We’re continuing our series on listening for Jesus inside spiritual disciplines – because listening is inherently part of practices such as rest, reading scripture, or prayer. In these practices, we are having conversations with God, which means in these practices, we can hear Him louder. 

Today, Marnie is with Amanda Bible Williams, co-founder of She Reads Truth, talking about listening for Jesus in scripture.

If you are longing to hear God speak into your life, whether it’s for a specific circumstance or because you’re longing to know Him deeper, reading scripture is the place to start. Being in scripture is a discipline that helps us to learn and know and recognize His voice. 

Reading His Word leads to hearing His words. 

Friend, if you want to hear God louder through scripture, this episode is for you. 

Marnie and Amanda discuss:

• How anything we read in our Bibles “counts.”
• Rhythms and creative ways to read the Word regularly.
• How community helps us stay in the Word.
• What hearing God through scripture is like.
• A personal story from Amanda of hearing God’s promises for her family through scripture.

Amanda Bible Williams is co-founder of She Reads Truth, a worldwide community of Bible readers. She is co-host of the She Reads Truth Podcast and editor of the bestselling She Reads Truth Bible and The Bible Is for You: A Devotional Journey Through Every Book of the Bible. Amanda is pursuing her MA in biblical and theological studies at Denver Seminary. She and her husband David live in Tennessee with their four kids.

We've created a free resource for you to use throughout this Fall series! It’s called "Three Listening Questions to Ask in Spiritual Disciplines" here! With this resource, you'll listen for Jesus by asking three simple questions as part of every spiritual discipline you practice.

Grab your free copy of "Three Listening Questions to Ask in Spiritual Disciplines" here! 

Amanda and the She Reads Truth team are offering 20% off your order in the She Reads Truth shop through October 9, 2026! The Advent 2026 collection launches September 21, 2026! And when you spend over $60, you’ll also get free shipping (no code required).

Head to She Reads Truth and use this shop code: HEARHIM20

You can find Amanda on Instagram or over at She Reads Truth -- and check out the She Reads Truth Podcast.

You can connect with Marnie through her Website or on Instagram.

We’re kicking off with a series on listening for Jesus inside spiritual disciplines – because listening is inherently part of practices such as rest, reading scripture, or prayer. In these practices, we are having conversations with God, which means in these practices, we can hear Him louder. 

As we begin Fall, these episodes will offer encouragement that as our paces picks up, we can still listen. Today, Marnie is with Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith to talk about rest. Yes, even in Fall.

Did you know that rest is about far more than being still? Today we unpack seven different types of rest (physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social, sensory, and creative), learn how to identify rest deficits, and discuss how, when we rest, we can hear God louder.

Friend, if you’re tired and wondering why naps aren’t helping, this episode is for you.

Marnie and Dr. Saundra discuss:

• The definition of rest (hint: it isn’t just cessation of activity).
• Seven different types of rest we need. 
• How to recognize rest deficits and what to do about them.
• How rest helps us to hear God. 
• The difference between abiding with and striving for God.
• What reclining with God looks like.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith is a Board-Certified internal medicine physician, speaker, and award-winning author. She is an international well-being thought-leader featured in numerous media outlets including Prevention, MSNBC, Women’s Day, FOX, Fast Company, Psychology Today, INC, CNN Health, and TED.com. She is the author of numerous books including her bestseller Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity, including insight on the seven types of rest needed to optimize your productivity, increase your overall happiness, overcome burnout, and live your best life. 

Take the free Rest Quiz to discover your personal rest deficits.

We've created a free resource for you to use throughout this Fall series! It’s called "Three Listening Questions to Ask in Spiritual Disciplines"! With this resource, you'll listen for Jesus by asking three simple questions as part of every spiritual discipline you practice.

Grab your free copy of "Three Listening Questions to Ask in Spiritual Disciplines" here! 

Be sure to connect with and learn more about Dr. Saundra at DrDaltonSmith.com.

You can connect with Marnie through her Website or on Instagram.

Welcome to the Summer Book Club, a special series for the Hear Him Louder podcast that features three guests and three books in three episodes, all focused on helping you to hear Jesus louder.

Is there something you’ve sensed God inviting you into? Have you wondered what will happen when you say yes?

In this episode, Paige Allen and I talk about what we can learn from the matriarchs in Genesis about the promises that God has for us, because each of us has a part to play in God’s story. Paige recounts the stories of the matriarchs (Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel) and then shares five stages they (and we) can experience in birthing a God-promise.

Marnie and Paige discuss: 

• How God invites us to join Him in His plans.
• What His voice can sound like.
• How and why to say yes to God.
• What the stories of the matriarchs teach us about our story.
• The five stages of birthing a God-promise.
• How to ask God about His promise for you.

Paige Allen is a speaker and writer and executive pastor at Church on the Rock in Lubbock, Texas. She co-hosts the Bloom Talks podcast, where unknown but remarkable women tell their stories of God’s faithfulness. Paige has a Masters of Divinity degree from The King’s University. She's written two books, He Knows Your Name: How 7 Nameless Women of the Bible Reveal Christ’s Love for You and Matriarchs: What the Women of Genesis Teach Us About Our Part in God’s Story.

You can connect with Paige at her website or on Instagram.

Go grab Paige’s book here. 

To help you get into a practice of listening for Jesus in your everyday, Marnie created a FREE resource for you: Find Your Listening Rhythm with Jesus. You can connect with Marnie through her Website or on Instagram.

Welcome to the Summer Book Club, a special series for the Hear Him Louder podcast that features three guests and three books in three episodes, all focused on helping you to hear Jesus louder.

Do you need a two-minute timeout with Jesus this summer? Are you a mama who is struggling to hold onto the wonder of summer because the chaos is real?

In this episode, Andrea Fortenberry and I talk about the weary and the wonderful of motherhood as it plays out in summer. What if we could find new and creative ways to meet Jesus even in these days of summer?

Andrea shares her story of finding God in the hardest moments and offers simple, practical ways that we can embrace the wonder of whatever stage of motherhood we’re in, from newborns to launching our young adults. 

Marnie and Andrea discuss: 

• Why perfectionism doesn’t work in motherhood.
• How to listen for Jesus in whatever stage of motherhood you’re in.
• What it can look like to sit with Jesus in summer.
• How making time for God, even in our tiny margins, is actually a time-saver.
• How to show up for the life God has for us even if it isn’t what we expected it to be.

Andrea Fortenberry is a writer, speaker, and host of The Perfectionist’s Guide to Mothering, a podcast that equips moms to find freedom from perfectionism and show up for the life God has for them. She is the author of Two-Minute Timeouts for New Moms: 100 Devotions for Weary and Wonderful Days. She has been married to Will for 21 years and they have two children, ages 17 and 14. She is on staff with MomCo as the Leadership Development Manager and cohosts The MomCo Leadership Podcast. She loves chai lattes, reading books and all things Gilmore girls.

You can find Andrea at her website and Instagram.

Go grab Andrea's book here. 

To help you get into a practice of listening for Jesus in your everyday, Marnie created a FREE resource for you: Find Your Listening Rhythm with Jesus. You can connect with Marnie through her Website or on Instagram.

Welcome to the Summer Book Club, a special series for the Hear Him Louder podcast that features three guests and three books in three episodes, all focused on helping you to hear Jesus louder.

How would you live differently if you really knew that you don’t have to hold it all together?

In this episode, Nichole Suvar and I talk about what we’re holding, why we’re trying to hold it and why we don’t have to anymore. She shares her story of battling anxiety and how she held onto this phrase: “In Him all things hold all together.” (Colossians 1:17). And we discuss how our world distorts and twists what God originally intended in the garden of Eden – and the truth that the peace of Eden still waits.

Marnie and Nichole discuss: 

• Seven deep truths that God embedded in us back in Eden.
• What the distorted versions of these truths look like, including control and perfectionism.
• How to notice what we are holding and how to lay down what isn’t ours to carry.  
• The difference between managing overwhelm and finding peace.
• How to cultivate the peace of Eden in our own lives.

Nichole Suvar is an intentional living strategist who comes alongside overwhelmed women to introduce them to God’s design for mental wellness. Today we’re discussing her new book, “I Don’t Have to Hold it All Together: Cultivating the Peace of Eden When Feeling Overwhelmed.” 

When she’s not writing or coaching, you can find Nichole trying in vain to keep the cupboards stocked for her always-hungry teens, hiking a new trail, soaking in the quiet with her husband, Paul, or savoring cheddar cheese with pickles like it’s a gourmet meal. She’ll take deep conversations over small talk any day, especially if there’s good coffee involved.

You can buy Nichole's book here. Find her other resources at her website and follow her on Instagram.

To help you get into a practice of listening for Jesus in your everyday, Marnie created a FREE resource for you: Find Your Listening Rhythm with Jesus. You can connect with Marnie through her Website or on Instagram.

Today’s conversation with Jennifer Dukes Lee is all about our mornings. Do you think of yourself as a morning person? Do you even like mornings? What if we could not just love our mornings, but also hear God louder in them?

Jennifer tells us that God is most definitely a morning person. And if we are made in His image, then we, too, are morning people…which means maybe we’ve been thinking about our mornings all wrong!

Friend, whether you jump out of bed every morning or you think you’re allergic to mornings, this episode will help you reimagine your mornings.

We discuss:

• Why our mornings matter.
• The difference between a routine and a ritual – and why that makes a difference in the morning.
• How we handle hard mornings.
• Four morning archetypes for how we may be wired to begin our days.
• How these four archetypes listen for Jesus in the morning.
• How to navigate mornings with someone who starts their day differently than you do.
• How to love God with our heart, soul, mind and strength in our mornings.

Jennifer Dukes Lee is a bestselling author, speaker, and morning evangelist from Iowa. She is the author of several books, including How to Love Your Morning, Growing Slow, and It’s All Under Control. She’s a fan of queso, bright lipstick, and singing too loudly to songs with great harmony. She lives on a fifth-generation family farm, where she and her husband have made a life of growing crops, pigs, two beautiful humans, and an enduring faith. You can connect with Jennifer at her Website or over on Instagram and Facebook. 

Take the quiz to learn your morning archetype.

Two ways to get your copy of How to Love Your Morning:

1 | Enter to win a copy of How to Love Your Morning.

2 | Purchase your copy here.

And to help you get into a practice of listening for Jesus in your everyday, Marnie created a FREE resource for you: Find Your Listening Rhythm with Jesus. Marnie would also love to hear from you. You can connect with Marnie through her Website or on Instagram.

Today’s episode with Erica Wiggenhorn is about how to learn how to recognize what God is speaking to us. To know His language.

Do you sometimes get confused when you read your Bible? Does it feel muddy sometimes? Erica shares with us that God did a whole work making her a Bible study teacher after years of not understanding the Bible. 

Her story of praying big, audacious prayers and seeing God speak into her story in powerful ways unlocked and jumpstarted her love for scripture and began her journey of listening for His voice.

What if learning God’s language could change how you hear Him? What if you opened your Bible with anticipation? 

Friend, when we meet God in the word, we hear Him louder. He has so much He wants to say.

We discuss:

• What to do if reading the Bible is confusing or hard.
• How praying audacious prayers can reveal God’s character.
• How to learn God’s language.
• That hearing God’s voice is easier when we understand how we’re wired. 
• How to elevate God’s voice over lies.

A later in life Jesus follower, Erica Wiggenhorn felt like you needed a secret decoder ring to be a Christian. Afraid to pray out loud, uncertain how to read the Bible, but wearing the cutest church clothes west of the Rio Grande, Erica spent years of her life trying to figure out what it meant to truly follow Jesus. Attending her very first Bible study at the age of 30, she finally found that missing decoder ring and the Bible began to come alive for her. Today, Erica Wiggenhorn will tell you, “Jesus saved me from my sins and His Word saves me from myself, daily!”

You can connect with Erica at her Website or over on Instagram and Facebook.

Other episodes mentioned today:

Episode 40 with Evelyn Sherwood

Episode 37 with Janet McHenry

Episode 6 with Niki Hardy

To help you get into a practice of listening for Jesus in your everyday, Marnie created a FREE resource for you: Find Your Listening Rhythm with Jesus. You can connect with Marnie through her Website or on Instagram.

Today’s conversation with Wendy Speake is about how we can hear Jesus louder when we quiet the noisy places in our lives – and we talk specifically about the noise that food and social media introduce into our everyday.

How often do we think about food? How often do we reach for our phones? Wendy shares how she accidentally discovered the spiritual benefits of a sugar fast, which grew into a journey that hundreds of thousands of women have now participated in. What they learned is that eliminating sugar allowed them to know God more. And hear Him louder.

When we fast from things that crowd out God’s voice, or as Wendy says, when we set down the ordinary, we will discover the extraordinary. 

We discuss:

• What our appetites tell of our attentions and affections.
• How consuming less allows us to experience more.
• What fasting is actually about (hint: it’s not about what we give up). 
• How fasting from food and phone noise leads to hearing God louder.
• How finding connection with Jesus keeps us both satisfied and makes us hungrier.

Friend, if you are longing to hear Jesus, opening up your spiritual hearing might begin with fasting from noisy places in our lives.

Wendy Speake is author and host of The 40-Day Sugar Fast, The 40-Day Social Media Fast, and the companion resource, The 40-Day Feast. She is also co-author of the popular parenting book, Triggers: Exchanging Parents’ Angry Reactions for Gentle Biblical Responses. As a trained actress and heartfelt Bible teacher, Wendy ministers to women's hearts through storytelling and Biblical life applications. She utilizes drama, poetry, and the study of God's word. During her career as an actress in Hollywood, Wendy longed to tell stories that would edify and encourage women. Today she does just that.

You can connect with Wendy at her Website or over on Instagram and Facebook. Grab her books here: The 40-Day Sugar Fast, The 40-Day Social Media Fast, The 40-Day Feast, and Triggers. 

And to help you get into a practice of listening for Jesus in your everyday, Marnie created a FREE resource for you: Find Your Listening Rhythm with Jesus. Marnie would also love to hear from you. You can connect with Marnie through her Website or on Instagram.

Have you ever wondered how people walk through back-to-back-to-back hard things and still stay standing? Have you wondered how God meets and sustains them? Today’s episode with Evelyn Sherwood will give you a glimpse of how.

We talk about her story of stacked-up-high hardships and how her practice of listening for Jesus sustained her through it all. 

Evelyn shares with us the behind-the-scenes conversations she had with God during a series of difficult circumstances, including COVID and cancer, and how she grieved and lamented – and also listened in the unknowns. God asked her to trust Him in the “messy middle” and live her story openly as it unfolded. And He met her in new, unexpected ways.

As Evelyn says, the more we learn to hear God, the more comfortable we get with trusting Him.

Friend, if you, too, are in the messy middle, this episode will give you hope.

Marnie and Evelyn discuss:

• How Evelyn discovered how present and real God really is.
• Questions to ask God in the middle of grief.
• The (many) hurdles Evelyn encountered and what Jesus spoke into each hard thing.
• An unexpected, beautiful way Jesus began to meet Evelyn as she walked through chemo.
• How noticing beauty helps us find peace.
• The four-step TRIP method (Thank, Read, Invite, Post) for reading and listening while studying scripture.

Evelyn Sherwood is a trusted minister, speaker, and blogger who has served in pastoral ministry for forty years. Nothing puts a smile on her face more than sharing about the faithfulness of God with a friend over a steaming cup of cappuccino or iced peach tea. On a summer evening, you might spot Evelyn and her husband, Steve, driving through Indiana farmlands in a canary yellow ’47 Ford pickup or enjoying an outdoor movie night in the backyard with their eight grandkids.

You can connect with Evelyn at her Website or over on Instagram and Facebook. Her Pocket Full of Hope series is available here.

And to help you get into a practice of listening for Jesus in your everyday, Marnie created a FREE resource for you: Find Your Listening Rhythm with Jesus. Marnie would also love to hear from you. You can connect with Marnie through her Website or on Instagram.

In today’s episode, Marnie and Jodi Snowdon talk about how we walk through the hard parts of our stories. We each have stories that hold difficult and painful things that we didn’t and wouldn’t choose. When we face those hard things, we can choose to run to God or run from Him. 

Jodi shares with us today about how to navigate our pain and cautions us that running from God means facing our grief alone. But the grief is there either way. 

Maybe you know someone who has run from God in their pain? Or maybe you understand that yourself? 

Listen to hear Jodi’s eight-step “grief roadmap” that will help us to see what it looks like to grieve with God and how He will meet our pain and redeem our stories.

Friend, if you are carrying grief, this episode will give you hope.

Marnie and Jodi discuss:

• The lies we can hear in our heartbreaks.
• Understanding the choice to run to or from God in our grief.
• How running to God in our pain can move us toward growth. 
• Ten scriptures that meet our heartbreaks.
• An 8-step grief roadmap to help us walk through grief.
• How listening for God’s voice helps us to heal.

Jodi Snowdon is an author, podcaster, and speaker who serves women through her podcast, Depth, and her blog, Heartbreak to Strength. In August 2022, she released her first book, Depth: Growing Through Heartbreak to Strength. Having walked through multiple heartbreaks (divorce, miscarriage, & cancer), Jodi now inspires women to grow deeper in their faith and to find hope, joy, and purpose through their unexpected storms. She is raising two sons (one in college and one adulting) in Southern California where she teaches science to elementary students in the STEM Lab.

You can connect with Jodi at her Website or over on Instagram. Her book is available here.

And to help you get into a practice of listening for Jesus in your everyday, Marnie created a FREE resource for you: Find Your Listening Rhythm with Jesus. Marnie would also love to hear from you. You can connect with Marnie through her Website or on Instagram.