Conversations with God

Nancy Guthrie

It’s actually because he is sovereign, because he can that we pray. We pray because we see in the scriptures, over and over again, that actually our prayers matter.

Courtney Doctor

Welcome to the deep dish, a podcast from the gospel coalition where we love having deep conversations about deep truths. I’m Courtney doctor here with my co host and friend, Melissa Krueger, and today, we are delighted to be joined by one of our dearest friends, Nancy Guthrie, and we are going to be talking about prayer. I have no doubt that most of you listening know and love Nancy, and you know that she has done a lot of writing and a lot of thinking and a lot of speaking about prayer, including several books, a book on praying through the Bible for your kids, a book on how to pray for someone. In fact, I have that one here with me. It’s one of my favorite books how to pray with somebody who is suffering, called I am praying for you, and a book that teaches kids how to pray and so. Nancy, welcome. Thank you for joining us. And I want to just kick it off with a with the obvious question of, Why? Why have you written so much about prayer?

Nancy Guthrie

That’s a good question. I suppose some of it is, I so long to be a woman of prayer, and can I just be honest? I mean, when you, when you wrote me about this, I just thought, oh, man, I’m going to talk about prayer. And sometimes I feel like I’ve written about it more than I do it. I mean, I, I have a deep longing to be a person of prayer, that that’s just my instinct and my lifestyle and my go to that it would be a part of the fabric of who I am. And I just have to say much more than it is right now, and, you know, I’m I just sometimes I just wonder, how long is it going to take, you know, and but it’s going to be my pursuit, I suppose, the rest of my life, well, to be someone who just is a person of prayer. Yeah,

Courtney Doctor

may that be true for all of us. And I love that you led with that type of just authentic confession. I think we all long no matter how much we study it or talk about it, if we’re not doing it in increasing amounts, then what are we doing? And So may the three of us be women who increase in our love and practice of prayer, and as we invite people into this conversation, that the same would happen for for you. So, Melissa, you are actually somebody who is so quick to pray. I you know as my friend, as my co worker, you pray for our team, you pray for our meetings, you pray for our work. You you pray for me and so what has shaped you into someone who turns to prayer so quickly. Yeah,

Melissa Kruger

when I saw that question, I was like, Oh, that’s a I think aging and realizing my words really aren’t that helpful. I don’t really have much wisdom to offer anyone. I don’t have enough casseroles I can make to make it better. The sorrows are too deep, the hurts are too much. There’s not a book that’s good enough to bring someone, and honestly, it’s been the realities of the hardness of life and walking. Gosh, I’m already crying with you, ladies. I’m sorry, like when you walk through and you’re crying out for people and you wish you could change it, and you can’t. Here’s, here’s what’s going deep. Good grief, I can’t. And so you’re, you’re like, that’s all I have. It’s all I have. I know a guy, and he’s the sovereign of the whole universe, yeah. And I can’t do much, but I can pray, yeah. And I can beg the Lord to change was happening. And, and then I think even with our work, you know, I realized sometimes, oh yeah, we’re just gonna work really hard. And, and then, you know, I’ve fallen on my face, falling flat on my face, enough to know my hard work has done do it all. My good efforts doesn’t do it. My getting up early, am I going to bed late? It doesn’t do it. Only the Lord can do the things we’re asking to be done, because they all take a miracle of the Holy Spirit invading someone’s life and taking over. Yeah, and so I think I’m just more and more like all we can do is pray for one another. But I feel a lot like Nancy, though, in the I think as my brain is aging, it wanders more quickly. So I’m talking about that quiet prayer I have tried in my practice with people to pray right then. You know, sometimes you’re sitting with someone and they’re telling you something, and you say, Let’s just pray right now. But I will say Aging has. Made it harder at times to focus during that Bible reading time and prayer, I I’ve had to start writing names down and just keep refocusing. Okay, I’m gonna pray for this person. I pray, I think, I think it’s really hard and Nancy, you talk about that like it can be really easy to quickly say, hey, I’ll pray for you, you know, and we all do that, right? We get the email, we see the Facebook post, you know, someone has cancer or whatever, and we are like, I’ll be praying for you. But it’s, it’s really easy to say that, it is really hard to practice that. Do you have any tips for us? Like, how can we do that better? Well,

Nancy Guthrie

the thing is, when we say, I’m going to pray for you deep in our soul, we intend to, and we want to, but just the dailyness, the busyness of life gets in the way, and we see them a week later, and we think, I haven’t at all, right. So, I mean, I think a practical tool is we all carry around with us this tool that we could use, perhaps, you know, to set a reminder, like a daily alarm, that reminds us to pray for a particular person, but I think you’re right, Melissa, there’s something about putting pen to paper. You know, make making a list, making a note, putting something somewhere where we can see it. But I, I think what goes along with it, what really drove me to put together that book I’m praying for you was that I want, what we want to get past is just that vagueness, yes, of I’m praying for you. Because the question is, what are you praying, right and and the thing is, we all have the tendency, especially when we’re praying for someone suffering, but like the only thing we know to pray that we maybe pound on again is in is begging God to do things differently, is to ask him to heal, to restore, to remove, to change the circumstances. Why do we do that? Because we’ve decided in our mind what the best outcome is, yeah, and so, I mean it’s, it’s not just that though. I mean it’s, it’s our hearts of compassion. That’s compassion we see someone who’s hurting, and we want them to not have to hurt so more so much anymore. And so we determine what we want to pray toward. And the thing is, I think we’re free to do that. I think the scriptures open us up to just share with our loving father what we want, but I think that means we have a limited vocabulary in prayer, that maybe that would be the only thing we know how to pray. And the truth is, if, if we are looking at the whole of the scriptures, we see over and over again that God has good purposes for the suffering that he allows into the lives of those who love Him. And so if that is the case, maybe I don’t want to always be praying that suffering away. Maybe what I what I want to do is to lean into the scriptures, to open them up and see what they have to say about what God’s good purposes are for the suffering in the lives of those who belong to him, and then pray toward those ends. Pray. So what that does is expands our vocabulary from prayer, rather than solely every day, take it away. Heal this. You know, do this Lord instead day by day, as I’m seeing various places in the Scripture the good purposes that God has for prayer, then I begin to ask him to do that. So, for example, John nine, we read about the Jesus healing the man who was blind from birth, and you remember the disciples asked him, like, who sinned? This man or his parents? He was born blind, and Jesus said, you know, neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened that the work of God or the glory of God might be put on display in his life. And when I read that, I say, okay, yeah, I want that there’s a purpose, right? Yeah, and so both in my own suffering or as I pray for someone else, that that expands my vocabulary, so that I can begin to pray for that person. Lord, don’t wait for the suffering to be over. Don’t wait for the. Problem to be fixed, to put your glory on display. But you know, even now, in the midst of her suffering, in the midst of his suffering, would you put your work on display? Now a challenge for that specific example is the way God’s glory gets put on display as he gets the miracle. Yeah. And so we see that, and we think oftentimes, you know, well, I didn’t get the miracle. This person I’m praying for isn’t getting the miracle. And yet, is it not a miracle that you and I, in the midst of the worst thing we could imagine, could have peace and joy and that we could trust God with the hardest thing we can imagine. I would say that when the world looks at us, when we are suffering and what they see is joy and peace and patience and kindness and a lack of self centeredness, I would say that is the work of God, right, being put on display in the emanating from the interior of a person’s life,

Courtney Doctor

yeah, yeah. And that he can use it for not just his glory, but for our good, and that we can trust that more and more that you know, even James talking about, you know, produces endurance and let endurance have its, you know, its result, and that we would be perfect and complete, that we are becoming more like Christ through those things. Melissa, you referred to God’s sovereignty. And then Nancy, you’re talking about ways that we pray for, maybe more than the removal of the circumstances change in the circumstances. So we’re going to have an entire episode on the sovereignty of God, meaning that his sovereignty, we acknowledge and confess, that He is all powerful, that He is all knowing, that he knows the end from the beginning, and a lot of times the the idea of God’s sovereignty leads people to the erroneous belief that our prayers don’t matter. God is going to do what he’s going to do. And so why would we even ask him in the first place? And so Nancy, can you speak to why that is simply not true.

Nancy Guthrie

I love this question, because what I want to say back is, if God is not sovereign, why would you pray at all? Right,

Courtney Doctor

right,

Nancy Guthrie

if he does not have the power to act, to change, if, if we would think he doesn’t have the will or the want to to care for his own you know, Why pray at all? So it’s actually because he is sovereign,

Courtney Doctor

because he can that we pray

Nancy Guthrie

and we pray out of faith, honestly. We pray because he has told us to pray. We pray because we see in the scriptures, over and over again, that actually our prayers matter. Yeah, that’s hard for us to imagine, especially when we do have a big view of his sovereignty, but it but it’s so clear, I think, all the time, about the Lord’s Prayer, where he’s where he he instructs us to pray, Give us this day our daily bread. Now we can just operate on the other bigger promises in the Bible, that he’s promised to care for his own and provide, but what he has designed is that we would come to him every day and say, Daddy, would you give me what I need? Not for just out there for, would you give me what I need today? And you know, it’s the relationship of a father and child that wants that fellowship and wants that daily dependence, daily dependence. And I tell you what, right now, I’m working on my seminary class on the prophets, and I’ve seen this so clearly. So just yesterday, I was working through some questions study questions on Isaiah, you know, and what’s the problem with these people that Isaiah is talking to? And one of their big problems is that they’re going to worldly sources for protection and to get what they need, instead of trusting and asking God. And I’m just like, here’s the Old Testament picture of this, right? It’s like, and honestly, I am geared toward this. I am a fixer. And I I like to tap into my network and figure out a solution to the problem. And man, am I seeing myself in these Old Testament Israelites. It’s like I’m going to find a solution for this that I can work out. And what I’m just seeing in the scriptures, both who met all these Old Testament pictures, as well as, you know, the the Lord’s Prayer, and just really throughout the Scripture, is what our Father desires from us is daily dependence. And this is isn’t that at the heart of prayer. And so rather than just presuming, well, he’s, you know, he’ll take care of things, no rather than presume he calls us to press in, to pray, to always be interacting with him about the things that are important to us, and not just that the Scripture, the things that are important to him. This is why he can say in the scriptures, you know, ask and you will receive. You know, a part of that paradigm is the expectation that we are in such a relationship with him, how, through His Word, that who he is and what he wants and what he loves and what he hates is being impressed upon our hearts and minds, so that as we turn to Him in prayer, more and more we’re asking for the things that are heavy on his heart and asking him to accomplish His ways. I think maybe the best verse for that is we think about Psalm 3037, for you know, delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart, which, I wonder, if you guys were like this, like, for a lot of my life, that was like The Single Girl’s hope, right?

Speaker 1

You’re gonna get really close to God. Desire of your heart is, yeah, yeah. You got this desire,

Nancy Guthrie

you know, for that man and you know? So you’re gonna, you’re gonna, okay, so rather than just focusing on that, I’m gonna really get happy in God, and then he will give me what is the true desire of my heart? Yeah, right. But actually, that’s not what this verse is communicating. It’s as we delight ourselves in who God is, and what he wants in this world and what he wants for our lives. What is it that happens? He actually gives us implants in us new desires. I mean, that’s what I really want. That’s what I really want to happen as I fellowship with God in his word that he would be plucking out my very fleshly worldly desires, and in this place, he would be implanting in me new desires. Have

Courtney Doctor

you ever had that experience where he gives you something to pray for. You don’t realize it. You think you’re praying out of your own desires, but then he gives it to you, and it’s like he’s proving himself like I I’ve had those experiences where I wasn’t expecting to pray for something, and then I found myself asking a very specific thing, and then he did it, and it’s like, oh, you gave me even the words to pray, because you are proving yourself to me again and again. You know, oh, how I’ve proved him over and over. And so it’s that sense of like, not only is he changing my desires, he’s showing me through giving me certain desires, like you were saying, giving me new desires, and then prompting me to pray for them. It’s just, it’s amazing to me when that happens.

Melissa Kruger

I love even what you’re saying there too, because Courtney, sometimes I think he’s also showing he’ll do it. I get to the end of my rope with a lot of those things. You know, it is kind of like, I mean, especially when I think about, I mean, we’ve all been moms, you know, we’re all fixits, right? We’re going to fix these children, and I can, and then I’m going to read articles that will help me fix them, and then I’m going to read books that are going to help me fix them. I’m going to talk to this friend about that, and I’m going to do this. And then suddenly I’ll be like, Have I even prayed about this? And then, you know, it’s like, oh, and I think it gets to what you’re saying Nancy about that daily dependence on like he wants us to come to him so that we almost and that’s a protection on us, so that we don’t think, wow, it you know, it’s because I figured it out. I did it in me, and that’s where we tend. Didn’t you go? I think in our lives, it’s always I did it, just like the two year old toddler. I do it myself, you know. And it’s like he keeps saying, no, let me. Let me show you how much I want to be your provider and come to me, and you can come to me. And sometimes I’m embarrassed what I have to keep coming to the Lord with. I don’t know if you all ever feel this way. I’m like, I’m the slowest creature Lord. I’m, you know, just the confession aspect of prayer and all that. I come and I’m so slow and I and I’m, like, ashamed to even ask for mercy and grace again, then

Nancy Guthrie

with this one, yes. And then

Melissa Kruger

I, I can remember it was like the Spirit just brought to mind. You don’t graduate from Grace, Melissa, this isn’t who you graduate from. Telling you you’re face to face with the Master. I mean, then we’ll graduate, maybe, from this need to confess and repent and everything. And I think prayer is just a special communion that we that we really get to have with the Lord, and it is important to teach the next generation. You know, Nancy, you’ve written on teaching children how to pray. Why can that be so hard, and why is it so important?

Nancy Guthrie

Well, I think left on their own. Maybe it’s not totally on their own. Maybe it’s because this is the example that we’ve set for them, mostly kids. If you think about small children, they ask God for things, and they thank God for things, and that’s awesome. That’s great. But once again, we want to expand their vocabulary for prayer, and you know, the Bible, it shows us all the different things that we can pray about and who we can pray for, and what that might sound like so in my little book, what every child should know about prayer, I kind of went through different sections of the Bible. I looked at people who prayed and what they prayed for, you know, like Solomon, praying for wisdom to know right from wrong. And, you know, various characters we look at at the Lord’s Prayer and all of the things that the Lord’s Prayer teaches us to pray, like to confess and and to welcome His kingdom into the world, and to forgive, to have what we need, you Know, to forgive others, one of the most significant, significant, I think, for kids, is to work through the Psalms. And what are the Psalms teach us about prayer. And so much of the Psalms is just telling God what we want and how we feel and what’s hard. So I think to maybe introduce children to being the ability to just express our hearts and longings to God. And I mean, just by the way, isn’t it a wonderful thing that we have this whole book that God has given us, He’s given us the words to cry out to Him and to complain to him and to ask him for what we want, and then simply just some instructions the Bible gives us about prayer, about praying at any time, in anywhere, and that simply it calls us to pray and keep on praying yes

Courtney Doctor

and Jesus, and Jesus showed us, I mean, his own event. I just even think about the prayer the night before he was crucified, and his begging of the Father to if there was any way possible right to take this suffering from him. And I mean, who hasn’t prayed that Lord please, like, take this from me. And I actually find so much comfort in the Lord’s tender answer to his beloved Son, the one whom he loved, and that the answer is clearly no, that no, I’m I won’t remove this suffering from you, because I’m doing something greater, and that just comforts me so much. And you know, even as you’re talking Nancy and Melissa, you were asking the question, about children learning to pray, I thought it’s I need to learn to pray. I mean, I am no different. I need those same instructions. And it is one reason. I know I’ve now mentioned this book three times, but I don’t know if you remember Nancy when you first started writing it, you and I were talking about it, and I was so excited, because I do think it’s the it’s the one I keep holding up I’m praying for you, because it does give language. It’s instructive. It it shows us how to, you know, pray for more than just the change of the circumstances, not less than, but more than. I’ve I’ve been using a. Book called piercing heaven. It’s prayers of the Puritans for the last several years in my just my morning, time with the Lord. And it’s given me new language to in my prayers. And I just love that, because we are we are constantly needing to grow in in our just the words and the way that we go about praying. So I just think it’s so helpful. So thank you for providing that for us.

Melissa Kruger

So here’s my question on that, for in this is for both of you, let’s say someone has been praying for things for years. I mean, we all know there, there are deep things people have been praying for. I mean, the salvation of someone in their life, yeah. I mean, these can go on for years, yeah, whether especially when it’s a family member or maybe a situation to change, like I have one friend. I mean, we, we were in a prayer triad for years, and we were praying for one thing, for it. It’s just it’s been an ongoing struggle. It just hasn’t ended. And I mean, years and years and years, I think we can get disheartened, and we can maybe say, am I supposed to stop praying for this? Maybe God’s not going to answer this. So should I just let it be what would you say to a woman who’s going through that like, who has this, this deeply, deep longing for a good thing? I mean, you know, some things we just know are good. Like someone coming to Jesus is a good thing. You can always, yeah, pray that. How would you encourage a woman like that, who’s, who’s just like, I’m just, I can’t I’m almost scared to pray, because it opens up hope. And they’re scared to hope anymore. How would you encourage that woman?

Nancy Guthrie

Well, the only thing I can think of is, what’s been helping me recently with one of those kinds of things is how much just every interaction I have with the Scriptures in the various settings in which I am in. So if it’s just, you know, something I’m reading online, or it’s the Sunday sermon, this is where it often is, or, you know something I’m working on writing whatever, wherever I am in the scriptures, I look for something to be a starter for prayer. Okay, so, for example, last Sunday in church, our pastor was preaching from Psalm 40. And, you know, as I looked through this passage, and I thought about the person I’m praying for to have, you know, new spiritual life here in Psalm 40, you know Was he drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bug, and set my feet upon a rock, and just as I was sitting there in church, that became prayer, yeah, Lord, would you make that this person’s testimony? Yeah, at some point in this life that he could say you, you drew me up out of this dark place, and blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not tune to the proud, who does not go astray after a lie. You know that gives me so much fodder right to keep on praying, right, Lord, this is the blessing that I want for this person, that he would be able to say, I have made the Lord my trust, and see as I do, that I just find new vigor in prayer, right? And that he wouldn’t grow astray after a lie. That gives me new specificity in prayer. So not this just general, drawn to yourself and given new spiritual life, okay, specifically, Lord, you know, help this person to see the lies that he’s believing. And those are the kinds of things that help me to persevere in prayer.

Courtney Doctor

Well, Nancy, and I’m gonna answer that question too. But before I do, I want to ask you, because even as you’re talking about that praying scripture, you were so clear in saying it was instructive and it gave you new vigor in prayer. But I think a lot of times we think it’s kind of magical to use like scripture in our prayers. And so how would you talk about that, like, is there? Is it more powerful to pray God’s word back to him than it is to just use our words. Or what is the, what is the place of scripture in

Nancy Guthrie

our think it has to be either or, first of all, I would say. But the way I quite often think about this is when, when we think about our relationship with other people? Yeah. Now, you guys are my friends, and you would never do this, but so, but certainly, there would be some people in our lives that they’re talk, you know you’re talking, and you sense they’re not even really listening to you, because they just they have something they want to say, and that when you finish talking, they start talking and like it had nothing to do with what you had been saying. And so, I mean, there’s no real relationship there, right? And I just think so often that’s how we interact with God. He’s speaking, we’re we’re hearing His Word, and maybe it’s in the Sunday sermon, like it was for me, or, you know, just doing our a daily time in the word we’re like, Okay, check that box now. Okay, now. Here’s my prayer list, Lord, here’s now. I want to talk to you that was really important to me, you know, and it has no connection to what he has been saying.

Courtney Doctor

That is the best analogy I have ever heard for that. I love that, because we’ve all know what that’s like, yeah, on both sides of that equation, right? I’ve been the person that it’s happened to, but I have been the person that’s done it. And so, you know, like, we know the breakdown, yes, and so that not responding to what God is saying through his living, active word is just like that. That’s And can

Nancy Guthrie

I also make an application for this, for our group Bible studies? Because I think about, you know, the typical group Bible study this happens, doesn’t it like we work our way through whatever the passage is for that day, and then we say, okay, what are your prayer requests? And, you know, what do we need to pray about? And it becomes all about, you know, my kid making the basketball team and the trip I’m taking, right? It’s, it’s all so removed for what we’ve been studying. And you know, if we’ve been studying a passage like Psalm 40, shouldn’t our prayers, even in that group setting, be it begins, I waited patiently for the Lord. So, hey, group, in what way? What are you waiting for that you’re not waiting patiently for? In what way or what do you want to pray to him using the last verse of that passage, you are my help and my deliverer. Do not delay. Oh, my God. Let’s pray about those things together in a way that’s responsive to what God has said, rather than, yeah, God said that. Okay, now I’m gonna talk to him about what’s really important to me. I think

Melissa Kruger

that is just that picture of depth we wanna move toward. The scriptures unite you just so differently, rather than like somebody aunts cat, that sometimes that comes up, and I’m sorry if your cat is sick and it’s your aunts, we will

Courtney Doctor

just lost one of my cats.

Melissa Kruger

But that question Nancy is so different. What are you desperately waiting on? I just think it’s gonna if we’re willing to go there, though, that’s what the word directs us with one another, to go to these different places of saying, Yeah, well, you pray. This is really the thing,

Nancy Guthrie

but to make a confession here, though, okay, okay, sometimes in our my small group, there has been a discussion that intersects, and I feel relieved we’re not gonna pray about it, you know, I mean, that should be a red light to me, but because I like I think I’d rather just keep it real shallow And, you know, pray for traveling mercies.

Unknown Speaker

Okay? Right?

Nancy Guthrie

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, maybe, you know, it can be like a red warning light, like, oh, there was that. But I really don’t want that to I don’t want that to mess with me.

Courtney Doctor

Well, when the word is piercing the heart and dividing bone and mirror, like, it’s, I, yeah, you’re right. I don’t always want to enter into that space. But, you know, I’m even thinking as we’re having this conversation on prayer, I hope that anybody who’s listening that’s a small group leader will take this as a way of moving your small group towards because even if you know Nancy and I are in your small group, and we’re not wanting to to pray that way, praise God that somebody’s leading us towards that, and to look for ways to to have what you’re studying, cultivate prayer in you. What a beautiful thing. And Courtney,

Melissa Kruger

maybe even just to pause after we read our Bible privately and say, Lord, who do you want me to pray for? This for today, like I do Nancy. Just like you say, I come with my list. Do I ever like? Who Lord should I pray for today, according to your word, who’s like, will you bring to mind, you know, Holy Spirit. Bring to mind right now, who maybe I’ve forgotten to pray for for the best three weeks. That’s that I prayed for. Like, will you bring to mind that that’s just such a good word for me. I mean, I’m going to take that tomorrow and I’m going to that’s going to be a new prayer. I hadn’t thought about like, This is so sad. You

Nancy Guthrie

could pray more today. Melissa, no, it’s only, only

Melissa Kruger

at certain times am I allowed to pray. Nancy,

Unknown Speaker

okay, okay.

Melissa Kruger

Melissa, said,

Courtney Doctor

Melissa, we’re gonna stay on afterwards and have a little, you know, pray for me station, yeah, well, we will be. And I’ve got a whole book that shows me, Oh, my word, okay, well, obviously a rich and convicting and helpful conversation, which is literally what we were praying for. That is not to sound super spiritual, but we actually were praying that this conversation, it’s our prayer for, the podcast, that it will be helpful on topics that really matter. And I can’t think of many that matter more than prayer and Nancy, as is so typical of you, you have pointed us again and again, not just to the Lord, but to his word and how that is what can instruct us in knowing him and knowing how to to talk with him. And so want to thank you for being a part a big part of the deep dish. And what we like to do is we like to ask our guest a fun question. We want you to give us the deep dish. And so I want to, I want to know if the answer to this is going to surprise me, but I want to know what Nancy Guthrie does for fun.

Nancy Guthrie

The answer is not going to surprise you. Okay, because you’ve done it with me more than once.

Speaker 2

No, I think you called me the other day from it. Did you? Is that it No, am I picking something else? What did you do? Yes,

Nancy Guthrie

I love to walk in the park near my house. It feeds my soul. Both Melissa and Courtney have been with me to that park. And what you know is, even though it’s in the middle of the city, you just feel like, like you’re in the Smoky

Courtney Doctor

Mountains or so it’s not a park. It’s, I mean, it is, but it’s like people

Nancy Guthrie

picture the trail, yes,

Courtney Doctor

exactly a mountain, yeah, exactly yes.

Nancy Guthrie

And you also met one time at a place, like we walked to a waterfall. How cool was that on your birthday?

Melissa Kruger

Oh, yes, I know,

Nancy Guthrie

yeah. I mean, that feeds my soul. I love to walk. And, you know, I get to travel to a lot of places to speak, and nothing makes me happier than to, you know, be somewhere and find a beautiful walk and there to enjoy the beauty of nature. It just, it feeds my soul. So you know, when somebody will contact me, you know, can we get together for coffee? I’m like, nope. For one thing, I don’t drink coffee. But the other thing is, like, you know, meet me at the park and we’ll, we’ll go for a walk. And so that makes me pretty happy. I

Courtney Doctor

love that. Well, Nancy, thank you for joining us and friends. Well, this you, oh, gosh, this is so fun, so fun to do it with you. I know, yeah, everybody else, y’all can just stop. They’ll just slowly stop recording, but we’ll just stay on and keep talking. But But before you all, before they stop recording, I do want to say for all of our friends and people listening, we hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of the deep dish from the gospel Coalition. We hope it has been encouraging and helpful, and if you have found it so then we would invite you to like it, to share it and to subscribe to future editions of the deep dish.