PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 392: WELCOME TO THE LAND OF MORE AND MORE, Part 1
LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 392: WELCOME TO THE LAND OF MORE AND MORE, Part 1
Welcome to the New Year. And welcome to our new series. God intends our walk with Him to be a MORE AND MORE walk. According to God’s Word, it is “superabundant,” and “over and above the normal.”
We begin our journey through God’s Word to discover all the things that are MORE THAN THE NORMAL. Instead of dipping our toes in the shallowness of God’s vastness, we must move into the extraordinary life God has for us.
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! Welcome to the New Year! Wow, this last year went by so fast, didn’t it? Well, it did for me. I’m wondering whether it did for you. Now we’re facing a new year. Are you ready for it? Well, we never know what’s going to happen in a new year, do we? But the wonderful thing is that we have our God, our faithful God. I’m sure we’ll have lots of wonderful blessings, but we may have trials too. But it doesn’t matter. Whatever. We have our God with us.
At the beginning of this new year, lovely ladies, I am beginning a new series. It is called “Welcome to the Land of More and More.” This is what I call our Christian walk. I’ve always called it “The Land of More and More.” I get that from one of my favorite Scriptures in the Bible which is Proverbs 4:18: “But the path of the just as is the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”
That’s how it’s meant to be. Our walk with the Lord is meant to be a continual more and more walk with the Lord, learning more of Him, coming to know Him more, to trust Him more, coming to know His ways more and more. I would like to take you on this journey into the Word of God. Come with me and we’re going to find out about this more and more life.
Before we start, I must tell you a story. Actually, this was told to me by a dear friend who was one of my Above Rubies directors in England. She’s now passed it on to someone else. But she is like me, someone who started her life in New Zealand.
She told me the story of her brother who lived in New Zealand. He saw this lovely hobby farm advertised and he decided to buy it. Actually, he hoped that it would also provide an income, but sadly, it just wasn’t enough to provide a full income for him and his family. But it was a great hobby farm.
Anyway, it was many years later and he decided that he would sell it. When he came to sell it, he found that he had another ten acres that belonged to him that he didn’t know he had. They were the best ten acres. They were fertile and wonderful and would have provided him with a full income. But he didn’t know he had it. He hadn’t really looked into what he had bought.
In fact, after he found this out, he went to his neighbor who was using this land, and gaining so much profit from this wonderful, fertile land. He said, “You’ve been using my land! How could you be doing this?” And the neighbor said, “Well, you never came to me. You never told me this was your land.” This is a true story.
But I think it can be very true of us, dear ladies. When we come to Christ, we come into His land, His kingdom. In this kingdom, He has given us so much. But often, we don’t know what we have. We haven’t even got a clue sometimes, so we live in the little that we know, and we miss out on all that we don’t know.
So, thinking of this, there’s a wonderful word in the New Testament. This Greek word is perisseuo. It’s a word that occurs many times in the New Testament. This is what it means. It means, “more and more, to excel, to exceed, to go beyond that which is necessary, super-abundant in quantity and superior in quality, over and above, enough and to spare.”
Well, that’s a lot of words to explain one word, isn’t it? But that’s what it’s often like when we look up the meaning of a Greek word in the New Testament. There’s a big, long line of words to describe it. So, it’s describing this whole understanding of “more and more.” Our Christian life is not meant to be ordinary. It’s not meant to be normal, status quo, boring. No, it is above the normal, above and beyond, over the top, more and more.
ARE YOU LIVING THE “MORE AND MORE” LIFESTYLE?
So, ladies, we do face the big challenge: are you living a more and more lifestyle? Or are you kind of in the normal lifestyle? That is not true Christianity. Christianity is not normal. It’s above the normal.
We are going to see this as we continue into the Word. I think it’s so sad, isn’t it? Often many of us are just dipping our toes in the shallow water of God’s vastness when there is an ocean of treasures, and wisdom, and understanding, and blessing, and more and more that God has waiting for us.
I love that Scripture in Colossians 3:2, where it says: “In Him, Christ Jesus, are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” They are all in Him, but we have to discover them, don’t we?
ARE YOU POSSESSING THE LAND GOD HAS GIVEN TO YOU?
Another thing I was thinking about too was back in the Old Testament, when the Israelites went into the Promised Land. They conquered the land and they subdued it. But there came a day after that where they were all hanging around. Joshua, their leader, said to them in Joshua 18:3: “How long are you slack to go possess the land, which the Lord God of your fathers hath given thee?” In other words, he’s saying, “OK, the Lord has given you the land! It’s yours! But you haven’t even possessed it yet!”
And there were seven tribes who hadn’t yet taken up possession. So, Joshua said to them, “Take three men of every tribe, and I want you to go through the land.” This is what he said, verse 8: “And the men arose, and went away: and Joshua charged them that went to describe the land, saying, Go and walk through the land, and describe it, and come again to me.”
And then in verse 9, we read how these men who went out and walked through the land took a book with them. And they wrote everything down in a book to describe it, how many cities there were in all the different parts, and everything about the land, and they brought it back to Joshua so he could take lots and decide which tribe would go where.
I think that’s a wonderful picture of what we’re going to do now, lovely ladies. We’re going to walk through the land. We’re going to find out what is there. I want to take you to all the Scriptures where it talks about God wanting us to have more. There are so many!
We’re going to start off. I will put them in alphabetical order. I don’t know how I could say one was more important than the other, so we’ll go in alphabetical order for all these Scriptures that include the word “more,” or “far more,” or “much more,” or “how much more.” You’re going to be amazed. When God writes, He doesn’t just write about things that are normal. It’s always more than the average. It’s above and beyond. It is perissueo. Just abundance, and more and more!
ARE YOU READY?
OK, you're ready to go? You’ve got your bags packed? Are you ready to go on the journey? Here we go.
No. 1. MORE ABIDING
Ephesians 3: 17, in The Living Bible it says: “And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts, living within you as you trust Him. May your roots go down deep into the well of God’s marvelous love.”
The question is, lovely ladies, are we letting Jesus possess more and more of our lives? Or do we hold back? Are we letting Him possess more and more of our homes? Or are there areas that we hold back from Him? Jesus wants to come into our lives and fill every part of our lives. He wants to come more and more.
As we open up to Him, He can dwell in more and more of our lives. Even in our homes, every room, every part of our home, let’s open it up to Jesus. Our bedroom, our kitchen, our dining room, all the bedrooms of our children. Let’s open them up to God, to Jesus, so He can come in and dwell in every room, more and more. Amen?
No. 2. MORE ABOUNDING GRACE
Wow, ladies. All of us are sinners, without hope, living under the condemnation of God’s judgment until Jesus came and poured out His pure and precious blood and died on the cross to take our punishment. Through His incredible sacrifice, He redeemed us back to Himself. What a wonderful redemption! What amazing grace!
We all know that glorious hymn, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.” We sing it so often. But there are many, many other beautiful hymns about the grace of God. I’ll tell you about them in a minute, but I want to read the Scriptures first. So, we’ll go to the Scriptures in Romans 5:9-20 (NET):
Verse 9: “Much more then, because we have now been declared righteous by his blood, we will be saved through him from God’s wrath.”
Verse 10: “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, since we have been reconciled, will we be saved by his life?”
Verse 15: But the gracious gift is not like the transgression. For if the many died through the transgression of the one man, how much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ multiply to the many!”
Verse 17: “For if, by the transgression of the one man, death reigned through the one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ.”
Verse 20: “But where sin increased, grace multiplied all the more.” I was reading from the New English Translation. The King James says: “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.”
And so, as we read these incredible Scriptures, often when we read them, we don’t take them in. But here, it’s telling us of the grace of God. The grace of God which brought redemption to us is “much more.” Even though sin held us in its clutches, God’s salvation, the grace of God, the redemption of Jesus, is so “much more” to deliver us.
Let me count how many times it says “how much more” in these few Scriptures. One, two, three, four, five times it says, “how much more.” Oh, dear precious ladies, I think we need to take time to really (no, we can never, ever comprehend, because even in eternity I don’t think we’ll comprehend the enormity of the sacrifice Jesus paid to redeem us).
But how thankful we should be! How full of praise and thankfulness and worship we should be to Him for our great redemption! I try to make it a habit in my life that every day I thank Him for His great redemption to me, because I am overwhelmed with gratefulness. Do you thank Him every day? I think there are some who are born again, and yet, they forget to thank Him. We should be so thankful for His wonderful grace to us.
I love that old hymn by Isaac Watts. Did you know that Isaac Watts was one of the greatest hymn writers? He wrote over 800 hymns. A lovely one is “Alas, And Did My Savior Bleed?” Let me read a couple of stanzas from it:
Was it for crimes that I have done,
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity! Grace unknown!
And love beyond degree!
Well might the sun in darkness hide,
And shut its glories in,
When God, the mighty Maker died
For His own creature's sin.
I also love that beautiful hymn. I wonder if you know it. “Who Can Cheer the Heart Like Jesus?” It’s one of my favorite beautiful hymns. It’s a great hymn. In fact, I think I’d like my husband to come and sing it to you, because if you don’t know it, I’d love you to hear the words. I won’t sing it to you. As I’ve told you before, if you heard me sing, you would be turning off the podcast! So, let me find my husband!
. . . OK, thank you, Darling, so much for coming! Glad you are around at this moment. By the way, the person who wrote that beautiful hymn was Thoro Harris. You sing it, Darling. Just listen to the words!
Colin: I love this hymn too.
Nancy: Yes, the words are just so amazing.
Colin: (singing)
Who can cheer the heart like Jesus,
By His presence all divine?
True and tender, pure and precious,
O how blest to call Him mine!
Refrain:
All that thrills my soul is Jesus,
He is more than life to me, to me;
And the fairest of ten thousand
In my blessed Lord I see.
Love of Christ so freely given,
Grace of God beyond degree,
Mercy higher than the heavens,
Deeper than the deepest sea. [Refrain]
What a wonderful redemption!
Never can a mortal know
How my sin, tho’ red like crimson,
Can be whiter than the snow. [Refrain]
Ev’ry need His hand supplying,
Ev’ry good in Him I see;
On his strength divine relying,
He is all in all to me. [Refrain]
By the crystal, flowing river
With the ransomed I will sing,
And forever and forever
Praise and glorify the King [Refrain]
Nancy: Thank you, Darling, for singing those beautiful words. Did you get them? I love these words:
Love of Christ so freely given,
Grace of God beyond degree,
Mercy higher than the heavens,
Deeper than the deepest sea.
Truly, God’s grace is beyond degree. In fact, there’s a little acrostic for “grace.” I wonder if you've heard it. For the word GRACE it says:
God’s
Riches
At
Christ’s
Expense!
That’s a wonderful way to see the word GRACE.
Hebrews 9:14. Once again, listen to these words. “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works, to serve the living God.” How much more shall the blood of Christ is able to save us from our sins, and make us righteous before God?
Do you notice that in that Scripture all the trinity is involved? God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all involved in our redemption. Look at it again. “How much more shall the blood of Christ (God the Son) through the eternal Spirit (God the Holy Spirit) offered Himself without spot to God (God the Father). So, therefore, we see there all the trinity involved.
All right, let’s go to the next one, shall we?
No. 3. MORE ABUNDANT LIFE
You all know the Scripture, John 10:10: “I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly.” Do you notice? You see, once again, Jesus is speaking, and He doesn’t only say, “I have come to bring you life.” No, He says, “I have come to bring you abundant life.” No, more than abundant. He says, “I have come to bring you life MORE abundantly.”
Here’s another “more.” These words “more abundantly” in the Greek are another one of those peri words. Remember, I told you about the word perissueo. This one is perissos, and it means, “exceedingly, above the normal, beyond measure, above and beyond, extraordinary.” Wow! This is the more abundant life that Jesus paid with His life to give us. As I mentioned, it’s one of the peri words.
In my book, 100 Days of Blessing, Volume Three, in my introduction, I give a list of the seven peri words in the New Testament. They all have that similar meaning of being super-abundant, beyond measure. It’s hard for us to take this in. We’re so used to living boring, normal, average lives.
But this is not God’s intention. Jesus Himself is not normal or ordinary. He is Christ, the Son of God, filled with all the godly attributes and He has come to dwell in us by His Spirit. When He comes to dwell in us, He dwells in us with His life. It’s not a life that is just the normal. It is a life that is super-abundant, beyond measure, above and beyond. It’s beyond the natural.
So, when we have Christ, we have living in us Someone who is beyond the ordinary. We should not be living ordinary, boring, shallow lives! Because Christ dwell in us, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossian 12:27). So, I don’t even think I’ve got it totally. But we’ve got to come up to the Word of God, ladies.
We seem to live in our normal world, but this is what the Bible says. We’ve just read it. Hear it again. These are not my words. These are Jesus’ words. “I am come to give you life, and to give it to you more abundantly.” This is what we have to rise to. This is the more and more walk in Christ. This is perissos. And once again, I’d better read the meaning to you. This is the meaning of this word. So, we can somehow get it. We’re not going to get it until we know.
It’s like the Israelites. Before they could possess the land, they had to go in and walk through the land and find out everything about it so they could dwell there. If we don’t know, well, we’re not going to rise to it, are we?
YOU CAN MAKE THE MOST MUNDANE THINS IN LIFE INTO THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY
So, perissos means “above the normal, beyond measure, above and beyond, extraordinary.” Oh, lovely mothers, I know, sometimes you're feeling overwhelmed in your home. You’re just feeling as though you're been doing the same old thing from day to day, caring for your little darlings, and keeping the home, and cooking again and again and again.
They seem such normal things. Yes, they are normal. But you don’t have to do them normally, because Christs dwells within you. Every little, insignificant thing you do does not have to be insignificant when Christ dwells within you. So, when you're coming to prepare another meal, it’s not, “Oh, no, I have to get some more food ready and cook another meal.” No, “Christ dwells in me. He dwells in me, giving me an abundant life, so I can do this abundantly. I can do it excitingly. I can do it extraordinarily.”
You can make the most mundane things in life into the most extraordinary. It determines what you're going to do. You either live in . . . actually you live in disbelief, or you live in the belief of the words of Jesus. But He came to give you this “more abundantly life” so you embrace it and live it.
You thank Him: “Lord Jesus, I thank You that You dwell within me. Therefore, this job that I am doing, I’m just scrubbing the toilets, but I thank You, Lord for Your joy that fills my heart and that You are my Savior. You’ve given me this home. Lord, I’ve got a home! And I’m actually scrubbing the toilet! I don’t even have to go out into the bush! Lord, I thank You for all Your wonderful blessings. I’m going to do this with joy and extraordinariness!” Amen? So, this is how we live our lives. All right, perhaps we’ve got time for just one more as we close this session.
No. 4. MORE ADDING TO THE LORD
We read in Acts 5:14: “And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.” You can read the whole passage there in Acts 5. Oh my, I long for the day when more and more people will be added to the Lord. I long for that. I long for a great revival.
We go back to read about the early church. We read in Acts 2:46-47 that the believers “Continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their food with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, (and it goes on to say) And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.”
Do you notice that we began that Scripture with “daily”? The believers met together and ate their meals together daily, and then we see the outcome: “Daily the Lord added to the church.” Obviously, the people around saw a lifestyle they’d never seen before. They saw the believers, loving one another, fellowshipping with one another, having something that they didn’t have. It was something new and they wanted it.
Today, how often do believers meet together? Well, they meet on Sunday, usually, when they go to church. But often, that’s about all. Here it’s talking about a lifestyle of hospitality and sharing with one another. And then we see that much people were added daily. They were added to the Lord.
OK, ladies, well, time has gone for this session, but I want you to keep coming back because I’ve got many, many more of the “more” Scriptures to share with you as we walk through this LAND OF MORE AND MORE. That’s what the Bible is, and I’m going to be giving you Scriptures in the Old Testament and in the New. All these “more and mores” are in the Old and in the New. We’re going to discover a lifestyle that is in the Word of God that God wants us to live. Amen?
Are you going to come with me? Are you going to keep on this great journey?
“Dear Father, we thank You so much again for Your precious Word, and all that is in it. Help us, Lord God, to be those who see and discover, Lord, what You have given to us, that we will not miss out, but we will come into and live in all that You have provided for us. Let every mother listening today, every wife, every young person, and even fathers and husbands who may be listening. Lord, I pray Your blessing on every home. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.”
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
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Transcribed by Darlene Norris
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