PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 400: WELCOME TO THE LAND OF MORE AND MORE, Part

LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell

EPISODE 400: WELCOME TO THE LAND OF MORE AND MORE, Part 9

This is Podcast 400! Wow! Huge congratulations to those who have listened to 400 podcasts! Today we talk about seven things the Bible likens to gold. You’ll want these in your life.

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, wonderful ladies! Can you believe it? This is podcast 400! Wow! I can’t believe we’ve already done 400 podcasts together. I wonder if any of you have listened to the 400? I know when we got to 300, I asked those who’d listened to 300 to write in and tell me. Quite a number did. That was exciting!

So, I think I’ll ask again. If you happened to have listened to 400 podcasts, do email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Tell me and I’ll have to find something special to send you because that would be pretty amazing. And thank you for coming in and listening every week. It’s so wonderful to know that I’m sharing God’s heart with all you wonderful, precious, mothers and young people and children. I love it when the children are listening too.

I do believe that children are meant to listen. When Jesus was talking to the people, there were always children there. Oftentimes, He would want to give an illustration of a little child. He didn’t have to go looking for one. He would just pick up a little child, because they were right there listening to all the things He was saying.

Maybe you could even bless me. If there is something that has touched your heart, some revelation that has come to you that changed your life in your mothering, your marriage, or your home, email and tell me about it. That would be so encouraging.

So now, we’re going to go on today and talk more about gold. Last podcast, we talked about how God’s Word is more than fine gold. But I have found, in reading through the Bible, I have found six (seven) different things in the Bible that God likens to gold. While we’re talking about gold, I thought I would share them with you. I think that’s a lovely subject for podcast 400, to talk about gold, because gold is so special and so valuable. So, let’s look at these six (no, seven, the perfect number) things, shall we?

Number one is what we talked about last week.

No. 1. GOD’S WORD IS MORE THAN FINE GOLD

No. 2. MOTHERING IS LIKE GOLD

I did actually talk about this in podcast 397 so you can go back to listen to that. But I believe the career of mothering is gold. I believe it’s something that will stand the test of time. Gold is always likened to that which stands the test that comes through the test.

I think of those words in 1 John 2:15-17: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”

Did you get those words, dear mothers? “He that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” Now precious mothers, you are there in your home with all your children around you. Your little ones, your middling ones, maybe older ones that are now moving out and getting married. But this is God’s work. It’s the work He has given to you. When He gives you children, He doesn’t give them to you to give them to someone else so you can go and do something else. He gives them to you to nurture, to nourish, to care for, to feed physically, but also to feed spiritually with God’s Word, and to train, and to disciple, and to raise godly young men and women for this life to bring God’s image into this world.

But even more, you are raising them for the eternal world. Motherhood is an eternal career. Because you are doing the will of God, your work is going to abide. And its only gold that abides.

I think of that Scripture in 1 Corinthians 3:13: “Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.”

And I do believe, dear mothers, as you embrace your mothering role, and you are there in the home, pouring your life into establishing a godly home, and a godly family, and godly children, it is work that will abide. Oh, praise the Lord. It’s gold, because if it abides, if it abides the fire, it’s gold. Your work is gold. Be encouraged, lovely mothers.

Oh, I know, sometimes you feel full of despair. You feel as though you're a failure. I can remember when raising my children many days of feeling I was a failure, because you don’t do everything right. Sometimes you blow it. Oh, you feel as though you're just not making it. But often that is just a lie from the enemy.

I want to encourage you today that you are in the perfect will of God. As you continue to be faithful, your mothering will abide. And you will take your children that you lead to Jesus, you’ll take them into the eternal realm. Oh, goodness me, you're taking more than yourself. You’re taking children with you! Wow! Oh, how amazing!

The more children you have, the more you take into eternity with you. What an incredible thing, to give children the absolute, incredible privilege and joy of experiencing eternity forever! This is what you do when you bring a child into the world, and you raise them for Jesus. Wow! That is the most incredible thing, because not one of us can even fathom what the glory of the heavenly realm is going to be like. But it’s going to be so much more than glorious. We can give that to our children. Wow! This is so amazing. So, mothering is like gold.

No. 3. THE TESTING OF YOUR FAITH IS LIKE GOLD

There’s quite a number of Scriptures about this.

Job 23:10: “But He knoweth the way that I take. When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”

Proverbs 17:13: “The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold. But the Lord trieth the heart.”

Well, we don’t really like the “trying” business, do we? That is really going into the fire, into the furnace, which is heated up to a thousand times Celsius, to bring out all those impurities. This really happens in motherhood, doesn’t it? Because it shows up everything that’s in us. It’s so easy to live a godly life all on your own with nobody rubbing you up the wrong way or getting you crazy. Oh, it’s so easy!

But when you're surrounded by people, you're surrounded with your children, and none of them are perfect. And your husband who’s not perfect either. And you're not perfect either. So, you face all these things. Sometimes things come to the top, all that junk and ugly stuff. And you just have to let it go.

Come before the Lord, and confess it before the Lord, and ask Him to continue purifying you, and trying you. Which He does, and which He will, because He wants to bring you forth as pure gold. He wants to bring forth the image of Christ in you. That is His goal, that the image of Christ will be seen in us.

Zechariah 13:9: “I will try them as gold is tried.”

Malachi 3:3: “He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver.” This is one of the prayers that I pray continually. I look out on this nation, and I look out on the world. I look out on even the church of God, and I see we’re not there. We’re full of spots and wrinkles. God says He’s coming for a bride that’s without spot and wrinkle (Ephesians 5:27). There are still so many impurities, and junk, and worldliness, and stuff to eradicate from our lives. We need the purging of the Holy Spirit. I pray for this in my own life and in the church of God. “He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver.”

1 Peter 1:7: “That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” Oh, we often don’t like what we have to go through, but what God works in us will “be found unto praise and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” Yes, everything is preparing for the eternal world.

In Revelation 3:18, Jesus says to the church at Laodicea: “I counsel thee, to buy of me gold, tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich.” Oh, ladies, our greatest riches are going through the trying and the testing of the fire. Yes, so that we can come forth as gold. That’s the real riches, isn’t it?

No. 4. GETTING WISDOM IS BETTER THAN GOLD

Proverbs 3:13-15: “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.” So, let’s go after wisdom, ladies.

Proverbs 16:16: “How much better is it to get wisdom than gold! and to get understanding rather to be chosen than silver!”

Ecclesiastes 7:19: “Wisdom strengthens the wise more than ten mighty men which are in the city.” So, let’s strive and seek after wisdom. How we need it! Oh, goodness me! I’m always crying out for wisdom. Aren’t you, dear ladies? Praise the Lord for James 1:5, which says that if we lack wisdom, if we ask of God, that He will give it to us liberally. But how we do need it! Amen? Especially in mothering. I think that’s one of the greatest places we need wisdom, and that is mothering.

No. 5. THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IS BETTER THAN GOLD

Proverbs 8:10: “Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold.” God’s instruction and His knowledge is far better than choice gold. There’s so much knowledge that’s around today. A lot of it is man’s knowledge, but we want God’s knowledge, don’t we? Where do we find it? In His gold Book, the Word of God.

No. 6. CHILDREN ARE LIKE GOLD

In Lamentations 4:2, it says: “The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold.” I know that most people pronounce that word “comparable” as “COM-par-able,” but to tell you the truth, I don’t like that way of saying it, because when you’re comparing something, I want to say “compaaarable,” and that’s how I feel, even with this Scripture: “The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold.”

The New Living Translation, and most other translations that I looked up translate it this way: “See how the precious children of Jerusalem, worth their weight in fine gold, are now treated like pots of clay, made by a common potter.” But what it’s saying in that Scripture is that our children, (OK, this was not happening at the time, they were being treated like pots of clay), but as God sees them, and as the Bible sees them, they are “worth their weight in fine gold.” What a powerful Scripture!

Dear lovely mothers, your precious children, all around you in your home, the Bible says they are “worth their weight in fine gold.” This is how God sees them. He sees them as gold. Yes, they are created in His image, and He wants, well, yes, of course, they are sinners as well. And so, therefore, they’re tainted with sin. But God wants them to find salvation, and He wants them to come into His image.

I love that beautiful Scripture in Romans 8:29: “For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.” He’s the firstborn, but He wants all those coming after Him to be like Him and to be conformed to His image.

This is what they do when they’re purifying the gold. The goldsmith heats up that fire to scorching heat. Every time they heat it up, they skim off the impurities. They heat it again. They keep doing it until he can see his image in that gold. That’s what God wants to do in our lives, and in the lives of children. Our children, He wants to bring them forth as pure gold, too. This is how God sees them.

They are so precious to Him. God loves children. The opposite to the enemy, the devil, who hates children. He does not value children. He wants to stop them from coming into the world. When they come into the world, he wants to destroy them and tarnish them. We think of all that’s going on in the world. We think of the sex trafficking. Oh, this comes from the very pit of hell, from the devil himself who wants to destroy children’s lives.

But God sees them as gold. He values them. He wants us to treat them like gold. Now that doesn’t mean that we’re going to spoil them. No, because spoiling children isn’t treating them like gold. That’s ruining them. No, we treat our children like gold because we want God’s best for them. We want them to be conformed to the image of the Son.

This causes us to pray for them. This causes us to deal with issues in their lives, and with disobedience, and with rebellion and all these things that come up in their lives. The bad habits, we’re not going to allow them to continue. We deal with them because they’re gold, and we don’t want them to be ruined. We’re not going to spoil them and ruin them. No, we want them to be changed into the image of the dear Son.

Do you think upon your children in this way, that they’re like gold. We don’t treat them lightly. It’s mothers who treat their children like gold who will be there with them in the home. Do you know that it is a powerful, powerful thing, dear mothers, to just be there? Some are going to say, “Help! What on earth am I doing? What am I accomplishing?” Do you know that apart from everything else, even just being there with your children is powerful? Because it gives them such great security.

You are also revealing to them a divine attribute. One of the seven salvation names of God is “Jehovah Shammah,” which means “the Lord who is there, who is available.” Our God is available. When we cry out to Him, we don’t get an answering machine. “Sorry, He is not available. Would you try again at 5 pm?” No, He is there, and when we are there in the home, we show to our children what God is like. We give them the understanding of stability and security, and knowing that we’re always there, like God who is always there for us.

I can remember, as a child, coming home from school. We didn’t know anything about homeschooling in those days. But I would come home from school, and my mother would be there. She’d be in her sewing room. She loved to sew. Or she’d be in the kitchen. But she was there.

And I would say, “Hi, Mum!” And I’d throw my schoolbag in the door, and I’d run out to play. I was contented. I was secure. My mother was there, and I felt free to go out and play with all the other children on the street where we lived. That’s what we did in those days. It was so different, because it was safe. We could go out in the street and play.

But there were times when I would come home, and my mother wasn’t there! Oh, she was most probably late from shopping, or she got caught up somewhere. But I didn’t throw my bag, and say, “Hi, Mum,” and go out to play. I moped around the house. I didn’t have that same confidence because she wasn’t there. It was amazing. Just knowing that Mother is there is so powerful.

Let’s go on, dear ladies, to the last one, yes, number seven of what God likens to gold.

No. 7. (well, that’s interesting that it’s seven because seven is the number for God). I’ve got this point. GOD’S PRESENCE IS LIKENED TO GOLD

Oh, I love that. Yes.

And we read in 1 Kings 6, and in 2 Chronicles 3 how Solomon was building the temple, and how he was building at the very far end of the temple, he was building the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies was not at the entrance of the temple where everybody could just see it. No, the Holy of Holies was at the very far end of the temple. It was a place that was hidden, because this was where God’s shekinah glory dwelt. It wasn’t on display for everybody.

Back there, in the wilderness days of the tabernacle, and then the temple, only the High Priest could go into that Holy of Holies. He only went once a year, taking in the blood, because if he didn’t have the blood, He could have been wiped out. He was going into the very shekinah presence of God, and not only did he take the blood, he had to go in also with the incense, filling the whole of the Holy Place because he could not see God and live.

Of course, now we are in a different era. When Jesus died, that moment He died, that curtain that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies was torn from the top to the bottom. Now there was access into the presence of God through Jesus, through His death, through His blood being shed, through His resurrection. Now we can come into this Holy of Holies, and we can commune with Him. How glorious! But it speaks of the presence of God.

I want to talk to you a little bit about this Holy of Holies. It tells us in 1 Kings 6 that it was filled with gold. The floors, the walls, the ceiling, everything in this Holy of Holies was covered, not just with gold, but with pure gold.

I will read it to you from the Message translation that makes it very clear for you. “The inner sanctuary was a cube 30 feet each way, and plated with gold. The altar of cedar was also gold-plated. Everywhere you looked, there was pure gold. Gold chains strung in front of the gold-plated inner sanctuary. Gold everywhere. Walls, ceiling, floor, and altar. Dazzling!”

Yes, it must have been dazzling. When you think of everything, the four walls, the ceiling, the floor, and the ark of the covenant covered with gold, and the cherubim and their wings which stretched from wall to wall. Sometimes you see pictures of these little cherubim on top of the ark of the covenant. I don’t know how or why they painted such pictures because the Bible says that the wingspan of the cherubim stretched from one wall to the other.

So, each one had a 15-foot wingspan because it was a 30-foot cube. That was huge! And they were all covered with gold. Even the nails that were used were made of 20 ounces of gold. Can you believe it?

But dear ladies, oh, I must tell you to give you a bit more of an idea. Some people worked it out. The King James Version says it was 600 talents of gold in the Holy of Holies. Some say that that works out to 20.4 metric tons. The New Living Translation says that there were 23 tons of gold, just in that Holy of Holies, where God’s presence dwelt.

But that was nothing compared to His presence. The gold would have dazzled anybody, but it was His presence that was real gold. So, this was just to show what God’s presence is like. But His presence is pure gold. It’s perhaps the most wonderful thing we can experience in our lives, to know the presence of God with us, and to have times when we really experience and know tangibly that presence.

Often, as I am praying for the persecuted church, oh, there are so many being persecuted for their faith today, more than any other time in history. There are more martyrs for the faith today. But I pray. I like to pray that God’s presence will be tangibly with them, that they’ll feel His presence. Oh, they may be feeling pain as their bodies have been tortured. They may be feeling hunger when they’ve hardly had anything to eat. How I pray for God’s presence to come to them.

His presence is like gold. There is nothing more wonderful in the world than the presence of God in our marriages, in our homes, in our family life. Amen?

All right. Well, I pray that you have been blessed, dear ladies. May we all take Romans 8:29 to ourselves and for our children. “For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.” That’s when we’re being purified to be like gold.

May the Lord richly bless you. If you're going through a fiery trial, a time of tribulation, or difficulty in your life, I pray that God will be with you, that you’ll know His tangible presence with you. And you won’t despair, lovely ladies, but you’ll trust Him because He is bringing you forth as gold.

“Dear Father, I pray for Your blessing on everyone listening today, on every wife, every mother, every young person, every child. I pray that, Lord God, You will manifest Your presence to them. Let them know Your beautiful presence in their lives. And, Lord, even when they don’t feel anything, Lord, that they will know by faith that You are with them. There are times when, Lord God, You manifest Your presence. Other times, its cold-blooded faith, but we trust in Your Word, and in Your truth, and we know that You are with us.

“I thank You that You are with every one of these precious ones here listening today. Lord God, pour out Your blessing upon them, and upon their homes, and upon their families. Lord God, let everything in their lives, their marriage, and their home, and their children become more precious to them.

“And Your Word, all these things that You liken to gold, I pray that these will truly become the things that are gold in their lives, Lord, and everything else will be superfluous, Lord God. All the things of the world, which, Lord, You tell us are just going to pass away but “he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”

“Oh, Lord God, let us be those who rejoice in doing Your will, that all that we do will abide and stand the test of fire. We ask it in the precious Name of Jesus. Amen and amen.”

Well, lovely ladies, don’t forget to write to me if you have listened to 400 podcasts. And also, don’t forget to write to me by email if you have heard something during these last 400 episodes that has touched your life, that has changed your life, that has, oh, caused things to change in your home or in your marriage. Yes. May the Lord richly bless you. Amen.

Blessings from Nancy Campbell

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www.aboverubies.org

Transcribed by Darlene Norris

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