In 2025, Nathan Carter was drafted by the Atlanta Falcons. In addition to his career in the NFL, he wrote a book and hosted a podcast. He regularly uses his platform on Instagram to share his faith and the gospel. 

PEER: How did you come to know Jesus? Did you always grow up in the church?

NATHAN CARTER: I grew up in a church. My father is a pastor in my hometown in Rochester, NY. But even though I grew up in a church, my parents instilled into us that we need our own relationship with Christ. I was more of a fan of Jesus than a follower. I knew a lot of facts about God. I relied on my parents’ faiths heavily, thinking that their faith would get me through life. It wasn’t until college that I had a “come to Jesus” moment in my life. I was going through some adverse things, some challenging times. It was really at that time in my life where God was speaking to me, like, “Hey, I want a relationship with you personally.”

I’m grateful that I had my father in my life to be able to guide me, direct me through those challenging times, and to really focus in on my personal relationship with Christ. I think that’s important, that we can’t rely on someone else’s faith, or just relying on facts about God. But we truly have to know Christ for ourselves.

Now, I’ve just been living on fire for Jesus and striving to help others to experience the love and joy that they can have overall with Christ. 

P: You share a lot about your faith and the gospel on your social media. What motivated you to begin sharing your faith on social media, especially with a large platform? 

NC: What motivated me was the fact that I viewed my platform as a ministry. I understood that whatever God gives me is not for my own doing, it’s not for me to be blessed, it’s not for me to receive the glory, but it’s for God to receive glory. I use things like my social media as an easy way to do that. Nowadays, you can reach so many people with social media. And from my Instagram specifically, just being able to use that platform for me to be able to share my faith, to be able to tell people about God and to be able to encourage people to know God for themselves.

And ever since then, it’s been encouraging. A lot of young people would reach out to me on private message and tell me that my messages are encouraging. Some guys even ask questions, and I’d be able to go and talk to them one-on-one and answer the questions they have about faith and things like that.

At the end of the day, I want to be faithful with what He’s given me, whether that’s social media, whether that’s me being in the National Football League (NFL), or whatever. I want to be faithful to what God’s given me because at the end of the day, the main story is about making Jesus known and making Him proud.

P: What was the heart behind your book, “If I’m Not By Your Side”? 

NC: I created it for my future children. It’s called “If I’m Not By Your Side,” and then the subtitle is, “Legacy of Faith and Wisdom for the Next Generation.” I wanted to pass that down to my future children, from my wife and I, that legacy of faith and wisdom. And then as I was writing it, I was like, “Man, this could be useful for a lot of people. Who knows what God could do with this?” 

In the midst of writing it, I was a little bit insecure, to be honest with you, because in my mind, I was like, “Well, I don’t know anything about being an author. Everything’s new to me. Who would want to hear what a 22-year-old would have to say?” But I just felt the Lord calling me to write a book, to share about my life stories of what He’s done in my life. And the biggest thing as I wrote the book, the biggest message that I want people to realize, is that the same way in which God was in my story is the same way that He’s in all of our stories. 

I’m not the main character of the story despite me writing a book about myself, but it’s really, God’s the main character and how He’s been working in my life and how He can also work in the lives of others if they would trust and believe in His Son. And that was the main message that I tried to portray. I’m hoping that people would see that and they would be encouraged by my stories and my testimonies. And that would encourage them to be, like, “Man, let me take a look back or take a look at the mirror and see how God’s also in my story as well.”

P: As you pursue your career in the NFL, how does your faith help you remain grounded?

NC: What I’ve realized with this being such a short time, being my first year in the NFL, there are so many distractions. There are so many distractions that the enemy would try to throw to take from looking at Jesus. And I think the biggest distraction is money. Everyone wants to make millions of dollars and drive the fancy cars, have the big house and all those things. I see a lot, just in the NFL, but in general that most of the time when people put their idols as those things, they come to fall short.

When in the game of football, when something gets taken away from them or this idol gets taken away, now they’re questioning their identity as if, “Well, what do I do with my life now?” And one of the biggest things I see now is just understanding that people who don’t experience faith, who don’t have faith in something that’s rooted in a strong foundation, especially in Jesus Christ, their foundation is built on the pressures. Their foundation is built on money. Their foundation is built on these temporary things that’s not going to last a long time.

So, being rooted in my faith, I’ve understood that, okay, number one, the foundation has to be firmly stood on Jesus Christ. That’s where the foundation’s going to be the strongest. And then from there, once your foundation is set, the way that you view life and the way that you see life is through a different lens, you’re not looking at it from a worldly view, but you’re thinking at it from an external view. The way that I value and use money, I’m not thinking of it as something that’s worldly. This is not my money, it’s God’s money.

Yes, God put me here in the NFL, but He put me here for a reason. I have a goal. I have a mission. I’m not just here to play football. I’m here to share the gospel. I’m here to lead other people to Christ. It’s really a mindset shift of how I think of things because of my faith being rooted in Christ, of how I view the world, and especially how I play the game in the NFL and how I interact with teammates and all those things.

P: What’s your mindset going into game day? How do you approach game day? Even on days you may not play, but what’s your mindset like?

NC: I think that the one thing I pray for each morning is like, “Lord, would you just lead me? Help me to be a better teammate, help me to be a better encourager. Help me to just seek you and to be there for teammates in the midst of when I’m not playing, I’m still being there in those moments.” And then my next prayer after that is, “Lord, I want You to be glorified in my play. Whether I’m playing, whether I’m not playing, whether it’s my teammates playing, Lord, I pray that you are glorified. Use my gifts and my abilities and a little bit of what I have and just do it all for Your Glory and just use me however you want.”

I approach it with open arms, of, okay, Lord, what do you have for me today? That’s not just a game day thing, but it’s an everyday lifestyle that I would encourage everyone to be at. No matter where you are in life, just have open arms to God in your life. He can do more in my life than I can envision for my own.

So, the way that I approached the game, the way that I approach the practice is with open arms — of “Lord, have Your will, have Your way, do what You want to do. Whether I play, whether I don’t play, I pray that however many plays I play, whether it’s a hundred plays or whether is one play, that I glorify You in that play, that I do it all for Your glory. If I don’t play, I pray that I’m still glorifying You in the way that I serve, and I way that I love my teammates.” 

It’s continuously being that witness for Christ no matter what’s going on in your life. It’s continuously seeking to show other people the love of Jesus regardless of if you’re in a spotlight or not. A lot of people think that being valuable and being used in the kingdom of God means you have to be in the spotlight, but you don’t. God can use you in the background when no one’s looking. I mean, Christ actually encourages us to do that in the Sermon on the Mount. He talks about doing things in secret, and when nobody’s watching. God is glorified through that.

I would encourage people, regardless of where you’re at in your life, whether you’re in a hot seat and everything’s screaming on you or where they’re in the background and no one’s really paying attention to you, for lack of a better word, Christ can still be glorified. Wherever you’re at. If you approach your walk with Christ and approach your life each and every day with open arms, by saying, “Lord do what You want to do in my life,” man, great things will happen.

I can’t tell you how many times that I prayed a simple prayer, where I said, “Lord, I pray that when I go into the building today, help me to share the gospel with somebody” and every single time I’ve prayed that prayer, every single time, every time I prayed the prayer of God, give me an opportunity to share gospel with somebody, it’s happened every single time. Every single time. Why? Because it’s God’s will. We’re praying God’s will. God wants people to know Him. If we pray God’s will, He will be faithful and answer that and answer those prayers for us.

P: How has your faith grown or been impacted since starting your professional career in the NFL?

NC: My faith has grown in the way that I interact with teammates, I’d say, because being in the NFL, a lot of guys either don’t know God or don’t feel like they need God. And the reasons for that is because, like I said, they’re distracted by the things of this world.

For me, I got to be beyond the spotlight by me not playing so much. It really is challenging me to be more interactive with my teammates, going outside the comfort zone, even talking to older guys who have been in the league for nine, 10+ years and being like, “Hey, there’s something that football can’t give you. Yeah, you’ve made all this money, but I can give you something or I can tell you about someone who can give you something that’s going to last longer than the money you have in your bank account.”

It’s being able to step outside that comfort zone and trusting the Lord and surrounding myself with community to be that salt and light that God calls to be in the workplace. For me, that’s been encouraging, challenging and hard at times, because you want people to come to know Christ and you want to be like, “Oh, man, I’m going to share with you the gospel the first time. You’re going to come to know Christ and all that stuff.” But it doesn’t happen like that. Sometimes it takes time. It takes relationship building. It takes having multiple conversations, multiple gospel conversations. It takes time of praying for your teammates by name, like praying for them, praying for the coaches, and being there for them, in those moments. 

It hasn’t been a big challenge for me, but it’s really been an encouragement for me. That’s a way I can continue to grow on my faith in the time that I’m in right now.

P: What advice do you have for young aspiring Christian athletes who may be struggling with their identity on and off the field?

NC: Man, because I’ve dealt with that especially in my freshman year of college, with me being a newer recruit and trying to prove myself and want to be the best. And having a desire to be excellent in all I do and be the vessel in what I do. And that’s a good desire. We shouldn’t do anything that’s not a hundred percent giving our all.

I think that for me, what I see a lot is just peer pressure. The pressure that we put in ourselves was the pressure that others put on us.

It’s for us to perform, in football and in all sports, and even in jobs. Our performance is in identity. If I don’t perform on the field, I’m not going to play. If I don’t perform on the field, I’m going to lose my job. So now they take that. They take what the world says, and they try to apply that relationships to God and say, “Oh, man, well, if I don’t read my Bible enough, God’s not going to love me. Or if I don’t do X, Y, and Z, God’s not going to love me.” And that’s not how Christianity works at all. 

Our faith is not performance-based faith at all. And if it comes to be a performance-based faith, it’s not going to work. It’s going to fail. The foundation is going to fall short. It comes to the question of, “How can I shift from me being in performance-based sport, but also remembering that despite my performance, that God still loves me?” Whether I play well, or whether I play bad, that doesn’t change the way that God feels about me. It doesn’t change the way that God views me. It doesn’t change the mission and the calling that God has in my life.”

It’s reminding ourselves of that. And memorizing scripture, reminding ourselves of scripture of like, who am I working for? Am I working for human masters as Colossians says, or am I working for God? Because I work for human masters, I want to be servant the Lord. It’s reminding ourselves of the truth. That’s why the scripture of God says, “You are fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14, NIV). He didn’t say, “You’re fearfully and wonderfully made if you play a good game.” He didn’t say, “You’re fearfully and wonderfully made if you get X amount of money.” He says you’re fearfully and wonderfully made. That’s who you are. That’s your identity.

P: When people hear the name Nathan Carter, what do you hope they think of? What kind of legacy do you want to leave for not only like just in general, but also for future generations?

NC: If I were to die tomorrow, I guess that’s a little bit extreme, but if I were to die tomorrow and my family, my wife, and all my friends were to come together, they would stand there and when they would go up, I wouldn’t want people to say that I was a good football player. I wouldn’t want people to say about me that I broke all these records and that I did all these things, all these worldly things. I would want people to say about me that I ran the race well, and I was faithful. 

My favorite verse in the entire Bible is Acts 20:24. And Paul, as he’s about to go into the ministry, is saying, “I consider my life to be worth nothing to me” (Acts 20:24a, NIV). He said, “I only work for me to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me — the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace” (Acts 20:24b, NIV). And that’s how I want my life to be shaped. I want to run the race. I want to complete the task that Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace. That’s what I want in my life, I want my legacy to be at. Not to be a good football player, even though I strive to do that — that’s what God’s given me — but that’s not who I am. Because at the end of the day, I want Jesus to be made for me.

Like, 500 plus years from now, no one’s going to remember who I am. But it’s been thousands and thousands of years, and Jesus’ name is still being mentioned, Jesus’ name is still being proclaimed. So, my mission and what I want to do is to reach as many people as I can for the gospel, for Jesus Christ, because that’s what’s going to matter at the end of the day. It’s not going to matter how many touchdowns I run for, how much money I make, how big my house is, or any of that stuff. What did you do for the sake of Jesus Christ? What did you do to lead people to Christ? That’s what I want my legacy to be.

In the Hot Seat

P: What’s on your hype playlist? Are there any songs that get you hype for a game? 

NC: I’ve been listening to Hulvey. I love Hulvey. He actually just came out with a new album, and there’s one song that’s on his album, this new album, the second track of the new album that he put out.  

I love listening to worship music and I believe Elevation Worship just came out with a song: “Jesus Be The Name.” I’ve been banging that recently. Absolutely love that song. And then, this is my pre-game, ritual every single game since college. I’ve listened to KB, the album “His Glory Alone II,” from start to finish, the whole album from start to finish every single time during my pregame ritual pump up. After I’m done listening to worship music and do my little devotional time, that’s my music. I’ve been doing that since my second or third year of college. 

P: What’s a Bible verse that’s been on your heart recently?

NC: It’s Psalm 27:4 — “One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”

I think that’s been the psalm that’s been on my heart lately — just this life with everything about me, I want to seek Him in His temple. I want to follow after Jesus, chase and run after Christ as fast as I can to become more like Him, to depend on Him, to glorify Him, to love and to worship Him, and to love others as He’s called me to love.

Photos used by permission from the Atlanta Falcons.