Jeff Kinley - The Losers Club. Lessons from the Least Likely Heroes of the Bible

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LOSERS CLUB: LESSONS FOR THE LEAST LIKELY HEROES OF THE BIBLE
Copyright 2005 by Jeff Kinley

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ePub Edition June 2009 ISBN: 0-310-86287-6

Youth Specialties products, 300 South Pierce Street, El Cajon, CA 92020, are published by Zondervan, 5300 Patterson Avenue SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49530

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kinley, Jeff.
The losers club : lessons from the least likely heroes of the Bible / by Jeff Kinley.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-26262-6
1. Failure (Psychology)Religious aspectsChristianity. 2. BibleBiography. I. Title.
BT730.5.K56 2005
220.9'2dc22

2005024229

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible:New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan.

Some of the anecdotal illustrations in this book are true to life and are included with the permission of the persons involved. All other illustrations are composites of real situations, and any resemblance to people living or dead is coincidental.

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.

Web site addresses listed in this book were current at the time of publication. Please contact Youth Specialties via e-mail (YS@YouthSpecialties.com) to report URLs that are no longer operational and replacement URLs if available.

Creative Team: Doug Davidson, Shawn Odegaard, Laura Gross, Janie Wilkinson,
Holly Sharp, Rule29, David Conn
Cover design by Burnkit

06 07 08 09 10 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Joel Owens,
my closest friend and a fellow loser.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Jay Howver and the rest of the crew at YouthSpecialties for recognizing the potential for this project. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my wife, Beverly, for her savvy marketing genius and for helping me create the Losers Club concept. Thanks to my three sons whoare always willing to give me insight from a teenagers perspective. I am also grateful to Doug Davidson for hiscreative expert analysis and tune-up of my original manuscript.

CONTENTS

This is a book about losers for losers. Now, dont Im not implying youre a loser. Wait. No, backI confess. I am implying that. I do mean to say youre a loser. But before you get offended and shove this book back on the shelf or use it for firewood, give me a chance to explain.

Over the past two decades, I have become friends with a number of guys and girls who have experienced some real losing seasons in their lives. For some, their struggles came in the form of doubtstimes when they wondered what in the world God in heaven was really up to (or if he was up to anything !) Others experienced some pretty huge failuresfailures that are documented as a part of public record. And others were labeled losers because they were nobody to speak ofthey never made millions, achieved fame, or marked a generation. They were just people. But they are all part of a very special group, like a fraternity or sorority. Only its a fraternity of faith.

A Losers Club.

Now, this particular club has no official meetingplace. No headquarters. No annual dues to pay. No special handshake. No identifying crest or logo. It does have lots of members. Just living life day-by-day gets you into the club. To learn the stories of its charter members, you need look no further than your own Bible. There, on the pages of Scripture, are the men and women who firstsigned the clubs imaginary membership book-signed with their own sins, doubts, failures, and faults. If you sawonly certain scenes from their lives, you might conclude they were long-term losers. But look at the entire movie,and youll watch a doubter eventually believe, a struggler eventually overcome, and an obscure nobody eventuallyfind a place in history-and in His-story.

Sometimes its difficult to understand some ofthose biblical characters or make sense of the way they actedor why they didnt do the things they should havedone. Its also difficult because they lived in another place and time, miles and millennia away. But thats exactlywhy I wrote this book-to bridge that gap for you. Together, well remove the halo from the heads of thesesaints, ensuring theyre not too holy for us to emulate or too ancient to understand. Well see that they were realpeoplejust like us (James 5:17). Each of them struggled with sins, doubts, and failures. Ive yet to meet a youngperson who hasnt stared these same foes in the face. And for that reason, you may discover you have quite a bit incommon with these people.

Losers Club will help you do several important things. First, youll be able to identify with Bible personalities (perhaps for the first time), particularly in the struggle believe we all have at times. Second, youll be encouraged by those who, though they sometimes failed, still managed rise above difficult circumstances to survive and to succeed. Third, youll be inspired by the lives, exploits, and examples of some lesser-known characters in Gods Word.

This book wipes the dust off 12 Bible characters, allowing them to step out of the pages the living room of your mind. Losers Club reveals not only the humanity of Bible characters but also the humanity of the maturing our own lives. It links our pilgrimage to theirs, that doubt and failure are a normal part of process.

Losers Club will invite you to re-image your perception of some familiar Bible personalities while also introducing you to other characters whose stories you may never have heard. In the process, youll discover that the questions we ask of God today are the same questions by great men and women of the past. Is God good? Is he there? Does he care? Is his timing perfect? How do I overcome my failures and struggles? How can an ordinary person like me make a difference?

In this book, youll discover that its in the middle of your struggles that you truly find God. Youll learn that its okay to be a loser. (In fact, you might even find yourself liking the nickname.) And youll realize that only through losing your life can you really find it.

This is a book for anybody who has ever lost a game in life. To be a part of the Losers Club simply means you havent always gotten it right. It means you have a scar or two from past battles or failures. It means you still struggle from time to time like the rest of us. It means youre encouraged and motivated by the stories and lives of others who struggled to become the people God wanted them to be. It means something refuses to give up until you cross the finish line.