PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 324: How Do You Keep It All Together? Part 2
LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 32
4: How Do You Keep It All Together? Part 2
Courtney joins me again today as she shares more of her family life. We came to the conclusion that we are either conditioned and programmed by the advertising of this world, or we are the advertisers of God’s ways to the world. Which side are we on?
Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to The Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Hello, ladies! Here we are again together. I have Courtney with me again, because I think we’ve got more to say together today. But before Courtney and I get going again, I forgot to tell you something last week that’s so very important.
Do you remember a while back, I did two podcasts with Rebecca Lavrenz. Those podcasts, if you want to listen to them again, were numbers 301 and 302. Rebecca shared how she was one of the January 6th people, who that day actually walked into the Capitol. But Rebecca had gone that day to stand up for our nation as a patriot.
While she was there, an amazing thing happened. Just in front of her eyes, she couldn’t believe it, the doors were opened from the inside. They could never be opened from the outside. They were welcomed in by the Capitol police. She saw people going in, being welcomed in, so she thought, “Wow! This is amazing! I might as well go in too!” She went in, and she walked around. She was there about ten minutes or so and walked out.
But as they have done to all these January 6th people who went into the Capitol that day, she was arrested by the FBI. Eventually she went for her court case. We did the podcasts while she was on her way up to Washington DC to do that court case. She was found guilty. She was made to be guilty of all these things that were not true.
Then she had to go back for sentencing. That was in August. She has just now received her sentence. Actually, it was so great that she was out here in the east and is now on her back to Colorado. She was able to stay with us the night on her way back.
How was she sentenced? Well, praise the Lord, God was so good. She did not receive a prison sentence, praise the Lord, as so many J6 prisoners are in prison. There are some who are there for 22 years for having gone into the Capitol, but the sentence upon Rebecca is house arrest. She is on probation now for a year, but on house arrest for six months.
She’s on her way back to Colorado. When she gets there, she will not be allowed out of her house for six months. She is not even allowed on the Internet. They are very, very scared of her voice, because in the last few months, the Lord has opened up so many doors for her on so many talk shows and so many amazing opportunities. She has been out there, sharing all over the nation. God has given her a great voice.
You can go to her daily email too, which is so amazing. I did every day. But now, she is not allowed on the Internet. They’ve shut her voice down with house arrest. They are shutting her from even doing her daily newsletter to everyone. But praise the Lord, her family has risen up. There are four grown children. They are now going to take it on.
She was also fined $103,000. That was a lot for just a misdemeanor of only walking into the Capitol. Not being violent, not destroying anything, not doing anything at all. But I thought I’d update you with what was happening to Rebecca. She’s a great-grandmother. Pray for her, as she’s now being hidden away. But she believes that the Lord will still get this message out as her children take up her daily newsletter. I think she will be doing a lot of writing while she is on house arrest.
But isn’t it amazing? We’re here in a nation that’s supposed to be the freest nation on earth and yet, here they are, trying to stop her voice, which is, of course, the First Amendment of our Constitution. We have the right to speak! She’s being shut down from that.
We are really coming under communist rule, unless we wake up, unless we vote this coming election. Oh, dear precious mothers, I pray that you will vote, that you will vote for Trump. We cannot have Kamala and Walz, who is perhaps one of the most liberal democrats you could ever find. Their whole premise, really, is communism, extreme socialism.
If we want freedom in this country, we must vote for Trump. I hope that if you have children who are 18 and older, that you’ll encourage them to vote too, because I know it’s going to be a fight again. And they’re going to try to steal this election again. We have to pray, don’t we?
Here we are again, and I have Courtney with me. Oh, I must tell you some more things about Courtney. Actually, you can follow her. I said in the last session that she’s also breeding dogs. She has a Facebook page called, now what’s it called? “Nashville Poodles and Doodles.” I like that, because I do love poodles and doodles.
Just recently, our little poodle passed away some months back. I was looking for another dog, and my sister found this doodle, a golden doodle, and I got it! Courtney said if she had known I was looking, she would have given me one of her amazing dogs! Oh, goodness me, because this dog has been quite a challenge. He’s a golden doodle, but he's quite a strong golden doodle. He pinches everybody’s shoes and takes everybody’s shoes. It’s time I trained him well.
But you may like to look it up. She has just done a video of how she trains her ten new puppies. She trained ten puppies all at once to sit in only two days! Wow! That is amazing! You can see it on that Facebook page.
Courtney: At the top they can see that video. It’s amazing to me, actually. It’s the first time we’ve done this with our puppies, and I’m just amazed at how easy they were to train.
Nancy: Yes! And I could have just got a trained puppy! [laughter]
Courtney: Well, they don’t come fully trained! We can’t advertise that for me. But they are very smart and easy to train.
Nancy: Oh, yes! And actually, you’ve still got some puppies.
Courtney: I do. We’ve still got four puppies. If you’re interested in a beautiful, amazing, Bernedoodle puppy, and you can’t afford the topnotch prices people are charging. Our puppies are much cheaper than the mainstream puppies, but they have all the beautiful, glorious Bernedoodle lines. They’re very smart puppies, very good with families.
Nancy: I would just love to get another dog if Colin would let me! Oh wow!
Courtney: [laughter] We’re still pulling for chickens for you first, before you get the second dog!
Nancy: I’m still waiting, after over 60 years of marriage, to get chickens!
Courtney: One morning you’re going to wake up and they’ll be right out there! And no one will know.
Nancy: He doesn’t like chickens hanging around the door and he hasn’t yet let me have chickens! Oh boy. One day.
Anyway, another thing that Courtney does, she has an Etsy. You call it what?
Courtney: It’s “Morning and Evening 24.”
Nancy: Yes! And, she has quite a few things there. But one thing is so amazing. Tell us about it, Courtney.
Courtney: OK, so this is an idea that the Lord gave me this summer. We make Scripture stuffed animals. That is where we take a sound bite, and we put a Scripture in it, and we put it inside of a little stuffed animal. Children love to memorize things. They love the little toy phones that have all the songs, and counting, and alphabet songs.
I would never speak favorably towards those songs, because if they were going to memorize anything, I wanted them to memorize Scripture. That was a priority in our home. We’re godly people. That was the first thing you’re going to memorize. I was a little dogmatic about things like that.
We put the Scripture on that sound bite, put it inside of a stuffed animal, and sew it up. The children love it. They can click that button over and over and over again. They’re becoming infatuated with God’s Word. They memorize very quickly.
And you can change that sound bite and put another Scripture on it. Or you can put a hymn on it, anything, a quote that you wanted your children to memorize. It’s such an amazing toy. It came straight from the Lord. It’s genius.
Nancy: Then you gave one to Solly for her birthday.
Courtney: Solly just turned three. I bought her a big stuffed bear, and I put the sound bite in her ear. Even before I sewed it in there, she was playing with the sound bite, and she just started clicking it, clicking it, clicking it. I wanted her to memorize Psalm 121. That’s one of our favorites as a family. I did the first two verses on it. “I will lift up my eyes to the hills.”
As she’s playing it, after maybe five or ten times she started to memorize it, and started naturally muttering it. I told her, “Go practice and memorize this.” She just naturally did it. She wanted to say what the bear was saying.
Not only Solly, but her sisters are learning, we’re all learning the verse. But she’s learning, because she’s clicking that thing all day long. When she has it memorized, I’ll put the next verses on there. You can change it from inside the bear.
Those are available on our Etsy shop. Or you could even do it! But if you’re inclined, you can order those little sound bites on Amazon and put them in your own stuffy. Or you can send your stuffy to us, and we will sew it in.
Nancy: That’s right. You will do them according to what people want, won’t you?
Courtney: Yes, they’re fully personalized. You can pick your Scripture that you want loaded on there. You can pick whether you want it to be a little toddler girl thing, or little toddler boy. We’ve done where we’ve recorded our children’s voices.
We also have an A-Z Scripture CD in our Etsy shop that is a lullaby. It has a beautiful piano in the background. It’s our children reciting Scriptures for bedtime, or naptime, or quiet time. Just put that in there. If you have a night where you haven’t all gathered together, that was kind of our key, putting on the Scripture CD, and our children would go to sleep, with Momma and Daddy’s voice playing the Scriptures.
Nancy: That’s so beautiful. And I’m just thinking, what a lovely idea, too, for baby showers! Because many times, when I’m looking, and you get the baby shower invitation, you can look up all the things that you can buy. A lot of them are just a bit boring. I love buying different things. I’ve never been a conformist in any way.
Courtney: We’re all thankful for that! [laughter]
Nancy: I think that wow, I might just come to you for some of these gifts!
Courtney: The Word works! My husband, whenever we have a lot of distance in our family, everybody’s bickering, he notices that we have not been in the Word enough. So, he’ll play the Bible throughout the day. He’ll put it on.
Also, when there’s a sickness that we’re not cutting, personally he’ll have his little thing in his ear, just playing Scripture all night long. He’s not a big . . . He won’t rush to give the children their little natural remedies like I expect him to. But he will turn on the Bible next to their bed. He says, “The Word works!”
He wakes up often when he does that, and he’ll have dreams where he’s preaching or reciting Scripture, because the Word is getting in you. It’s getting in you, and it’s working. That’s just another tool that we have. The children are sitting in their room to play. Turn on that Bible verse CD, and they sing.
Nancy: And they all love to go to bed with a cuddly. And then to have the Scripture into their ears, well, that’s so beautiful. So, check that out!
We finished off last session talking about this lady who served the Lord in India, and how God showed her that the greatest way to get answers was to wait, and to listen. I’ve been so challenged reading the miracles that happened. But you have found this too, haven’t you, Courtney, in your own life?
Courtney: Yes. God’s wisdom works. He’s so good. He created family and the idea of children, and mama and daddy. When I would have my littles at Walmart as they got older, people would be just amazed. “Wow! How do you do it? How are your children so well-behaved? How are they calm? How are they obedient?”
The world does not have the answers to these things. Almost always, even the puppy video, “Wow! You can train a dog?? Like that?” People want to know; how did you do it? What are you doing? Just seeing that video. I’m not really an expert. People start asking me, “Give me your tips for training my new puppy!”
But God’s wisdom works. He’s so good. I’ve had so many times in my motherhood where I’ve come to a wall of something I don’t know the answers for. Sometimes it’s simple. Maybe you want to get to church on time, and it just eludes you all the time. Or it can be complicated, to dealing with your relationships with your sons who are becoming men, and how to navigate this thing.
God is so pleased that you ask, if you lack wisdom, which we all lack. The whole world is lacking wisdom. To ask, and He will give the answer. Every time I have asked the Lord for wisdom in a specific area, He answers, almost immediately. I’ll read an article in a magazine, or I’ll pick up a book.
Just recently, it was a courtship thing. Nancy had given away books, and my husband came home. Our children are getting to that age, and my husband grabbed that book off the table. It was just the book that we needed at that moment. It was perfect. Just the wisdom of God. He knows the answers for everything we face, even finding matching socks! He knows the answer. “What will work for my family? How can I order my house?” He’s just so wise.
Nancy: As you’re talking about that, I love the Scripture that Mike read on Sunday about wisdom in Proverbs chapter two. Do you remember? It was so amazing. Let me turn to it. Proverbs 2:1: “My son, if,” and he brought out that there were three “ifs” here. “If thou wilt receive My words, and hide My commandments with thee;” (his translation of the Bible says, “and treasure.” I love that). “Treasure My commandments with thee, so that thou incline thine ear.” That’s listening, isn’t it? It’s easy to come to the Lord and say, “Oh please, help me do this, yada, yada, yada.” It’s learning to listen.
“Incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; yea, if (there it is again),“If thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.” Yes, that’s what we need so much. “For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of His mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.” Amen.
The Lord will speak to each one of you differently, because every home, every family is unique. God will give you wisdom according to what fits your family. Of course, it will be Bible-based, but it will fit for you. Amen?
Well, another thing that we got onto at the end of last session was how you’re dressing your girls femininely. I love to see that. They always come looking so beautiful, like these gorgeous little girls. Whereas today, you don’t often see that. You go to the shops to get clothes for your children, and mainly they’re just jeans and tops, right from the time your children are tiny little toddlers. That’s how you’re starting to dress them.
I think, “Wow, if mothers are dressing their children this way, from the time they’re toddlers, they are going to grow up realizing, well, this is the way you dress.” They don’t think of any other way. That’s how they dress.
Like you were saying, when you go back to your hometown, to be in a dress, you feel as though you're some weird person from out of another planet! You find it a bit weird. Now, isn’t that incredible, that you can feel that you're from some other planet, just because you're wearing a dress?
Courtney: Yes, it’s telling about our culture right now. Yeah.
Nancy: It’s so amazing. But it really is culture. As you were saying when we were talking about this, it’s advertising. All the advertising we see, and it’s the culture that we are living in, which is not a godly culture. But if you just let children do, like I find, one of the favorite things that my little grandchildren, and my children used to love to do is a dress-up box.
I still have it here, although my grandchildren are all grown now. The box is still there, and I notice little Solly (you’ve got a Solly, and I’ve got a granddaughter Solly). Every Sunday Solly comes to me. “Nana, can I dress up now?” I’ll say, “Just wait until after we’ve eaten.” And she can’t wait! “OK, can I dress up now?” And they love to go and dress up.
How do they dress up? As a princess. As a bride. It’s the way they want to dress up. They want to be a fairy, they want to be a princess, they want to be a queen. That’s who they want to be. It’s totally instinctive. Every little girl is like that.
But then, by the time they get to teenagers, well, they want jeans and tops and cool, da ya dah. How do they change? It was culture, and outside advertising that is training them that way. It’s not really instinctive in what God has really put in them. But tell me how you’ve changed, and how and what you're thinking about it in your family.
Courtney: I have changed. You’ve heard some of my story two podcasts ago. I have changed a lot over the years. Nancy’s been a big part of that. She’s reminded me, really, to hang onto biblical womanhood, and what it looks like.
I first started to wear dresses more often. We would never even wear dresses to church. When I met Rob, I think I wore shorts and a tee shirt everywhere I went because I didn’t want to draw attention to anything. I just wanted to love the Lord with all my heart. That was the period I was in.
At some point, Rob noticed how all the leadership were dressing this way. He said, “You know, we’re representing the kingdom of God. Maybe we should start taking it up a notch, ladies.” Our culture and our leadership team even shifted, and we started trying to dress better. We put on jeans. That was a shift.
So, you don’t want to judge another person by the way they dress, because you never know. I say this to my children often. “You don’t know what their modesty is. You don’t know. That bathing suit that person’s wearing may be the way they’re honoring the Lord today, because we’re all on our journey.”
Nancy: Exactly.
Courtney: A big change. I went from a bikini to a one-piece to shorts over the top of the one-piece. It’s evolved over the years. God’s been so good. But sometimes it’s more of a process than we would like.
Nancy: Oh, yes! It is. I do believe it.
Courtney: My good friend Danielle that I’ve talked about a lot would wear dresses in her home. Again, she just came from a worldly situation. But she shared with me, not that it was the way you had to dress, but she looked so feminine wearing a dress. And she loved wearing a dress. That inspired me and made me want to dress more femininely.
My go-to was always my jeans and my tee shirts, because that’s comfortable. I was used to it. How many years of training in those things? Of course, my mother always wanted me to dress more femininely, but I was quite tomboyish. I have to admit I wore a tuxedo to my mother’s wedding when she married my stepdad. I was eight years old. (Nancy’s face is priceless right now!)
I was eight years old, and the deal was, she could put my hair in a dreaded French braid if I could wear a tuxedo. I don’t know what she was thinking, Mom, if you're out there. But she allowed me to wear a tuxedo with my brothers! If it would have been the culture now, I’d probably be in a different place maybe. Anyway, I didn’t want to be a boy. I just wanted to dress the way my brothers dressed.
It’s been a journey. Here I am. I love to wear dresses. But my go-to, even this year, was just jeans and a tee shirt. I was comfortable with it, and they were the easiest clothes hanging in that family closet that I could pull off the hangers. I was sharing with Nancy that I’ve filled my closet with simple skirts that I can throw together because I have three little girls. They’re seven, five, and three.
They love to see me dressed in a dress. “Oh, Mommy, you look so beautiful!” Solly says, “You’re my princess, Mommy!” It’s like a glory to them. They hold it in their heart like, “Oooh.” It makes the little girls sigh. That’s enough for me to want to wear a dress, just hearing them.
Nancy: Isn’t it amazing, it’s those little girls who are not yet tainted with the world? They are showing what it’s really meant to be like.
Courtney: They inspire me.
Nancy: And they all want to be princesses. That’s why we have, today we have Breezy’s Ball. Breezy will be 15 this coming ball, but we started when she was four. Breezy used to always be dancing around, always in a beautiful princess dress. Oh, she just wanted to be a princess, and one day marry a prince, even at four.
So, Serene said, “OK, let’s have a ball for Breezy’s four-year-old birthday.” It was just a family party and everybody in the family came. She said, “I want you all to dress like princesses, and the men to dress like princes.” So, everybody did. In fact, it was one of the best, best, best balls we ever had. Everybody dressed up. It was so amazing.
Courtney: I remember seeing it in the magazine.
Nancy: But then, it was so great, we carried on. We don’t have a ball for anybody else, but it’s still Breezy’s Ball every year. It started with that, that longing of a little girl to be a princess. But today, society and culture and advertising just take that edge away. They don’t think they’ll fit in, being like that.
Courtney: True. It’s a choice for me. I have to choose, because I actually prefer jeans. It’s an easy go-to, and I feel comfortable. This is what I’ve always fallen back on. But I choose. I want to look feminine. I told my children, even our culture, even our secular culture, they notice a feminine woman. She stands out in the crowd.
Any man thinks that’s beautiful and pretty, a woman in a dress. It’s just glorious. Not that we’re dressing for the men of the world; I’m just saying there’s a distinction. They like a feminine woman. Every man wants a feminine woman.
Nancy: But you say, well you’ll wear your holey jeans out to milk your cow.
Courtney: Yes. Yes, I do. I save them for that. That’s what they’re good for, the holey jeans. It is funny. I’ve had people say, “Oh, advertising doesn’t affect what I wear.” No, you are deceived. Advertising affects all of us. We can’t get away from it.
Every time we go to shop at the grocery store, everyone that’s there is advertising. Everyone. We are advertising. We don’t realize it, but we are advertising for the world what we value also. Now I’m preaching to myself, right?
It matters what we wear. It really does. Just like they influence us. We’re seeing men, and there are stores I won’t take my children in, because I don’t want them exposed to that advertising. Because advertisers know how many times we need to see something in order to purchase it, and to replicate it.
We need to be on guard. There are places I don’t go. I might crow on this, but I don’t go to the mall. It’s a conviction I have. I don’t go anymore. The last time I went, I had to have my children look away at every turn. I passed just awful obscenity. I said it’s not somewhere I go. I don’t want that advertising for myself. I won’t go alone, because I don’t want that advertising. I don’t want them to determine in my heart passively what is beautiful and feminine.
BLASPHEMING OR ADVERTISING GOD’S PLANS
Nancy: I think what you said is so powerful, about advertising. We, as you say, we are an advertisement every single time we go out. That’s why I think we should, because God created male and female, and made such distinction between the two. I’m such a great believer that we should be as feminine as we possible can. If we really want to glorify God, we will!
Men should be masculine. We can’t stand to see a wimpy man. It makes you vomit. It’s absolutely vomitous. How is it we’ve gotten so used to women looking like men, and dressing like men? It’s unbelievable, really. It’s just a slow, slow, gradual thing of culture. But the thing is, to go out, and be an advertisement.
That word “advertisement” is very interesting, because if we go back to Titus 2, and we all know that Scripture where the older women are to teach the younger women, and to teach them how to love their husbands, and love their children, and be keepers at home. It says at the very end of that, wow! Very powerful words! “That the Word of God be not blasphemed.” Very powerful.
I think some women don’t like those words, but it says if we do not live that lifestyle, we are blaspheming the Word of God. The J. B. Phillips translation turns it around and gives the translation in the opposite. It says: “That if we do these things, we will be a good advertisement for the Christian faith.” Isn’t that great?
Help! When you think of it that way, we’re either blaspheming, or we’re being a good advertisement for the Christian faith. I think if we really, truly honor God, we will want to glorify Him in honoring the way He made us.
If we’re female, let’s be female. Let’s dress female. Let’s be proud to go out into society wearing a dress, even, as you say, when you go back to your own hometown, you look like a freak. But you’ll still look beautiful. How is society going to change? Only if more and more women become feminine, and dress femininely again.
We haven’t been lately, but a few years ago, Colin and I would go into a church in the city, a beautiful church with young people worshipping. Oh, we just loved it there. Just loved their heart for God and their worship. And yet every young person there is dressed in jeans and tops, just how all the teenagers are today. But you know their heart. They’re just full of love for God. Nobody’s ever told them any different. It’s the culture. They don’t know another thing.
And yet, at the place, on more than one occasion, I had these young people, they don’t even know me, come up to me and say, “Oh, you look so beautiful!” Goodness me, I know I’m not. Here I am, this old lady in her 80’s. Help! They’re saying, “Oh, you look so beautiful!” And I realized, it’s just because I’m looking different. I had a three-quarter length or longer kind of dress on. It’s beautiful.
Everybody else is in jeans and tops. Something is instinctive. They know that’s beautiful. And it’s arresting, yes. But if everybody began to do it, that advertisement . . . advertising is powerful, isn’t it? So, we are advertising. We are either advertising who God created us to be, or we are pulling people away from it.
I believe it, and forgive me, ladies. I think I’ve shared this with you before. It’s a pretty powerful statement, but I do believe that we, as women, are the beginning instigators of where we are in this transgender society today, because there came a time in the course of our history where women began to wear pants and be like the men.
It began with a woman who decided she was not going to be confined to home and family and the role of a woman. She would get out there where the men are and dress like a man. It was totally so obnoxious to people, just like you want to vomit when you see a man dressed like a woman. But they did not give in. They continued, and so it became more and more part of society.
Now even the Christian church dresses like the world. It’s like the late Mr. Schaeffer said. Francis Schaeffer has now passed away, but he said, “Tell me what the world is saying today, and I’ll tell you what the church is saying seven years down the line.” Isn’t it sad that the church can be so influenced by the world? The world’s advertising, while we, the people of God, should be the advertisers for God’s way.
Back to you. You’ve got a teenage daughter too. She always dresses so lovely.
Courtney: Lovely and feminine. She inspires me.
Nancy: She’s beautiful, like her mother.
Courtney: There’s tension there sometimes though, because I have tension in my own heart with how I dress. So, there’s naturally going to be tension like that, but we can encourage each other. I can say, “Oh, I’d love you to look more feminine for this event.” She’s happy to go, “Oh! OK.” And she’ll run and put a dress on.
Then I see her in the kitchen, cooking in her glorious dress. I say, “Auden, what are you doing? But you look so lovely!” We can inspire each other like that. But for my littles, I just don’t buy them jeans. They have to go. If they have just their tights on, I say, “Go cover yourself, and get a dress on.” That’s what they know to do.
Nancy: So, it’s becoming a habit of their lives. It’s just the way it is. Yes, they’ll continue like that. But it is a choice. It’s a choice, actually. “How much am I willing to go God’s way?” For many, of course, it’s like, “Oh, goodness me! What are you talking about?” Because that’s all they’re used to. But we have to have those who wake us up to the Word of God. I keep getting woken up.
I know we’ve got to finish this thing, but oh, down at the retreat. We’ve just come back from the Above Rubies Family Retreat down in Laguna Beach, Panama City. I was sharing in one message there about that Scripture in 1 Timothy 2:9. It’s a Scripture. If you read it in the King James, oh, goodness me! It has these old-fashioned words. Here it is: “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety.” Goodness me! Most people don’t even know what those words are!
Courtney: We should do a podcast on “shamefacedness” because it’s not in our vocabulary anymore.
Nancy: It’s not even in the vocabulary! I had to look them up, and say, “What do they really mean?” Well, “sobriety,” actually it’s also mentioned at the end of this chapter. Two times it’s mentioned to women, but what does it mean? It just means “self-control, habitual self-restraint.”
It’s actually talking first of self-government, learning how to rule your own spirit. What does that Scripture in Proverbs 16:32 say? “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.” Great Scripture, ladies, to get all your children to memorize.
If we know how to rule our spirits, and not let our minds get carried away with all these crazy thoughts, and our self-pity thoughts, and our “poor me” thoughts, and all these terrible thoughts we don’t know how to rule them in. Well, we haven’t got sobriety. We haven’t got self-control if we don’t know how to rule our passions. It’s learning how to have that self-control, rule our spirit, because then we know how to rule our family!
But the amazing thing is, this “shamefacedness,” which we can, oh, yes, that’s just for ladies. No! That same word is written to men! (CHECK BELOW!). Yes, it’s written to men who would be pastors and bishops. It says that they will be of “good behavior.” Same word. So, it’s a word that actually means the whole way of life. Somehow, within you, you will not do that, because you know the consequences. That’s sort of the meaning of the word.
But then, it says, OK, that we are to be “dressed and adorn ourselves with modest apparel.” The word “apparel” there, oh, goodness me. When I looked it up, whoo. Now I’ve got another challenge in my life. So, I won’t tell you what it means, because boy, I get a bit radical. But when you get down to finding out what a word really means, you end up having to change your ways.
The trouble is, most can read the Bible, but they don’t even know what the Word’s about, or what it really means. You don’t have to face it. Actually, down at the retreat, I said to the ladies, “I’m not going to tell you what it is. If you want to know, come and ask me.”
Well, only two people came and asked me! For me, I’d be asking. I love to find out things. Anyway, I thought, “OK, I won’t tell you either. If you really want to know, email me, OK? And I’ll tell you exactly the full meaning of that Greek word. That’s if you want to be challenged.”
All right. Let’s pray, shall we?
“Lord God, we come to You, full of thanks and joy, Lord, that You are the One Who teaches us. You teach us little by little, “precept upon precept, line upon line.” Lord, we couldn’t take it all at once. We just take it little by little, because we’re so far away from, Lord, Your original ways and plans.
“But we pray that You’ll bring us back to Your ways, that we can live Your ways, Lord, in joy, and freedom, and blessing, and glory, because, Lord, You haven’t called us into legality. You’ve called us into freedom, but freedom to walk Your ways in the midst of a crooked generation. Lord God, we have freedom, not to conform to the ways of this world, but to conform to Your ways.
“We pray that You’ll help us to be mothers and daughters who live this way. I pray Your blessing, Lord, upon every mother and daughter listening this morning. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.”
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
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Transcribed by Darlene Norris
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“LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell, Above Rubies”
DON’T KEEP THE BLESSINGS TO YOURSELF.
IT IS ENCOURAGING FOR ALL WIVES AND MOTHERS.
UPDATE ON THE WORD SHAMEFACEDNESS VERSUS MODEST.
Sorry, I was speaking from memory and the word shamefacedness has a different meaning which I will give to you. The word that means “of good behavior” is the word “modest.”
The word modest is not only written to women but also to men. It is the Greek word “kosmios” and is also used in 1 Timothy 3:2 speaking of a man who aspires to be a bishop or elder. He must be a man “of good behavior.” The same word as modest in 1 Peter 2:9.
The word means “modesty, not only of dress, but of demeanor, deportment, manner, in fact our whole manner of life. It also means well-ordered, well-behaved, appropriate, suitable, orderly.”
The meaning of “shamefacedness” is the Greek word “aidos” and means:
Modesty, bashfulness, respect, reference,
A sense of shame which precedes and prevents the shameful act,
Restraint from an unworthy act,
Reflects upon the consequences and shame of an act,
The word should really be “shamefastness.”