Park Cities Presbyterian Church (PCA)

Tidings of comfort and joy

Nancy Guthrie to speak at PCPC

Published August 1, 2010 in Witness

Nancy Guthrie will be coming to PCPC from Nashville to speak at our women’s Fall Gathering, CJ’s Café, on October 7 and 8. She has been featured in Time Magazine and USA Today and is the author of eight books, including Holding on to Hope, which has been translated into nine languages around the world.

Nancy’s life experience has forced her to dig deep into God’s Word in search of answers to hard questions about who God is, and what He is doing in the world. She often finds that her listeners have the same struggles and questions. And while she openly shares the deep hurts in her life, she also likes to laugh. She regularly speaks throughout the U.S. and internationally, and those who hear her often say that they appreciate that she is transparent and real.

We asked Nancy to tell us a little bit about herself and what she’ll share with us at PCPC:

Nancy, our theme for the evening dessert and morning coffee is comfort and joy. Where have you found comfort, and what brings you joy?
C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “Comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.”

So many of us tend to go to the Bible in the midst of hard circumstances looking primarily for verses that seem to promise what we want to get from God, and often, when things don’t turn out the way we had hoped for, we end up disillusioned and disappointed, feeling that God has not lived up to our expectations. But my greatest comfort in the losses that I have experienced has come from going to God’s Word, not to pluck out a verse here and there, but to dive in seeking to understand the big picture of what God is doing in the world, and therefore in my life.

In terms of what brings me joy, I used to think that joy and sorrow were mutually exclusive. But now I know that a person can experience deep sorrow and yet have profound joy in the midst of it. In fact, I think experiencing significant sorrow actually increases our capacity for joy. When we’re told in the New Testament to rejoice when we have trials, we think to ourselves that this must be some sort of super-spiritual brand of Christianity that is unrealistic for us. But I’ve come to think that the real source of joy in the midst of struggle is discovering that the faith we’ve given lip-service to our whole lives is the real deal. Faith shifts from being an intellectual exercise to a personal adventure. There is joy in sensing that God is at work in us and through us in the midst of the most difficult of circumstances.

What are you going to share with us when you come to PCPC?
We’re going to talk about hope. Many people will say that they are “hopeful” in a certain situation or that they are “holding on to hope” as they deal with a difficult situation—problems in their marriage, financial setbacks, health issues, struggles with a child, or the death of someone they love. We’ll talk about what hope really is and what it means to hold on to it in the hard places of life.

I know that many women at PCPC will be inviting friends who don’t know Christ, and I want you to know that I don’t take that trust you’re extending to me lightly. I know what it is like to think about inviting my unbelieving neighbor to something and wonder how the gospel will be presented—nervous that it be heavy-handed or formulaic or just plain weird.

Recently I spoke at a luncheon in New York City and one woman told me afterward, “If I’d known you were going to be so real and present Christ so clearly, there are about 10 friends I would have brought with me.” I was happy that she found my presentation of the goodness of the gospel winsome, but sad that she had not invited those 10 friends! So I would say to the women at PCPC that I hope you will bring someone you know and love who does not know Christ. While I can’t guarantee that they won’t be offended by the gospel—because the gospel is offensive in itself to those who see themselves as good and with no need for Christ—I can commit that I will present Christ in as authentic way as I know how.