By Marilyn Tinnin

 

Vicki Courtney Presents
“Sincerely Yours” at Meadow Grove Baptist

 

Vicki Courtney will speak at Meadow Grove Baptist Church in Brandon on April 20-21. Women’s event theme is “Sincerely Yours,” and as Vicki says, “The message is multi-generational.” A wife, mother, and grandmother, Vicki is one women’s ministry guru who has spent a lot of time reflecting on each season of her own life through the lens of scripture and God’s grace. She is wise, warm, and so able to relate to the 18-year-old as well as the 68-year- old. It will be a Friday night and Saturday morning that is well worth your time! See page ?? for details.

 

As a college student at the University of Texas in the 1980’s, Vicki Courtney had zero desire, ambition, or inclination toward anything Christian. She had drunk the Kool-Aid of the pop culture and was a self-proclaimed agnostic and feminist.

 

A native of Irving, Texas, Vicki did not grow up in a typical Bible Belt church-going family. Her parents who had been reared in Christian homes had decided that God would not be a part of their lives, and so, Vicki and her brother, although in a loving and supportive home, had little need for church either.

 

Her grandparents on both sides were strong Believers. When Vicki moved to Austin as a college freshman, her maternal grandparents frequently invited her to eat with them and to escape the dormitory. They also invited her to their Hyde Park Baptist Church, but she laughed them off saying church was really not something that interested her. Her grandfather, who called her “Sis,” never minded telling her in his “bold and boisterous manner” that he and her grandmother hoped she would change her mind and that they were praying for her.

 

It was in her junior year that a boyfriend, who had recently rediscovered his Christian faith, persuaded her to attend a retreat. There she heard the gospel presented in a clear way by the worship leader whose personal story very much mirrored her own. Vicki realized that there was a reason that all the things she had chased for fulfillment never satisfied that empty place inside her. She tells a humorous story of giving in to the Lord after about 11 very Baptist choruses of “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus.”

 

The next morning she eagerly and enthusiastically went in search of a pay phone, called her grandparents and told them she had accepted Christ the night before. Her grandmother choked back tears telling Vicki that she had prayed for this moment for 21 years. That was a powerful instant when it happened, but it engraved a meaningful truth across her once cold heart – Prayers are real, and they matter. Perseverance matters, too.

 

“Once I came to Christ,” Vicki says, “everything else in my life made sense. God birthed a passion in me that night in 1985, and it has never gone away.”

 

The next few years brought marriage, babies, and a consistent hunger to know the Lord deeply in each season of change. It was as though she had to catch up for all the years she had missed in relationship with Him. Her devotion and her sheer consistency opened doors to speaking, writing, and leading others.

 

Vicki’s book titles almost scream two obvious facts about her. She genuinely cares about the hearts of women in every season of life and she wants them to approach every large and small event of life with an understanding and personal acceptance of God’s abundant grace.

 

The scripture for the “Sincerely Yours” event is 2 Corinthians 3:2-3. “You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

 

Vicki promises that the sessions will be a little like a “banquet of messages” from all of her books. If you are looking for something to jump-start a spiritually fatigued season or a total overhaul of a life that isn’t working at the moment, “Sincerely Yours” is for you.

 

Call 601.825.5704, or visit meadowgrove.org. Online Ticket Sales: https://www.itickets.com/events/389821.