Thinking Like Jesus About Disability

Nancy Guthrie

Nancy Guthrie says the most important thing God has given her is a love for him and for his Word. “To me, God's Word is a treasure to be mined,” she says. “The deeper I go, the more I see its wisdom, the more it authenticates itself, the more it reveals to me the amazing mystery of God. He’s given me a mind that wants to figure out the big picture of who he is and what he is doing in the world.” Nancy’s life experience has also significantly affected her teaching. “I’ve had to dig into God’s Word in search of answers to hard questions about God and how he works, and I find that my readers or listeners usually have the same struggles and questions. And while I share openly the deep hurts in my life, I also like to laugh. I often have people who hear me teach say that I'm very real. That’s what I want to be." Nancy and her husband, David, have a twenty-something son, Matt, and have had two children, a daughter, Hope, and a son, Gabriel, who were born with a rare genetic disorder called Zellweger Syndrome and each lived six months. Nancy offered many of the lessons she learned from this sorrowful experience in her 2002 book, Holding On to Hope: A Pathway of Suffering to the Heart of God. She regularly hears from readers who have been touched by the book from all around the world as the book has been translated into German, Danish, Norwegian, Korean, Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese. Since then, Nancy has continued to write books that reflect her compassion for hurting people and her passion for applying God's Word to real life. Her desire to grow in her understanding of God's Word has prompted her to pursue graduate work in theological studies. She and her husband, David, host weekend Respite Retreats for couples who have faced the death of a child. She speaks regularly at conferences nationally and internationally, and is a regular contributor to The Gospel Coalition. Nancy and her husband make their home in Nashville, Tennessee where, according to Nancy, life is less about professional pursuits than about the ordinary aspects of being a wife, mother, friend, and follower of Jesus, with clothes to wash, e-mails to answer, and a friend to listen to.