Simply Stories Podcast

Listen, I hope y'all are ready because Andi Andrew is on today and she brings a WHOLE WORD about relationships, broken belief systems and living lives that pursue the way, truth and life in Jesus! Andi is passionate about God, His word and His people and doing the work of being a human in this broken world so you can connect more deeply with God and with people. She'll share in this conversation a...

Today I have the pleasure of sharing with you my conversation with Jenny Albers. Jenny is an author and a speaker who courageously shares her story of miscarriage and loss to encourage other women who are walking in a similar journey. Her book Courageously Expecting: 30 Days of Encouragement for Pregnancy After Loss is a beautiful offering of how to cling to hope and deal with all the trauma that...

Today I get to share my conversation with Bethany Beal of Girl Defined Ministries. Bethany and her sister Kristen Clark have written a timely book called Not Part of the Plan: Trusting God with the Twists and Turns of Your Story where they both share their stories of learning to trust God and deepen their faith in Him as they experienced seasons of longing and waiting. Bethany shares from her jour...

Today I get to share with you my conversation with Shannon K. Evans. Shannon is an author and a speaker who shares about spirituality, social justice and encouraging women as she navigates mothering 5 kiddos. During our conversation, Shannon shares her story of growing up with a model of Christian servitude, and living lives full of mercy, and love, but as she grew up that became misconstrued into...

Today I have the absolute pleasure of sharing with you my conversation with the one and the only Jasmine Holmes. Jasmine is an essayist, an educator and an excavator of jewels hidden in history. She shares her story of growing up in a predominately white environment and shares about the well-meaning people in her life who would say totally misguided and inappropriate things to her that she just fe...

Dr. Jemar Tisby is an author, educator, historian and speaker on a mission to share truths from the Black experience, witnessed and known in his own life, particularly within the Christian sphere. He sums it up this way: "To me as a historian that's what I do is I tell stories. I tell stories of import and consequence and try to contextualize them to make them stand out for how they're still relev...

Today we're jumping back into my conversation with Dr. Christian Widener. So in part 1 of our conversation, Dr. Widener shared about the history of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem throughout the old and new testament scripture coupled with historic accounts and what he has learned in his research with renowned scholars, historians and archeologists. In this part two, he'll walk us through the histor...

Dr. Christian Widener grew up from a curious kid who always needed to know 'why' and work it all the way through to an answer to become an investigator and researcher to the core. Through his in-depth research he has written a book called The Temple Revealed where he makes a case for the location of The Temple in Jerusalem.  He worked in cooperation with numerous renowned archeologists, historians...

Today we get to go to class with Dr. Bryan Litfin, and take a deep dive into the history of the Ancient church, and what life looked like after the New Testament ended and generation upon generation began to carry the story of Christ with them everywhere they went and grew the Church around the world. Dr. Bryan has been on the podcast before, where he shared about some of the things we'll discuss...

Today we are continuing to talk about living lives of Kingdom influence, discipleship and working out what it looks like to live out our faith with two incredible women, Amy Davison and Hillary Morgan Ferrer of Mama Bear Apologetics.  Hillary is the founder of Mama Bear Apologetics. What is apologetics exactly? Hillary will talk about that with us in this conversation, but essentially it is making...

Today I get to share my conversation with you with the wise and gracious John Basie. John is presently the Director of Impact 360 Institute's Masters program. The heart of the Impact 360 Institute is to "cultivate leaders who follow Jesus." John and the rest of the staff are passionate about discipleship and asking questions about what it looks like to be an apprentice of Jesus and becoming someon...

Happy New Years Eve, y'all! I am thrilled to share my conversation with the absolutely fantastic JL Gerhardt with you because it feels like a powerful word to walk into this new year with. JL is a writer, storyteller, and teacher who really loves the Lord and helping others fall in love with the Him too. She shares with me her story of learning about God's love through stories, and experiencing th...

Today I have the absolute pleasure of sharing my conversation with the wonderful Beth Wayland. Beth has been in relational ministry for a very long time first with Campus Crusade for Christ, which is now called CRU and for the last five years she has been working with a ministry she founded called WITH where she ministers to those working in churches, para church ministries and more. Beth is a wom...

Today I get to share my conversation with incredibly sweet Denisse Copeland. Denisse is a wife, a Mom, and an author of Set Apart: Stop Comparing , Own Your Giftedness, and Rest in Jesus. She was born and raised in Puerto Rico and at the age of 16 she and her sister moved to the U.S. with essentially no English, and with no sense of belonging along with a gigantic amount of culture shock. Denisse...

Today, we are going to talk more about unpacking the gift of Emmanuel, God with us, with one of my absolute favorite people, Dorena Williamson. Exactly one hundred episodes ago, Dorena became a part of the simply stories life. She's a children's book author, a writer, a pastor's wife and incredible preacher herself whose passion for God's people and pursuing Biblically diverse unity in the body of...

Today, I'm chatting with Allison Hottinger and Lisa Kalberer who are the two sisters that created the Giving Manger. The giving manger is an Advent activity for anyone who is looking for a way to connect kindness, generosity and giving with Christmas and the Gospel, and creates space for people young and old to intentionally experience the beauty and the gift of serving one another right where the...

Today I am sharing my conversation with the absolutely wonderful Becky Keife. Becky is wife, a Mom to 3 boys, an author and the community manager of the online (in)courage community. Today, Becky and I are talking about the topic of her latest book The Simple Difference: How Every Small Kindness Makes a Big Impact. Kindness is something we desperately need and is a powerful gift that is underutili...

Today I have the absolute pleasure of sharing with you my conversation that I got to have with the wonderful Kayla Craig. Kayla is the author and creator of Liturgies for Parents, as well as her recent book To Light the Way: A Collection of Prayers and Liturgies for Parents. Today, Kayla shares the introduction of liturgical prayers into her faith life as she was up to her eyes in a situation wher...

Today I am sitting down with the incredible Kat Armas. Kat is a Cuban-American author and podcaster who is passionate about elevating the voices of women of color, asking big questions and wrestling with American culture to have a more clear view of God and how He makes Himself known through people and their experiences. She invites readers into the wrestle of our ideas about wisdom, or ideas we h...

Today I am chatting with much beloved fiction author Regina Scott. Regina is the author of more than FIFTY books, and she has lived such a cool life. She's a wife and a mother, she's a scientist, she's an author, she's a woman with a killer costume collection, but most of all she is someone whose kindness and sense of wonder about the world is contagious.  During our conversation, Regina shares he...

Today I am chatting with speaker and author Michelle Reyes. Michelle's ministry lives at the intersection of faith, culture, and justice. She is the Vice President and co-founder of the Asian-American Christian Collaborative, and she and her husband, Aaron, planted a church in East Austin, TX where she serves as the scholar in residence. Michelle and Aaron lead their church body to serve the vulne...

Today on the podcast we have speaker, author, mentor, and spiritual support leader for the YouVersion Bible app, Cindy Beall. She is also a woman who has been through incredible seasons of heartbreak after her husband revealed his unfaithfulness to her with multiple women, he was deep into an addiction to pornography, and one of the women he had slept with was pregnant. Cindy shares with us with s...

Today on the podcast, we have a much beloved returning guest, Jane Kirkpatrick. Jane was my guest on episode 53. Her books explore women in history that may not be more readily featured in the average history book. Her most recent book The Healing of Natalie Curtis, is based on a woman who left New York City after a successful professional music career, but experienced a meltdown, and headed west...

Today we are doing something a little different in order to raise an Ebenezer because of what God has done over the last 100 episodes. One of my dearest friends and I sat down at her kitchen table and just… talked. As someone who has walked with me through all of the life that's happened since we began the podcast, April McKinney was the perfect person to talk about where we've been and where we'r...

Today is our 100th episode!!!!! How in the world did that happen?!?! I can hardly believe it. My guest today feels like such a perfect person to celebrate the great things God has done with. I'm chatting today with speaker, author, and powerhouse Bible Study teacher, Marian Jordan Ellis. Marian's ministry and podcast lives under the umbrella of This Redeemed Life. That's the banner over her life,...