PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 373: LIVING THE BLISSFUL LIFE, No. 7
LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 373: LIVING THE BLISSFUL LIFE, No. 7
We complete our 13 points today. Life is great, even when it's not going great, when we do the things God has ordained to release the happy and loving hormones.
Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to the Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies, a magazine bringing strength and encouragement to families across the world.
Nancy Campbell: Hello, ladies! Oh, I must let you know that I have been working on the new Above Rubies magazine, # 103. I know you're desperately waiting for a new magazine to come out. I’ve actually now finished putting it together. Oh, it is looking so beautiful! I think it’s one of the most beautiful magazines that I’ve ever put together. Well, I must say my design artist has done the most beautiful job on it.
It’s filled with the most wonderful testimonies and stories. I can’t wait to get it out to you. I still don’t have all the money in but as I go ahead in faith, I’m believing for it to come in so that we can get it printed and out to this nation and the nations of the world. If God puts it on your heart, to send something in to help us get this message out, well, just do that, because it’s the only way I get a magazine out.
I just had someone call me this morning. “Can you tell me how many times you print a magazine? Is it every month?” And I had to say to this person, “So sorry, it’s not every month. My vision is for four times a year, but sometimes I don’t even do that, because I go to print when the money comes in.” So, I just have to wait for that. It costs a minimum of $80,000 to print and send out. That’s a lot of money to wait for. But I trust that it will be in soon and soon you will be getting this beautiful, beautiful magazine.
All right, we’re still on this series, “Living the Blissful Life.” We are up to . . .
No. 8. LOVEMAKING IN MARRIAGE
Lovemaking in marriage, and I say specifically in marriage, releases oxytocin. This is one of the most wonderful ways to receive oxytocin, this wonderful, glorious hormone that we want to have so much of, because it brings rest, and calm, and blessings to your life.
In fact, although perhaps oxytocin is maybe the major hormone involved, other hormones are involved too, such as endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin. I did tell you about these hormones in a recent podcast.
I call them the DOSE: D for dopamine, O for Oxytocin, S for Serotonin, and E for Endorphins. So, we need to have constant doses of these hormones if we want to live this beautiful, blissful life. A wonderful way to receive these hormones is lovemaking.
Now, we talked about this previously in this series. It was one of the points where I was talking to you about the 17 different things that God wants us to do CONTINUALLY. Lovemaking is one of them. It’s not meant to be a haphazard thing in a marriage but a continual thing, because God wants us to be blessed. He doesn’t want us to be living in tension, depression, and sadness. He wants us to live this blissful life, and He has given us beautiful ways for us to do this.
Not only are those four hormones involved, but there is also estrogen, testosterone, prolactin, and adrenaline. So many hormones—seven hormones that are involved in lovemaking. When I spoke about it before, I gave you Scriptures so you can go back and listen to that. So, make sure you have plenty of oxytocin. You’ll have to make sure you have plenty of lovemaking.
No. 9. SING FOR JOY
Did you know that singing out loud releases oxytocin? All these wonderful things are what release oxytocin. I know everyone listens to music today. People have got their headphones on. They’re always listening to music but it’s not just listening to music that releases oxytocin. It’s actually singing yourself. It’s singing. It’s opening your mouth and singing.
I think this used to be a wonderful way that people got oxytocin. I remember my father talking to me about his parents, and how that way back in the early days, when they didn’t have any of the entertainment we have today, they had to make their own entertainment.
After a hard day’s work and after the evening meal, he said his parents would hitch up the old buggy to the horses. They’d go down to the neighbor’s home and then they would have a singsong. They would sing songs and sing hymns and sing them with all their heart. That was their enjoyable evening, and it released oxytocin, and relaxed them after a hard day’s work.
The Bible also is filled with hundreds of admonitions to sing to the Lord, to sing aloud, to sing for joy, to sing praises, to sing with thanks, to sing a new song, and, of course, to praise and worship the Lord. The Bible talks about twins. That’s when two things couple together—twins of rejoicing and singing, laughter and singing, and dancing and singing.
I think of my husband’s family. There are nine children in my husband’s family, and they all love to sing. They all loved to sing out loud and they all loved to sing in harmony. I think it’s one of my most favorite things to be with his family, especially when they’re singing the great old hymns.
To hear them, oh, just singing! They open their mouths so wide, and they sing, and their heads are rolled back, and their mouths are open wide. Their faces are uplifted to the Lord, and they sing! It’s so amazing to just listen to their harmonies. They never sing softly. They sing with all their hearts.
In fact, I think they got practice out in the cowshed. They grew up on a dairy farm. The boys would sing in the cowshed and neighbors for miles around could hear them as they sang with all their hearts. In fact, as we raised our children, my husband would never allow our children to sing quietly, or hardly open their mouths, just softly. No, he made them open their mouths as wide as they could go and sing as loud as they could sing.
Because that’s how we’re meant to sing. We’re meant to sing aloud. The Bible says . . . it doesn’t say ever in the whole of the Bible to sing softly. It says to sing aloud, to sing with rejoicing. When you’re rejoicing, you're usually loud. Of course, we get to sing together as a family morning and evening. Our family has grown up now, but we always have other people in the home.
Colin and I, wow, we’re great-grandparents and still we do not live alone. We always have people living with us. So, at family devotions, every morning and every evening, we sing the great old hymns. Oh, we love the hymns. Well, we love the beautiful, anointed worship songs too which we sing in church. But at our devotions, we love the hymns, so we can keep them and not forget them.
It’s important that we don’t forget the hymns. I believe in embracing the new, but not forgetting the old, not discarding the old. It’s so sad that many young people today don’t even know the hymns. They’re filled with such doctrine and such truth. Oh, they are so amazing! We love to sing them with all our hearts. That’s a wonderful way you can sing together. A singsong is an amazing thing. People don’t have singsongs where they gather friends and people around and sing! Singing the hymns or singing wonderful songs they know. It’s a wonderful way to release oxytocin.
THE LORD’S PRAYER THREE TIME A DAY
Another thing we’ve just started doing . . . We haven’t done this throughout our lives. But we’ve just learned this. It’s amazing, dear ladies. You don’t have to be stuck. We are always learning something new. You can always be adding something new to bless your family’s life. I have read some time back, it’s taken us a while to actually do it, but if you check it out, we read that the early church said, or I guess, sang sometimes too, THE LORD’S PRAYER three times a day.
So, we have now started doing this. Sometimes we don’t get to do it three times, because everyone is out for the day, during the middle of the day. But we are definitely and habitually now doing it at least twice a day at our morning devotions and our evening devotions. Sometimes we say it, but mostly we sing it because it’s so powerful to sing it. At the end of our family devotions, we all rise, and we all sing The Lord’s Prayer.
Oh, if you don’t do it by rote, if you do it just by embracing the words, every line is so powerful. I believe it’s having such a powerful effect upon our lives. I’d like to encourage you too to do it yourselves. If you don’t know the tune to it, you can at least say it. But begin to say it, to speak it out loud, or sing it if you know the tune, with your family, at least once a day, hopefully two times a day. But if you want to be like the early church, three times a day.
As your children are growing up (our children have left now) but you have that opportunity to do it three times a day, because you're there with your children. You’re homeschooling your children. You’re with them for breakfast, lunch, and supper. At those three occasions each day, you can say The Lord’s Prayer together.
I would really encourage and exhort you to begin this habit with your children. Don’t let your children do it by rote. Encourage them to really feel those words as they pray them or sing them. It will do something so powerful in your family.
We always say grace at the table. I know some of you have songs you sing. Yes, there are lots of wonderful graces that you can sing. I love visiting different families. They will sing different songs as their grace at the beginning of their meal. I love it. Sometimes I’ll hear songs that I haven’t ever heard before. I love it! You can choose one. There are simple ones that you can pick up and sing. You can say grace, but it’s good to change things around and sometimes sing it.
This is one thing we do when we all come together as a family, if it’s a big birthday, or, of course, Christmas or Thanksgiving. With our own immediate family now, just our children and their spouses, and their children and their spouses, and their children and their spouses, we have over 100 in our immediate family now. That’s without extra people we invite.
So, on a big occasion, with all the food spread out, we will all gather round and hold hands and sing our grace. We usually sing the one that says:
Be present at our table, Lord,
Be here, and everywhere adored,
These mercies bless, and grant that we
May strengthen for Thy service be.
Those are the words we sing, although if you look it up, you will find that the last line says, “May feast in Paradise with Thee.” I like that line too, but somehow, we’ve, through tradition, have always sung the other line. We love to sing the verse, and we come to the end, and then, it’s “Amen,” and everyone sings it in harmony. It’s so glorious. It is so wonderful. We enjoy doing that. You will find these things that you can do too, but make sure you have singing in your family. Amen? That will release oxytocin too.
No. 10. TAKE A WALK EACH DAY
Exercise is good for releasing oxytocin. Yes, and actually, just going for a walk outside releases more oxytocin than doing a workout in the gym with hard exercise. Yes, more oxytocin means less cardiovascular stress, and an improved immune system. So, you're outside at the same time, which is really good. We’re meant to have at least 10 to 15 minutes outside in the sunlight every day. Of course, not only does it release oxytocin, but endorphins. That is another blessing too.
No. 11. LAUGH
Well, in our first episode in this series, “Living a Blissful Life,” I did it with my daughter, Pearl. It was about smiling and laughing, but we mainly talked about smiling, and how that even smiling when you don’t feel like smiling releases endorphins and oxytocin and how that we can learn to smile, even when we don’t feel like it. We talked about how to do that, how to do it when you don’t feel like doing it. So, do go back to that podcast, No. 367, if you didn’t listen to it. That was No. 1 in this series.
Because laughing, oh, laughing is amazing. I do have to say myself, I think I would laugh every day because I do enjoy a happy life, but I do think I don’t laugh quite as much as I used to when I was young . . . when you had those crazy things that would send you off, and you’d have this incredible belly laugh and you couldn’t stop laughing.
In fact, I can remember times as a young person, going to church, and something funny would happen. You’d begin to get the giggles, and you’d start to laugh, but you couldn’t laugh out loud, so you had to laugh inside and that made it worse. And the seat would start to shake, and the next person would start laughing next to you. Then the whole seat would be shaking with laughter!
I have my girls here recording this. Have any of you ever experienced that? You’re nodding your heads. Isn’t that the funniest thing in the world, really? Yes, and I think it’s an amazing thing. You can actually tell that you're releasing endorphins and oxytocin when you have that kind of laughing, when your whole body is just shaking with laughter, and you're just about rolling on the floor with laughter.
So, I’d really like to do a lot more than that these days. I don’t quite do the things that make me do that. But I do laugh. I still laugh at so many things. I’m always laughing at myself, because I’m always doing crazy things, and the wrong thing. So, I’m always laughing at myself. But laughing is so important. The Scriptures talk about laughing. Let’s have a look at some of them, shall we?
Let’s see what I’ve got here. Luke 6:21: “Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh.” Praise the Lord! The word in the Greek means, “a sign of joy and satisfaction.”
Let’s go to the Old Testament. Proverbs 8:30-31: “I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.” That passage in Proverbs 8 is speaking of wisdom, but it’s actually speaking of Christ who is Wisdom, and of Christ the Son, who is with the Father. He says here: “I was daily His delight, rejoicing.” That word actually, in the Hebrew, is “laughing.” “I was daily His delight, laughing with Him.” What a beautiful description! This is talking of the Father God and His Son together, delighting in one another’s company, laughing. I just love that.
And then Zechariah 8:5. This is one of my favorite Scriptures. I love it, and I believe it will be perhaps part of millennium times, because it actually hasn’t happened yet. It says: “And the streets of the city shall be filled with boys and girls, playing” (the word is “laughing”) “laughing in the streets thereof.” I love that Scripture! One day the streets of Jerusalem will be filled with boys and girls laughing. It actually says “and old men” also. But laughing.
I think back of when I grew up in a little town called Te Puke in New Zealand. The street we lived on was a street of families. It was in the days when nobody worried about anything, and all the children could play in the street. We’d go to school, and we’d come home from school, because we didn’t know about homeschooling in those days. We’d come in and we’d throw our school bags inside.
And then we’d all come out. We’d play and laugh in the streets. We’d play our games on the road because there were hardly any cars coming up and down. People walked to work in those days. They walked to work, and they whistled as they walked. They were amazing days. But you can’t let children play in the streets today. It is too dangerous.
It shows us in the days to come that there will be nothing to hurt. There will be no harm. Everything will be beautiful, and all the boys and girls will be in the streets laughing. How wonderful! God loves laughter.
By the way, there was a famous person in history, a great man of God, who said these words: “If you are not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.” Do you know who said those words? It was Martin Luther! Isn’t that amazing? You wouldn’t think that he would be the one to say that. But that’s what he did. “If you're not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.”
OK. We’ve got some more Scriptures. Job 8:20-21: “Behold, God will not cast away a perfect man. Neither will he help the evil doers: Till he fill thy mouth with laughing, and thy lips with rejoicing.” The word “rejoicing” there means, “with shouting for joy.” When we’re really joyful, we will shout.
Genesis 21:6. This is talking about Sarah when she gave birth to Isaac: “And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear shall laugh with me. And she said, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah should have given children suck? For I have borne him a son in his old age.”
Now, here in these Scriptures, we have laughter associated with a baby being born, and with a mother nursing at the breast. In fact, when Sarah is talking about motherhood here, and saying, “Who would have thought that I could have given a son to Abraham?”
But she doesn’t say that. She says, “Who could have thought that I could give children suck? That I could nurse a baby?” This is how she describes motherhood. It was nursing this baby. She was so filled with joy that she says: “God has made me to laugh,” and obviously she laughed so hard that people laughed and rejoiced with her.
You know, when you laugh, it makes other people laugh. Have you noticed that? Laughing is contagious. I remember once I was coming back from Australia to the States on the airplane. I was reading a book. It was a book about Australia and all the funny things. Yes, it was Bill Bryson. He was the author. Bill Bryson. Have you read any of his books? He’s written many, many wonderful travel books.
This book was called The Sunburned Country. It was about Australia and some of the things were so funny that I began to laugh on the plane. It was so funny. I couldn’t keep my laugh to myself. I actually began to laugh out loud. And people around me began to laugh! I was amazed how laughter was so contagious.
Job 5:19-22: “He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee . . . At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh.” Can you really laugh when you're going through a difficult time? Yes, I believe we can. You can laugh at problems. You can laugh at trials, because you know God is in control and He is bigger. It’s amazing. Try laughing at your problems, even at terrible things. You can laugh.
Proverbs 31:25, talking about the virtuous woman. “Strength and honor are her clothing.” That word “honor” also means “glory.” “Strength and glory are her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come.” The word “rejoice” means “laughter.” Most translations of that Scripture say: “She will laugh at the future.”
She’s not even worried about the future because she has prepared. She is well-prepared, physically, and mentally, and psychologically, and spiritually, and also prepared food-wise. In every way, she is prepared. For no matter what happens, she can laugh at the future. So, laughing is a wonderful thing and it releases oxytocin. OK, dear ladies, all these wonderful things . . . are you an oxytocin-filled home?
All right, what’s the next point?
No. 12. BE GENEROUS
Giving to people, showing kindness, and helping others releases oxytocin. It also releases dopamine, and serotonin. It’s one of those DOSEs.
It’s important to be a giving person because the Bible is so true, isn’t it, when it says: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” We are blessed when we give. And so, giving releases oxytocin also. That reminds us of one of our phileo words. Remember? Phileo is affectionate friendship.
One of our phileo words is philanthropia. Of course, we know philanthropy comes from that word. It means “benevolent, kindness, showing love and generosity to people.” That also releases oxytocin. What does the Bible also say? “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over shall men give into your bosom, for with the same measure that ye meet, withal, it shall be measured to you again” (Luke 6:38).
Of course, we have to do it cheerfully. 2 Corinthians 9:7: “God loves a cheerful giver.” I don’t think we will get much oxytocin if we give grudgingly. That doesn’t help. No, but when we cheerfully give, we release that beautiful, blissful hormone of oxytocin.
Now, we are up to the last point, No. 13. Fancy ending on 13! But I did find 13 points. The last one is . . .
No. 13. POSITIVE THINKING
Proverbs 23:7: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” So, ladies, it all gets back to how we think. What are you thinking? Are you thinking negative, depressive thoughts? Or are you thinking good thoughts, happy thoughts?
Are you thinking about your husband? How you love him? How you can show love to him?
We have to take time, lovely ladies, to think about other people if we want to bless other people, do good things for other people. And of course, it starts in our home, it starts with our husbands.
We have to take some time to think about it. To think about, “Now, what can I do?” If you don’t sit down or walk around, to take time to think about it, well, you won’t do anything! We’ve got to think about, “How, what could I do, to really bless my husband, to show my love for him? Oh yes, I know I love him, but how can I show it?”
You take time to think about it. You take time to think about your family as you're raising your children. You take time to think, “How can I bless my children more? Are there other things I can do to make life more exciting in our family? How can I make life happier in our family?”
So, you take time to think about these things. You’re going to be thinking of good things, positive things, happy things, things that will release oxytocin as you do them and as you say them. But it will also bless your husband and your family. Then, of course, you can start with others outside the home. But always start with those inside your homes first. Take time to do that. “As a man thinks, so is he.”
Oh, remember, we talked about last session in the phileo words. Most of them are wonderful words about being affectionate and loving. But then there’s that word, loving yourself. Wow! That’s the opposite. We have to watch that, so that we don’t spend all our time thinking about ourselves.
That’s what a selfish person is. All they do is think about themselves. They don’t take time to think about others. So, they’re thinking about themselves. Wow! It becomes a miserable life. People who think about themselves are very miserable and not very exciting to be around. So, ladies, start thinking positively. That will also release oxytocin.
OK. That’s the end of those points, but next week, I’m starting something else I want to share with you. It’s all part of living the blissful life. It goes back to when I was speaking about the 17 things God wants us to do continually, because in that Scripture, where I first started it all, Hebrews 13:15: “By Him, therefore, let us offer this sacrifice of praise to God continually. That is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His Name.”
Well, we talked about all the things God wants us to do continually, but we haven’t yet talked about the sacrifice part. Wow! This is all part of still living blissfully. So, we’re going to go into that next week. We’re going to find out that it’s all related to the Old and the New, because in the Old Testament, they did five different sacrifices. But amazingly, in the New Testament, we find that there are now five New Testament sacrifices God wants us to do. But they will all bring us great blessings. We’re going to start that next week. Do check in. Don’t miss out!
“Dear Father, we thank You. Oh, we thank You so much. We are so blessed. We’re blessed to be Your children. We are blessed to be recipients of Your great eternal salvation. Lord God, we can hardly take it in, that we are blessed, that we will live eternally with You. But not only then, even now You’ve shown us the way to live in blessing. Lord, help us to live the lifestyle that You have planned for us, I pray. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.”
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
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Transcribed by Darlene Norris
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