FLOWING WITH MILK AND HONEY!
Part 3

“Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones”

Proverbs 16:24.

We continue the description of the “land” of our family life.

IT FLOWS WITH HONEY

Honey energizes

Honey energizes the heart and increases blood flow. Our homes should be full of energy. “Oh my, you don’t have to tell me that,” I hear you reply as you try to curb the exuberance and noise of your little ones. Don’t worry; this is all part of raising little ones and the life of the “land of motherhood.”

However, we can have productive energy in our home—not the energy of the flesh, but of the Holy Spirit. The energy of vision and leading our children into profitable and good things. The energy of creativity and developing many projects. The home is firstly a nurturing center, but it is also a birthing center, a training and education center, a praise and worship center, a prayer center, an eating center, a hospitality center, a cultural development center, a social center, a counseling center, a health and healing center, an industry center, a convalescent center and a garden center! How do you have time to leave?

The home is such an exciting place. It is where everything happens. We don’t need to go out of our home to find fulfillment and excitement. It can all happen in the home!

Honey Sweetens

The land of our family life is not a land of complaining and sourness. It is a pleasant and amiable land. It is where we are sweet and kind. It is where we speak sweet words rather than harsh and hurtful words.

My husband loves me to speak sweetly to him. If I start to get on my “high horse” he will say to me, “Nancy, you’ve got to be sweet to me.” He doesn’t give me a chance to get harsh!Solomon, speaking to his bride in Song of Songs 4:11 says, “Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue.” What drips from the honeycomb? Sweetness! What kinds of words drip from your tongue to your husband and children? The land that flows with milk and honey is a land where we speak sweet, soft, encouraging, considerate, gentle, cheerful, positive, helpful, supportive, kind, wise, forgiving, loving, pleasant and life-giving words.

Proverbs 15:1 NASB says, “A gentle answer turns away wrath.” And here is another challenge from the Song of Songs 4:3 Knox trans., “Thy lips a line of scarlet, guardians of that sweet utterance.” Do our lips guard the harsh and nasty words that so easily fall from our lips?

The Word of God is also likened to honey. Psalm 19:10 says they are “sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.” Psalm 119:103 says, “How sweet are thy words unto my taste! Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” The more God’s Word dwells in us richly the more “honey” will flow from our mouths.

Honey Soothes and Heals

Honey is soothing to the throat and calming to the nerves. It heals many physical problems, even ulcers. My mother healed a terrible ulcer on her leg by using only honey. Medical journals report large bed sores, which would otherwise need skin grafts, being healed without scarring after honey treatment.

Our task as mothers it to soothe and heal heartaches and “to bind up the broken-hearted.” Life is not perfect and there will always be conflicts in family life. However, instead of being part of the conflict, our job is to bring healing to the problem. We should try to keep a peaceful atmosphere in our homes. That doesn’t always mean a quiet atmosphere! We can have peace in the midst of noise and activity. Peace is having a tranquil spirit in the midst of whatever is happening. Peace is eliminating tension and strife in the home.

Ultimately, God is our Peace and we find our rest in Him as we look to Him instead of looking at the problems. I would have to say that my favorite Scripture is Isaiah 26:3-4, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in thee.”

Leviticus 26:6, “I will give peace in the land.”

Psalm 147:14, “He makes peace in thy borders.”

Isaiah 32:18, “My people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation.”

And when God descries motherhood in Isaiah 66:11-13 He says, “I will extend peace to her like a river.” When a mother gives birth to a new baby and begins the big task of caring for her little child, God does not leave her stranded. When a mother nurses her baby oxytocin is released which is a calming and relaxing hormone. This is one of the blessings of “the land of motherhood.” The more babies a mother nurses over the years the more peaceful and calm she becomes.

LOVE FROM NANCY CAMPBELL
www.aboverubies.org

PRAYER:

Dear Father, please save me from filling my home with conflicting, harsh and negative words. Help me be a healer in my home, healing bodies, relationships, hurts and broken hearts. Help me to be like honey and drip sweet words from my mouth. Amen.”

AFFIRMATION:

I am anointed by God to bring healing to my home.

Many women like to save these devotions. They print them out and keep them in a folder to read over and over again. Some print them out and pin them on the fridge with a magnet to read through the week.

FLOWING WITH MILK AND HONEY!
Part 4

“He will love thee, and bless thee; and multiply thee: he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee” Deuteronomy 7:13.

IT IS A LAND WHERE WE MUST RELY UPON GOD

Deuteronomy 11:10-12 says, “For the land which you go to possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and watered it by foot, as a vegetable garden; but the land which you cross over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water from the rain of heaven, a land for which the Lord your God cares; the eyes of the Lord your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year.”

Egypt is a type of the flesh and the world. In Egypt they relied on the overflow of the Nile River for their irrigation. They stored the water by artificial means and irrigated the fields with treadmills, using their feet. It took human sweat and toil. But in the Promised Land they did not have the Nile River. They had to rely completely on God to provide the rain to grow and harvest their crops.

It is the same in our land of marriage and motherhood. Yes, we have to work hard, but when we do it in our own strength it is to no avail. As we raise our children we have to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom and understanding and to help us moment by moment. We have to rely on God to provide for our needs. We are totally cast upon the blessing of God. Psalm 127:1 says, “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.”

This is why one of the most important aspects of parenting is prayer—crying out to God for our children; crying out to God for help and wisdom. We cannot do it without Him. But when we trust in Him, we will find that He is absolutely faithful to show us the way and to provide for our needs (Matthew 6:25-34).

Many mothers feel that they need to join their husband in his role of providing for the family because they do not believe God is able to care for them. This is like being back in Egypt, turning the treadmills with our feet. In this Promised Land we must totally rely upon God, a God who cares for us from the beginning of the year until the end! Remember, God’s eyes are upon your land. Why leave the “land” that God has ordained for you and go back to Egypt? Why strive in the workplace, leaving your children and taking your husband’s place when God wants to bless you in your home? (1 Kings 9:3)

IT IS A FRUITFUL LAND (Deuteronomy 6:3)

Wouldn’t it have been terrible for the children of Israel to go into the Promised Land and find it a barren land? That would have been devastating. But our God is a God who delights in fruitfulness and He chose a fruitful land for them.* God was the first real estate agent and He spied out all the lands to find the best land for His people. It was a land of fruitfulness that brought forth an abundance of grapes, figs, pomegranates, corn, wine, wheat, barley oil and honey. Ezekiel 20:6 RAV says, “I lifted up my hand in an oath to them, to bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I had searched out (spied out) for them, flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all lands.”

I remember years ago traveling from Egypt through the Sinai desert to Israel. The moment we entered the borders of Israel we beheld orange groves growing prolifically. It was the same desert land but with hard work and irrigation the land was blossoming. For years the land lay desolate with deserts and malarial swamps but since Israel became a nation in 1948 it has began to blossom again.

But God not only promised to give an abundance of food but to increase them with children. God wanted His people to fill the land. Deuteronomy 6:3 says, “Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey.”

This land of motherhood is a land where we embrace increase. We receive every child as a blessing from God. We don’t endure having children but joyfully embrace them. Jesus said in Matthew 18:5, “Whoever receives one little child like this in my name receives me.” The word “receive” is not the attitude of “take it or leave it” but an active receiving, “to receive by deliberate and ready reception of what is offered.” (Luke 9:48)

Love from NANCY CAMPBELL
www.aboverubies.org

PRAYER:

“Father, thank you that you are watching over our family from the beginning of the year until the end. Please forgive me for relying on my own resources. Teach me how to trust you for all our needs. Amen.”

AFFIRMATION:

I’ve finished with living the Egyptian way; I’m trusting God’s infinite resources.

* Read all the Scriptures about the Fruitful land: 

Leviticus 25:19; 26:4-10; Numbers 13:23-27; Deuteronomy 1:2;5; 7:13; 8:1; 7-9; 28:1-14; 30:5, 16; 11:13-14; Nehemiah 9:25; Psalm 85:12; Isaiah 26:15; 30:23-24; Jeremiah 3:16; 23:3; 34:27; Ezekiel 34:27; 36:8-11; 29-30, 37; Zechariah 8:12 and 10:8.

FLOWING WITH MILK AND HONEY!

Part 5

“And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety” Leviticus 25:18-19.

IT IS A LIFE-GIVING LAND (Deuteronomy 30:15-20)

God spoke to the children of Israel through Moses before they went into the land and said to them, “I call upon heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live… that thou mayest dwell in the land” Deuteronomy 30:19-20.

The land of our family life where we live each day should be a land of life. All around us is a society of death. We are indoctrinated by a feminist and humanist agenda to choose death rather than life. The majority have joined the enemy’s plan that hates life and seeks to eradicate it any way possible. They often choose abortion, but more frequently they choose to eliminate life before it is conceived. This has become the normal practice in our society. But this lifestyle does not belong to God’s land. His land is a land of life. God loves life. He is the author of life. He looks for life to come from godly couples.

Isn’t it amazing that what is strange and foreign to the kingdom of God has now become normal? What a dichotomy! Even in Christendom families who have more than two or three children are looked upon as strange! Truth has become so twisted that what is Biblical is now foreign! And we are so entrenched in this deception that we don’t even recognize it!

Isaiah 29:16 NASB says, “You turn things around. Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay, that what is made would say to its maker, ‘He did not make me, or what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘He has no understanding’?” The KJB says, “You turn things upside down”!

Micah 3:9 NASB says they “twist everything that is straight.” Read also Psalm 144: 11-12; Isaiah 45:9-10; 64:8 and Romans 9:19-21.

God promises that He will bless us in the land when we choose life (Deuteronomy 30:16). When we choose life, we choose health.*

IT IS A SAFE LAND (Ezekiel 28:26)

When we enter into this land we find it is a land of safety.** It’s a place where we can dwell confidently. It is safe from deception. The context of 1 Timothy 14-15 is that we will be saved from deception as we embrace our maternal duties. When a motherleaves her children to compete with man in the career world, she enters into a realm where she is not only vulnerable to the enemy, but where she can subtly be led into deception, often without realizing it.It is not the sphere that God planned for her. Of course, a mother can help her home financially through the gifts and talents God has given her. Creating a business in her home is a place where she can work confidently.

God also wants us to mother with confidence, knowing that this is the sphere God has chosen for us. We are not doing an inferior work but the most powerful career in the nation as we train children who will determine the course of the nation.

IT IS A LAND OF PROVISION (Deuteronomy 28:11; 30:9)

Deuteronomy 8:9 calls it “A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it.” Although we covet a lot more than we require, God will always give us what we need. I am often reminded of the Israelites in the desert. God reminded them that during that time “they lacked nothing” Deuteronomy 2:7 and Nehemiah 9:21). Nothing! And yet they lived in temporary tents! How would you like that? They had no modern conveniences such as we have today. How would you like that? They couldn’t pop down to the corner store to grab some milk and forgotten items when they ran out! How would you like that? And yet God said they lacked nothing! He provided them daily manna and their shoes miraculously never wore out! Many times we can’t understand how we survive either. God supplies beyond our income. But that’s how God does it. He is a miraculous God and we will prove Him continually as we trust in Him. ***

Love from Nancy Campbell

www.aboverubies.org

PRAYER:

“Father, I thank you such much for this wonderful land to which you have called me. Help me to acknowledge and rejoice in all the blessings of this land. Amen.”

AFFIRMATION:

I am living in a land of life and provision.

* When we choose life, we choose health.

Go to www.aboverubies and read the following articles: Preserved through Mothering, Preservation Testimonies and Quintessentially Feminine.

** Read the Scriptures about the Safe land.

Leviticus 25:18-19; 26:4-6; Deuteronomy 12:10; 33:28; Isaiah 32:18; Jeremiah 23:6; 32:37; Ezekiel 28:25-26; 34:27-28 and 38:11.

*** Read the Scriptures where God promises to provide:

Go to www.aoverubies.org and click on CAN GOD PROVIDE?, then click on CAN GOD PROVIDE FOR ANOTHER BABY?

FLOWING WITH MILK AND HONEY!

Part 6

“The Lord shall GREATLY BLESS thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it”
Deuteronomy 15:4.

IT IS A LAND OF BLESSING (Deuteronomy 28:8; 30:16)

Here are some of the blessings God pours out upon us in our land:

Blessings of fruitfulness (Genesis 1:28; 22:17; 28:3; Deuteronomy 7:13-14; Psalm 107:38; 115:14).

Blessings of the breasts and of the womb (Genesis 49:25).

Blessings of health (Deuteronomy 7:15).

Blessings of weddings and celebrations (Jeremiah 33:10-11, cf. Jeremiah 7:34; 16:9; 25:10).

Blessings of bread and water (Exodus 23:25).

Blessings of God’s watchful care (Numbers 6:24-25).

Blessings of peace (Numbers 6:26; Psalm 29:11).

Blessings upon all that we do (Deuteronomy 2:7; 14:29; 15:10, 18; 16:15; 23:20; 24:19; 28:8, 12).

Blessings on our children (Psalm 115:14; 147:13b; Isaiah 44:3).

Blessings if we live in the city or the country (Deuteronomy 28:3).

Blessings on our cattle and produce (Deuteronomy 28:4-5, 11; Psalm 132:15; 107:36-38).

Blessings on our daily walk (Deuteronomy 28:6).

Blessings of reigning instead of servitude (Deuteronomy 15:16; 28:13).

Blessings of lending to others instead of borrowing (Deuteronomy 15:16; 28:12).

Blessings on our land and gardens (Deuteronomy 30:16; Psalm 107:37).

The blessings are when we are in the land, not out of the land. Many times we walk away from obedience to God’s ways and yet expect Him to bless us. We have to put ourselves in the place where God wants to bless us. Contrary to public indoctrination, the blessing of God is on those who embrace mothering and home-keeping. Women take the birth control Pill to avoid children and many times end up with decreased libido. Women avoid pregnancy and lactation and miss out on the hormones that will bless them physically, not only while pregnant and nursing but for the future lives.*

IT IS A HOLY LAND (Zechariah 2:12)

We must seek to keep our homes holy and free from all contamination. Check your home for inroads of the enemy-- books, DVDs, computers etc. We must not allow anything in our home that belongs to Satan’s kingdom. Read Deuteronomy 7:35-36.

God calls our land a holy land. It is opposite to the ways of Egypt.

The marriage bed must be kept “undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4). This is the same word that is used to describe Christ who is our high priest who is “undefiled, separate from sinners” Hebrews 7:26. The marriage bed is one of the “delightful” blessings God gives us in our land (but once again, the blessing is in the land, not out of the land!). Some say that “anything goes” in the confines of marriage. That is true, only if it is “undefiled” and within the limits of God’s plan for sexual union!

IT IS A CHALLENGING LAND (Joshua 11:16)

Joshua 12:8, “Joshua gave unto the tribes of Israel for a possession according to their divisons; in the mountains, and in the valleys, and in the plains, and in the springs, and in the wilderness, and in the south country.”

What a boring land it would be if it was all flat! But our land of motherhood is anything but boring! We don’t have the monotony of plains. We go through valleys and the wilderness. We face mountains that loom higher than we can cope with. But this is what makes life adventurous and exciting. This is how we mature. This is how we learn wisdom and God’s ways of doing things. This is how we learn to trust God who is “enough” for every situation for He is a protector of all those who trust in Him (2 Samuel 22:31).

"Got any rivers you think are uncrossable?

Got any mountains you can't tunnel through?

God specializes in things thought impossible!

He can do what no other can do."

Love from Nancy Campbell

www.aboverubies.org

PRAYER:

“Thank you, Father, that my land is not boring and predictable. Although I do not like the challenge of obstacles and difficulties, I thank you that this is where I prove your faithfulness and power in my life. Amen.”

AFRIRMATION:

I am daily trusting in the God who is Enough!