Romans 8:28 | WBF Ashes to Endzone: A Journey of Faith

Sunday Morning | July 19, 2026 | Perris Jones | Louisville, KY

In the second message of the four-week Walk By Faith series, former University of Virginia football player Perris Jones shares his powerful testimony of God's faithfulness through adversity. After suffering a spinal injury during a football game that left him paralyzed, Perris experienced a remarkable recovery—going from being unable to move to walking out of the hospital just three weeks later. His story is a moving reminder that God is present and at work even in life's most difficult circumstances.

*Due to technical difficulties a part of the sermon at the beginning was not recorded. 

You can join us on Sunday mornings at 11 AM for worship.  We are located at 8911 3rd Street Road, Louisville KY 40272.

Transcript

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When it comes to recruiting. Recruiting is about buying that bright fancy spaz car. I want the biggest, best thing out there, right? And it's just being honest. That was not me. That's not who I was. I was more of like a Honda Civic, you know, that had like 150,000 miles on it, you know, old, reliable and get you to and from that was more so me. And so it ended up working out for me and my I didn't get a lot of Division one offers, even though my stats were just as good as anybody in the country. Right. And so Yale was what I was going to settle on going to, and that was my best academic and athletic opportunity that I was going to pursue. Right before I signed my letter of intent, coach Nick Howell approached me. And he he is the defensive coordinator at UVA at the time. And he said, I can't give you any money. All I can give you as an opportunity right? And I said, okay, I'll take it. I’ll bet on myself because I've always wanted to play Division one football. So I took that chance and I came. It was the worst decision I've ever made in my life at that point in time, I hated it. I don't know how many of you know what being a walk on actually is and what it means, but it's basically like being a practice dummy. Truth be told, like once you're utilized, you're thrown in the closet. You don't really care the maintenance of it, as long as it's there when you need it the next time, that's pretty much it. So I go through this first year and keep in mind I still want to play. So we have what's called like a beginning of the season meetings. Right. And that's basically where you're envisioning it like for school, say you meet with your teachers for the youth and for your adults in the room, it's like when you go to a job and it's like, what's your career plan? Where do you want to be in ten years? Where do you want to be in five years? It's more of that conversation, but more just condensed down to your time in football. I told my head coach and I told our offensive coordinator, I said, I want to be the starting running back at this university. And both of them laugh at me straight in my face, laughed, and I said, wow, okay. You know, these are the guys that have to essentially give me the job promotion and they’re laughing at me on day one. That's not exactly a good, good sign, right? But now that you're not there, I keep working right. Working hard, repeating the work ethic that I had and I get nothing from it. And then we have a situation that comes about. And for walk ons, you don't get taught what you're supposed to do in the actual offense. So imagine showing up to a job or showing up to class, and you're trying to get a grade and they don't tell you how to get the grade, and they don't tell you how to do your job. And if you don't do it, you get in trouble. So lose lose situation, right? Like you really can't win. And it's designed that way. And so we get put out there. Coach says, you know what? We're going to put the walk ons out with the ones today just to see how it goes. So he throws us out there. And I had no idea what I was doing. I asked our starting quarterback. I said, okay, what am I supposed to do? And he said, good luck. I said, oh man, okay, this is going to be rough. So the ball is snapped, right? Boom, clap starts to play and I just stand there frozen. Looking around. Everybody else is moving around me and I'm just watching. And I get called every name in the book all the way off the field. Right. And I remember being so upset and so angry. Right? Because I was like, how can you put me in a situation to lose and be mad that I lost? Like, that's not my fault? You knew I didn't know the play, but you put me in any way like that didn't make sense to me. So what do I do? I called my dad. Which, kids in the room, If you're ever in a problem, call your mom. Don't call you don't, don't. Don't call your dad. Don't call your dad. All right? Mom's going to tell you. She's going to give it to you softer, but neither here nor there. So my my dad was like, basically, in a nutshell, he said, you can't give someone else the control or control over your life. And what you get that's on you. That's your decisions. You can't give that power away. And I was like, dad, you don't understand. No, you're in control of that. He said, so what are you going to do about it? Not what someone else is doing. What are you going to do about it? So I said, okay, cool. I wake up the next morning renewed spirit and renewed sense of energy, and I start thinking of different ways that I could possibly put myself in a position to obtain what I wanted. Right? And you notice how during this point in time, I'm not mentioning anything about God. That's intentional. Keep that in the back of your mind. So I'm working, right? I'm working, I'm working. I say, okay, I'm going to go to the facility right before the cleaning ladies come in, right. And I'm going to get the plays out of the trash can that the upper classmen had. And I'm gonna study those. I'm going to watch some of our upperclassmen running backs. His name was Chris Sharp. Don't tell him this because he still doesn't know to this day. But I watched him log in and I took his login so that I can match the plays, that I got out the trash up with, the plays that I was watching on film. Right. And then I would go back to the facility after hours. I would repeat every single exercise that I didn't do well the previous week, so that my weaknesses were now strengths, everything that I could possibly do when my friends were saying, oh, Perris were from to go out, you know, to the bars and to this party, I would say, okay, cool. Yeah, I'll be there. And I was going to the facility to get more work in, like anything I could possibly do to give myself an advantage. And before I knew it, soon enough I was stronger, I was faster, and I knew the plays in the system better than any other person on our team, offense and defense. And they didn't teach me. So the next time the situation comes around and where the coaches put us in to seemingly keep us down, I knew what I was doing, ran off the field and the coach said, how did you know that? Don't worry about it. You know, I know it, I know it, that's all. That's all you need to know. So I figured it out and I started doing really, really well. I started gaining momentum right in practices. I was outperforming my teammates and I still wasn't getting any playing time. So I did really, really well. Ended up earning a scholarship my fourth year, and I still didn't get any meaningful snaps, still didn't get any carries, still didn't get what I wanted. And so I called my mom after four years. Remember what I told you? I called my mom, you know? So I called her and I said, mama, you know, maybe this isn't it for me. Maybe this is God telling me to go into a different direction, you know, because I've tried everything I could possibly do for four years. I'm far faster than everybody else. I'm stronger than everybody else. I know the system better than anybody else, and I'm still not getting any chances. Maybe there's just God telling me football is not the path he wanted me to walk. And she says, you know what, baby? Pray about it. God will give you a sign if he gives you a sign to leave I'm behind you to enter the transfer portal. If he doesn't, then you got to stay. I said, all right. Cool. Wake up the next morning. And I'm like, man, nothing's going to change. I had already started researching the portal entry, where I could potentially go to coaches to reach out to, and our head coach gets fired right when I wake up in the morning. Breaking news. You know, Bronco Mendenhall stepping down. I'm like, oh, that's a sign. I guess. You know, it's a pretty good sign. So I stay and Coach Elliott comes in. I repeat the same process I've been doing. I was blessed to be awarded with the starting running back position. Right. And then the first year that I started in my first game, I broke school records in the in the process of doing it first running back in over a decade to have over 100 yards and two touchdowns in his first ever career start. So it was everything I wanted, right? I was on a high, I was on a high. And keep in mind, God came in when I felt like I wasn't getting what I wanted. That's when I started talking about God to my family again. Crazy how that works. The story progresses and so we keep going and I'm doing really well. The team's not doing so good, but I'm doing good. In terms of personal, I'm starting to make a name for myself at the college level now where teams are starting to know who I am and I'm doing that, I'm doing that, I'm doing that. We get to the end of the season, right? And it's a Sunday night. I'm a very routine guy, military dad. Also, being a college athlete, I'm pretty much anybody that knows me can guess what I'm doing on any given day, at any certain time, because it's pretty much the same, very similar. Sundays, that's my reset days, right? So I get up in the morning, I listen to my worship, listen to my word. I go clean my house, play with my dog a little bit, start preparing myself a nice dinner, and then I watch a movie. I go to sleep. Every Sunday. It doesn't change, like every Sunday. I'm doing this and at the time I live with two other people, Ronnie Walker and Michael Hollins. Both of them were running backs. Both of them are very, very dear friends that I consider brothers to this day. Right. And so we go up, I go to sleep. Mike's doing something, Ronnie's doing his own thing. And typically when I go to sleep, I shut my door. When my door is not shut, it's an open door policy. You walk in and get whatever you need, whatever you need for me, you want to talk, whatever. But when that door is closed, I'm sleeping. All I ask is that you respect my privacy. Respect the time. Right. And all my both of my roommates knew that. So Ronnie comes beating on the door in the middle of the night. I try to act like I don't hear it. I tried to ignore it, and he keeps banging and I'm like, man, okay. And so I open the door and I'm like, what's up, Ronnie? And he's like, man, like, do you know where Mike is? And I say, middle of the night, weekend day. You could probably roll the dice and know where he's going to be at, you know? And I just let him do his thing. We'll see him in the morning. He says, no, P, something is wrong. Something is really, really wrong. Like we don't know where Mike is. We haven't heard from our other teammates either. And I said, okay. So I go into the room. Mike's room is right next to mine. I look for any signs of life, right? Any keys, any clothes on the ground, anything of that nature. Look outside to see if Mike's car is in the driveway in the parking lot. It's not there. So I say, okay, let's hop in the car. Let's go drive around the town and see where they're at. You know, see, see, we can find anything out. See if anybody knows where he's at. Nothing. Nobody's heard from him. No one seen him. Nobody knows anything for many of our teammates. So we keep driving around. We drive past. I guess Mike was on a field trip, so we drive past where the bus was. The bus was sitting there. We're like, okay, well, no one's on the bus. So, you know, they must be in other places, keep driving around, and then we say, you know what, let's go to the hospital just to rule out there because we know he can't be there. So let's just cross that one off the list. We go there and our head coach is there. We don't put two and two together that he wouldn't be there if they weren't there. But he says, go home. And when we know something, we'll tell you something. Of course we're not going home. We keep driving around, so we keep driving, we keep driving, we keep driving. And you know, when you're sitting in a situation and you have that pit in your gut, right? That just gets heavy when you know something is wrong. You're like something doesn't feel right. And it just gets heavier and heavier and heavier. That's what we were. And then we go and we sit down in the Wegmans parking lot. Wegmans is a grocery store, and we just wait, wait, continue checking Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, anything we can think of to see if we can hear anything. And then the news comes out. Three people were killed, right, shot and killed tragically. So, okay, who was it? So we're waiting, we're waiting, we're waiting. And it says three football players were killed tragically. Okay. Who was it? Like, who are the three football players? And then they released that we had lost Devin, DeShawn and Lavelle. Three dear teammates were tragically shot and killed on a field trip bus coming home. Mike was fighting for his life in critical condition. He had a bullet that went through his spine and just missed his vertebrae and went out through his stomach, right? He was in the hospital fighting and then we had another young lady, Marley Marley Morgan, who was shot. But she was she was okay. It just grazed her. We cried so all we could do, we just sat there and cried. How do you deal with something like that? You know, where where's the instruction manual to navigate that kind of a situation or that space or that mental space? How do you go play a football game after that? How do you do that? Right. It's rough. It's hard. So we come together the next day as a team and we meet no words, just a facility full of tears. That's all it is. Facility for the tears. We just cried. Embrace each other. Got to the point to where we could crack a couple laughs and remembrance of our fallen teammates and situations and things that they would have done. And for me, that was it. I'm a heart on my sleeve kind of a guy. You know everybody that's in my circle that I love and even people that aren't in my circle, I love everybody, so it's hard for me to do and keep doing them. Like thinking selfishly of what I'm going to do when I know other people that I care about are hurting. So in my eyes, I was done with football. I called my mom and I said, mom, I'm done. And like, I'm just going to go pursue something else. Like, I can't play ball anymore because, you know, in the locker room, I was number two when I played. Lavelle was number one. I saw him every single day for the last four years. Every single day. And I can't go into that locker room and sit next to a locker that I know he's not coming back to, not because he's late, but that's just because he's just gone. I couldn't do it. So I was like, mom, I'm not doing it. And she says, whatever you want to do, baby, I support you. I said, okay, we go in and have more meetings, and I tell some of the guys, I'm like, yeah, man, I'm done. You know, like, I'm just going to support you guys from afar and be here for whatever you need emotionally or mentally. But outside of that, I think football is it. It's done for me. It's a wrap. They said, Perris, we need you to come back, you know, just one more year. One more year. And after that, if you want to be done, be done. But the guys on the team need you here. You know your brothers. As I said, I'm a heart on my sleeve kind of guy. Whatever my people need for me, I'm going to do it to the best of my ability. So I come back and play, try to put the pieces together as best as I possibly can, right? Work out, get Grant at the start and roll again. Start doing really, really well for myself. I put myself in a position where I could potentially take care of my family. It's getting towards the end of the season and my coach comes to me, says PJ. I've been getting calls from the league. You know, there's some teams that want to give you a shot. All you have to do is finish the season healthy and you're going to the next level. That's it. I said, all right, cool. And so I do that. And not too far from here. We're at L&N Stadium here in Louisville. Right. And I get an ordinary play. It's an ordinary day. You know the games for the games going how it typically goes. We're starting to gain some momentum. I get a swing pass that I've run a million times. I can tell you exactly where everybody on the field is going to be at every exact second with my eyes closed, because I've done this exact place so many times. It’s that routine for me. And so I catch the ball, I see my blockers. He's pushing the nickel back out, the safeties coming down with the outside linebacker. I think to myself, I'm going to end this play the same way I've ended every play for the last 18 years. I've been playing this game, put my head down, endured the collision, get up, go to the next play. Right. That's it. That's all there is to it. Except when I encounter the hit, my lights come off, I can't move. I don't even feel myself hit the ground and I drop the ball, which I'm still mad about. I still like every time I think about it, I get mad. But I dropped the ball right? And I remember just laying there, looking up at the ceiling, looking up at the stars. And I don't know if you guys ever been in the stadium full of like 60,000 people and had them go silent on the drop of a dime, but it's scary. It's real scary, especially when you're the cause of it. So I'm laying there and all the thoughts are rushing through the head, right? I'm sitting there saying to myself, man, like, why is this happening? This is only 362 days after my teammates were shot and killed. So not even a year yet. And this happens. What am I doing wrong? Like what happened? Like why me? Why this situation? How am I going to take care of my family? How I'm going to take care of my mom? I'm going to how am I going to provide for myself? Who's going to want to be with me now if I'm paralyzed and I can't move? Which thankfully my wife here, my newlywed, she she said she would be there, but we don't know if that's true or not, but we're going to take her at her word. So but it's you know, all those thoughts are going through my head in that moment of just just doubt and question, right and worry. And right after that I said, you know what, God, I'm listening. Whatever you want to do in my life, you do it. Whatever. And as soon as I open my eyes from saying that prayer. I was overcome with a sense of peace that to this day I still cannot explain. I can't, I can't describe it. And I write a lot, and I still can't find the words I can't. It's so surreal and not of this world, the peace that I was given. And so they carted me off. They take me to the E.R. and they bombard me with all these questions and these tests, and they say, you know what? We're going to have to rush into emergency surgery to preserve some of your movement. You know, as much as we can. And so we say, okay, we go into that situation. They said, there's a good chance that you may never run again. You may not walk correctly or normal. You may not be able to function normally. I run two miles every day to this day and I walk just fine, right? And so in that moment, I realized when I was laying in a hospital bed and my grandmother came and she she's my she's my warrior man. She's my spiritual warrior. We talk about a lot in that sense. And I was asking her questions while I was in there. I was like, mama, why is the Lord brought me through so much? Like, why has he put me in so many of these different situations that no one wants to go through, right? She's, you know, she said, sometimes, baby, God takes you to deep water because the things trying to get you can't swim. I was like, wow. You know, like that's that's pretty that's pretty revolutionary. And I begin to understand that, you know, like man like and my dad, he was really, really rough on me, like, pushed me really, really hard. And I didn't understand that why either. And then in conversations that took place when I was in that bed, I was like, man, like, dad, why did you do what you did? And he said, I was just pushing you as hard as I thought, because I knew what life was going to throw at you. I didn't know, but I knew. And he said, at times I questioned myself. But I'm so glad that, you know, he he used to if I got a bad grade, he was the kind of dad to drop me off at the highway and make me run home. And like he was, he was he was one of those. So he was like, you know, at times I felt like I was pushing you too hard. But I'm so thankful that I built that within you so that what you're dealing with now, you can face it head on. Every single day when I was in that hospital bed, I was surrounded by people who couldn't walk, who were in breathing tubes, who couldn't eat on their own. I was in that position for a little bit, like they were just in crazy circumstances. And I was like, man, I feel like I didn't deserve to be here. I felt like I was okay compared to them, and so I felt like I had to be a blessing to them any way I could. And for the first time in my life, I couldn't rely on my athletic ability to do it. I had to talk to someone, you know, I had to hear them, had to try to give them a smile, you know, and things that I'd never really done, things that I'd never really focused on. And I couldn't brush my teeth for a while. I couldn't eat on my own for a while. And it was frustrating. But I realized that God was trying to reposition me. And you remember what I said earlier? I didn't come and rely on God till I needed him. Every single time. Every time my back was against the wall, that's when I wanted to turn to God. Not because he wasn't in my heart, but just because I lost sight of it. I started chasing the things of this world, right? I was caught up in the limelight, the people coming up asking for autographs, the praises, the screams, the scoring touchdowns, the interviews, all those things were things that I started to live for. And I forget why I started living for him in the first place, or why even started playing this game. I told my dad when I first before I played my first snap with him, I said, the reason I'm playing this game is to glorify God with the platform that this would give me. By making it to the NFL, I could tell about what the Lord has done in my life. When I got hurt, I thought I couldn't do that anymore. And then God said to me, man, just turn around and look. I gave you everything you wanted. You have exactly what you started playing this for. It's not how you thought it would look, but you have it. It's not about how you think it's going to look, man. Submit to what he wants. And when you do that, you'll never have a bad day again. Every day I get up in the morning, I'm thankful. My wife will ask me, I'm walking up the stairs. She's like, why are you smiling? Because, you know, nobody likes stairs. But she's like, why are you smiling? I'm like, man, there's a point in time where I couldn't do this, you know, like I'm eating. And she's like, slow down. And I was like, there was a time that I couldn't do this, you know? And there's people that can't. There's so many things that happen in our day to day lives that we take for granted because they're the mundane. There are things that you've done since the time you can remember, so you don't think about it. How many? Well, let me clarify this question. I hope you all thought about brushing your teeth this morning. But, but, but while you were doing it, how many of you thought about what you were actually doing while brushing your teeth? You didn't think about it. You just did it right? I hd to think about it. I was stabbing my gums for a while because I couldn't do it properly. But it's just small things of that nature that you got to be grateful for and so after that what do you do? Right? I told you guys when I started this that I had no direction after. I didn't know what, but I knew God had a plan. And God comes to you and sometimes through other people. And for me, that was my grandmother who told me to get up on stage as much like this and preach my story and tell my story, in hopes that it can help somebody else along their journey. I didn't want to do it. I didn't think I was qualified to do it. And so that lends my first challenge for everybody in the crowd tonight, right? You all have a story to tell every single person in here, and there's many situations that you're going to be in where you're you are the only Bible someone's ever going to get a chance to read. You are. Not the book. You and your day to day actions tell your story. Tell your story. And it doesn't have to look like mine because it's not mine. It's yours and somebody needs it. So that's my first challenge. My second challenge is for you guys to be grateful for everything, every single thing in this world. I lost a friend, a dear friend to cancer about a month ago, about a month ago, and he was so full of life. And I remember saying to myself, and I even said to my wife, I was like, man, I don't even know why I'm crying. I don't know why I'm crying. I know where he's going for one, but two, the word can't just be word. You gotta live it. You gotta live it. That's my second challenge for y'all. Live it, live it, live it. Make sure that there is fruits of the word in your day to day life. Don't let it just be a Sunday thing. Don't let it be that. Live it, right? And then the third thing and the final thing, which is really for I want everybody in here to vibe every single day. Vibe does not just mean dance, although if you want to dance, dance, I encourage it. My grandmother, other grandmother used to always tell me that there's power in laughter and joy. So if you want to dance, dance, but vibe and it stands for four different things. Okay. Every hardship situation. Excuse me. Situation that you come to. I want you to do these four things and it'll help you get through it, I promise you. For one, it's V. It stands for vision. Okay? Sight is what you see directly in front of you right now. Vision is telling me what's on the other side of that wall. Okay. Vision. The I stands for intention. It's why you do what you do. It's the purpose. Don't do anything just to do it. Have a reason behind it. Because we serve an intentional God. So you guys be intentional as well, right? B stands for believe. Nothing can occur if you don't believe in yourself and in what you're doing and who you're doing it with. Believe. E, which in my opinion is the easiest of all of them is just execute. That's putting the rubber to the road. All right? If you do those four things, I promise you in every single situation you'll be okay. Alright, so y'all remember those. What's the V? What's the I? What's the B? What's the E? Execute. You do those four things you will be okay. Don't ever think that the situations that you're in in life are meant to break you because they're not. They're meant to qualify you. Every hardship situation that you come into is just another way for you to prove that you serve an Almighty God, and that he's doing amazing things through you. Amazing in any category, amazing has a lot of different views. It looks a lot of different ways. Okay, so if you will bow your heads, please, I want to lead you guys in prayer before I get out of here. Lord Jesus, I want to thank you for this time. I want to thank you for these people being here and coming together. We know when two or more gathered in your presence, you are here. We know you're in this room. Lord, I pray that you move and let this message hit whoever it needs to. I pray that you empower everybody underneath my voice right now to go out and tell your story. Lord, your story of what you've done in their lives in hopes that other people can realize what he can do in theirs. Lord, I pray that you increase in us a spirit of conviction to understand the times that we're in and the things that are coming. And we know that the enemy is scared because you are moving now more than ever. Give them the conviction and the courage to follow you and know what's of you and what and what's not. Lord, I pray that you increase in us a spirit of love and grace. All things can be mended with love, Lord, and your grace. We're called to serve as you did, and we pray that you increase that in us, Lord and Lord. Honestly, I ask that you, everybody in this room is just happy. This happy. We serve you, Lord, and you've done amazing things in everybody's life. I pray that they can take a moment and think about those things and be grateful for them, and be grateful for you. We have no bad days because you are supreme over everything. Every situation that happens. You ordained that, you knew it was going to happen and you've given us the tools to navigate through it, and I pray that you give them confidence to do that. And we ask this in your name we pray, Lord. Amen. Thank you guys. Hold on, hold on now. We are going to end this the same way that we started it. Before I turn it over to pastor. It's only like 10s if that's okay. All right. You guys remember or you need a refresher? All right. Valley View. What day is it? Thank you guys, I appreciate you. And God will bless you. Thank you, Perris. And thank you for making sure our kids know to call mom when they need something. I'm very grateful for that. I think they know that already, though. But one thing you shared with the men that really stood out to me, that I think is good for all of us to hear, and I think. Let me see if I remember this right, that your grandma every day would say to you. What verse would you quote?

Was it Romans 8: 28:09

28? God causes all things to work together for good, for those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose. Every day she would say that to him. Hold on. He's going to correct me. That's also her contact for - that's her contact for him.

How she lists him, Romans 8: 28:29

28.

She doesn't use his name. He's Romans 8: 28:31

28. God calls us all. And listen. That verse gets thrown around a lot. Oh, God's going to work all things out for good. But if anybody can embody that verse through the adversity that Perris has been through. I mean, when he walked through the things because I knew I saw him on the football field, I thought, this whole story is going to be about that. And then you hear all he's been through and how God has worked all of that for good in his life. I thought, this is a message I needed to hear because the smallest little thing will derail me, let alone those huge things he's been through. And I was just so grateful to hear that. I think each of us can walk with that encouragement today. And I don't know what you've been through. I don't know what God has going on in your life. It may be harder than what he faced. There's a good chance, though. There's some things that are much less than that that are derailing us, and we've got to depend on him to get us through that. So I hope his story was an encouragement to you today. What I'm going to do now is just pray and close out our time together. So if you would stand, we'll have a closing prayer of blessing. Thank you for being here. We're continuing that emphasis of walk by Faith. Next week we'll be back in Hebrews 11 talking about that as well as [?] But let me just pray and close us out. God, we thank you for today. Thank you for this powerful story of how you've worked in Perris’s life, whatever you're going through today, I pray that God guides you, that he comforts you, that he gives you direction, that you would sense his presence around you. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. And may you know his peace today. Jesus, we love you. We thank you for this day. It is the best day ever. We love you and your name we pray. Amen. Have a great day. Go in peace.