Mentor Mama:
Today we are going to be talking about following God's will. While Scripture is full of wisdom and advice, it isn't always easy to know how God's Word in the Bible, which was written thousands of years ago, should apply to our lives now. As a result, many Christians struggle with the question, what does God want me to do? And they ask themselves that both in general and in specific situations that we face every day. Our guest today, Brittany Ann, author of the upcoming book, "Follow God's Will - Biblical Guidelines for Everyday Life," will help us answer these types of questions to boldly pursue God's will for our lives and find practical ways to live out our faith on a daily basis while helping us understand God's written Word and how it applies to us today.
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Mentor Mama:
Brittany Ann is an ECPA bestselling author, speaker, and founder of the popular website, EquippingGodlyWomen.com, where she challenges, encourages, and equips Christian women to be "all in" in faith and family. Her work has been featured on CBN, The Christian Post, Crosswalk, and more. Brittany is married to an incredibly godly husband and together they have three adorably energetic children. Please welcome Brittany.
Brittany Ann:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to speak with you today.
Mentor Mama:
I'm so excited to have you here today. Let's dig in and start with God's plan. Does God have a specific plan for everyone's life? And if so, how do we discover ours?
Brittany Ann:
Yeah, that is a great question. I feel like so often when we think about God's plan for our life or God's call for our life, we think of it in terms of this great grand mission. Like pastors are called by God or missionaries are called by God or priests, or, all of these Christian professionals are called by God, but what about all of us on a day to day? Are we called by God to do anything? And the Bible tells us that we are in Ephesians 2:10, it tells us, for we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. Now, some of those might be big things. God does call some of us to be pastors and priests and missionaries and all of those sorts of things, but God's plan for our life isn't always this big, super holy, super spiritual, and mysterious thing. God also gives all of us a call no matter where we are and he calls us all differently, and it's so beautiful that he calls some of us to be mothers or he calls some of us to work in the corporate environment, and he calls us all may be to volunteer or to serve a specific church. So God can call all of us differently. He created us all to be unique and wonderful and he absolutely has a plan for each of us. We just have to figure out what that is. So, to answer the second part of your question, how do we figure out what that is? There are a few different ways that we can go about it and this is basically the premise of what I share in my upcoming book, “Follow God's Will,” how do we figure out what God wants us to do? As an entire corporate body, what does God want Christians to do? But also, how do we know what God wants us to do personally ourselves? And so, one way to figure that out is by reading the Bible, the Bible, of course, has so much wisdom for us, but it's kind of general like it tells us we should do this and we do this, but how does that help us with our friends and our family on a day-to-day basis? So thankfully while the Bible is probably the best and most reliable way that God gives us wisdom and direction, and I adore the Bible, it's not the only way that he speaks to us. He also speaks to us through the Holy Spirit, so he can prompt us and say, hey, let's go this way, go help in this situation. He can speak to us through other people. He can speak to us through the circumstances around us and he could even speak to us through our desires. So, if you are really passionate about a subject, it may be because God put that passion in your heart for a reason, because he knew something that he was going to call you to. So, he's not going to call us to do something that we would hate, that would be silly, instead, he knows what it is he wants us to do and he gives us the passion and the gifts and the abilities that we have like it says in Ephesians 2:10, he knew in advance what he was going to call us to do. So he has equipped us with what we need so that we can go do what it is that he put us here on this earth to do.
Mentor Mama:
That's so amazing and when you think about all the different people and all of the different trades and callings that everyone has, it's absolutely magnificent. In your book, you share several common ways that Christians misunderstand God's call to love our neighbors. Can you share some of these with us?
Brittany Ann:
Absolutely. So one of the biggest premises of this book that I wrote is the main thing that Jesus calls us to more than anything else is to love God and love others. We see that in Matthew chapter 22, where Jesus is telling the Pharisees, like all of the Scripture, everything else, all hang on these two commands, love God, and love others. Everything throughout the whole rest of the Bible is given to us to help us do these two things. So if we're not loving God and loving others, then basically we're doing it wrong. So first, in order to be able to do that, we need to understand what does it mean to love other people? Because when we look around our culture, we see so many different definitions of what different people think it means to love each other. For example, I've seen commonly on social media, that to love people means to accept everyone exactly the way that they are and you never notice, or you never point out their faults and we all just celebrate everybody exactly how they are, but when we go to the Bible, that's not really the picture that Jesus gives us of. Yes, he loves everybody, but he loves them as they are and then invites them to grow in holiness and their relationship with him. He loves them how they are, but he doesn't leave them how they are. So just the idea of just accepting everyone, like you're perfect and wonderful the way you are like that doesn't really line up with Gospel truth. Another one that we see commonly is bluntly pointing out others’ sins and shortcomings so that we can help them do better and that's kind of the opposite. Either we accept them how they are, or we tell them you need to change and you're wrong and the Bible says, and you need to do this, and while there can be some element of love to that, yes, we should tell other people in love, especially those close to us, if they're way off track, it’s loving to help them, so we often see this huge dichotomy between, accept everyone exactly how they are or boldly tell them and bluntly tell them you're wrong and you're doing the wrong thing. And people get so messed up with all of these different ways. It's really hard to find that balance. So that's why we really have to go back to Scripture and see, how did Jesus love people? What did Jesus do? How did he treat those around him? He didn't just leave them in their sin. He didn't say, oh, you're perfect the way you are. He told them when they were sinning, but he did it in a way that was loving and accepting of who they were.
Mentor Mama:
He absolutely did. I think about, The Chosen, and how great they show that and demonstrate how God really loves someone. But the Scripture does say, Jesus would say, now turn and sin no more. He was able to do that in such a loving way. In your book, you commonly talk about this checklist mentality, help us understand what this is and why you think it's harmful.
Brittany Ann:
This is something that I see so common among Christians. I definitely have fallen prey to this myself as well, but we know as Christians that we should read the Bible, we should pray, and we should go to church. And yes, we should do these things, they're very good and they're good for us. God gave them to us as gifts that we get to do. If you just stop and think for a minute, we get to read the Bible. Throughout history, they didn't get to do that. We get to read the Bible, we get to have the Holy Spirit, we get to hear God speaking to us and that's amazing, but so often we can fall into these “shoulds,” where we're like, oh, well I should read the Bible. If I'm going to be a good Christian, I have to read my Bible every day. I have to read for X amount of time, it doesn't count if I don't do enough, I have to make sure that I do this. Check this off the list, got my Bible reading for the day, check! Got my prayer for the day check! And we can often turn our spiritual walk into this checklist of, okay, I'm supposed to be volunteering, okay, check! Got that. Okay, I'm supposed to be in a Bible study, okay, check! Got that. Okay, I'm supposed to love my kids, most of a check, like, you know, I messed up a little because we're not perfect, but we're trying. So often we can turn it into this checklist where we're like, okay, these are the things that I have to do, let's check them off. Okay, great, got that done. Let's go and move on to the next thing, and as I was sitting down to write my previous book called, “Fall in Love with God’s Word,” and in that book, I really looked at a statistic that said that so many Christians wish they could read their Bible more often, but they weren't. And I really wanted to dive into, you know, why is it that we say we want to read our Bible. We know it's important. I mean, I'm speaking for myself here as well. We want to be in our Bible more often, but we're not, so why aren't we? And I just thought about when I first met my husband and I started to fall in love with him, I didn't have to create a checklist. I didn't have to create my to-do list for the day and say, okay, he's hanging out with this boy for 30 minutes and I need my cup of coffee and I need to take a picture for Instagram. It wasn't like that at all. It wasn't, you know, make sure you hang out three times a week or anything like that. I wanted to see him. I wanted to be with him. So, I think moving away from that checklist mentality where we're like, okay, I have to do this, I have to do this, to, the God of the Universe, this God who created everything, who created you, who created me, and he wants to spend time with us and he wants to encourage us and give us wisdom. And there's so much for us in his Word that rather than seeing that as another thing we have to do, we get to do this thing. We get to spend time. How amazing is that? That we get to, in prayer, talk to the God of the Universe, who knows absolutely everything, who knows everything about us. That's such a privilege. So just tweaking our mindset a little bit. We should still be in the Bible regularly as we can, whatever is reasonable for our season, but tweaking our mindset from, okay, here's something we need to check off a list to get it done, to, this is something I get to do. And even if I read the Bible a little bit less, because I'm just going to be realistic and honest, maybe my life in this season is crazy, rather than like making sure I stick with it every day, instead, having this heart posture of, maybe I don't stick with it every day. I'll try to, but even if I don't, the times that I am going to God's Word, I want to be here, I'm coming here seeking God and I want to know what he has to say. I think that heart posture just makes such a huge difference in terms of our experience with Scripture and in terms of what we get out of it and it just completely changes the ball game.
Mentor Mama:
It sure does and I absolutely love your analogy there talking about how it was when you first fell in love with your husband. It's not a checklist and we want to have that same posture towards God. I can't wait to do my quiet time because I'm so excited to learn more about God and who he is and how much he loves me and that's just a beautiful way to look at it. Why do you think so many Christians disagree about how to live out Scripture today and how can we make sure we are understanding Scripture correctly?
Brittany Ann:
This is a great question because I think so much of the fighting that we see on social media or even at family functions often comes down to, you know, we love God's word to varying degrees, you know, depending on who is in your family and who you're talking to on social media, but we want to follow God's word, we want to understand it correctly, but we have these different viewpoints and these different opinions, and some of that, honestly, is good. I don't want to be surrounded by people who think exactly the same as I do, because I am a human, and I have limited experience. I only know so much and if I'm only surrounded by people who have the exact same experiences that I do there's just not that same opportunity for growth. So personally, I love to be surrounded by people who think differently than I do, who believe differently than I do, and who have different life experiences than I do, and when I do that, you can see like, oh, okay, in my understanding in the way that I was raised, I grew up thinking it was this way, and that makes sense with the way that I read it, but somebody else can read it, and that's one of the beautiful, but sometimes frustrating, parts about the Bible is somebody else can grow up reading the exact same Bible verses and come up with a completely different interpretation of it and there are so many reasons why that is. One is just because of our personal experiences and how we view the world. So, for example, a little bit ago, I gave the example of falling in love with my husband, well that's because in the culture that I grew up in, I got to pick my husband and I got to choose to fall in love with him and I got to choose how much time I spent with him, but in other cultures of the world, that's not the experience of getting to know someone and marrying them. They would have a different experience. So they might understand that in a different way, just because we all came from different backgrounds. But then also there's the fact that you have to remember that the Bible wasn't written in English. The Bible was written in Hebrew Greek and Aramaic, 2000-plus years ago and because it was written at all different times by all different people and we don't have the same life experiences that they have, we don't understand all of the things that they would've understood so many things that would've been very obvious to the first-century audience we completely don't understand that and they go completely over our head. For example, I heard an analogy once in a sermon, and I'm trying to remember the exact details, but there was a part of Scripture where Jesus says, hey when somebody asks you to go one mile, you know, go the extra mile and do more. So for us, we're like, okay, well we should go above and beyond. But apparently, back in that time, there were laws about Roman soldiers who could mistreat the Jewish people so much, but they couldn't mistreat them more than that. Like there were limits to what the Roman soldiers could have the Jewish people do. So, if the law was that, oh, the Roman soldiers are only allowed to have the Jewish people carry something for one mile and then the Jewish person says, well, I'm going to carry it two miles. And that's against the law, just this mental picture of, oh, well what is the Roman soldier do in this situation? That could get him in trouble if this Jewish person's like, oh I'll just keep carrying it, it's fine, it's not a problem. There is just so much background, I just heard that in a sermon once, so I don't know all of the rules of what was the rules and the laws back then, but just using that as an example, something that we think is just going above and beyond, but what if that was actually getting the Roman soldier in trouble? Could you imagine a Roman soldier chasing a Jewish person down the street? Like, no, no, no, it's fine, you don't have to do it anymore, and just the dignity that would keep for the Jewish person being like, oh no, it's cool, it doesn't bother me, you're not enslaving me, I'm happy to help. And it just completely changes the ballgame. So, the more that you know about the history, what was going on at the time, that's why it's so important to read the Bible in context, in culture, to learn from different Bible scholars and to read books and to learn from people who have different perspectives. Because once you know some of what was going on in that time, it completely just changes the meaning that you can get out of things that we don't always know. Yes, you can just sit down and read your Bible, but you only get so much if you're just sitting down and reading it yourself. But when you really dive into what else was going on at the time, what was the context of this verse? What was going on in history? Like it just opens up so much more and it's just so fascinating.
Mentor Mama
It sure is. And so many references in the Bible are related to the agricultural context back then that we don't necessarily understand today and I think that is why having a really good study Bible is just so helpful because it alerts you to those things about what was going on back then. In your book, you share three common myths about God's will. Tell us about those.
Brittany Ann:
I alluded to one of them earlier, but the first one is that God only has one will for your entire life. So we think, okay, what is God calling me to do? Is he calling me to be a pastor? Is he calling me to be a teacher? Is he calling me to be an architect? Is he calling me to be a social media director? Like could be anything, but what is the one big thing that God is calling me to? And yet I find that God doesn't orchestrate every single detail of our life in the sense that he's now like, oh, well you better wear the red shirt today instead of the blue shirt or else, like that's against my will for your life. We still have tons of freedom, but God isn't just giving us one thing and then the whole rest of our life is wasted. He uses us differently in different seasons of our life. So maybe when you are a child, your season of life is just to learn how to behave in a family context and is to learn how to love God. Maybe God will call you somewhere when you're 20 and that's going to be different than how he calls you when you're 30, it's going to be different than how he calls you when you're 80. So it's not just one thing that you have to figure out like, what is, God's one huge call for my life. He might have a job for you. He might have a spouse for you. He might have a place for you to live. He might also have just a conversation for you to have with somebody that you meet on the street, so it doesn't have to be just this one big thing. God can call us individually differently over time and he can call us to small things right within our life as well. The second myth, which goes right along with that, is that God's will always involve a big decision. Like I said a second ago, like, yes, it can involve a big decision, but it doesn't have to, it could be something really small. It could be sending a note to somebody at your church that you know has been going through a rough time lately. It could be offering to pray for a coworker that you know is facing a really difficult decision and you said, hey, I just want you to know that I'm here for you. I mean, it could be even just something as small as that. And, the third one is that God's will is always super-spiritual, difficult, or weird. Yes, sometimes God calls us to do things that might feel uncomfortable to us, but not always. Sometimes it's his will is literally just for us to love our families well, or to donate our extra clothes to somebody who could use them or donate extra canned goods that we have to the canned good drive, you know, whatever that could look like. It doesn't have to be this one big thing where we're putting so much pressure on ourselves to figure out what is this one big, huge, spiritual thing that God has for us. Yes, he has some of that for us too, but it could just be, hey today here's how I want you to love me well. Today, here's how I want you to love those around you well, as well.
Mentor Mama:
That's one of the things that I really suggest praying about in the morning, is just having the sensitivity to the Holy Spirit and how he's going to maybe prompt you for whatever things are going to come up during your day that will be about following his will. And I know there have been times where it's come to my mind and I'd be like, ugh, but God, you know, stretches us sometimes too. Do you have any practical tips to help women learn to hear God's voice?
Brittany Ann:
Absolutely. So, one of the things first is just to pray and to ask God to help me because God wants us to hear from him. He doesn't want to just talk and us not listen and he doesn't want to just not talk with us. It's God, he loves us, he created us on purpose. So of course he loves us and he wants to have a relationship with us. Even if you're someone who's listening right now, who feels like, you know, God doesn't love me or God doesn't care about me or God doesn't see me—he does. That's the beautiful thing about God is, that God is love, and he loves you no matter what you have done in your past, no matter what you are doing now, and no matter where you are in your life. Even if you are steeped in sin and you need God's help right now, he loves you. That's why the Bible says that Jesus was sent to us even in our sin because God loves us. So, the first thing is just asking God, will you please speak to me loudly and clearly? God, will you please help me to hear you? And those are prayers that he loves to answer. He loves to connect with his children, so praying and asking. The second tip is taking the time to listen. So often our lives are so full and so busy. Even if we have a minute, we're spending it on social media scrolling or we're on TV or we're thinking about a million different other things like how do I look in this shirt? Or, you know, what am I going to eat for lunch? Just taking the time to think, you know, God, are you speaking to me? Can I take that time to listen? Can I sense that? Because so often God speaks to us in a really quiet, small voice. I guess he can speak to us in a big booming thunder, but that's not how most of us usually hear God. Usually, it's in a still small voice and you have to take the time to listen for it and to get familiar with it. To give an analogy back before we had caller ID and people would answer the phone and you didn't know who was on the other end of the line, if somebody called you and it was your family member, you would recognize their voice. You would know that it was them because you've heard their voice so many times before, you know what it sounds like and it's the same way with God. When I very first started to hear God's voice decades ago, it's been a while now when I very first started to hear God's voice, I didn't recognize that that was God speaking to me. I just thought, oh, it’s just thoughts in my own head. I don't know what that is, and then it was only after listening over a long amount of time that I started to realize like, no, I think that was actually God leading me or prompting me to something and I didn't recognize it at first. I had to learn how to recognize it. So just take the time to listen, taking the time to turn off the noise to go by yourself. I know that that can be hard to do depending on the season of your life, but it is so worth it. Just to take a few minutes, maybe that's five minutes before you start your day, where you say, I'm just going to sit here and be calm and I'm going to be restful. Maybe it's five minutes at the end of the day. I have gotten in seasons where I used to take walks around the neighborhood. I literally just walk out of the house barefoot and just walk around the neighborhood and just look up at nature and think and pray and listen and have that stillness and that quiet. So setting aside time to be able to listen is so important as well.
Mentor Mama:
Absolutely. Praying and asking and taking time to listen. All of those are excellent suggestions for discerning God's voice.
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Mentor Mama:
What should we do if we want to follow God's will for our lives, but we have absolutely no idea what God might be calling us to do.
Brittany Ann:
That is a great question because I feel like so often, we are in a situation where we're like, okay, I want to listen to God, obviously, he's God, he knows things. He knows way more than we do so his way is best and I want to listen to him, but where do I even start? So, the best place to start is usually by reading the Bible because if you say, oh, God's never told me anything, well, God's told you a lot of things. The Bible's a big, big book, so we can start with what we already know. We can read the Bible and it can say, you know, be respectful of your husband, it can say submit to your authorities, it can say parents don't exasperate your children, that's the verse that comes to mind for me all the time when I'm engaging with my children and they are exasperating me, I’m like parents don't exasperate your children! So, God has told us so many things already in the Bible. He's told us to love each other. Love God, love others. So there's so much that we already do have that we already do know. And then from there, once we're doing those things, then we can start to pray and ask God, please reveal your will to me, and he can reveal it through a lot of different ways, and then, it's just a matter of paying attention. Maybe we just need to pay better attention to the circumstances around us. Maybe we just need to try things. Right now, I am an author, and I own the website Equipping Godly Women, and I do a lot of things, but I didn't originally set out to be like, oh, well I'm going to be this Christian author and speaker, like, I didn't know. I was just at home with babies and I found out that there was a thing called a blog. And I was like, oh, I could do that, that sounds fun and I have time during nap time. So I just started doing something and then God led me from there and I was able to walk through open doors from there. But those doors don't open unless you take the first step. So, if you truly have no idea, then yes, read the word and pray, talk to friends and family and say, hey, what am I really good at? What do you think that maybe God might be calling me to? Maybe sometimes your friends and family would have some advice about where they see that you are good at this thing or you're so encouraging to people or you're so, whatever. So, paying attention to the opportunities around you, but then it's just a matter of trying things and seeing where they go and if it doesn't lead to God's big overarching will for your life—that's okay. Did you love people along the way? Well, then that is God's will for your life. You loved people. God's not going to let us just completely miss his will for our life. It's not like he has it hidden under lock and key and it's this big secret and we really have to go search. It's really a matter of just leaning on a day-to-day basis, God, where do you want me to be today? Like, please show me how you want me to love the people around me. Please show me the opportunities, and help me to notice them. And I think just slowing down and paying attention to what is all around us, how God has gifted us, and what opportunities we have, and just trying things and seeing where it goes really can get you a lot of the way there.
Mentor Mama):
Yes, absolutely. If you have a mentor too, that might be somebody else great to bounce some things off of. In your book, you share six questions to help us determine if we're hearing God's will for our lives correctly. Tell us about some of those.
Brittany Ann:
Yeah, absolutely. So, it can be difficult, first to hear God's voice, but then once you hear you think maybe like, is this from God? Like I can't tell if it's just my own thoughts or his, or, I don't know if it's just something that's a circumstance I don't necessarily need to act on. So it's really helpful to have some guidelines to help us make wise decisions. So I share six specific questions in the book that you can use to help you figure out, okay, is this something that God is calling me to do? Is it not? Should I pursue this opportunity? So, the first one is, does the Bible give an explicit command? So if it's something that the Bible explicitly says, you should do this, or you should not do this. You don't have to wait and wonder is this God's will for my life. Yes, it is God's will for your life as he tells you in the Bible, this is what you should do. So should you love your neighbor? Yes, you should. Should you not murder people? Yes. You should not murder people like these things. If it's in the Bible like we know it's there, so that's the first thing, it's kind of obvious, but I think it's sometimes something that we skip over and we're like, oh, not sure. For example, should you have an affair with a married man? The Bible's pretty clear that you should not be going and having an affair with a married man. And so often we might think, not you or I specifically, but people might be like, oh well, but they make me so happy, God would want me to be happy. Well, no, if the Bible explicitly says, don't go have an affair with a married man, or don't go into this really bad situation where the Bible's very clear then no, don't do it. You don't need to ask God's permission. You don't need to ask your friends and family for their advice. Like the Bible already tells you and you already have your answer. You just need to obey. The second thing is, has God already given you clear direction? So, if you know God has spoken to you and he has told you to do something and you're like, well, I don't know. I don't know if I'm qualified, I don't know if I could do it, I don't feel up for the task, I'm not anybody special enough, it just seems too scary. Well, if God has already told you to do it, then yes, you should do it.
Brittany Ann:
You can ask him; how do I do this? Or please give me additional clarity and steps and all of the things, but you don't need to ask God, should I do this? If he's already told you, yes, you should do this thing. To give examples from the Bible, God told the Israelites and Moses, to go part the Red Sea, go step in the water. There was another example where he told someone with leprosy, to go bath in the river or Joshua marching around Jericho. Sometimes, yes, that seems kind of weird. Like, would that help? I don't know, but God told them to do it. So just go do it and let God figures out the details because he already knows. He knows the past and present and future, he already knows what's going to happen. So, if he tells you this is the way to do it, even if it doesn't make sense for us, God knows what he is talking about. So if he has clearly told you to do something, don't wait for a different answer. Don't wait for a different response or different guidance or direction. If he's told you, then go do it. So those two seem a little obvious, but I feel like sometimes we overlook them or skip them because we're like, oh, I don't know. I don't want to do that. The third thing is, does this decision fit in with God's character? So, by reading the Bible, you can learn a lot about God. God is loving, God is patient, God is kind, and God is forgiving. So this decision that you want to make, does it line up with God's character? What he would want you to do? Does it make you more like God or less like God? Just thinking through some of the ramifications beyond just the immediate consequences, what is likely to happen as I go down the road, if I continue on, what path will this set me on? Even if the beginning of the path looks really good, where is this going to lead me? The fourth one is like I was talking about a minute ago, what are some likely outcomes of this decision? Also, have trusted mentors affirm this decision. If you have mentors in your life, if you don't have someone specifically to mentor you, then possibly your parents or your pastor or, godly friends and family that you trust. And then finally, is there a way to test the waters? So, is there a way where you say, okay, I'm not sure if this is God's will for my life, I'm not sure if I should do this, maybe I can try it out a little bit. Maybe I don't sell everything I own and go be an overseas missionary on the first day. Maybe I just go see what opportunities are available in my area and I try it out in a small sense and then can sense where God is leading me from there.
Mentor Mama:
Excellent. Wow! Six great tips there to think through and all of them are really helpful. Thank you so much, Brittany. Before we end our interview here, I want to talk a little bit about your book that's coming out. Tell us a little bit more about your book and then also tell us about a conference that you have coming up in September.
Brittany Ann:
Absolutely, thank you for asking. So, my book that's coming out this fall is called, “Follow God's Will - Biblical Guidelines for Everyday Life,” and it is meant to answer the question, what does God want me to do with my life? Both in the big decisions and in the small. So how do I figure out God's will for my life in the big sense? And then also, how do I know what God would want me to do? How should I handle this situation as a Christian? How should I handle my brother-in-law who just came out? This is a hypothetical example, but how do I handle my brother-in-law who just came out as transgender? What do I do if I just found out my niece wants an abortion, or what do I do if my coworker is dead set against Christianity and she's spouting off things all the time? How do I handle this? Should I go and witness to them? Do I keep my mouth shut? How do I love them? So, this book is just birthed out of so many conversations that I've had with Christians over the last couple of years who are saying, I want to do the right thing. I want to approach these kinds of situations in a God-honoring way. I want to shine a light for my faith, but I don't know what that looks like especially in our super-political culture. So, figuring out, what is God's will for my life in general, but then what is God's will for my life today? Every day when I wake up, how do I figure out how to handle the situations that I face each day? So that book, again, is called, “Follow God’s Will: Biblical Guidelines for Everyday Life,” which is coming out in October and you asked about the conference in September, right before the book comes out. We are having an online conference called, the Called to Act conference, that I am so excited about. We have some amazing speakers lined up. we have Pastor Mark Batterson, who is a best-selling author that a lot of your audience will probably be familiar with. We have Professor and Dr. Mark Strauss, who is at Bethel University in California. We have, Pastors Peyton Jones and Kris Langham, who co-founded the Through the Word app, which is my favorite Bible reading app that I absolutely love, and a bunch of other additional speakers as well, who are all really diving in deep and interviewing and sharing information on how do we figure out God's will for our life? What does that look like? How do we hear his voice? There are so many practical tips, there's so much inspiration in these interviews and I'm just so excited for people to sign up for this. So, it's a free conference, you can sign up for free. I'm sure you'll have the link in these show notes where people can go to get signed up, but that is in September. So you definitely have some time to sign up, but you definitely want to go ahead, sooner rather than later so you don't forget and go ahead and sign up for that free conference as well.
Mentor Mama:
Awesome. How can people find out more information about you?
Brittany Ann:
My website is equippinggodlywomen.com. You can go there and you can find out all of the things we do. We have a lot of different things going on all of the time, but the website is kind of our main hub, especially if you get on our email list, either from the website or by signing up for the conference. We regularly send out practical tips and encouragement a couple of times a week just to help Christian women live out this walk, whatever that looks like for you, whatever season of life you're in. If you need someone who's kind of like a big sister in your faith, who is going to walk alongside you and say, hey, what about this? Or, hey, here's something you can do that’s super practical and easy. That's the kind of advice that I love sharing regularly just to have that voice in your ear around you saying, okay, you can do this, this Christian walk is not always easy, it is always worth it, and we're going to help you along the way.
Mentor Mama:
It is an excellent website. Before we go, Brittany, I want to ask you some of our favorite Bible study tool questions. What Bible do you use and which translation is it?
Brittany Ann:
I actually use a really old Bible. I have an NIV Study Bible that I got when I graduated from high school that I have always used. Lately, I’ve been thinking that I need a new Bible because I've had that one forever, but it's just like my standard, like my stock Bible that I've used for decades now. So, it's just the one I'm so familiar with and comfortable with. It’s just an NIV study Bible that's probably out of print now and they probably have new additions from the one that I'm still using from a long time ago.
Mentor Mama:
That's a good solid translation. Do you have any favorite journaling supplies or anything that you like to use to enhance your Bible study experience?
Brittany Ann:
I don't do specific Bible journaling as often. For me, my favorite supplies to help me get in God's Word more are just books. I love reading so many books from so many different perspectives, like how do you read the Bible and how do you understand this point of view for this because there are so many authors who have taken so much time to research in-depth on a specific topic. And so while I read the Bible and I kind of get the surface level, if I read a book that an author has spent like countless hours and months pouring into like researching and studying all of the things behind the scenes, I feel like I learn so much and it just brings it to life so much more. So I am an avid reader, constantly reading all of the time.
Mentor Mama:
What is your favorite app or website for Bible study tools?
Brittany Ann:
My favorite app is definitely Through the Word. As I mentioned a minute ago, the co-founders are speaking at our conference this September and I'm so excited that I got to interview them, but Through the Word is amazing because it is a few pastors who walk you through every chapter of the Bible chapter by chapter, and so, they'll spend eight or nine minutes really explaining, okay, in this chapter, here's what you're going to hear. Here's what you're going to learn. Here's what you need to know. So, here's how this fits into the Old Testament. Here's the background. Here's what was happening at the time. Here's how this ties to the New Testament. I started listening to it when I was going through Leviticus because I was like, okay, I know I can read through Leviticus, but I'm going to miss out on so much if I just get the surface level. So, I love listening to this, every day to go through and hear some of that background and context that they've done so much of their research for me. They explain it so well and it just brings it to life. It's not super heavy and academic, I will listen to it with my children, but I still ask somebody who's read the Bible for years, still learn so much and I'm so inspired by how just obviously in love they are with God's Word.
Mentor Mama:
I'm so excited to check that one out and we will put a link to it in this blog as well. Brittany, thank you so much for being here today to share such encouraging advice and offering us this Biblical framework to help us hear God's voice and understand his Word. We appreciate you taking the time to join us.
Brittany Ann:
Thank you so much for having me.
Mentor Mama:
And for our readers, Brittany's book, "Follow God's Will," will be available for pre-order. You can find the link in our show notes where we will also include information about the Called to Act conference. Also, be sure to share your comments with us on this blog. And lastly, head over to the Coffee and Bible Time website for our prayer journals that will help guide and document your prayer life at coffeeandbibletime.com. We also have two new courses available on how to pray using our prayer journal and prayer binder. Thank you so much for joining us on the blog today. We love you all. Have a blessed day.