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A few weeks ago, I read The Real Win: A Man’s Quest for Authentic Success by Colt McCoy and Matt Carter. It is, quite simply, the best men’s ministry book I’ve come across. Filled with gospel truth, practical application, and personal testimony, The Real Win deserves to be read, digested, and put into practice by Christian men in our churches. The video / study materials available for churches are superb as well.

Here is a little about the authors and then an interview with Colt and Matt about the truths they’ve articulated in this book.

(By the way, if you haven’t seen the viral YouTube video of Matt catching a bird with his bare hands, do yourself a favor and watch it now.)

COLT MCCOY is an NFL quarterback. As a college student, he was the winningest quarterback in the history of NCAA football and led his University of Texas team to the 2010 BCS national championship game. During his senior year, Colt won thirteen of the top fifteen major college player awards, including quarterback of the year, offensive player of the year, and outstanding football player of the year. The 2008 Heisman trophy runner-up, Colt is involved in several ministries around the world. Colt and his wife, Rachel, live in Austin, Texas.

MATT CARTER is founding pastor of the seven-thousand-member Austin Stone Community Church. He is a co-leader of the For the City network, which helps churches partner with social service agencies to meet local needs. Matt is the author of several books and is a sought-after national speaker. He holds a master’s of divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children: John Daniel, Annie, and Samuel.

INTERVIEW WITH COLT & MATT

Trevin Wax: Your book is about “winning” and “not losing,” and yet your goal is to redefine our understanding of what the “win” is. You say a lot of guys are climbing the ladder of success, but have their ladder up against the wrong wall. What are some ways a man’s drive to be successful is misdirected?

Colt McCoy & Matt Carter: First and foremost, success in God’s eyes is about trusting and serving Him before anything or anyone else. He becomes your highest pursuit.

The way this gets misdirected for many men, including us, is when we put other pursuits—even good, godly pursuits like our work or calling—before our primary purpose which is to bring glory to God by trusting and serving Him with every aspect of our lives.

We’ve seen this happen in both the ministry world and the corporate world. Pastors and businessmen alike are tempted to chase after money, power, the respect of their peers, or achieving some great goal they have in their minds, and it ends up leaving them feeling unfulfilled, empty, and frustrated. We’ve all seen the aftermath of these feelings either in ourselves or others: porn addiction, workaholism, neglected wife and family, midlife crisis. Why is this? God is the only one worthy enough to be our highest pursuit, and trusting and serving Him alone was meant to be our definition of success. 

Trevin Wax: There’s a lot in this book about the formative impact of suffering and trials in life. Matt, you talk about your struggle with cancer. And Colt, you talk about a physical injury that sidelined you during a national championship. What have you learned from these experiences?

Colt McCoy & Matt Carter: “Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord is an everlasting Rock” (Isaiah 26:4). The truth is, we may have read that verse a hundred times, but without the struggle in our life, it would never have had the significance it has to us now.

God is a solid Rock that we cling to and stand firmly upon in times of difficulty. And when we’re standing firmly on the Rock, we cannot be moved by injury, cancer, suffering, or failure. This is what the Lord has taught us, and it is something that we are imploring the men around us to learn as well.

The verse right before says, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because He trusts in You” (Isaiah 26:3). What is the fruit of this kind of trust? Perfect peace. God is inviting all men to this kind of peace, but it comes through trusting Him entirely.

Trevin Wax: You guys are open about some of the struggles you’ve had in your marriages, particularly the temptation to be so focused on success outside the home that you are less inclined to serve your family. What are some decisions you’ve made that have helped you cherish your wife and lead your families well?

Colt McCoy & Matt Carter: Naturally, if a biblical redefinition of success has happened in a man’s life, he’ll see that trusting and serving the Lord first means honoring and laying your life down for your wife as Christ has done for the Church (Ephesians 5:25-33).

This practically means loving her first. Loving her before your job, your ministry, or your goals is loving her first. This is how Christ loved us and gave Himself for us.

We’ve seen so many women, including our own wives, become functional widows because of our pursuits outside the home. We leave them spiritually, emotionally, and physically destitute when we put our careers first, and this comes from a heart that loves our achievements and success more than God.

Trevin Wax: The strategies you give in this book regarding temptation, working to God’s glory, and loving your families are buttressed by a robust theological grid that sees sin as the acting out of idolatrous identity. You recommend men ask themselves, “Where do I sin?” and “Why do I struggle with this sin?” Why are these two questions clarifying?

Colt McCoy & Matt Carter: Men can often point to areas of sin in their lives. It usually doesn’t take much thought to list out a few of the sin patterns that we deal with on a regular basis. This answers the first question men should ask themselves, but it usually stops there for most men.

These recurring sins merely lie on the surface of a deeper worship problem. They indicate that our hearts’ affections and our minds’ attention are consumed with something other than God.

This is why the second “why” question is so important. Until we recalibrate the focus of our worship and attention, we will forever be plagued with these “surface sins.”

Answering the “why” shows us that we want something more than we want God which shows us that we do not trust that God will give us what we need and satisfy our every desire. Psalm 37:4 tells us that when we delight ourselves in the Lord—meaning, we make Him our highest pursuit and greatest joy—He will give us the desire of our heart—Him! The result of this is that sin begins to no longer look as desirable as it did before.

Trevin Wax: You write about failure and how we should respond when we sin. Why is understanding the grace and mercy of God so important for dealing with ongoing sin and our need for forgiveness?

Colt McCoy & Matt Carter: Since we’ve redefined success as trusting God with every aspect of our lives, this means we should also trust God when we sin. Our response to sin shouldn’t send us into the pit of shame and despair, and it shouldn’t cause us to harden ourselves with the pride of thinking we can just try harder.

So many men live with regret, shame, and guilt over their past and current failures, or they just wink at their sin and go on with their lives thinking they’re fine. Both are ultimately a failure to trust God.

When we trust God with our sin we go straight to Him with it, and we are always met with forgiveness, mercy, and grace. He has definitively dealt with our sin on the cross of Christ. Therefore, any attempt to deal with our sin outside of running to the provision of God’s mercy and grace at the cross is foolish pride and unbelief.

Trevin Wax: What do you hope this book will accomplish in the lives of the men who read it?

Colt McCoy & Matt Carter: We want the lives of men to be measured not by achievement, but by faithfulness. Faithfulness to their calling to love and serve God and love and serve their families. We hope men see this two-fold calling as the primary legacy they leave in this world.

There are so many other things vying for a man’s energy and attention in the few decades we have on the earth, but nothing will cause them to leave their mark on this world more than living to be forgotten. This is how Christ lived. He was born into obscurity. He worked faithfully. He loved and served and taught people. He never wrote a book or championed a cause other than God’s. And He died the death of a common criminal. But because of this incredible life of humbling Himself to the will of the Father, He has left an eternal legacy that cannot be shaken, and “God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name” (Philippians 2:9).

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