‘Trust is a major key in our walk with God’

I was born in a town called Ayr in Scotland. When I was a teenager, my father used to give me tickets for the Usher Hall in Edinburgh, where lots of different artists perform. He would buy a whole load of tickets, and then he would get me to sell them to my friends. One of the people I sold a ticket to invited his friend, and that was how I met Ray Goudie. I was only 14, but we didn’t start dating until I was 16. We married when I was 20 and Ray was 22.

In 1980 we both joined Youth for Christ and about nine months later started the band Heartbeat. Ray was a drummer and I was a backing vocalist and we asked God to give us a vocalist, a bass player, guitar player and a keyboard player. God brought all of them in without advertising. 

Seeing God move

We went into schools, colleges, universities, prisons – anywhere where we could tell people about Jesus. We then invited them all to come on a Friday night to the local town hall. We never knew how many would come, but we spent a third of our day in prayer asking God to be bring people. What we saw was incredible. 

Our single was released into the charts in 1987. I was pregnant at the time, due to give birth in the September so I came out of the band for a month and, during that time, Heartbeat got on Top of the Pops! 

In 1987 we started NGM – New Generation Ministries, based in Bristol, and Heartbeat became one of the bands within NGM. We produced a whole host of different people who could do what Heartbeat was doing. 

In the Heartbeat days, we saw thousands become Christians every week. We also saw hundreds of people physically healed. In 1997 I felt I should run ‘Spiritual Health Weekends’ where people could encounter God. I said to God: “What you did in Heartbeat’s days was like revival. Would you come and do it for my spiritual health weekends?”

God has done it again; we see loads of people saved and healed. God told me before the last one: “You will see miracles this weekend.” We saw one lady who had been told that she had to go on dialysis when she went back home because her kidneys were failing. She went to the doctor who asked: “What’s happened to you? You no longer need to go on dialysis!” 

Another lady had a crumbling spine – she could hardly walk but came forward for prayer and God healed her. Her doctor said she no longer needs an operation!

Gifts in the midst of pain

In 2013 we celebrated 40 years of marriage, but then Ray started to get ill in November 2014. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with him, but he wasn’t able to eat. Just before Easter, the pain got so bad I took him to hospital. The next morning, we got a phone call saying he had pancreatic cancer. I went back in to see him in hospital, crying all the way. We looked to God for a miracle. 

Firstly, we got a word that for people with pancreatic cancer, there is a small chance that you might be able to have an operation that takes away most of your insides, but it gives you a better chance of success. Very few people are able to have that operation, but Ray was. The surgeon doing the operation came to see Ray, and she was a Christian. 

The surgery was successful, and he had to have chemotherapy and radiation to make sure all the cancer was gone. In May 2016, at our last medical check-up, they said to us: “We haven’t got your results through yet, but everything has been fine so far. So, our advice to you is go on holiday.”

We went to Spain for a month, but when we got home I could see something wasn’t right with Ray.

He died in bed at home in July 2016. I was devastated. God had been so faithful and the miracles we had seen all suggested that Ray would not die. I prayed for him to come back; I commanded the spirit of death to leave but nothing happened. I phoned our two sons distraught. Ray had always said to me: “If I die then you need to know that it was my time to die.” 

That night, I was sitting in my bedroom, crying in total grief over the situation I could not understand. I had so many questions. I thought: “What am I going to do?” I didn’t hear God, but I heard the enemy, who said: “God’s turned his back on you. Turn your back on him.”

I thought: “There’s no way I can turn my back on God, he’s been so faithful.” So I stood beside our bed, and said: “God, I have 101 different questions about what has just happened. I don’t have any answers to any of them, but I’m not called to understand everything. I am called to trust you, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

God gave me two gifts, which I physically felt come on me. The first was the gift of peace. I was still mourning, and crying, but I felt this peace come on me, and it was just remarkable. Then I got another gift, which I didn’t feel I could tell anybody, because it was a gift of joy. Those gifts have never left me.

If I hadn’t had these two gifts, I don’t know how I would have survived, because it wasn’t just losing my husband, I was losing my best mate and my partner in ministry. We had about 120 people we were looking after at NGM. We ran a church. I wondered: “Lord, can I do this on my own?” But trust is a major key in our walk with God, especially when facing something so difficult. It releases you to be able to do the supernatural.  

Miraculous recovery

I had my own healing miracle in 2022. I came home from America and the next day my assistant couldn’t get hold of me. She ended up calling the police, and they found me lying on my bed with traumatic brain injury. I had fractured my skull, and had two brain bleeds and a blood clot in a vein. I have no memory of what happened, but I must have fallen somehow.

They tried to call for the ambulance, but couldn’t get one. My assistant’s husband, who was there, felt he should call one of the guys that used to be in NGM, but was now a paramedic. He asked him: “Where are you right now, Craig?” He replied: “I’m just passing Nancy’s house.” 

He took over from the police and got an ambulance. If it hadn’t been for him being able to arrange an ambulance, I would have died. 

The hospital said they didn’t know whether I would live or die. I was in hospital for about three to four weeks and was then taken to a hospital for brain injuries to learn to walk. I couldn’t get out of my bed without help, I couldn’t go to the toilet by myself. When I got to this hospital, the consultant told me: “You will be here for at least six weeks. You are a very ill woman.” He said it three times.

He was wrong, because I was only there for just under three weeks and then I was allowed home. I went to see my GP, who took blood tests. When he got the results he said: “Nancy, I want to tell you something. You are a very well woman!” He said it three times.

I just laughed, and praised God!

A life verse for me is Hebrews 11:6: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” My mum taught me that from a very young age, and she also taught me that prayer is a two-way conversation, so we need to stop and listen. My faith in God is stoked by his faithfulness and by trust. Miracles happen. 

Read more on Nancy’s formative years in our 2020 interview online

To find out more about Nancy’s books and spiritual health weekends visit: nancygoudie.com