Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again

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Raised in Alabama, Rachel Held Evans is also the author of the New York Times best-selling book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood. Featured in the Washington Post, Christianity Today, The Huffington Post and the CNN Belief Blog and a guest on Today and The View, Evans now lives in Dayton, Tenn. but hails as a “lifelong Crimson Tide fan.”

One day a baby girl was born in Birmingham. Her parents named her Rachel, in honor of the beloved shepherdess who gave birth to two of the tribes of Israel. The child grew in grace and wisdom, in favor with both God and her church. Her life was filled with sermons, Sunday school and Scripture. With the Bible at the center of her existence, she was a child of the rightly divided Word. But then she grew up, started asking questions, and everything changed.

Rachel Held Evans lost the Bible, only to rediscover it and fall in love with it anew. In her recent book, Inspired (Thomas Nelson), Evans shares her journey into a new understanding of the imagery and meaning of Scripture. The ancient stories in our Bibles are designed to do far more than reveal humanity’s salvation history. The Bible is not a textbook. It is power and poetry, lament and laud. It is literature on fire, stories of people grappling with what it means to be the people of God. Inspired is a brilliant book which seeks to restore the wonder and power of the scriptural account of men and women who slew giants, raised the dead, and gave birth to prophets and kings.

What happens when you have to rethink long held beliefs about the Bible? What do we mean when we say the Scriptures are breathed by God? How can ancient stories of talking snakes and genocidal invasions and a crucified God be taken seriously in our post-modern world? Perhaps you know of someone wrestling with these very questions. If so, Rachel Held Evans has a message for them.