Kim Walker-Smith’s passionate performance of “How He Loves” helped transform Jesus Culture into a global worship movement. But she wasn’t always so confident of God’s unrelenting, powerful love.

Coming from a painful childhood, Kim struggled to believe that God could heal her heart or bring any sense from her past. Yet when she chose to hand her struggles over to God and receive His love, freedom, and healing in return, everything began to change. On the other side of surrender, Kim began a journey of looking at one painful memory at a time with God and exchanging her perspective for His truth–a journey in which God rewrote her story of pain into a story of redemption and hope.

If you are longing to experience God more than the shame or hurts of your past, the pressures of your present, or the fear of your future, Brave Surrender offers a soul-healing path forward. As Kim learned in her own life, the first step–and the bravest step–is letting go. Once we let go of anything that gets between us and God, we are freed to take hold of the life that truly matters. As Kim writes, “When we encounter God’s love, it changes the way we see. And when we learn to see what He sees, we will never be the same again.”

I picked this book up for two reasons: I needed a book by a celebrity for a reading challenge and I’m a worship leader who was interested to read about another worship leader.

This book is challenging, in that Walker-Smith experienced a lot of supernatural healing and freedom. It can stretch your faith, but seeing the fruit in her life makes it clear that God has been and is working in her life.

I truly appreciated Walker-Smith’s openness and vulnerability in admitting her anger, her struggles, and her pain. Not that it’s “nice,” but it’s encouraging to know that other people also struggle (especially when those people are well known and it’s easy to believe their lives are so easy).

I’m still thinking about this book as I process some of the things she talked about and how they intersect with aspects of my life (all in a good way). A great book for spiritual growth, but it will definitely challenge some traditional ideas and theologies.

Get your copy here!