Angela Halili and Arielle Reitsma, or better known as the founders and hosts of podcast Girls Gone Bible, have now added author to their titles.
The Christian content creators, who amassed over 71 million views on YouTube and 20 million listens on Spotify with guests, including pastors Stephanie Ike Okafor and Phillip Anthony Mitchell, cover topics like perfectionism, mental health and brokenness on their platform.
“I feel like our story is everyone’s story,” Reitsma tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s a story of heartbreak, it’s a story of feeling like it’s the end, even [feeling] suicidal, having infertility issues, [or] addiction.”
Delving further into their personal experiences, guided scripture and encouragement, Out of the Wilderness curates a space for healing and transformation over the span of the 31-day devotional.
The duo, who started off as Hollywood actresses seen in films like Tyler Perry’s Duplicity and Lifetime’s The Wrong Cheerleader, share the joy of their ministry journey, which included bouts of mental instability and self-images issues.
“I had a really intense journey with panic attacks, and anxiety disorder and OCD, and forms of disassociation, like derealization and depersonalization, you name it,” Halili tells THR. “I was so full of fear.”
Reitsma explains, “I think the biggest issue in my life was my identity because I never felt safe and I never felt peace. I thought that peace and identity and love and all these things were always found in somebody else.” But she encourages, “One of the things I love and learned most about the wilderness season, is you don’t stay there.”
Before their upcoming For God So Loved The World Tour kicks off this fall, THR caught up with the GGB girls to discuss the standout encounters they’ve had with their listeners, their faith journey and what it really was like creating a 31-day devotional for their audience, including the niche devotional BookTok crowd.
What made you want to write a book for your audience?
ANGELA HALILI I think the podcast is amazing because people get to [listen] when they’re driving their car, when they’re cleaning their house, [or] wherever people might watch and listen to a podcast. I think there’s something so significant about having a book in your hand where you read somebody else’s words and it’s just a different type of way to take in information. I think a lot of people who especially are new to faith, they don’t even know where to start or how to start, so to have something where it’s like, okay, they’re showing me how to pray and now they’re letting me pray, it’s very interactive and digestible for people.
ARIELLE REITSMA Angela and I started Girls Gone Bible, and then shortly after we jumped into writing this book, and when I think back to the process, it was so many nights of second guessing myself of being like, “Am I qualified for this?” But then really leaning into God and being like, “Yes you are.” These seasons are seasons that we all go through, and they need to hear it and read it because you’re going to help people. It was nights of feeling stuck, nights of having to go back in my journal and relive some moments, days of writing and still healing through things I was writing. It was messy, it was holy, it was transformative even in my own life. Even writing it, I began to heal because it showed me how much He’s transformed me through each and every season and sometimes that’s what you need in the wilderness season. You need to feel seen, you need to feel like, wait, I’m not in this alone.
What does the phrase “Out of the Wilderness” mean to you?
HALILI Biblically speaking, being in the wilderness would be described as a time of dryness, a time in your life where God is not answering prayers or so it seems like God is silent. He’s nowhere to be found. You’re just wandering lost and waiting for God to speak the next steps of your life, but you just have no idea which way to go and which way is up and which way down. I think a lot of people fight the wilderness season because it is painful and it is hard to go through, but if you think about it, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, and you see so many countless stories in the Bible where men and women of God were led into the wilderness to have something really significant produced in them through the wilderness and Jesus pulls you out of the wilderness. I think for our book Out of the Wilderness, we basically take people through 31 seasons or moments or situations in our lives that were wilderness situations and show them how Jesus pulled us out of those.
REITSMA I love what Angela said, and it’s a season where you almost feel like you’re in survival mode. You can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel where you feel like God has abandoned you or [wonder], “Is this the end for me?” So why we wrote this book was to show people [that] you’re not alone, and we all go through this. I feel like our story is everyone’s story. It’s a story of heartbreak, it’s a story of feeling like it’s the end, even [feeling] suicidal, having infertility issues, [or] addiction. It’s not the end, it’s only the beginning and it’s not about just surviving, it’s about surrendering. One of the things I love and learned most about the wilderness season, is you don’t stay there. You were never alone. God is with you through it and he doesn’t leave you there. He walks through it with you. And on the other side of it, it’s breakthrough in pruning and who we became through our wilderness is someone we never would’ve became if we didn’t go through it. It’s a season of transformation.
Can you speak to your journey in Hollywood as actresses and how that’s helped you navigate those intersections of ministry and entertainment?
HALILI I was in LA for 10 years pursuing acting, loved it with all my heart, fell in love with Jesus [and] started this podcast. The first maybe six months of the podcast, there was no way I was letting go of this dream of acting, the one thing that I loved more than anything, I literally just slowly opened my hand and released it, and it became this effortless kind of mutual understanding between God and I. I just felt like there was a couple of times where he looked at me and he’s like, “Listen, you are my star, but you’re not the star.”
I felt like I kept having this conversation where he is like, “I’m calling you to something different,” so just over time, I was able to just open my hands and let it go. Now, I have no desire to act and I just want to be in full-time ministry. I think for both Ari and I, we can agree that so much of our acting history has aided us in communication, storytelling, in our speech and even interpretation of scripture. For me personally, I realized the way I used to interpret and break down scripts has actually aided in my studying of scripture.
REITSMA Acting was a rough road for me. I moved here when I was 18, and I would get my foot a little bit in the door and then get the door slammed in my face and it was just like an uphill battle. It was funny because during the time I was acting, I felt like, “I don’t have a college degree. I’ll never be anything else. This is all I’ve ever known. What else will I do?” But during that time, I remember I was trying to start an organization called the Good Kid Org. I was calling high schools back from where I was from because I wanted to help kids with their mental health. I always had this steep desire in my heart.
And when I had found Jesus and everything got stripped from me, one of my prayers was, “If you use me to help the lives of others, I will never let you down.” I’ll never forget saying that prayer. I always wanted to help people, but never in a million years think I’d be in ministry. It’s so cool.
Angela Halili and Arielle Reitsma pose together with their devotional book ‘Out of the Wilderness.’ Courtesy: Matt Morgan
Matt Morgan
In Out of the Wilderness, something that stood out to me was the chapter “My Mind is a War Zone.” Can you guys explain that part of the faith journey and mental health?
HALILI I had a really, really, really intense journey with panic attacks and anxiety disorder and OCD and forms of disassociation, like derealization and depersonalization. You name it, I was going through it. I was so full of fear. I was literally afraid of everything. I was afraid to leave the house. I was afraid to drive a car. I think mental health is a really interesting journey and I think that Ari and I have learned a lot as time has gone on to have a well-rounded perspective around mental health because mental health is spiritual, mental and emotional. And I think you can’t just focus on spiritual work and neglect emotional soul work and the opposite way—you can’t just be going to therapy all day without fighting in the Spirit. Sometimes it requires both. For my mental health journey, I mean a lot of it was epigenetics. I had a predisposition genetically to anxiety.
My mentor Socrates taught me about authority, taking thoughts captive, fighting in the spirit, praying your heart out, declaring scripture over yourself like, “No weapon formed against me shall prosper [Isaiah 54:17].” And continuing to speak over yourself and speaking to anxiety, speaking to these thoughts that are tormenting you and saying, “Stop in the name of Jesus. I will not come into agreement with these thoughts. I’m not doing this anymore. Like Satan, you’re exposed. You have no legal right in my mind, in my body, in my life, be gone in the name of Jesus.”
I want to get into purpose and insecurity. A couple of standout quotes from your book was “From loss to found in his purpose” and “Faith is established by trust, not understanding. We can only know ourselves through Jesus.” So, in a world that we live in, which always tries to give us our identity, how did you go about finding purpose and overcoming insecurity?
REITSMA I think the biggest issue in my life was my identity because I never felt safe and I never felt peace. I thought that peace and identity and love and all these things were always found in somebody else, whether it would be a relationship, a career or just something that would make me feel like I was something. I was constantly searching. I always came up feeling completely empty and hopeless and more lost than ever.
When I hit a wall in 2021 where everything got stripped from me, I realized these things never fill me. I realized that before your desires come, you need to know your identity through Jesus, so Jesus really took me on a journey of singleness and purity. I’m still on a journey of my identity, but I love the scripture, “Seek me with all your heart and you will find me [Jer 29:13].” And when you find Jesus, you then find yourself. Insecurity is ongoing. It’s a journey, and it’s something I still battle with. I still battle with thoughts. I still battle with not feeling adequate sometimes and being in my head. One thing I try not to do is hold in what I’m feeling because once you let the shame out, it loses its power. So staying in community, being vulnerable with what you’re going through and not letting it manifest inside.
REITSMA I leaned so much more into my true identity. I think in ministry with Girls Gone Bible, the temptation has been to be like, “All these amazing things are happening, and that’s who I am.” I just feel really challenged by God every day of my life of him being like, “That’s not who you are.” He takes me on a journey within my own heart every day to show me who I am and where I need to work on in my identity to become more like him so I could live in my true identity.
What advice would you give to the person who’s going through their journey for the first time?
HALILI I would say if you are somebody who didn’t grow up believing in Jesus, you didn’t grow up in a culture believing in Jesus, I just want to commend them for even giving it a thought. Because the idea of putting your entire life into something that you can’t see with your own eyes tangibly is just so impressive to me. One of my favorite things is people who are atheists or agnostics or even of a different religion, they grew up believing something completely different and they step out in boldness and in faith to be like, “Something is pulling me this way.” It’s just the most beautiful, impressive thing.
I would just say to those people, “Pray to Jesus, pray to the Holy Spirit even if you don’t understand [or] if you don’t know what’s going on. Pray really dangerous prayers like ‘Jesus, if you are real, I want you to show me who you are.’” If you knock, he’s going to open the door.
REITSMA I remember that’s exactly what I did because I didn’t know what I was doing that day that I met him in that little Catholic church and I just said, “Show me” and he did and it started with his love. And I did not feel adequate to come to Jesus, I did not feel adequate to be in the church. I felt like I was too far gone. I felt like I was too much of a sinner, and what I just tell people is that you are not, that you can come as you are, no matter your past, your religion [and] no matter what you feel. For the one who has been stuck in sin, stuck in addiction [or] who has felt like they have just gone the total opposite way, the beautiful thing about Jesus is he gives you rest. He shows you a life of peace. He shows you love and it’s not fleeting, it’s safe. I would just add that we need community and one of the greatest gift Jesus gives us is each other. So never stay in isolation.
What are some standout moments that you can share that highlight the transformative nature of your ministry?
REITSMA There’s been so many stories that we’ve heard of. “You’ve prayed for me for infertility and now I’m pregnant.” “I had a tumor and they gave me a 5 percent chance of living. Now I’m healing.” This is Jesus. This is who he is. And we’re two girls who didn’t walk this walk. We didn’t grow up in Christianity, but we had each other and we chased Jesus together and we have faith, and that’s what we want to tell people. It’s not about how long you’ve been in the bible or how long you’ve been a Christian or how long you went to theology school. Are you with Jesus? Have you been with Jesus? Because we all have the opportunity to have faith and pray for people. We all have the gifts of healing if we have the boldness and the faith and the hunger.
HALILI Can I tell you my favorite story that we’ve heard recently? This girl was dating a guy and he gave her everything. They were living in a worldly type of relationship. He bought her dream home and she’s living with her boyfriend. She loves him All of a sudden she starts getting curious about Jesus. She starts listening to these two crazy girls on a podcast who are saying, “Don’t have sex, break up with your boyfriend, he’s leading you to sin.”
We’re out here, everyone’s laughing being like, “We’re ruining guys’ lives” because their girlfriends are breaking up with them being like, “I’m not having sex anymore if we’re not married.” And this girl moved out of the house and was like, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m living a pure life. I am not meant to be in this sort of relationship.” And then the guy calls a friend of a friend of a friend and goes, “What if this girl who gave up her dream house and I gave her everything and she’s leaving everything for Jesus, maybe I need to look into this guy, Jesus.” And he starts going to church. Isn’t that so crazy?
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OUT OF THE WILDERNESS: 31 Devotions to Walk with God Through Your Hardest Seasons: A Devotional is available now.
