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

“Inspired” feels like a long, intimate, and painfully honest conversation on faith with an old friend.

Rachel Held Evans’ final book "Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again" is an exploration of the Bible that is painfully honest, emotionally captivating, intellectually stimulating, and at times wickedly funny. In trademark Evans fashion, the author gets vulnerable about her journey from losing the Bible as she knew it to coming to love the Bible in a different way — as a group of writings both divinely inspired and humanly messy. Evans explores the Bible as a collection of different types of genre stories that can inspire people today: stories of deliverance, war, wisdom, resistance, and more. Throughout the book, Evans similarly intertwines varied genres like parables, memoir, and scholarship to make the Bible accessible to a wide audience. The audiobook is particularly captivating; while listening to her reflect in her warm southern drawl, you can’t help but feel you’re having a brutally, beautifully honest conversation with an old friend. "Inspired" is a conversational book of exploring faith without squelching doubt, a book of flinching and refreshing honesty.