Ann Spangler - Less Than Perfect: Broken Men and Women of the Bible and What We Can Learn from Them

CONTENTS

Reading just the first paragraph in Ann Spanglers exquisitely written book carried my mind into a cozy, candlelit scene, sitting at the feet of a master storyteller. Her colorful descriptions and dancing phrasing served to paint moving pictures in my imagination. I could see the Bible stories in a way that illuminated them as never before. Clearly, Less Than Perfect is a pleasure to read and a must for anyone desiring to know the men and women of the Scriptures more intimately and see more of ourselves through them.

SUSAN GREGORY, bestselling author, The Daniel Fast

As children we enjoyed our storybook Bibles, with brightly colored illustrations and sanitized stories about our flannelgraph heroes. In Less Than Perfect, Ann Spangler invites us to take a grown-up look at biblical characters and meditate on how God used them despite their lack of storybook perfection. I especially enjoyed her vibrant tale-telling and many cultural insights. Each chapter is sprinkled with nuggets from the ancient world that shed new light on the lives of biblical characters in the world that they knew.

LOIS TVERBERG, author, Reading the Bible with Rabbi Jesus

Ann Spanglers latest book Less Than Perfect is a moving tribute to the fact that God uses broken people who are often seen as failures to others. These are beautifully written stories that will touch the deepest part of your heart and inspire a fresh faith in Jesus Christ and his grace.

JIM CYMBALA, Senior Pastor, The Brooklyn Tabernacle

Ann Spangler has a gift of making the Bible come alive. Her beautiful storytelling combined with historical insights give us powerful lessons we can apply to our own less-than-perfect lives.

JOANNA WEAVER, bestselling author, Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World

Ann Spangler makes Bible people feel like close cousinsif not like us ourselves. Taking us by the hand, she guides us through these ancient lives with a contemporary lens thats candid, courageous, inspiring, and insightful. With Ann Spangler, such Bible voyages are always remarkable journeys. Dont miss this one!

PATRICIA RAYBON, author, Undivided: A Muslim Daughter, Her Christian Mother, Their Path to Peace

In her vividly but faithfully imagined vignettes of thirty biblical characters, Ann Spangler unerringly gets to the heart of the matter: God always works with deeply flawed people, and he often works in spite of them. Anns rich portraits capture the strangeness of each characters times and yet the familiarity of their situations. These storiesof Adam and Eve and their varied offspringwarn and encourage us both: after all, we too are sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, and these stories are our stories. They remind us of what runs in our blood and of the One whose blood can redeem it all.

MARK BUCHANAN, author, The Rest of God

Those who think the Bible is full of perfect people have never really read the Bible at all. In these less-than-perfect people we find more than we expect. Thank you, Ann, for helping us use our imagination to feed our souls. Ann reminds us that there is only one kind of personbroken. As she invites us to run our fingers over the jagged edges of these biblical lives, we are reminded of our own complexity and our own great need of Gods patience. Ann is a master storyteller! She makes the people of Scripture as vibrant as those we meet in a novel or in daily life. No one-dimensional saints here! Only desperate peoplewhether they know it or notin need of God.

DERON SPOO, pastor, First Baptist Tulsa; author, The Good Book: 40 Chapters That Reveal the Bibles Biggest Ideas

Ann Spanglers knowledge and understanding of ancient history, laws, and cultures allow her to weave informative commentary between the pages of Scripture. Through detailed descriptions of scenes and emotions, the stories and characters come alive, giving the reader a front-row seat as the drama unfolds. The authors creative retelling of Bible stories reminds us again how God used flawed and less than perfect people in his ultimate plan for redemption.

CRYSTAL BOWMAN, bestselling, award-winning author of more than 100 books for children, including Our Daily Bread for Kids, Devotions for Beginning Readers, and M is for Manger

OTHER BOOKS BY ANN SPANGLER

Finding the Peace God Promises

Hes Been Faithful (Carol Cymbala with Ann Spangler)

I Am with You: Daily Meditations on

Knowing and Experiencing God

Men of the Bible (coauthored with Robert Wolgemuth)

The Names of God: 52 Bible Studies for Individuals and Groups

The Names of God Bible (general editor)

The One-Year Devotions for Women

Praying the Names of God

Praying the Names of Jesus

The Rescue (Jim Cymbala with Ann Spangler)

She Who Laughs, Lasts!

Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus

(coauthored with Lois Tverberg)

The Tender Words of God

Women of the Bible (coauthored with Jean Syswerda)

ZONDERVAN

Less Than Perfect

Copyright 2018 by Ann Spangler

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

ISBN 978-0-310-34172-7 (softcover)

ISBN 978-0-310-35542-7 (audio)

ISBN 978-0-310-34173-4 (ebook)

Epub Edition June 2018 9780310341734

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.Zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

All passages in the text are from the NIV, though in order to stay as close to the Scriptural text as possible and to preserve the readability of the stories, some Bible passages have been slightly paraphrased. For the same reason the author did not always use quotation marks to indicate passages drawn from the text of the Bible itself.

Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in association with Yates & Yates, www.yates2.com.

Art direction: Curt Diepenhorst

Interior design: Denise Froehlich

Editorial: Sandra Vander Zicht, Robert Hudson

First printing May 2018 / Printed in the United States of America

B efore one word of the Bible was ever written down, its stories and instructions were spoken aloud. Though modern cultures rely heavily on the writings they produce, many ancient cultures shared and recorded their stories and faithfully handed them down by telling them from one generation to the next.

Certainly that must have been how many of the stories included in this book were first told and retold and then passed from generation to generation, perhaps around a campfire under starry skies. When the sun went down and their work was done, people shared a meal and told stories about their nation and tribe, entertaining each other with memories of colorful characters and eventsreal people whom their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents had known.