Many leaders look to those in Scripture and the more spiritually mature
and accomplished around them and assume they have never experienced the
same life-altering setbacks that afflict other mere mortals. Or, they
imagine that the strongest in the faith could never make serious
mistakes or make the kinds of devastating choices that undermine career,
family, and faith. For many, failure is almost a foreign concept to
what it means to live and lead faithfully in this world.
As
Shane Stanford and Anthony Thaxton demonstrate, some of the most
important stories of spiritual maturity in scripture happen due to the
failures (not the successes) of those we consider closest to God — one
only has to mention Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, Paul... the list
goes on and on... as examples of the best of our faith whose lives were
significantly shaped and impacted because of their failures. While we
do learn much from their successes, understanding the impact of their
contribution to God’s Kingdom calls us to paint the entire picture,
including the failures.
Lessons from the entire journey of life
are not just reserved for Biblical characters. As Stanford and Thaxton
demonstrate, many of the strongest leaders learn as much from defeat,
brokenness, vulnerability, unsettledness, and, yes, failure, as they do
from victory. In this book, readers learn from those Biblical and
historical leaders who seem to ‘get it right’ precisely in and through
experiences of ‘getting it wrong’. With humor and levity the book
shares very serious U-turns and dead-ends that almost cost some of the
greatest and most profound leaders their careers, livelihoods,
reputations, and even their lives.
