Kierra Sheard-Kelly is a Grammy Award-winning gospel singer, songwriter, fashion designer, actress, and entrepreneur. Sheard-Kelly is also the author of Big, Bold and Beautiful: Owning the Woman God Made You to Be and her new book The Vibes You Feel: What I’ve Learned about Life and Relationships Through the Holy Spirit, which explores what it means to listen to God’s voice, better understand the “vibes” and intuition the Spirit uses as guidance, and live a life that proclaims your heavenly truth.
Sheard-Kelly spoke with rolling out about her new book and her inspiration to create it.
What inspired you to write this book?
What inspired me was having moments when I was like, “God, do you talk to me or not? Are we friends or not?” I wanted to offer something to others who have experienced those same feelings. Of course, we can call our family members and our friends but to talk to our Creator is a different level of decision-making whether it was relationships, career choices, and even growing in relationships. Sometimes there were shifts in relationships and I’d be like “What am I feeling” and sometimes will downplay it and call it female intuition. That was the Holy Spirit that was talking to you but because you downplayed it and said it was just female intuition, now you don’t know when to trust what you’re feeling or not. Very often when we’re like “Someone told me not to go there,” and something happens, that was God trying to protect his child. I wanted to give something to teens and young adults, because very often we deal with anxiety and depression, and we’re overthinking things, but God will speak to you, and he’ll give you peace to follow it.
What did this book do for you while you were writing it?
It was therapeutic. These are journal inserts from my personal phone from me typing when I get angry, or how if I’m feeling some kind of way, or if I’m talking through something and I hear myself. The Bible [says] the answer of the tongue is from the Lord and it also says in the multitude of counsel there is safety. So sometimes when you’re talking to safe counsel, you’ll hear yourself with the answer and it’s like, “Oh, I have the answer. Let me write that down.” I’ve written a lot of those ideas down or it could be the Holy Spirit flowing through you like a fountain. Sometimes I just needed to talk, I just needed an ear, I needed the conversational approach so that I could hear my perspective or my opinion. I’ve got some things out, and I even realized some toxic ways about myself that I needed to fix.
