Matt:
When Colt went down, I immediately started praying, “Lord, let him back in the game.” I was begging God, wrestling with the same issues of trust, asking, “What in the world are you doing? Don’t you know how huge this is, God?”
Then the report came saying Colt wasn’t getting back in the game. For a moment I sat there in front of my TV, completely deflated. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: No, for reasons we’ll never fully understand, what’s happening at this exact moment is part of God’s perfect plan. This moment is what God has been preparing Colt for all year long.
Instead of worrying, I trusted God and prayed that Colt would do the same. I knew there was going to be a post-game interview with Colt, and I began to pray, “God, give him the right words to say.”
Sure enough, after the game Lisa Salters came on the screen with Colt at her side. A microphone was in his face. I knew this was the moment.
Colt started slowly at first:
“I … I …” He cleared his throat and began again. “I love this game. I have a passion for this game.
“I’ve done everything I can to contribute to my team, and we made it this far.
“It’s unfortunate that I didn’t get to play. I would have given everything I had to be out there with my team.
“Congratulations to Alabama.
“I love the way our team fought. Garrett Gilbert stepped in and played as good as he could play. He did a tremendous job …”
Then, as Colt finished speaking, he said one last phrase. It brought me to my feet in my living room. I heard the words and stared at the screen.
Colt:
I said: “I always give God the glory. I never question why things happen the way they do. God is in control of my life, and I know that if nothing else, I am standing on the Rock.”
Matt:
I screamed at the top of my lungs. “That’s it!”
Colt:
I know those words came to me because of God. They came because I had been meditating on Isaiah 26:3-4 before the game.
God was keeping me in perfect peace because my mind was stayed on him.
God was my eternal Rock, and although I was hugely disappointed over not winning, my life wasn’t going to be shattered. God was still in control.
That’s what I told everybody that day, and that’s what I had come to truly believe.
Matt:
On national television, with the whole world watching, Colt had just quoted Isaiah 26. Within two seconds of Colt’s interview, my phone started going off. I bet it went off a hundred times. Everyone who knew that Colt and I were friends started texting me, saying things like, “Unbelievable,” and “God was glorified through that,” and “Tell Colt I’m so proud of him,” and “That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
This young man hadn’t only given glory to God when he had won, but he just gave glory to God when he had lost the biggest game of his life.
That’s what it means to truly win. It means that eternity is always in view. Colt could have been shattered, but instead he stood confidently on the eternal Rock of God.
Colt:
It’s true that I was hugely disappointed. If you could imagine what I felt in that moment—my whole life had been built around winning that game. Everything I had spent hours upon hours preparing for was encapsulated in that event.
Yet God chose to use me in that moment of pain and failure to glorify him. And that was okay with me. Yes, the experience hurt. It was painful. I still have nightmares about it today. I still get upset when I think about it. But that was the route God allowed me to walk down. I know now that things in this life don’t always go as planned, but I’m confident that I’m on the journey God wants me to be on, and I’ll go where he wants me to go.
The Real Win for You
So that’s what this book is about: trusting God in the deepest way possible. This is where the real win in a man’s life comes from.
Redefining success is a task for every man, including you. The task isn’t always easy, but the rewards pay off in big ways. With God at the core of your life, your life is rock steady. You don’t have to wonder, Am I committing myself to the right tasks? Am I a part of something that really matters? Am I valuable? You’re not on the shifting sands of your own best notions and efforts; you’re built on the Rock. A peace and an assurance like you’ve never felt before flood your life.
That’s the surprising reward of faithfully serving God—absolute confidence. It’s not so much a confidence in yourself or your abilities, although that’s often a by-product of trusting God. It’s a confidence in the righteous character of God himself. God is good all the time, and God always has our best interests at heart. Trusting God means knowing that our lives are being lived out in the center of his perfect plan.
We don’t have all of life figured out by any means, and both of us still make as many mistakes as the next guy. But we want to talk to you in the pages ahead about how God has changed our life stories—how by trusting and serving him wholeheartedly, we’ve seen him change our marriages, families, hearts, careers and lives. Through the truths we’ve discovered in the Scriptures, we are learning how to be the men God calls us to be.
We invite you to do the same. To learn how to trust God more fully than you ever have before, and then do it. The way of living presented in this book isn’t about shining yourself up or pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. It’s about a love relationship with Jesus, about grace and not perfection, about following and obeying a God who cares for you, no matter what.
Consider this your personal call to redefine success in your life. When you trust in the Lord as your eternal Rock, you can be absolutely confident no matter life’s circumstances.
Taken from The Real Win: A Man’s Quest for Authentic Success. Copyright © 2013 by Colt McCoy and Matt Carter. Published by WaterBrook Multnomah. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.
Order from Amazon.com: The Real Win (Men’s Bible Study)
