cover, and includes devotions for every day of the year. Plus, new inspiring work written before Sarah’s passing. You’ll get twelve new bonus devotions and you’ll start each month with a letter from Sarah to her readers.
This special commemorative edition also features moving, personal touches, including a loving essay from Sarah’s daughter celebrating her legacy, and you’ll see samples of Sarah’s handwritten devotionals.
The updated deep blue design and deluxe packaging make this a heartfelt gift for the special people in your life, and the perfect way for you to spend time in the presence of the Savior.
The Jesus Calling commemorative edition is available for pre-order for a limited time.
Our next guest is Jonnie W., a comedian from Nashville. Jonnie shares how he went from being a shy musician to a college pastor, and now a comedian, as he invites us to think deeper in a down-to-earth way about the value of laughter in our lives.
Jonnie W.: My name is Jonnie W. I’m a comedian based in Nashville, Tennessee, and I’ve been doing comedy for about fifteen years now. I do comedy at churches and companies all over the country. It’s a great job. It’s a lot of fun.
I grew up in, Knoxville, Tennessee, and I did not ever see myself doing this. I think people assume that if you do comedy as an adult that you were an extroverted child or you were a ham. I think that’s true of some comedians. I was kind of an introvert and painfully shy in some respects. My upbringing for sure played into what I ended up doing just because there was always laughter in my house. One time when I was doing a radio interview, somebody asked me what my influences were, and I started naming people, and I realized a lot of them weren’t even standups. They were like people on the Carol Burnett Show or whatever. And I realized as I was saying it out loud that I was naming people that made my mom laugh. And I think it was a weird realization to come to, it almost made me cry. I just started thinking, like, Every kid wants to make their parents laugh or be proud of them. And so I think there’s something formative about that that kind of clicks in a comedian’s brain, that extra little bump of attention that you get from someone laughing or you kind of push someone’s buttons in a way. There’s something about that that is pretty remarkable.
“I think there’s something formative about that that kind of clicks in a comedian’s brain, that extra little bump of attention that you get from someone laughing or you kind of push someone’s buttons in a way. There’s something about that that is pretty remarkable.” – Jonnie W.
Moving From Side to Center Stage
I moved from Knoxville to Nashville. I was pursuing speaking ministry. I was trying to get my credentials and get ordained and the whole thing. And they put me over a college group. We would have these big retreats and college students would come in from all over the state. And I’d just been installed as a college pastor, and they said, “Hey, get up and do an icebreaker game, get everybody talking.” Okay, so I had 300 students from all over Tennessee there, and I was so nervous and embarrassed, but I was like, I’ll get John—who was my buddy in my band—I’ll get my buddy John. We’ll do a song together. We’d written these silly songs or whatever to raise money for missions in the youth group because he was a youth pastor. So I was like, We’ll do something like that. Well, he got really sick that day. He said, “I can’t get out of bed. I’ve got a fever.” I said, “Are you kidding me?” And I panicked. I was like, What am I going to do? I’d never been on stage without him. And Something just kind of came over me, and I started thinking of ideas of what I would do if I was just going to roast the different colleges. They’ve got funny mascots. I’ll make a slideshow. I just basically did like an eight minute roast/comedy show. And if it hasn’t gone well, there’s no way I would have ever tried it again. But it went so well that some of these college pastors started inviting me to do outreaches at their campuses. “Hey, you’ve got to come out and do something like that at my college, people would love it.”
I was more afraid of not doing it than doing it, you know? That’s kind of really why I started comedy. You get a little more afraid. What if I never try this and it could be fun? And so that tipped over to the point where I was like, I think I’ll be more regretful if I don’t do this.
There was a pretty successful comic in the church circuit named Tim Hawkins, and he started taking me out on tour with him about three years later, and put me in front of huge crowds that I probably was not ready for, but I just kind of was thrown in front of. And just the idea that somebody was watching and had confidence in my abilities more than I even had in my own, was really cool.
Finding the Funny Side of Music
I started out in music. I was in bands, and that was fun. At the end of the show, I’ll have two or three people say, “You should do music!” And I was like, “You had seven years to make me famous as a musician, and you blew it. So we’re gonna go with comedy.” There’s a lot of fear when you start. I was comfortable behind a guitar.
One of the reasons I do music in my show, it’s this connection point. Most of us have strong feelings and memories tied to music, and so it’s this great… I don’t wanna say it’s a shortcut, like it’s cheating, but it definitely is this thing of like you can get right into something. It’s like tapping into a vein in a way. I like all kinds of comedy, so it’s fun to kind of give a little bit of something to everybody.
The Five Laughter Languages
I’d never really market myself as a Christian comedian, but I will say comedy starts by saying, “I’m not going to be the hero of this story. I’m the dumb guy in this story. Here we go.” I usually tell people in churches, “I want you to take God more seriously and yourself less seriously. I think if we all did that, we’d be in better shape, you know?”
Anita Renfroe, a comedian friend of mine, did a conference once. And in her speech, she said before she goes out on stage, she prays for the Spirit of Pentecost. I was like, Okay, where’s she going? What does this mean? And she said, “The miracle of Acts chapter two was not that everyone spoke in another language. It was that everyone in the courtyard heard in their own language.” And she goes, “That’s comedy.” And I think about that all the time when I’m praying backstage before I go on: What language does everybody need to hear this in tonight? I like to think about the people that are coming to my shows and what private pain they might have, what they might need release from. My comedy comes from a place of faith. I feel like it’s such a gift that I discovered that I could do this and that God’s opened doors for me to go do it, so I never take it for granted.
“I like to think about the people that are coming to my shows and what private pain they might have, what they might need release from. My comedy comes from a place of faith. I feel like it’s such a gift that I discovered that I could do this and that God’s opened doors for me to go do it, so I never take it for granted.” – Jonnie W.
There’s another thing too, this idea that laughter is somehow fleshly and not spiritual. I grew up in a church that was very serious. It was an unwritten rule that the people who were the holiest also looked the most miserable. I understand there’s a time to be serious, but I just think sometimes we gloss over something as trivial as a joke or something silly. And we think, Oh, this isn’t important. We compartmentalize our lives. And I think it’s all one thing. If I laugh, my spirit is laughing, you know? I think you’re missing out on something that God wired inside of you if you’re not laughing.
“I think you’re missing out on something that God wired inside of you if you’re not laughing.” – Jonnie W.
Michael Jr. is a friend of mine who’s a Christian comedian, and he said when he does churches, he reminds them, “What good Father would not want to hear the sound of His children’s laughter in His house?”
The Expiration Date on Our Daily Bread
I think it’s important to connect every day with God, because it’s one of those things about how it’s called daily bread, and it’s probably a reference to manna. And manna came down from heaven to feed the children of Israel, but they were told not to gather it up because it would spoil. So they had to depend every day on the manna that would come for that day. If they stored it, it would rot. And I think sometimes we treat our relationship with God like that: Well, I’m good. I had Sunday morning, I had whatever spiritual experience at camp when I was a kid, and I’m good. And I think it’s more like a marriage, where if you said, “I do,” or, “I love you,” to somebody and then you haven’t said it again for twenty years, you wouldn’t be like, Well, I said it, doesn’t she remember? You wouldn’t treat your life that way. You wouldn’t treat your friends that way. “We had that great dinner that one time and that great text conversation, don’t you remember?” Yeah, I can’t sustain my life on that. I think sometimes I treat my relationship with God like it’s this thing that can self-sustain. And even though He’s doing all the work, I feel like there is a part that I play in accessing His grace for me every day and remembering who I am every day.
Mother Teresa said somebody asked her about prayer, and she said, “Well, I pray still, but mostly I listen.” And then they said, “Well, what does God do?” And she said, “He listens.” And I think there’s something really powerful about that, the idea of just sitting and contemplating who God is and not expecting it to be some grand show, or, I’ve got to have the exact right words. Just come to God in all your vulnerability. Many of the prayers that David prayed in the Psalms were angry or hopeless or he was at his wit’s end, or he’s exposing some horrible sin in his life. This is not somebody that was like, Let me be prim and proper and put on the right clothes and say the right things. He was begging God for help. And so a lot of my prayers sound like that sometimes, and I think that’s okay.
This is from Jesus Listens, March 21st:
Merciful Jesus,
Your Face is shining upon me — beaming out Peace that transcends understanding. I’m surrounded by a sea of problems, but I am face to face with You, my peace. As long as I keep my focus on You, I am safe.
If I gaze too long at the myriad problems around me, I will sink under the weight of my burdens. I’m grateful that I can cry out, “Lord, save me!” if I start to sink, and You will lift me up.
You’ve been showing me that the future is a phantom, seeking to spook me. Help me to laugh at the future — and stay close to You.
In Your sheltering Name,
Amen
Narrator: To learn more about Jonnie W., visit his website at www.jonniew.com, and check out his podcast, Talk About That.
If you’d like to hear more stories about reflecting the hope we have from God, check out our interview with Bethany Hamilton.
Next week: Hannah Brencher
Next time on the Jesus Calling Podcast, we’ll hear from author and online educator Hannah Brencher, who shares about her goal of reaching 1,000 hours being “unplugged” from her electronic devices in a year, and how it showed her a renewed sense of wonder while helping her move toward a closer relationship with God.
Hannah Brencher: What I realized is that I had to learn how to savor. I had to learn how to be in my own life. I had to get to the point where I say, “Well done. You and God partnered together to create this thing, and it is enough because you were there and you were present in it.”
