PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 359: WHO ARE YOU?
LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 359: WHO ARE YOU?
Robyn Coughlin shares again with me today and talks about the three most important principles of marriage she learned with her first husband. She is now married again and realizes she must use the same principles. Robyn states: "It's not so much who you are married to, but WHO YOU ARE!"
Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to The Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Hello, ladies. Today I have Robyn with me again. Today she’s going to share some of the principles that she has found that have helped her in her marriages because she was first married to Lee. Then in the last podcast, she shared how the Lord took her husband home. The Lord has now blessed her with another husband. She’s had to work out these principles in both marriages. Let’s hear what you've got to say, Robyn.
Robyn: Thank you. Thank you again for letting me speak. It’s really quite an honor just to be sitting here with you, to be honest. So, thank you so much. I think I shared last time how God had really started me, that ten years after I had been married to Lee. By then . . .
Nancy: Oh, by the way, how long were you married to Lee?
Robyn: We had been married 38 years, but we’d been together for 40 years on the 30th of October, which is my birthday. But he died on the fourth of November. We were very naughty and lived together for two years before we got saved. I wrote an article for Above Rubies about that.
Nancy: Yes! Your testimony in Above Rubies about how that wasn’t the way to go!
Robyn: No, don’t do it. But we’d been together for 40 years. I loved him more when he died than I think I did when I was 16 when we first met. He died at just 57 years. I think I shared how I had heard Larry Lea’s message about “The Lord’s Prayer” for those who didn’t hear me last podcast and he made a comment, “I’ve been married for ten years. It’s the best thing ever.” I was thinking, “I’ve been married for ten years, and it’s been hell.”
So, I really went on a real quest. I mean, I’d been a Christian. I’m thinking, “God, what is it to be a Christian wife?” I knew what it was, because you had planted the seed in me. But I wasn’t measuring up, so I read books, and I would pray, and I’d study the women of God in the Bible, Sarah and Zipporah. Oh, my goodness, I’d just go and pray.
I’d written a marriage workshop on that marriage. Now I’m in the middle of writing a book. I’m writing a book because my granddaughters said, “Gran, you need to write a book on marriage. Women today don’t know what it is to be a wife.” So, I thought, “Well, I’ve made a marriage workbook. I guess the next thing to do is write a book.”
I’ve started to write a book more since I’ve been married to Mark because I’ve used the principles God gave me. It’s not about so much who you're married to. It’s WHO YOU ARE! The principles are in the book, but there are three that I really want to say are top priority for any marriage.
UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
The first one is unconditional love. I know Lee, my late husband, would say, “If I’d get upset when we were pastoring,” or somebody would do something, or I’d get upset, he’d say, “Oh, so you've had expectations on them, have you?” Because he said, “Don’t have expectations on them and you won’t get hurt.
So often, we put expectations on our husbands, and we think they’re mind readers. Or we expect them to know something, or we get them to do something, and we get hurt. Well, I really meant that I’d never have unconditional love. I used to always sort of moan at Lee with things he wouldn’t do.
My sister-in-law, Raewyn, said one day, “Why don’t you start looking at things he does do, rather than going on about the things that he doesn’t do, that he might never even change?” I thought, like “That’s very good advice.” But it comes down to unconditionally loving them. Just like Jesus unconditionally loves me. That’s huge.
We seem to think that unconditional love is what God has for us, but actually, God expects us to love each other. He commands us to love each other. I didn’t always like Lee, but I always loved him. We don’t always like each other, but we’re commanded to love each other in the church.
I preached not long ago in our church. We go to seminars on worship, seminars on prophetic utterances, and seminars on this and that, but how many have ever been to a seminar about loving? There’s not enough. We need to start loving each other unconditionally. It’s got to start. Love is not a feeling. It’s a choice. You daily have to decide, “I will love you.”
I get really annoyed when I hear people say, “Well, I just don’t love him anymore. I don’t love her. It shows me you’ve got hurt, and you need to forgive, which is principle No. 2. You need to love and start speaking love, instead of speaking the opposite, and declare your love for him, because love is a choice. You choose to love somebody.
It’s not . . . I think there’s too much wrapped up in these romantic “happily after ever” stories. Young girls look at this happily ever after story. It’s always going to be happily ever after. Well, it’s not. They said, “Marriage is two people trying to become one.” That’s really amazing. Unconditional love was always my first thing to go to. When I’d had enough, I’d think, “Lord, just let me see him how You see him.”
I think it’s in 2 Corinthians 5, it says: “No longer will I look to the man after the flesh, but after the spirit.” That’s what we need to be doing, especially Christian wives or Christian couples. Far too much divorce in the Christian church. You need to start loving him unconditionally.
FORGIVE
Secondly, no unforgiveness. No offense, no unforgiveness. I know you argue, you disagree. Welcome to being married. But we always had the rule there. At nighttime, even if we’d had a terrible disagreement, we totally disagreed, that when we went to bed at night, even if we couldn’t talk about the issue, we would forgive each other. We would make sure that we became one, and say, “Look, we need to discuss this a bit further.”
But we would never . . . the Bible says: “Don’t go to sleep on your wrath, on your anger.” Because you know what it does? It opens a door for sin to come in. Even though you don’t want it to, and I think it’s in Genesis that it says: “If you do good won’t you be accepted? But if you don’t, sin is crouching at the heart, ready to come in.” So, just the seed of unforgiveness.
It amazes me how people don’t want to forgive. Really, unforgiveness is drinking poison, expecting the other person to die. That’s what unforgiveness is. You’re hurting yourself.
So, unconditional love. No unforgiveness. Forgive. You might not understand it, you might not like that, but you need to forgive and work through it. I had to do that. We had some terrible times in our marriage, wrong times, but I had to forgive because I knew as I forgave, then God could intervene.
I love the story of Sarah, how Abraham could make his wife go and say she was his sister and go with another man! I thought, “How could she not have just chopped his head off?” Seriously, but she didn’t, why? Because she knew if she obeyed her husband, God would intervene and would change the situation. What happened? They came out of Egypt rich because of her obedience. There’s power in it. I don’t know why women . . .
Nancy: It’s amazing. I always loved those three words in the Bible, where it just says: “Because of Sarah” (Genesis 12:17 and 20:18). Because she was willing to do that God did all these amazing things.
Robyn: Exactly! Don’t we want God to intervene? Because we try to do it. We get our fingers in it, and we just make a mess of it. But because of Sarah. I love that. “Because of Sarah.” I don’t know why women think to obey your husband is such an issue. That’s where the power is. Amazingly! God can do so much!
Women say, “Oh, well, my husband’s not a Christian, so no, I don’t have to obey him.” Hmmm. 1 Peter 3 says: “Wives, obey your husbands that if they’re not believing the Word, they will be won by your behavior.” That’s how to save the husbands! That’s what the Word of God says. Do we believe the Word of God or not?
Nancy: That’s for sure.
Robyn: The third thing that I really . . .
Nancy: But before you even go on to that, I don’t know whether you feel free to talk about it, but perhaps the most tragic or difficult time you faced with Lee that you had to forgive. Is that something that’s sort of not for the public? I mean, just whatever you feel. But really, what I’m sharing is that you had to forgive to the uttermost.
Robyn: I guess if I’m apprehensive about sharing it’s because he’s with the Lord. There is no unforgiveness on his name. He did have an affair. He went on a mission trip and had an affair and came back and told me. I was devastated. We’d put all our money into him going on this mission trip. I just couldn’t believe it.
He came back, and everybody was telling me how he had shared in such a dynamic way that his face shone like Moses. The next minute, he’s telling me on the way home they’d stopped off in Singapore and bingo, the thing had happened. I was devastated. I really was, but I learnt so much through it. I hear a lot of times that people say, “Well, he’s committed adultery so I can leave him.” I write this in my book, not going into detail.
But you don’t have to divorce him just because he’s committed adultery. You can get through it. And I got through it. It was very early, it was before we were pastoring, so it was during those ten years of hell. But I didn’t know the power of forgiveness could work so much in our lives. He came home and he told me.
The children were little, and we left them with a friend. We went to talk about what we were going to do. I think somehow, he wanted to go and be with her. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. I said to him, “Don’t touch me again until I know if I want you.” I was so hurt.
We went to the river which is a public swimming hole, embarrassingly enough, and we talked about our life, and we shared how isolation had crept into our marriage. We were very young. We were involved with church. I homeschooled. So we had me, the children, his job, church life, other people, and then him.
Somehow, we had lost focus on each other which is why it is so important to keep dating, to spend time with each other. The two of you, because children grow up and leave and you are left together. So you need to keep that relationship so tight. I learnt that through this. So isolation had come between us, and he had gone off, and obviously, his man’s ego got stroked and it happened. Not that he had planned it; it just happened.
We talked, and we said, “Well, we used to have fun together. We don’t do this anymore.” He said, “Well, let’s play hide and seek.” Look, I know it sounds strange. We’re about this marriage. So we did. And he went and hid. I found him. I went and hid, and I was praying, I was saying, “God, I don’t want my marriage to finish. What am I going to do?”
And God said, “Take your clothes off.” I’m like, “Well, is anyone else up there? Seriously, God? Are you joking? Look what he’s done to me. Why would I give myself to a man who’s just hurt me in such a way and defiled our marriage?” But anyway, when God tells you to do something, you do it. So, I took my clothes off.
And a carload of people pulled up down the drive, and I’m thinking, “Help me, Jesus! I’m going to get arrested for nakedness! Help me, Lord!” And Lee was walking the other way, so I started to snap twigs. And he came over. I will never, ever forget the look on his face when he saw me. It wasn’t until years later we were counseling another couple, and he shared that when he saw me, that I had sacrificed myself and he could see Jesus. Jesus had sacrificed Himself for him, for that adultery. The healing power. And I tell you what; that union we built was such a tie between us that when he died all those years later, that bond was so close.
It took me a while. I had to go down and face the woman and tell her I forgave her, because otherwise I would have hit her to be honest. But I went down and told her. I forgave her and she said to me, “Oh, I know he’s my white swan.” I said to her, “Well, he’s my ugly duckling but with him I have a purpose in God.” And I said to her, “I forgive you, but this marriage is going on.” And it did.
Nancy: Yes. Praise the Lord!
Robyn: That was huge. I learnt then the power of forgiveness. I really did through that.
Nancy: Amen. That is so powerful.
HONOR YOUR HUSBAND
Robyn: And the third one, really, that I think is important is honor. Honor is the thing that is lost today. Wives run their husbands down. Wives, keep your mouth shut. Dishonor brings disgrace. You look in the Bible when Michal mocks David. When he was dancing before the Lord, what happened to her? She was barren.
Having dishonor for your husband affects you. Look at when Noah got drunk and they uncovered his nakedness. The curse is on the grandsons. Dishonor goes into the next generation. Honor is so important.
Look at Zipporah, Moses’ wife. When God came to kill Moses, she realized he had not circumcised his two sons, so she quickly circumcised them, threw the foreskins at Moses’ feet, and said, “Oh, what a bloody husband have I!” She covered him. She honored him as the man of the house. She never said, “That’s right God, look at him. Here he is, going over to get the children of Israel out and hasn’t even looked after his family.”
No honor. Honor’s not even in the church today. We don’t honor our men of God. We don’t honor. Honor is so important that we honor our husbands. They need that respect.
Nancy: Yes. God created them in a way that they are desperate for it, they have to have it. In fact, the Bible says that God formed Adam first.
Robyn: That’s right.
Nancy: He is the head of all mankind. Even when sin came into the world, Eve was totally deceived. But Adam was right beside her and he knew what he was doing. God held him responsible, because He put him as the head of mankind, the head of the wife, and the protector and provider. This is what I find. You can love your husband and yet still not really honor him.
Robyn: Oh, I love it! It’s true.
Nancy: And I have been guilty of that. I always loved my husband, but I haven’t always honored him. I’ve had to learn to do that. And that’s what releases your marriage into the glory that God wants us to enjoy. When your husband is receiving honor, he knows that you're giving him that respect and that honor as your husband. Wow! Amazing things happen.
Robyn: And the interesting thing with Adam and Eve is that their eyes were not opened until Adam ate. If Adam had said to her, “Put that down,” sin would not have come into the world.
Nancy: True. That’s true.
Robyn: But it’s so important we honor our husbands, and we listen to them. I remember one time I needed to know something. I wanted to go to China. Lee was very anti about it. He didn’t want me to go. The children were little, but I just knew God wanted me to take Bibles into China. I said, “OK, God. Well, if he’s saying no, I have to honor that.” So, it was no.
My heart was, “OK, Lord, unless he says yes, I’m not going.” Because if God can talk to a donkey, even a husband that doesn’t want to do something, God can change his mind. I had to know by Friday at lunchtime, and Lee came and said, “You’d better ring up and say you're going to China.” See, if I had gone with him saying No, I would never, ever have felt peace by dishonoring him. It’s so important that we honor our men. Especially today.
Nancy: It’s the fact that you honored him, and were prepared to obey him, that released him to hear from the Lord and give you that release.
Robyn: But it’s my safety.
Nancy: It is.
Robyn: Obeying him is my safety, and my children’s safety. I’m not coming out of his covering. I think well, if he’s wrong, God will tell him. God does it a lot quicker than we do.
A HELPMATE, NOT A HINDRANCE
When I married Mark and moved to America, we had a bit of disagreement. I went outside, and I was sitting, and I was thinking, “Gosh, God!” Moaning and groaning, and God said, “Robyn, be a helpmate. Don’t be a hindrance.” And I thought, “Oh, Lord, okay, I repent.” I said, “OK, Lord, I’ll just surrender and submit to him.”
When I married, I’m New Zealand born, called pakeha by the Maori people. My father was English, and my mother, her parents were from England. But we were white. So, when I married Lee, it was a totally different culture. He was Maori and he’d been brought up by a single mother, a Maori, beautiful woman of God. I loved her so much. But I was yet to come together with the culture differences. I learned so much. I could lay stuff down. I love Maori culture now. In fact, so many people say I’m probably more Maori. But I just love the culture.
But coming here, Mark is American! I’m New Zealand! A whole new culture. Oh, my Lord, it seemed hilarious.
Nancy: Oh yes! You come here, and some people don’t even know what language you're speaking!
Robyn: No!
Nancy: I still say things that are New Zealand and people do not know what we’re talking about.
Robyn: I needed to say, “This is Mark, my husband, and my interpreter!” [laughter] So many people can’t understand what I was saying. It was hilarious. Once I remember he lost the keys. He said, “Where are the keys?”
I said, “They’re on the kitchen bench.” He said, “Well, why did you put them there for?” I said, “Well, that’s where you put them.” He says, “No I don’t.” He came out and started to laugh. He said, “That’s a counter. It’s not a bench!” I said, “Oh, sorry!” A bench is a seat. In New Zealand, a counter is where you go to buy from a shop. You go to the counter to pay for it. It’s hilarious.
Nancy: Yes, yes. So amazing.
Robyn: It’s so important we love our husbands unconditionally. They love us, which means wives, keep some things quiet. If you've got to share, go to someone very, very strong in the Lord, and with fruit in their lives.
I remember once with Lee, he was learning Maori, and he became a bit . . . he was learning about the Maori culture. I was beginning to worry. We were pastoring. I was thinking, “What is he into?” I thought, well, I’ll go and talk to my dear elder’s wife. She’s Maori, and when I got there, she wasn’t there. I left there thinking, “Oh.”
You know, to this day, I praise God, because we worked it out. But I could have offended her with him. She could have got an offence on Lee. I got over it. She might have held it. It’s so important that we be very careful what we share. Some things need to stay between husband and wife.
Sometimes, if you need counseling, go to a husband and wife who are strong in the Lord, strong in their marriage. It’s important. Too often women just say things they shouldn’t. And when you speak it, there are always birds in the air, wanting to pick it up. Unconditional love. Don’t ever have unforgiveness towards him. Honor him, regardless. Honor him. Respect him, because God can change all things.
Nancy: Yes. Thank you for sharing that, Robyn. I think those are the three main things, especially that honor. That is the one thing that men long for more than anything else. If they give honor to their husbands, well, usually a husband will end up wanting to do anything for them. It’s just what they long for. If they don’t get honor, help! They begin to turn away.
Robyn: I read a book when I was searching all this out. Look, to this day I wish that I knew who wrote it. If anyone’s listening to this podcast, and it pricks something in you, please let Nancy know to let me know. But it was a woman who was writing a book about her husband. She was saying things like, “If you want your husband to spend more time with you, release him to go with his friends. If you want this, release him to do the opposite. And he loves you for it.” I always remembered that.
The other book I read from a pastor’s wife, and honestly, it was a beautiful story. She had wanted to evangelize her neighborhood. She did all this while baking for them, sharing with them, but no one would come to church. She got very upset. She was in the kitchen.
She looked out the window and she said, “God, how am I going to get these people to church?” And there were two hills. She was on one hill with all the people and Jesus was on the other hill. Between the hills was thick mud. She said, “God, how am I going to bring these people over to You?” He said, “Lay face down in the mud. They may not remember you, but they’ll come to Me.”
Now, I’ve told my children that. When things happen, I’ll say, “Lay face down in the mud.” If things happen in my marriage, I’ll think, “Lay face down in the mud.” And at other times, something would happen, and I’d say something, and they would say, “Well, let’s all go and lay face down in the mud!”
But what do we want? Do we want to put ourselves on a peddle stool or do we want people to know Jesus? That should be what it’s all about. I’ve shared that many times with new pastors’ wives, or my daughters. They’ll be listening to this, laughing. “You’ve got to lay face down in the mud, darling, as long as they know Jesus. They might never remember you, but as long as they come to Jesus through your actions.”
Nancy: That reminds me of the most beautiful story I read one time. This guy had his binoculars, and he was looking up at this mountain. He began to see two mountain goats. They were both coming in different directions. He thought, “Wow! What is going to happen here?” because they were walking along these very, very narrow tracks. There was no way that when they met, they could pass. No way.
He thought, “What on earth will happen? Am I going to see a tragedy here? Two mountain goats fighting and both are falling down over this mountain cliff.” And he said, “I saw the most amazing sight I have ever seen. When they got to where they met, one of those mountain goats lay down on the path and the other one walked over it. And they were both safe.”
Isn’t that so incredible? If goats can do that, what about us? When you think that goats, when we read in Matthew 24 how at the end of the age, God is going to separate the sheep from the goats, because the goats are always considered not His company. They are the ones that go into everlasting damnation. The sheep are His people who go into everlasting life. Well, if the goats can take that spiritual anointing of humility and lay down their lives for the other, well, what about us as His sheep?
Robyn: Shouldn’t we be doing that?
Nancy: Yes. Amen.
Robyn: And that’s where honor in the church is so important. People think, “Oh, we don’t want to worship a man.” It’s nothing to do with worshipping a man. It’s all to do with . . . we took our team; we are with Love and Unity Movement. Beautiful, beautiful apostles. We took them out to lunch. We’d been to the conference, and they were saying “Eddie” (he’s one of the apostles). And I said, “Hold on, his name is Apostle Eddie. They said he said I could call him Eddie.”
I said, “Well, you know what, when you're listening to him, he’s probably a lovely friend but don’t you want to draw on the anointing on his life? Don’t you want to draw on that?” And if we honor that, what does it say about honoring prophets?
I’ve really taught our guys to honor the men of God, because they can be your friends, but there’s an anointing on them you want to draw on. Man, imagine when we get to heaven? We’ll be sitting with Peter and Moses. You’ll want to be drawing what they knew of God? A title’s a title, but an anointing is an anointing. Honor it.
Nancy: I love Ephesians 5 at the very end, the last verse, verse 33. In the Amplified, wow! This really brings it out here. “However, let each man of you, {without exception} love his wife {as being in a sense} his very own self; and let the wife see that she respects and reverences her husband {that she notices him, regards him, honors him, prefers him, venerates him, and esteems him, and that she defers to him, praises him, and loves and admires him exceedingly}” Whoo!
Robyn: You know, the whole thing about “Husbands, love your wife like you love yourself” . . . the trouble in our society today is that a lot of men don’t love themselves. And so, as wives, we’re expecting to be loved but if they don’t love themselves, they are going to struggle in loving you.
That’s why we need to make sure we praise them, and honor them, and lift them up, so that they start being confident in who they are. And the same, a wife who maybe has been mistreated . . . Husbands, love her. That’s why loving unconditionally is so important.
Nancy: And there are many men who, as you say, come into marriage. They’ve been dragged up. Maybe they’ve grown up in a home where they never received any encouragement. They’ve never been encouraged, affirmed, or built up. So, they come in with very low self-worth. Therefore, there’s still a lot to fill up in them to make them who they are meant to be.
I think a wife has the privilege of doing that, even in a husband who hasn’t had it growing up. That’s how a home should be. We’re raising our children, encouraging them, affirming them. Sometimes I thought that maybe we encouraged our children too much! They grew up thinking they could do anything in this world.
But there are many who haven’t had that. They’ve grown up. Even in their marriage, they’re still not all who they’re meant to be. But a wife has the privilege to speak into them, and speak honor, and affirmation, and encouragement. As they do, they get built up and become who they are meant to be as men. That’s the wonderful thing of honoring.
Robyn: It’s why I love Zipporah. We can say that Moses, in some ways, was brought up in two different cultures, Egyptian and Israeli. Then he murdered a man, then he went into the wilderness. He met Jethro and was there for 40 years. He stammered and so you could say he had low self-esteem. What does Zipporah do? She just covered him. She covered him. Beautiful.
Nancy: Yes. So, what is our time, Teeny? Goodness me! It’s been so great to have this time with you. Thank you, Robyn. I usually pray for the ladies, but while you're here, I’m going to ask you to pray for them again and pray over their marriages.
Robyn:
“Hallelujah! Oh, Father, Lord, You created marriage, and Father, it’s such a huge example of Your love for the church. And Father, so often we forget why You created marriage, Lord.
“So Father, I pray for every ear that is hearing this, every wife who might be struggling, every wife who might not know where to go, any wife who maybe wants to walk away from that marriage. Father, I pray, and I challenge them to come face down before You. Father, You have the answer for every marriage. You have the answer for every healing. You have the answer, Lord, to change us within, to love, respect, and adore our husbands.
“So, Father, I lift up marriages today. Father, in a world where divorces are so accepted, Father, I pray that we, as women, would raise the standard where we would not accept divorce. Lord, that we would go to the furthest place you can go in You, Father, to have our marriages healed.
“Father, I lift up each marriage today. Lord, I pray a blessing on them, Father. I pray, Lord, a newness on them, a new refreshment. Lord, I pray she starts doing what Your Word says. If they don’t obey the Word, he will be won by their behavior.
“Father, give them the strength. Lord, give them the whole desire, Lord, to serve and love their husbands. Let marriage and the whole world turn, Lord, that it will be something that people will want to run to. Not all the ones that want to run away from it, Lord.
“Lord, I thank You. I thank You for this time. I thank You for marriage examples You have put in my life, Lord, to see how marriage works in You. Lord, I pray that everything spoken through these podcasts, that women will take them on, just like we did. We were young women, and we heard all this from Nancy. We just desire to serve and love our husbands. Father, put that same desire in these hearts, I pray. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.”
Nancy: Amen!
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Transcribed by Darlene Norris
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
DON’T FORGET TO TELL OTHERS ABOUT THIS PODCAST, “LIFE TO THE FULL” WITH NANCY CAMPBELL.” DON’T KEEP THE BLESSINGS TO YOURSELF. IT IS ENCOURAGEMENT FOR ALL WIVES AND MOTHERS.