FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

Episode 44: HOW CAN WE CHANGE THE WORLD? Part 10

How can I live a blissful life in the middle of chaos? How can I have another baby if I have physical problems? What are the special blessings God designed for a nursing mother?

Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, From Our Home to Yours, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.

Nancy Campbell: Here I am, with you again! And we continue to talk about this beautiful word, sozo, which is used in the context of motherhood. It's found in 1 Timothy 2, verses 13-15. I would like to read it to you in a couple of other translations.

This is the Ways translation, and it says: “Moreover, it was not Adam that was actually deceived by the tempter, but it was entirely true, her being utterly deceived, that woman has become involved in transgression. Yet, through her motherhood, shall women be saved.”

“Through her motherhood.” We found out last session that it doesn't mean only childbirth, but it's the lifestyle of childbearing, the lifestyle of motherhood, of embracing children, nurturing children. It goes on to say: “If your women swerve not from faith and love, and self-consecration, coupled with virtuous self-control.”

The Goodspeed translation says: “For Adam was formed first, and then Eve, and it was not Adam who was deceived. It was the woman who was deluded, and fell into sin. But they will be saved through motherhood.” There it is again, “saved through motherhood, if they continue to have faith, and to be loving and holy, and sensible as well.”

We realize that that beautiful word, “saved,” is sozo, and if I can remind you again, it means “to be saved, delivered, protected, preserved, healed, and made whole physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.” Wow, you can't beat that, ladies.

And that is the promise to you, as a mother, as you embrace motherhood. Isn't that beautiful? Yes, we are preserved and saved, both physically, but also emotionally and spiritually. We're also in the context of that Scripture, in those Scriptures there, the context is about deception. We are saved from deception.

That is so true. A mother who embraces her mothering and her home is saved from the deception of the enemy and the deception of the world. I have watched this so frequently, as women have given up their motherhood, and they put their children out to be looked after with someone else, gone out into the career world . . .

Of course, you can do both. Yes, you can look after your one or two children, and you can keep them fed and clothed. Of course, you can do that. And you can love them. Of course, every mother loves her child.

But you can't fully embrace the lifestyle of mothering, because you can't keep having children if you also have a career. That does not work. It's too difficult to fit them both in. And so, women get into a different lifestyle.

They go out into the marketplace, which is the world that God created for the man. And they become deceived. They often even, well, often their marriages even fall apart. You see, mothering, and mothering in the home, is a protection. It will protect. We are protected against deception.

And we're protected physically. I encourage you to look up “Preserved Through Motherhood” on the webpage.

Go to:

http://tinyurl.com/PreservedThroughMotherhood

But let me tell you a little more about this too. This word, sozo, is so wonderful. Hang on. Let me give you some more meanings.

Oh, I found other, more enlarging meanings as I studied this word.

It also means to deliver out of danger or destruction, and into safety.

It means to keep safe and sound.

To save a suffering one from perishing.

To restore to health.

To lift above trouble.

To cause something to change to an earlier correct, or appropriate state.

I think that's a very powerful meaning, because we are living in an age of deception, where so many women have moved from the estate of motherhood, the commission that God has given to mothers. As they have moved from it, they need to come back to this, to His original plan.

OK. Remember? We are made whole. Let me show you some Scriptures about this. This is such a wonderful promise to mothers. Often, we think, “Oh, how could I physically bear another child?”

But often, in bearing a child, you are healed. Oh, there are so many wonderful testimonies of women who are healed from physical ailments through childbirth. Remember in one of our last sessions, Serene shared how God completely healed her adrenals and her panic attacks when she became pregnant? She never, ever had another panic attack again. That's over nine years ago!

So, it is true that pregnancy preserves, and it heals. Look at these Scriptures.

Talking about the woman who had an issue of blood for 12 years: “And Jesus said to her, 'Daughter, be of good comfort. Your faith hath made (the word is sozo), thee whole (sozo).” That Greek word that occurs two times in that little statement, “Your faith has made you whole.” “Has made” (sozo); “whole” (sozo). You're getting it doubly there. So, we see that it means to heal. Jesus healed her. She was made whole.

What about when Jesus raised Jairus' daughter from the dead? And he went, and what did Jesus say to him? “Fear not: believe only, and she shall be made whole (sozo).” My, she was raised from the dead.

Mark 6:56 says: “And Jesus entered into the villages, and the cities, and the country, and they laid the sick in the street, and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment, and as many as touched him were made whole.” They were healed. The word is “sozo.”

When Jesus healed blind Bartimaeus, He said, “Go your way. Your faith has made (sozo), you whole (sozo).” Same word that is used for women, that we will be saved through motherhood.

Now, when Jesus healed the demoniac, it says: “They also which saw it told them by what means he that was possessed of the devils was healed (sozo).”

When Jesus healed the ten lepers, “Jesus said: “Arise, go thy way. Thy faith has made (sozo) thee whole (sozo).

 

And so, we get the message of the fullness of this word. It brings wholeness to our bodies, and not only wholeness, but so many blessings.

Oh, another wonderful article, I wonder if you read, in Above Rubies. It was “How to Live Stress Free in a Stress Filled World.” That was in Above Rubies #92. Do you still have that copy? It's the one with Rashida and Jack on the front cover, on the day of their wedding.

In this particular magazine, I write about oxytocin. By the way, you can also get that article on the webpage under “Motherhood.” You'll be able to pick it up there. Here is the link for it: https://tinyurl.com/StressFreeWorld

In this article, I wrote about this beautiful, wonderful hormone, oxytocin. The amazing thing is, the more I studied it, the more I found that this hormone is released so much in a mothering lifestyle, in the home. It is such a glorious thing. We don't really get a lot of oxytocin sitting in an office. We don't get much oxytocin, I would say we get none, when we're just working in a factory.

We don't even get much oxytocin when we're out, you know, in that career fast-paced world. No, that's not where oxytocin comes from. Shall I tell you just a few of the places where we get it? Now, of course, first of all, I've got to tell you what it's like. I mean, the descriptions of this hormone are amazing.

As I read scientific articles, these are some of the descriptions that they use for this hormone oxytocin, the most incredible molecule on the planet! It's called the stress-relieving hormone, the calming hormone. In fact, it reduces blood pressure, cortisol levels, fear, anxiety. It can even wipe out psychological and physiological problems. Yes, they have even found it helps in PTSD.

But it's also called the molecule of motherly love, the life hormone, the love hormone, cuddle hormone, bonding hormone, empathy hormone, trust hormone, and, get this one, the bliss hormone.

Now, with all those descriptions, wouldn't you love to live an oxytocin lifestyle? I want to. I just think it's a beautiful hormone. Of course, I'm isolating it, and God doesn't isolate hormones. He has all the hormones that he gives to us, He has them all working together in perfect symphony. Or they are meant to. When they get out of sync, and they're not working in perfect symphony, well, then we have problems physically.

But I just wanted to isolate this to tell you about it. It's not really meant to be isolated. It goes with other hormones. So, as I wrote in this article here, I'm just looking it up again here. I have, I think, yes, ten different ways we get oxytocin. And they're all very beautiful, practical ways. But I won't talk about them all. I'll just give you one or two here. Let me tell you this one.

No. 1. LIVE IN A FAMILY

They have found that just living in a family releases oxytocin. Because it's God's way, the way He intends us to live.

 

No. 2. CUDDLE AND TOUCH

When we touch one another and cuddle, give hugs and kiss, we're releasing oxytocin. And of course, this happens in the lifestyle of mothering. You've got a little baby. You're kissing that little baby. You’re cuddling and holding that baby nearly all day long. And as you're doing that, you're releasing oxytocin. It's so beautiful! We're meant to have babies around us.

Of course, I'm a grandmother now, even a great-grandmother. But, praise the Lord, I have still babies around me that I can hold. They are oxytocin-releasing. This is the lifestyle God loves for us. And it's not only with our little babies and our children as we hug them throughout the day.

But it's also in our marriage relationship. We need to hug and cuddle and touch and kiss our husband as much as we possibly can. In Titus chapter two, verse four, the older women are to teach the younger women to love their husbands.

Now, what does it mean, love your husbands? In the Greek, there are four different words for love. There's that beautiful word, agape love. Now that's a picture of God's love. We don't have this love naturally, because often, we love when people love us. But God's love loves the unlovely. God's love loves when we're not loved back. God's love loves even when we’re rejected and hated! Oh my. It's very hard for us to have that love. We don't have it unless we allow God's love to fill our hearts.

That's the wonderful thing. Sometimes things can happen in your marriage. Love goes out the door because you've been hurt. Oh, hurt can bring bitterness. Hurt just wipes out love in the natural. But you see, we have something beyond that. If you are born again, you have Christ living within you. And His love loves, even when you're rejected. So, you can still love with Christ's love that's in you! But that's not the word that is used in this passage in Titus, but it is a word we need in our marriage, because there are times we do need agape love. We need love that's beyond our physical love.

Then, of course, there's eros love, which is sexual love. That's very important in the marriage, but that's not the word that's used here.

There's another word, storge, which is family love.

But the word that's used here is philandros. That word is friendship love. It means to be affectionate and cuddly. Isn't it interesting that God uses that word? He wants us to be affectionate to our husbands.

Not just to know in our hearts that we love them. Yes, it’s easy to begin to live your marriage like that. You get into a bit of a rut. You know you love one another, you've got a good stable marriage, but sometimes you forget to actually show it. To every time you see your husband, to touch him, cuddle him, just have a little smooch. Love him.

These are important things. This is what the Bible tells us to do. And every time you do this, you release oxytocin! Wow. That is so cool! And so, we live this oxytocin lifestyle.

Also, we release oxytocin through eating. That's why it's so important (that doesn't mean just eating a sandwich in the car). No, it's eating together, sitting around a table together. The togetherness, the release of togetherness and discussion and fellowship and heart to heart talking, that releases oxytocin.

It's not just eating. It's eating and fellowshipping. It brings a calming. It's stress relieving. That's why it's so important, lovely, precious mothers, to make sure we prepare meals, that we set them on the table, and we gather the family.

We don't ever allow our family, our children, to sit around anywhere in the house eating their meals. No! Meals are to be eaten together. Together! Just get it together.

I just wrote yesterday on my Facebook. By the time you hear this podcast, it will be way, way, way, way down, but I wrote about how our table is an altar. If you want to just read what I wrote, you can email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. I'm always happy to send it to you. I haven't got time to go into that now. But I want to remind you that it's also a place of releasing oxytocin.

Of course, lovemaking in marriage, that's one of the greatest ways we release oxytocin, which is so wonderful. That's why you don't do it every now and then. It should be a very regular part of your lives. Even scientific studies say that this does not happen with people with one-night stands. The releasing of oxytocin through lovemaking happens in a stable marriage, where the husband and wife are continually together.

And of course, embracing children. Oxytocin is involved in childbirth, yes, even in birthing children. Oxytocin is a very powerful hormone. And also, in the afterglow of childbirth. Oh, have you experienced that? I cannot think of anything more incredible, of that incredible high! “The high,” also called the “afterglow,” that you have after you have given birth. Oh, it is so incredible! It's amazing!

Of course, you don't get that if you haven't gone through the birth process. Many will want to get panned out, and make sure they can't feel anything, and they don't really go through the labor. And they miss out! They don't know this incredible joy and high of the afterglow of childbirth. That's oxytocin too.

And then, of course, when you nurse your baby! Oh, precious ladies! When you nurse your babies, you're releasing oxytocin! And you're also releasing prolactin, too. Both are wonderful hormones.

If you're nursing, dear mother, oh, just embrace it with all your heart. Love this season of nursing your baby and don't try to stop it! Squeeze out as much oxytocin as you can! Because it's such a wonderful, calming, stress-relieving hormone!

God is so amazing! You see, He gives this hormone to mothers when they've have a little baby. It's stress-relieving. It's calming. It's bonding. It's loving. It's this hormone that makes you more motherly, and it also calms you.

Have you noticed, I think you'll notice this if you've got quite a few children, you may not notice it so much with your first baby? But when you have two or three around you, and they're all crying, and this one wants you, and this one's having a fight with another one! Oh goodness me, you feel like tearing your hair out! And then the baby cries! Ooooh!

And you pick up the baby and the milk lets down. Oooh, you relax. It's oxytocin. You see, God, the Giver of life, the Giver of blessings, gives you oxytocin to enable you in your mothering. Don't you love Him? Isn't God so good?

Prolactin, this is an amazing hormone, too. In fact, science says the more you feed your baby, the more motherly you'll become, because every time you nurse your baby, you release prolactin. And it's a very motherly hormone. It's also a very, very protective hormone. Oh my, when you are nursing your baby, you are a protective mother! You are guarding, watching over your baby! Look out! This is why a nursing mother finds it so hard to leave her baby because she has prolactin!

So, embrace this time. Oh, dear mother, remember you are actually, the Bible says, you are a suckling mother. Do you know that passage? I'm just thinking of it now, in Matthew 19. Let me go to it. The Pharisees, they came to Jesus and were tempting Him, and asking Him about divorce. And Jesus answered them in verse four.

He said: “Have you not read? That He which made them in the beginning made them male and female?” We all know that Scripture. We read it, and we don't think too much about it, because we say, “Yes, of course! He made us male and female.”

But when we look into the Greek word, oh wow! We see something so interesting, because the main word for women in the New Testament is the word, oh my, what IS that word now? Um, I'm just forgetting it. (It’s gune, meaning “woman or wife”).

But there's a different word used here. It's only used in this passage when Jesus spoke these words, and in Romans 1. It comes from the root word thele, which means “the nipple of a woman's breast.” The noun of this word means just “a woman's breast, or a suckling mother.” The verb means “to suckle a babe at the breast.”

Ladies, that's the word that is used in this passage. Isn't that amazing? Jesus was saying that when He made male and female, He made the female to be a suckling mother. Oh yes, this is only just a season of your life. But in a mother who embraces mothering, it will be quite a few years, quite a lengthy season. And as this becomes part of her life, she will continue to be a suckling mother as she suckles others (spiritually) and brings comfort and blessings to them. It's who we are as women, physically, literally, suckling mothers! But then also innately just nurturing and mothering. This is what it's all about.

The word for “male” is also interesting. It's a word that means “to lift up, to lift up a weight.” It's talking about a man who is stronger and able to lift heavier weights than the woman. It's talking about the greater brute strength of a man. So, these things come into the Greek words that are used there.

So, ladies, are you nursing? Don't try to wean too soon. No, let your baby nurse as long as your baby wants to nurse. Some babies might just want to wean at one year. Some may want to wean at two years. But some, they like to linger on for three, or even four years or so.

Of course, you're not nursing a little child like a little baby. No, it may be that little night time snack, or when they're very sick, or when they're hurting, or when they're just frightened. They still have that beautiful relationship. Just wean when they taper off, when they are ready to wean.

And don't schedule your nursing, and only nurse, well, at certain times. My goodness me! That is ridiculous. Have you ever seen in your life an animal ever doing that? “Well, I have to have my three-hourly or four-hourly schedule, and that's the only time I can feed”?

No, you watch a little lamb with its mother. It nurses a little and goes off a little way. Then it comes back and has a little nibble again. This little lamb nurses off and on all day. You watch that with all the animals, mammals. That's just how they nurse. It's just a natural way.

You think, “Oh goodness me! I just fed that baby about seven minutes ago, and it's still crying! Oh goodness me!” But you see, darling ladies, nursing your baby is so much more than only feeding your baby. No, nursing your baby is mothering your baby.

And so, when your baby is crying, and it's fretful, and you don't even know what's wrong, you can put the baby to the breast. As you do that, maybe you'll put it to the side that's a little emptier, because they're wanting to suck. It's not because they are always wanting to get milk.

They're wanting to suck. It's satisfying. It's comforting. It's consoling. You're bringing comfort and consolation and comfort to your baby. That's what mothering is all about, not just feeding at certain times. It's total mothering.

And as you do that, you are constantly flooded with oxytocin. And so, you live this beautiful oxytocin lifestyle. Isn't it wonderful? That's another amazing thing, too, that happens when you nurse this way.

God gives a picture of this in Isaiah chapter 66, in the very last book of Isaiah. God is giving a picture. It's an allegory about Jerusalem. But He likens Jerusalem to a nursing mother. And as we read these words about Jerusalem, it's amazing. We don't read anything about feeding a baby.

But this is what we read. I'm just turning to it now . . . all right, verse 11. “That ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations, that ye may milk out and be delighted with the abundance of her glory. For thus saith the Lord, 'Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream; then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and dandled upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted.’”

And so, as we read that, what are the words that we read? We read comfort, console, peace, delight. And we read about, not only a little newborn baby, but a baby that's being dandled on our knees, and carried on our side. An older baby, a toddler, still nursing at the breast.

Because it's mothering, it's beyond just feeding, but as we do feed, do this, mother like this, we feed our baby, and the baby gets plump and cuddly and fat and chubby, and so beautiful. And also, guess what? We actually have natural contraception! Wow!

Now, once again, time is going, so perhaps we'll talk a little bit about that next time, because I know you've got lots of qualms about that. People say, “Oh, I was nursing my baby, and I conceived!” Well, yes, that can happen. But let's talk about it more, shall we, and find out a few things.

All right, we'll do that at next time. So. let's pray.

“Father, we thank You, that as mothers together, young mums, middling, older, and even the teens and children listening, because Lord God, these truths are for us as women. And we need to know, Lord, Your plan and Your heart.

I pray that You will minister to them and bless them, Lord, with Your wonderful, wonderful Word. Oh God, precious mums who are nursing their babies, I pray that You will fill them with joy, the joy of being able to nurse, and to be who You created them to be. To receive these beautiful hormones, oxytocin and prolactin, and all the blessings You pour out.

Lord, as older mothers, help us to be encouragers and teachers of the right way for the younger generation, I pray. In the precious Name of Jesus, Amen.”

One Scripture as I close. We read it this morning in our family devotions. And it says in Jeremiah 10:23: “Oh Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” How true.

Ladies, we don't want to walk according to the steps of this world. Let's walk according to the steps God has chosen for us and that He reveals to us in His Word. Amen.

P.S. To read all the points about oxytocin, go to: https://tinyurl.com/StressFreeWorld

 

FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

Episode 43: How Can we Change the World? Part 9

Rocky: Welcome to the podcast, FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.

Nancy: Hello lovely ladies, lovely to be with you again today. Sorry, I don't have Serene with me today. I'm on my own. However, I still have a few more thoughts of what we were talking about in the last three sessions, about the preciousness of life and how, if we are going to be those who change the world, we have to be those who not only believe in life but we adamantly advocate for life.

I have quite a few more things that are on my heart. Remember, we talked about how abortion is murder, but there's even more, because we talked about how even contraception and sterilization stops life. In fact, I think that this maybe one of Satan's greatest accomplishments. Through contraception and sterilization, Satan, because he is the mastermind of getting rid of life, has been able to eliminate literally thousands and millions of lives of precious people who have never come into this world, who have been deprived of life, deprived of eternity, yet many were in God's heart. This is how he eliminates life more than every other way.

Of course, there is abortion, which is horrific, but that's a back-up plan. If life is conceived, we've got life, but we still have got to get rid of it because Satan comes to rob, kill, and destroy. He uses contraception, sterilization, and abortion. When we get to understand this, it gets a little personal, doesn't it? It gets a little challenging.

Maybe you're thinking, help, that's all very well, but does that mean to say that I have to let God be in control of my womb? Wow, that's huge. Well, have you heard that little saying? I've heard preachers say it many times: “If He is not Lord of all, He is not Lord at all.” To tell you the truth, that is correct. If God is only Lord and master of just the things we want Him to be master of in our lives, but we keep back what we want to control, is He truly Lord? It's a big question, isn't it? Now, I'm not speaking to you as some holier than thou, “I've done it all correctly,” because I haven't. I think back with great regret.

The other night we had a beautiful family sitting around our table and they looked up at our family picture on the wall with our six children (that was before we adopted more children from Liberia). They said, “Oh, what a lovely picture.” I replied, “Yes. it is a lovely picture, but it also a sad picture because there are children missing from that picture.” That is true. I look at that picture, and I think of the children that are missing, even though there were six there at that time.

At that time of my life, I was a victim of society, a victim of our humanistic ways and thinking, and I didn't understand like I do now. When God revealed the truth to me, wow, it was such a revolutionary truth. When I understood God's heart for life, I had to repent. I don't think I have ever repented about anything so much as stopping children that God wanted to come into the world. I was on my knees for days repenting. Of course, I know that when we repent, God forgives, but I still have times of repenting because it is a huge thing.

We do pay the consequences for our actions, and I have missing today children that I knew I was meant to have, and that is a very sad thing to me. When we say No to children, we do deprive ourselves. In fact, we deprive quite a number of people. We not only deprive ourselves, because, is there any more wonderful gift that we can receive than a baby? This is a baby. This is precious.

There are people, even in-laws and out-laws, perhaps some of you will have faced this when you conceived, and you're having another baby and you're too scared to tell your parents or your parents-in-law because you know what they are thinking about babies and they are going to be not very happy about it and so negative. I know some couples who don't even tell them right till the end.

Sometimes mothers will call me, “Nancy, I'm expecting another baby, and we are actually so happy about it, but we are too scared to tell our parents.” I said, “Look, don't worry, because when this little baby arrives, they will love this baby.” It's so true. It's not that they don't love babies; it's that they have been propagandized in their brains by society which hates life. They are programmed to be against life, but when that little life is born, this is a bundle of life, a bundle of cuddles and smiles and joy and blessings and, of course, they love that baby. Sometimes you have to wait until the baby is born.

A baby is always a blessing even when you conceive, and you think this is not a good time. We are going through this, and we've got no money, and you think help, help, help. Yet a baby always fits into the family and into every situation. A baby always is a blessing. God's Word never lies; it is true that children are a blessing.

Not only do we deprive ourselves of this blessing, we deprive our other children. Children love brothers and sisters. The best thing they can ever receive in life is another brother or sister. I see, as my children have had babies, and as the new baby comes in to the family, the joy. Not just the joy of the parents, the joy of the whole family. I remember one time, it was one of Serene's babies that was born, and she was in one of our bedrooms at our home with the newborn baby. The baby was born there. All her children came in to see the baby, not only all her children but all the cousins. The room was filled with excitement and hilarious joy that there was a new baby in the family. Everyone was wanting to get close to see this baby and hold this baby, and some of the cousins missed out because there were so many that wanted to have a turn with this baby. They were so upset because this baby was the delight of not only the family but the whole extended family!

Babies bring such a blessing, and babies are a friend that you'll have for life. The more you grow older, the more you realize God's way is so beautiful and family is the most powerful thing on earth. Family ties are so powerful. As you get older, you have many friends throughout the years. Colin and I have had so many friends throughout the years, back in New Zealand, then when we lived in Australia, and now here in the States, and friends are so precious. We love friends.

There's nothing like family. When something happens in your life, it's family that gets together; it's family that bears the burden; its family that shares the joys. Colin and I have just been back to New Zealand to see some of my family and his family. They are getting older and some are in their eighties now and what joy to be with family. You see, the brothers and sisters that we have, they are family for life. It's something we have for life.

Colin is blessed to be one of nine siblings, so it's a lot to get around all of his siblings. Half of them live in New Zealand and half in Australia, so we didn't even get to the Australian ones this time.

What joy.

Sadly, I was only one of three children. My sister and I, Kate, who lives here not far from me now, often say, “Wow, we were deprived.” As we grew older, we went to different countries; the three of us were living in different countries for many years of our lives, and we didn't even get to enjoy one another. Sometimes, you need a lot of siblings to be able to enjoy them as you get older.

We also deprive our grandparents. Couples get to a stage where they are just longing for grandchildren. I have to admit there are some who don't seem to care and have raised their children into careers, and they just accept that lifestyle. There are others who are longing for grandchildren, and many of them are waiting and waiting. Sometimes, I meet older couples on our travels, and they are our age, and I'll say to them, “Do you have any grandchildren?” And some of them will say, “No, and we don't know when we are going to get them. Our children are in their careers, and they don't have time for children.” You see the longing and sadness in their eyes. Others will light up and say, “Yes, we've got two.” Those two grandchildren are the delight of their lives. They don't know if they will get anymore, so I guess they are just spoiled and spoiled and spoiled because they don't have many to pour out their love upon. Then sometimes I will reply, “Well, we've got 47 grandchildren so far, hoping for more.” They look at me as though I am from outer space, yet this is meant to be the glory of grandparents, their grandchildren. We are living in such   deluded world, aren't we? It's opposite to how God intends.

Stopping children deprives grandparents.

It deprives society because every child that comes into the world, especially of godly parents and raised by godly parents, is going to grow up knowing the Lord. We trust that they will be born again and follow Jesus and they will go out into this world to shine with His love and His glory and bring His truth and His gospel to the world. The more children we raise to serve the Lord, the more impact we have upon society.

We deprive society. We deprive the world when we stop having children. In fact, we have deprived the United States of America because, at this time that we have, where it's neck and neck of those who are conservative and want righteous values and who stand for life and righteousness and those who are liberal and pro-abortion and pro homosexuality and everything that is against God's ways, and here we are, there's this neck and neck. It's not meant to be like that.

I think I shared with you that passage in Exodus one where the children of Israel were in Egypt and how they multiplied, and they grew “more and mightier” than the Egyptians. That's how God intends it to be, that His people will be more and mightier than the heathen. There's only one way they can become more and mightier than the heathen, and that is by multiplying, by embracing the children He wants for them.

The very first words that God ever spoke into the ears of man were: “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth,” but then He goes on to say: “Subdue and take dominion.” It is a progressive principle, a progressive, eternal law. The people who multiply will be people who become more and mightier, the people who will then take dominion. At the moment, God's people are not taking dominion. We have this fight on our hands. It should not be like that because God's precious people, many through ignorance, have held back the godly seed.

That passage in Malachi 2:14, it's a passage here in the last book of the Bible, and it's talking about divorce, how God hates divorce. Of course, He loves divorced people, but He hates the spirit of divorce because it affects children. It touches the children's lives. There's no child who has been a victim of divorce that has not been negatively affected in their lives. God doesn't intend this. In this passage where He's talking about it, and “What does God wants from your marriage?”

 

“I want a godly seed. I want godly offspring.” That word seed there is zerah. We talked about that in another session how that word is the same word that is used for sperm, the same word used for offspring, for people, little ones, middling ones, adults, and this is what God looks for from our marriage.

Who else do we deprive? We deprive society. We deprive the generations to come. This is huge, ladies, this is huge. We think, “Oh goodness me, I really don't have time to have another baby; I've got so much to do, and I've got all these plans. Actually, it's not a good time because, you know, we are just barely making it financially, so we will make sure we stop any babies coming.” We have no idea of what we are doing, of who we are depriving. We also deprive the generations to come because when we say No to one child, it's not one child, it's a dynasty.

Every child, well most children on the average, will grow up to marry and have children hopefully. There are some who don't marry, and some who maybe can't have children, but the general rule is that they will grow up, they will marry, they will have children. This is God's plan for the building of the generations, but when we say No, we stop not just one child but a whole dynasty. The next generation and the next generation and the next generation. We are only thinking of my little situation at the moment and my little problem that I don't think I can fit in another child, and we forget that we are depleting generations, and we are stopping the continuing of godly generations.

We deprive the church. Yes, we should be filling the churches with the godly seed. How wonderful to be in a church where there are lots of families and children and little ones coming on. It's how it’s meant to be.

We deprive eternity, yes, eternity. We think nothing of stopping a child, yet we deprive eternity. God wants to fill eternity. He loves to bring people into His promise of eternal life. My mind can never even fathom the glories of eternity. The Bible says that it will take the ages, and that word is a word that speaks of eternity, of its unending ages. It will take the ages and ages to come to understand the glories and the enormity of our salvation and even the glories of living in this eternal realm. We deprive our own children, who could be our own children, of enjoying this incredible blessing, more than living here in this life.

Lastly, we deprive God. As I was reading in Malachi, “What does He look for”?  He says: “From your union, from your marriage union, I look for godly offspring.” I'm always amazed and challenged by that word. That word: “I look for godly offspring.” That word, godly, is the word Elohim. Now, I'm sure you are aware that that's one of the names of God. Elohim. What is God saying here? He's saying He wants children who are like Him, who will grow into His image, who will be born again and conformed to the image of His Son and who will go out into the world to reveal that image and that glory. That's God's ultimate plan.

We're not just having children or not having children because of what we decide. It's all God. We have them for God, for His plan, for His purposes, and we don't want to thwart or defeat His purposes in the world. It's a powerful thing, isn't it? You can imagine, as I began to understand these things, I did a lot of repenting.

Now, my husband, I can remember him saying, what a lot of rot. Can you believe that? He was a pastor too and still is a pastor today. Sadly, there are thousands and thousands of pastors who are deceived. Wonderful men of God, but they don't understand His truth and His heart on this matter.  Anyway, of course, because my husband wants to know truth, he began to get into the Word, as I began to get into the Word, and we began to see, our eyes were opened to see what God said. As he got into the Word, God challenged him. He had to completely change his whole thinking. He had to repent and turn back to God's ways. I remember, about this time, he had an invitation to speak at a men's conference, and he said to me, “Well Nancy, I see that this is the truth of God's word, it's God's heart, but I can't speak about it because if do, I'll never get another invitation again.” He went off to this men's conference, and he wasn't going to speak about this subject, but he got home, and he said to me, “I opened my mouth, and I began to speak and that's all I spoke about.” My husband is one who always speaks about what's in his heart. He never holds anything back. The amazing thing was, he said, was that it was well received. Because the men saw from the Scripture, what could they say?

It was also from that time why I wrote the book, Be Fruitful and Multiply, and I was writing all that I saw in the Word, and that book is filled with Scriptures, the Word of God. Sadly, at the moment, it's out of print, and we are planning to reprint it. You can still get it by an audio version. You can go onto the website, aboverubies.org, put into the search, Be Fruitful and Multiply and up will come the audio version which is often better anyway. I know that most husbands don't like to read, and they'd rather listen, maybe as they are traveling on their way to work or home or whenever. You can listen to it as you're working around or going for a walk or something like that. It's wonderful to hear the Scriptures and what God says.

Even when you begin to hear about this, you think, how can I walk this? I don't feel emotionally prepared, and I don't know how we could do it financially. That's why it is important for us to know what God says. We have to know the Scriptures. We've got to get into the Scriptures. That's why I encourage people to listen to or if they have a copy of Be Fruitful and Multiply, and there's lots of other books out there as well.

What does Romans say? “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” I think it's difficult to walk in the truth of any scriptural truth in the Word of God. If we just hear somebody talk about it, that's not enough. We've got to go to the Scriptures and find out what God says. As the Scriptures become part of us, and they fill us up, you know what happens? Faith arises; faith grows, and as faith grows, we can walk in it. That's the only way you can walk in this truth, as faith builds up in your heart. The only way faith will build up is as you know the Scriptures. That's how it works.

Some of you may be thinking, “Well, I'm so overwhelmed now, how can I ever cope with another baby?” Well, that's another interesting thing. I love that Scripture in 1 Timothy 2:15 and it talks there about how women will be saved through childbearing. Do you remember that Scripture? Some people think, “Oh, that means I can be saved from having a painful child birth.” No, that's not what this Scripture is saying. Although, I do know some people who have had pain-free child births; I wasn't one of them. Although, I have to confess that all my births, although they were not pain-free and they were true labor, that's what the word really means, it's laboring, sometimes groaning labor, but they were all so glorious, perhaps some of the most beautiful experiences of my life. It's not saying that here.

Do you notice the word is childbearing? It is the picture of embracing motherhood and embracing the role of childbearing. The Bible says that it is in this, that we will be saved, the embracing of this lifestyle. The word there in the Greek, to be saved, is sozo. It's actually pronounced sodzo, although spelled S-O-Z-O. This word means more than saved.

This word is used a lot in the New Testament, usually translated saved, but the full meaning, and we must know the full meaning. It is important to know what something truly and fully means. This is what it means ladies. Listen for it because this is powerful. It means “to save, deliver, protect, heal, cure, preserve, keep safe, and make whole.” This word is often used in being saved. We think of Romans 10:13: “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Yes, we are saved from our sin, from the guilt of sin, the power of sin when we call upon the name of the Lord, but that Scripture also means more than just saved, it means the full meaning. We will be delivered, protected, healed, preserved, and made whole. This is the fullness of our salvation, ladies.

What does it say in Romans 10:9, 10? “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Yes, saved from your sin but delivered from the power of sin, preserved, and made whole, and healed. It's a full salvation. I remember one commentator when I was reading about the meaning of this glorious word, sozo, he said, “As I understood the full meaning, every time I come to a Scripture in the Bible where it is translated “save,” I will speak out the full meaning. I speak it out loud and I say all the words.” He will say, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, delivered, protected, healed, cured, preserved, kept safe, and made whole.” Wow. If you begin to speak that out loud every time you read those Scriptures, you'll get the fullness of your salvation.

The amazing thing is, ladies, do you notice that this very same word is used to describe what happens to us as women when we embrace childbearing? What does it say again? That women will be saved in childbearing. The New American Standard Bible says that women will be “preserved.”. There's that beautiful word. Isn't that lovely? Women will be preserved through the bearing of children, the lifestyle of bearing children. Preserved, wow, that's the Word of God.

Many women think, “If I keep having babies, poor me, my poor body, what will happen to me?” No, lovely ladies, God created your body for childbearing. Yes, your body is created to function in this way and as you embrace it, you will be preserved. Yes, way back, a number of magazines ago, I did an article about women being preserved in motherhood. This is issue 77. That's a long time ago, isn't it? I wonder if you still have one of these copies.

Arden, look. There's a picture of Arden and Bowen just came back from fishing. These were when Arden and Bowen were young boys, these are our grandchildren, and now they are both married. Bowen has a little baby, and Arden and Esther are now having a little baby. If you don't have this magazine, you can go to the website, aboverubies.org and you can go to Articles and Stories. Under Articles and Stories, ladies, I have so many subjects about family life, you can click on any subject you want and under it there will be loads of articles and testimonies relating to it. Then click on Motherhood and under that you will find “Preserved through motherhood.” I'd love you to read it because it gives so many scientific studies of how as women embrace childbearing and the more babies they bring to birth and the more babies they nurse at the breast, the less instances of ovarian cancer and endometrial cancer and so on . It's very powerful.

There's another one you can look up on the website and that's “Preservation Testimonies.” Testimonies of women of how they'd been going through medical and physical things and how childbirth completely preserved them and healed them. Anyway, time has gone again, ladies. I've still got so much more to share. Can I share with you more next session? Let's pray, shall we?

Dear Father,

We thank You so much for Your living, wonderful Word that reveals Your way to us. Lord God, we are living in this deceived age. I pray that You will help us all to live by, not what we hear in society, but by what You say. Help us to embrace with meekness Your Word, to embrace it with submission. Help us to get Your Word filling up our lives so then we can walk in faith.

Father, I pray that You will bless every precious mother. Some are struggling, Lord, with maybe opening themselves to have another baby. Lord God, You only want to bless us. Lord God, Your whole heart is for blessing, and Lord, Your Word says when You give us a child, You're blessing us. Lord, I pray that they will understand that this is Your blessing to them and to their body and to their family, to the world and for generations to come, and for eternity, and Lord God, they're walking in Your perfect will.

I pray that You will minster Your grace and Your tender love and mercy to them and show them that Your way is perfect, and it is for their blessing. In the name of Jesus. Amen.”

Check out:

PRESERVED THROUGH MOTHERHOOD

http://tinyurl.com/PreservedThroughMotherhood

PRESERVATION TESTIMONIES

http://bit.ly/PreservationTestimonies

BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY * AUDIO VERSION

http://tinyurl.com/BeFruitfulAudioUS

 

 

Episode 42: How Can We Change the World – Part 8

Serene of Trim Healthy Mama is with me again for a third session. What a miracle. Serene shares testimonies of obstacles and difficulties she faced in embracing life. What does the Bible call a pregnant woman?

Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, From Our Home to Yours, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.

Nancy Campbell: Hello, precious ladies! And guess what? I've got Serene with me again! Oh! I'm just so grateful. So, one more session together with her. You are so blessed.

Last session, Serene was mentioning a Scripture in Genesis 2:7, and we looked it up in my Bible. I just looked it up in my Strong's Concordance, and it says chayim for life. But we did a little bit more study to find out, and found that yes, it's a plural word.

Serene: So, it's the Lord God who formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and then became a living soul. Well, apparently, the Hebrew for “breath of life” is neshamah, I'm probably not pronouncing it right, chayim. And “im” is plural.

So basically, it can be translated “the breath of lives.” Mum was saying, well, that makes sense, because when God breathed into Adam, Eve was inside of him, because he took Eve from his ribs.

Nancy: Yes, she was already there.

Serene: The other reason that Bible scholars say that it was plural was because when God breathed in the breath of life, Adam received two lives, in a way. His own, the fact that he was a living human being, and the fact that God's Spirit was put inside of him.

That is truly being really recreated! For we're not created to just be and live our life. When we're really to thrive and to live, we are created to be coupled with God's life, His Spirit inside of us.

What made me think of it is another book I was reading that used that term, “breath of life.” When it was breathed into Adam “the breath of lives,” they're bringing out how Adam was given the anointing and the command in Genesis to “be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth.”

So, when he was given life, he was given the “breath of lives,” and the breath to want to continue in life.

Nancy: Yes, and God put that blessing on him. In fact, if any of you have my book, “Be Fruitful and Multiply,” you will see a chapter there which gives all the Scriptures, where every time God spoke about being fruitful, or spoke about someone having a baby, it always precedes the words with, “and God blessed them.” God blesses us to bring forth life. We can't even do it without the blessing of God.

Serene: I totally agree. I'm going to interrupt here. Boy, I'm a professional interrupter!

Nancy: Yes, that's good! That what you're made to do!

Serene: We've been talking about choosing life. Mum's been . . . the whole series . . . what is it called, Mum?

Nancy: Well, we're doing a series, it's “How Do We Change the World?”

Serene: Right!

Nancy: This subject is, of course, we've got to become adamant about how God feels about life.

Serene: And so we're on the subject about “breath of lives” being plural. It just made me think, well actually, my son Arden and his beautiful wife Esther just have received the miraculous news that they're almost nine weeks pregnant now with the most beautiful baby to come!

He was saying when he came home from their first sonogram midwife visit, that the midwife said these days now, they can detect that the DNA of the child is actually floating in the blood. They can find it in the mother's blood.

We're talking about “lives,” the breath of life. It's so interesting, and that's why I think the sad consequence of abortion, and God can take away all pain, and wipe away the tears. But the sad thing about abortion is the psychological damage done to the mother.

Because you can never get rid of your baby. And that's the thing. The baby lives on inside the mother, even when that baby grows up and moves away, and goes to a different country.

So, your children are knitted into your body, into your bones, into your brain. The mother carries stem cells of her child. They're mingled into hers, even though the child within her is a totally different human being, with a different beating heart, and different brain waves, and different DNA.

The mother does carry a part of her baby forever. So when we're talking about “breath of lives,” it just made me think of that awesome, the other, another amazing tidbit of information that helps us realize the horror of abortion, and the beauty of a mother whose children, like yours now, Mum, who are all up and out of the nest, and wandering around the whole world, different countries at all different times.

But you still carry them in your heart. That's why, I think when a mother thinks about her children, she clutches her heart. In a sense, she's still holding them when she clutches her heart.

Nancy: Exactly! And to this day, I mean, it's part of a mother when she has a baby, she's always swaying, because she's rocking her baby. After you've had babies, you don't stop doing that. Well, of course, I have grandbabies, and now great grandbabies who I still rock. But swaying now is just part of my being. I still can't stop swaying!

Serene: When you hear a baby cry, and you're not holding a baby, I start swaying, because I think it's going to help the baby!

Nancy: Exactly! Because motherhood is so a part of you. Isn't it amazing? Motherhood is not something that is making you smaller, or less powerful. It's making you more powerful as you carry these children, continually, for your whole life. It's unbelievable! Everything about motherhood is so amazing.

Serene: So, from, oh, I hate that word “fetal.” I know it's probably all wonderful and everything . . . I just like “baby”!

So anyway, fetal cells are probably sprinkled throughout a mother's brain. A study of women who had died in the seventies found that the heart of the woman had male DNA, a snippet from the Y chromosome in her brain, presumably from when her sons were in the womb.

Scientists often look for male DNA in a woman, because it's easier than distinguishing a daughter's DNA from her mother's. If DNA from daughters were included, the number of women whose children's cells are in their brains would probably be even higher.

It's so interesting how we carry them in our hearts and in our minds in this way, as well. You know, I'm an extremist in everything that I do. And I'm not saying that this is theologically correct, or even biologically correct, but sometimes, if I have a child that's sick, or a child that's, whatever . . . when I take communion, I know that through the Blood of Christ and His stripes we are healed . . . I take it like I'm taking it for them, because I feel like I've got their cells in my body.

Even when my son, Arden was battling cancer, and I'd be like, “Oh, Lord, we need You!” it would be like my heart was crying out like it was me that was sick. It's just so interesting, because that's the beauty of parenthood, that you don't ever really separate from your children.

That's where we do need to minister and reach out to those who have been victimized by abortion. It's not just the baby. Its society dumbing us all down, society hoodwinking us, demonic activity at work, pulling the wool over our eyes.

There are precious women, and precious young men even, they're finding out that even the men, they’re coming out that men who have sought counseling, young men are racked with grief. It comes out in different ways they actually don't even realize in some hearts. Their lives, they come to find out that since the abortion has happened in their lives, you can't separate yourself from the children.

So there is this need to outreach to the people who have been through abortion and have become aware now of the truth of life, and they need to be encouraged of God's forgiveness and His grace. It is only He who can wipe those tears away.

It's something, when you've had an abortion, you're still carrying that child. And there's that pain of that.

Nancy: Yes. You were mentioning something about the demonic powers before, Serene. You know, I have found ladies, that this issue is actually . . . I'm quite amazed, many times, to find that it's a real battle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan.

You can talk to a secular person about having children, and perhaps they see you. Maybe you have three, four, five children, and they say, “Oh, goodness, are these all yours?” Of course, you will answer them so positively, and say, “Oh, yes! We LOVE children! Don't you?”

They'll say, “Oh well. Good for you!” But they don't get mad about it. You know, “OK, that's not for me. OK, that's for you.”

But I have found, oh my, not every time of course, but sometimes when I have spoken to someone who knows the Lord, they walk with God, but you bring this subject up, and suddenly, it's World War III!

This violent reaction! Now what is that? I believe it's a battle, it's a battle for life! It seems that the battle is greater in the godly people, because Satan is out to destroy the godly seed.

Serene: That reminds me, Mum, of when I first got married.

Nancy: Oh yes! Oh my! Tell us that story.

Serene:  I was signed with a record company and they put a lot of money into us. When I first came and told them that I was getting married, they're like, “Well, go outside the door. Come back in, and we'll pretend we didn't hear that.”

I suppose you can't sell as many records and have the right appeal if you're married. (Laughs) And so, anyway, I remember the morning we were to sign a contract that I wouldn't have children for three years, at least.

Nancy:  Oooh. Christian?

Serene: Christian. And when they found out that I was just going to go ahead and have children because my husband and I (I was drawn to my husband because of the way he loved children). We went on dates when first our relationship was growing. We used to try to pick up as many children as we could, our nephews and nieces, and go to the park.

Our dates were all centered around children. That's how we enjoyed each other, was with children. I mean, there's many other reasons I love him, but he was a magnet to children. I loved that about him. So we were wanting children from the get-go.

When people close to us found out about that, not my mum and dad, but many others, we were faced with such strong opposition. We had people say, “You signed a contract to be part of this record label. We've heard about that.”

All those people leading our church said . . . we had people saying they wouldn't come to our wedding. We had people praying that we'd be sterile!

Nancy: This shows such a spiritual battle! It's outrageous!

Serene: On our honeymoon we were still on tour, and we had to go out the next two days after the wedding to go on tour. We had people trying to arrange that we had to sleep on the couch, and not in the bedroom like some of the other band members, because they didn't want us to have the babies.

It was just so strange, but I remember those first few months of being married. I was reading . . . Mum is amazing in the fact that she has had these beliefs her whole life. She raised us with Scripture, but she never forced these . . . I want to declare that right now.

She never raised us to be robots like, OK, I've got this revelation from God about life, and where life begins, and how the devil is after life, even in the form of contraception. But she never programmed that into us.

So when all this stuff was happening with the record company, and I came to her for advice, she never said, “Well, this is what you have to do! You have to go in there and tell them you're for life and contraception's wrong!”

She never said it. She said, “Oh, I'll pray for you, and go to the Scriptures.” She was so supportive, but she never told me what to do.

I just remember picking up a book, “Abortion and the Church.” It has that picture of the blood flowing down the steps of the church on the front. I was looking into .. . . even though I believed in children, because it was a love of mine. Maybe I didn't know all the Scriptures, but it was just an instinct to want that when I first got married.

But I was reading, and my husband was in the Army, and he had gone away and left at three o'clock in the morning. I just couldn't go back to sleep straightaway, so I picked up the book, “Abortion and the Church,” and I was reading it.

I fell asleep reading it. I must have turned onto my stomach somehow. I woke up to the feeling that my body was dead, but I was trapped inside my body. I could not move. I felt like there were a trillion camels on my back. The weight upon my back, it made me feel like my body would not obey me.

I wanted to move, to look around the room, because I sensed such an evil presence. At this time in my life, I had never experienced any demonic realm at all. I was raised in such a godly home, never ever experienced anything evil.

The shutters were shaking in my room. The windows were locked tight. It was our apartment when we were first married. The shutters were moving back and forth, like sh-sh-sh, making a rattling sound. I couldn't move. I was screaming inside of my mind, “Turn around to see who's in the room! Turn around!” And I couldn't.

I remembered to just claim the Name of Jesus. I could hardly get the word out, “Jesus!” And when I said it, everything stopped. I got up, and I looked at what was in my home. It was the book, “Abortion in the Church.”

That was the time in our lives when I was going through what was I going to choose. Was I going to fold and say, “OK, we won't have children for blah, blah, blah, because they put a million bucks into us, or whatever . . . I need to fold.”

“Or am I going to stand with my convictions? I want to have a baby.” And Arden, our first-born, was a honeymoon baby. It was him that the devil was trying to stop. But that was interesting. I found that I actually experienced the heavy opposition of the demonic realm.

It came to me choosing life in my mind . . . like OK, I'm going to choose this path of choosing life. But it was also the devil trying to stop somebody coming into the world.

It was demonic as people actually stopped being my friends because I was going to choose to have a baby.

Nancy: You can't believe it, can you? And maybe some of you have had to face difficult things like this. In fact, some of you may be thinking, “Oh, goodness, you're talking all about this life, but you don't know what I had to face to have a baby! You don’t know our circumstances, I mean, how can we even afford to have another baby?!”

You know, there's so many things that can come against us in the natural to have a baby. I remember reading a little line, way back when I was having my children. It just said, “There is never a convenient time to have a baby.”

That is so true. If we want to find the time when we think it's perfect, and convenient, and everything is going well in our home, and it's going to fit, and it's going to be right, we'll never find that time! So we never find, in our eyes, a convenient time.

But! We find, we get pregnant, oh, wow! Oh goodness me! But it will fit in. The baby fits in. The baby, ohhh, it fits in God's timing. Always in God's . . . a convenient timing.

Serene: I find actually the baby is a way of God saying, “He gently leads those with young” (Isiah 40:11). God's way of saying, “Well, I'm going to help you to settle down,” because oftentimes in a pregnancy, you'll just get more tired, and you'll need to take that nap. Or when your baby's here, and you have to sit down to nurse.

You actually have more of a restful life. You've got the hormone relaxin flowing through your body. You're actually more of a relaxed person.

Nancy: Absolutely!

Serene: I find that, when I have another baby, my oldest children in the home get a softer and more devoted mother.

Nancy: Oh yes. I know, because that love, that oxytocin, that love and the nurture, and the joy, and the calmness that comes from oxytocin and prolactin that's just flowing out of you when you're a nursing mother . . . it affects the whole family, doesn't it?

In fact, did you ever read my article, I think it was Above Rubies #92, How to Live Stress-Free in a Stress-filled World? I talked about the hormone oxytocin, and oh, God is so good! I mean, when you're in the home, and you're embracing babies, and birthing and nurturing babies, and nursing them at the breast, you are just oozing oxytocin, which is the stress-free hormone!

This is what God intends for us as mothers, to enjoy this kind of lifestyle. But then again, I know, we were talking about some of you facing, oh, you face all different kinds of things.

Now Serene, what about that challenging time in your life, when you adopted children from Liberia, you adopted your own. And then, you even took into your home some others of people who just weren't able to cope with the ones they adopted. I think you had eight adopted children in your home at the same time!

Serene: Teenagers, all at the same time!

Nancy: And all in rebellion. I think that might have been about the most challenging and difficult time of your whole life.

Serene: I remember falling and screaming on the kitchen floor, saying, “I can't do it anymore!”

Nancy: Yes, Serene went through a very, very horrific time.

Serene: Well, my adrenals got flatlined, and I was just . . . but you know what happened? Oh, I love people say, OK, wow.

Nancy: But of course, you got, you know, because of your adrenals, they were wiped out. You got into these panic attacks, which were just, well, I mean, they just totally immobilized you.

Serene: I really thought I was dying, like many times.

Nancy: We were taking you up to the hospital all the time!

Serene: I was saying good-bye. Well, look after my children. I literally thought I was leaving my body.

Nancy: And so, going through that, how can you have another baby?

Serene: Well, I had so many people advising me, you know, you've done your thing now, you've done your stint. Pull back, cover your wagons, you've done a good job, now go back and relax. But you know, there was a time that I decided to believe that.

I started really looking after myself in this self-absorbed way, like putting masking tape over every little blue light in the room and wearing a mask over my eyes so that all the melatonin, blah, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. I was taking all these supplements, and I was getting sicker and sicker because I was getting self-absorbed.

Then I felt like, you know what? I just had this picture of me being in birth. It was all of a sudden, in my brain, and I couldn't get it out of my head. I started longing for another baby. We got pregnant with Breeze. She was called Breeze because we wanted the Breeze of God, the soft breeze after the tornado that came through our lives. You know, it felt like a tornado.

But you know what happened? The pregnancy healed me. The hormones that . . . I got a burst of hormones. After 24 you're in decline hormonally, unless you're breastfeeding or pregnant. Then you're getting a surge. I got a surge of all these wonderful hormones in my body.

It wasn't necessarily a pregnancy where I had the perfect nap every day. Maybe I did, like five times, get a nap, I don't know. But the pregnancy healed me. I've since researched that, how pregnancy can reset your hormones, and your levels of your adrenals. I'm healed.

Nancy: I know. Isn't that amazing? Could you imagine, could you even imagine if you'd stopped with Breezy? I mean, she is the most beautiful, beautiful child. Nine years old. And now, since Breezy, you've had Haven, who is the most adorable child.

Serene: And Haven. And Haven's pregnancy was a total spiritual journey. You see, I think when you're pregnant, you become pregnant spiritually too, in a way, I think, if you allow God to. Every pregnancy, I feel like God's conceived something inside of me spiritually and brings it to birth.

In Haven's pregnancy, God was doing a spiritual awakening of me, that He was my Rest. And as I called her Haven Rest, because the part of being anxious and suffering all these panic attacks, I feel like, in Haven's pregnancy was when I really let go, to just finally trust the Lord at such a deep level. And Haven Rest came along.

Each baby, and then, after Haven, then we had Remmy, which is just, he's the most incredible gift. And now our little baby, Solly, who is blue-eyed. Remmy and Solly are blue-eyed. All my other children are brown, and deep brown eyes as you can get. No one ever thought that my husband and I could have a blue-eyed little one too. People say we've run out of brown, but we'll see!

Nancy: (laughing) Well, now you're just hoping you'll fit some more in yet!

Serene: Well, that's the sad thing, you see. Now come this fall, and I know, I'm all about embracing the season. I'm not going to mourn over a season that God wants me to change into a new season. Like when I'm your age, Mum. I'm going to embrace my empressness.

I don't want to embalm an 18-year-old in my head. I don't want to constantly want to live the glory days of 18. I don't want that now, now I'm forty, how old am I? 42? I want to be queen now. When I'm your age, I want to move on, and be an empress.

I was just reading the other day, how the glory of an older man . . . the glory of a young man is his strength, but the glory of an older man is the hoary-headed gray hair. It's beauty. It's beauty. So we want to move on.

So I want to embrace when, like my sister Evangeline, to embrace the season now she's no longer having babies. And she's off with her husband kayaking, and doing all these adventures, and it's great! It's a new season. She can go off and all these amazing witnessing places where angels fear to tread, couldn't make it through anymore. All that to say, what was I saying? (laughter)

Nancy: You were hoping that you would be blessed again . . .

Serene: So I'm still hoping, but now I'm 42! Whoo! Every baby from here on out is going to be a beautiful, amazing gift. Every baby will be like, will this be the last? I'm not sure, but it's going to be a . . . it's over too soon.

And that's the sad thing about contraception that's permanent, like tying of the tubes, and things like that. Vasectomies, especially tying of the tubes, because I've been researching that lately. They say that when a young woman does that, when she's in her twenties or early thirties, she has a . . . it's called a . . . there's a syndrome actually called Tubes Tied Syndrome, I don't know.

But it's actually where there's certain hormonal issues, and heavy bleeding, and anemia, and all this stuff that can come through tying the tubes.

Nancy: They say that most times, the sterilization of the woman leads to hysterectomy. That's just where it ends up.

Serene: It's a sad thing. I know some friends who have had their tubes tied, and one is so severely anemic. Her periods have gotten heavier and heavier and heavier and heavier. That's one of the symptoms of having the tubes tied.

But the sad thing is, you see, it's over, quick. You're only fertile for a certain window, depending on when you get married. So you get married in your mid-twenties...

Nancy: By your mid-forties, you're finished!

Serene: Well, let's pray not! But you know, some women, who start to cycle earlier in life, there's only a certain window, and then you have your tubes tied until you're 80-something.

Nancy: When you think about it, your time of visitation is a very short window. It's only about 20 years of your whole life. You may live to 80 or 90.

Serene: Long time for a woman 23 or so.

Nancy: Hallelujah! Yes! Well, that reminds me of another Scripture, which I think really exposes something. It's in that beautiful story of when Sarah conceived. This is chapter 18 of Genesis.

Serene: But it's also fun. While you're looking up chapter 18 . . . you know, when my son walked down the aisle, uh, he didn't walk down the aisle! When his wife walked down the aisle, he walked me down the aisle to my spot before the wedding began. But I was holding a baby, and here's my son getting married. It was fun. I'm like, wow, this is a great adventure, I've got one now getting married, and I still have a baby in my arms.

And now they're having a baby, and I have grandchildren already through my adopted children. Now the new generation, Mum, some of my oldest sisters' children are having babies now too. It's so fun, because they learn off of me, because I'm having babies, and they're asking me advice.

But I'm asking them advice, of all the things that you forget when you're an older mother. You forget all the wonderful, energetic ideas you have of early motherhood.

I, the other day, got all the young mums, all my nieces in the room, and I asked them, “So how do you train a child to go to sleep again? I forgot. Can you all tell me?” And they said all these wonderful, energetic ideas. I'm so racked now, in my nights, that the babies just overwhelm now, and I'm heeding their advice.

It's fun, though, to give and to take, when you've been through the gamut, and you're along the season of motherhood, you have these relationships now with these new mums. You can learn from each other and have that great relationship.

Nancy: They come up with these great ideas, which they will most probably begin to drop a little bit of, along the way. Because, have you found too, that, you know, in mothering, you do just get a little more lax, and you relax more, and you just enjoy your babies.

Serene: And they are a little bit more well dressed, and their hair's always perfect. Arden is sitting here, he does the technical part of my Mum's podcast, he was my best dressed. And his hair was always swept to the side, perfectly. All the others, well, (laughter) their older sisters keep them looking not so “ragamuffin.”

Nancy: OK, here's Genesis 18, and this is where God came, and He promised Sarah and Abraham that they would have a son. Let's see, where are we? They visited them, the angels came, and they said unto Abraham, “Where is Sarah?” And he said, “Behold, in the tent.” She was in the heart of the home.

“And he said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life; and lo,” Behold! “Sarah will have a son.” Now that's a very interesting phrase. Have you read that before? The time of life the Bible talks about?

Serene: I've never thought of it like that.

Nancy: Yes, the time of life. It says also, not only in this passage, but in another passage, and in this passage,  it speaks of it two times. We know how Sarah laughed, and because she was old.

“And the Lord said unto Abraham, 'Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, shall I bear a child, who am old?' Is there anything too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed, I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.”

So two times He said those words, “the time of life.” Now I believe, this passage doesn't tell us, but I do believe that part of the wonderful miracle of Sarah conceiving again was that God restored her cycle. She was well past her cycle, but God restored it again. That made her young and beautiful again, and more desirable to her husband.

When we have our cycle, we have every month a time of life in that window of ovulation. That time when we are fertile, that's the only time we can conceive life. It's the time of life, the very powerful time that we have in our lives. We are blessed, God has blessed us, dear mothers, with this beautiful time of life every month.

And so, as Sarah's cycle was restored, God was able to come to her, and just bring conception to her, during that time of life. Because, did you know, the only way you can get conception is if God visits you?

It also tells us, a few chapters on, that, when that happens, that God visited. Let's see where it is . . .

Serene: While you're looking that up, when I was talking about that Scripture, “He breathes the breath of life,” and we can take it as breath of life. But see, life cannot come from inside of this earthly sphere. He has to breathe the breath of it. We can't create life. So we can't say, “Well, my husband and I, we decided to have life.”

We get to open our hearts to it and open our lives to it. But it is God Who breathes it. Which one of the guys in the Bible said, the wife came, was it Leah? No, was is Rachel who said, “Why can't you give me a child?” And he's like . . .

Nancy: I'm sure it was Rachel.

Serene: And he's like, “Am I God!? Give you a child?” Because it's God, it's God that opens the womb. It's about also, the sadness of abortion, too. It’s God, God's chosen the breath of life, even in rape. And that's what I wanted to say too, it's awfully interesting . . .  while you're looking up that Scripture.

They say, scientists, psychologists actually, are finding out that abortion compounds the rape trauma. Many women have reported in counseling sessions with psychologists that suffering from the trauma of abortion was harder long after the rape trauma had faded. They suffered the trauma of the abortion.

Randy Alcorn says in his book that “it's hard to imagine a worse therapy for a woman who has been raped, than then giving her the guilt and turmoil of having killed her child.” Now, the reason why people have been like, “Why couldn't you kill the baby? You can't even talk about that, how you have no place.”

But the reason why I feel like I can even mention this is because the church can be so strong against abortion, but some Christians can think, well...

Nancy: We can accept rape or incest.

Serene: I grew up with a friend, a great friend, and she was a rape victim. She was a child of a rape. Beautiful girl. She had a wonderful mother.

Nancy: I know, I was just going to talk about her. She chose to keep her.

Serene: If you feel like you can't handle the psychologicalness of raising a child, you can give it to adoption, and suffer less trauma, knowing you didn't kill the child, and you didn't have the two traumas of rape and then that . . . you can give it up for adoption.

You don't have to, you're not forced. There's so many people wanting to have a baby, and so many people open to that. But this girl, talented and beautiful . . .

Nancy: Wasn't she beautiful? And loved God and served God will all her heart.

Now one time I put out a post about abortion, saying that really, we can't even use rape or incest as an excuse, because this is not something that is me, this is another life. It is murder, no matter what. I got a load of responses from women who were rape victims.

And they said, “Oh, Nancy! I just want to share my testimony. I was born out of rape.” But many of them said, “I'm now married today, I have children, I have this blessed life, I have a beautiful husband, I am so grateful for life!”

One said, “If only all of us, I know so many of us, if we could just stand on the steps up there in Washington, and just let them know the blessing that we are alive, and we've brought more beautiful children into the world!”

Serene: You know, if a father has committed a crime, does it not mean that the child goes to jail for it?

Nancy: No.

Serene: No, they're a new child, they are a new human being, and they suffer consequences and be killed, because somebody has done a crime.

Nancy: And let me just give you these few Scriptures. Yes, God, it says that God visited Sarah. He actually visited her during that time of life. If you're a darling, lovely Mummy, God wants to visit you. Visit you, and the only time He can really visit you, and give you this miracle, is in this beautiful time of life during the month.

And the same with Hannah. You remember Hannah, she dedicated Samuel to the Lord. Then, when she came back after giving him to the Lord, and leaving him in the Temple, she comes back, and the Bible says, “and God visited,” do you get that word? “Visited Hannah,” and she had five more children.

He visited her five more times! Isn't that amazing? So this time of life . . . now it is so sad that even many Christians, mothers acting through ignorance, and not understanding, will make this a time of death. They say, “Oh, no, God! Don't come near me during this time of life!”

They're making sure they're using contraception, or they may even sterilize. They will do anything to make sure that God cannot get near them during this time of life. But what do we do? We're cringing from God, we're saying, “No, God, I don't believe that Your way is best!” God's ways are always the best!

Serene: I just think about sometimes, the incredible love parents have for their children, the incredible love. You know, you go out to hospitals, and you see these parents weeping over the bedsides of children with cancer, or with anything, or if a child departs from this world, just the grief, the grief, the terrible grief.

I've heard people say that, you know, who have had children who have passed from this earth, that they live one foot in heaven, because they're not normal again, because their child is dead, and so part of them is dead. I don't know how to explain it.

But when you see all the actual things that they're saying, “I don't want.” “Oh, I don't want to do this.”  “Oh pregnancy, I couldn't handle it!” Or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Complain, complain, don't want, don't want, put the wall up, put the contraceptive to visitation.

But when the baby actually comes, it's like, they would run in front of a train! They would cut off their leg! They would do anything for the child! It's so funny, because reality is what they're going to treasure the most. Isn't that funny?

Nancy: And often, it's because of the indoctrination, really, that comes throughout society, which comes from the very pit of hell. But you know what? We've gone over time again. And wow, we keep talking.

Serene: Can I interrupt one more thing?

Nancy: Yes.

Serene: When we were talking about the rape and the incest thing . . . you know, the soul is not the soul of the person who did the crime. The child has a soul. It's totally separate. The soul, this unique human being who has received the breath of life and is being visited by God with life, that has got nothing really to do with the DNA that makes its eyes a certain color, and everything like that.

Just as much as there are young teenage girls who have to realize the father of a one-night stand is a bit of a drongo, you know, a bit of a drughead or whatever. They've left that boyfriend, and they're trying to get their life on track. But they love their child.

You know, they just consider it may be like a teenage oops, or whatever. But they go on to be a single mom, or maybe getting married, and having a new adoptive father for their child. But they love their child.

Just as much as maybe there's a teenage boy who's a bit of a derelict. It still has the genetics of that derelict. It doesn't mean, they don't think of this child as an intractable, evil, whatever, child.

You see the parallels to a rape or incest. Just because they have the same DNA of somebody who committed a crime, or the same DNA of someone who just wasn't, you know, didn't have the heart to even stick around for the baby, or have the heart to even, or even ask to take her for an abortion. You know, wanted to kill the baby.

There was a father who wasn't all that and some, he wasn't a great stand-up guy to be proud of. They still go ahead in most, in a lot of cases, and have these babies. Do you see the parallel? Can you help me describe it?

Just because they have the genetics of a father, does not necessarily, I mean, you have a rapist that did that terrible crime . . .

Nancy: That new baby in the womb is a new person designed by God.

Serene: All these single moms that are raising these beautiful children, they're not thinking of the father, they're not thinking about it in their head, I don't think the whole time, about this awful DNA of the father. They just move on, and raise this beautiful child, because it's a unique soul.

I'm trying to say that about the rape and incest thing. Their unique soul has nothing to do with the genetics of the eye color, or the hair color, or whatever. Many times, these fathers are not in the child's life.

Nancy: We have adoptions. We have, you know, all kinds of things, different ways, yes, it happened in their lives before, but . . . the most beautiful, beautiful children in the world.

But, one little thing, and we've gone overtime. I just came to learn about this, and I think it's something that is worth noting. That is, the National Safe Haven Alliance. Have you heard about it? It is in every state.

It is an alliance that is available, and you can go onto the Internet, just look up National Safe Haven Alliance. Or go to their Facebook, and it will tell you where, in every single state, where a mother can take the baby.

Now some mothers, they are just in the most terrible circumstances, they have got no way of looking after their baby. But they don't have to abort it! Because there are these places— often a hospital, or a fire station, or police station. Every state has their own places where they can go.

They can take this baby, up to three days old. Some states it's up to 30 days, some 60 days, but I notice that most were up to three days. If they take it in that time, they can give the baby. That baby will be taken, looked after, and put up for adoption, with so many hundreds of couples waiting for babies.

So there is no need, ever, to abort a baby because a young mother is in terrible, difficult circumstance. We have provision in our nation for these babies to be cared for. So, make a note of that. You often may hear of someone in dire circumstances, a young mother in desperate circumstances. It's good that we can know this, so that there does not have to be abortion, or even, like in New York, these late-term abortions, which are so horrific.

But, time to stop!

“Oh Father, we just thank You, thank You, thank You, thank You, and praise You, that You are the Life-Giver. We belong to a Kingdom of Life. Lord God, help us to be those who are also always on Your side, always standing for life, from the beginning of life, from conception, even Lord, understanding that You see life begins in the sperm Rght up to, Lord, ‘til the moment that You take us, we'll always be standing for life.

I pray, Father, that you will bless every mother, precious mother, Lord. Some are facing difficulties, financially, physically, emotionally. I just pray for them. I ask that You come, Lord, and You will show forth Your mighty power in their lives, and You will encourage them.

For Lord God, You always bring us through. Lord, no matter what we go through, we think things are impossible, but Lord God, You never fail us. You always bring us through. And I pray that You'll fill them with hope and trusting You in a way that they've never known before. Pour out Your blessing upon their homes. In Jesus' Name, Amen.”

We are currently out of stock of the book, BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY. However, we have it in audio book which you can order from the following link: http://tinyurl.com/BeFruitfulAudioUS

 

FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

Episode 41: HOW CAN WE CHANGE THE WORLD? Part 7

Rocky: Welcome to the podcast, FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.

Nancy: Hello ladies. I am so excited that I have Serene with me again today. We are so blessed to have her. At the end of last week's poddy, I mentioned a Scripture, but I didn't have the right reference for you, so I must give that to you. I was talking about how the Hebrew word for sperm is the word zerah. It's so amazing that God, in His Word, uses the same word for people. This was the Scripture I was trying to give you, and it was about Jacob coming down from Canaan down to Egypt where Joseph was going to look after him and his family because of the famine.

Genesis 46:5-7, that's the reference. It says: “And Jacob rose up from Beersheba, and the sons of Israel carried Jacob their father and their little ones and their wives, and they came to Egypt. Jacob and all his seed with him.” There's the word, zerah, the same word used for sperm. Now, did all these little sperms float down from Canaan? No, they were people. They were his sons and his grandsons, his daughters and his granddaughters, as the next verse says. It says it again: “And all his seed,” meaning all his children, from his sons to their children, three generations, maybe more, coming down to Egypt with him. We see that the Scripture uses this same word for people of all ages.

We see it again, Isaiah 59:21 where God says: “As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord, my spirit that is upon thee and my words that I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed.” There it is again and it means your children. Yes, they started from a sperm, the word zerah, and now Scripture is still calling them zerahs, “nor out of thy seed’s seed,” meaning out of their children's children, “saith the Lord, from henceforth and forever.”

What about Psalm 37:25: “'I have been young,' said David, 'now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed.'” zerah, but of course meaning children, “'nor his children begging bread.'”

Do you remember when God came to Abraham, and he told him to come out and look at the stars? He said to Abraham, well I think it was Abram at that time, “Look at the stars, if thou be able to number them, and he said to Abram, so shall thy seed be.” The word is for sperm but also for children. It's used hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times in the Bible for people, for little ones, children, teenagers and adults. We are reminded again, this is how God sees it. He sees that a person begins with the sperm.

Now, of course, I have to say that the sperm is not the new person. It becomes a new person when the sperm joins with the egg, and then it's called a zygote. I don't really like that word, do you? I don't like a lot of these medical words, zygote, and oocyte (ovum) and all these words (they don’t sound very human or nurturing). I love what the Bible says. Do you know what the Bible calls a baby in the womb? “With child.”

Serene: That's beautiful.

Nancy: When someone is having a baby it says, “with child.” Isn't that lovely?

Serene: I don't want to interrupt you, but I started this interesting thought. You're talking about how the Bible calls carrying a baby “with child.” An interesting line of thought about when the Bible says life begins. Of course, we know in the understanding now of science is that conception and also in the Bible it says that He breaths life at conception. It's so interesting that when Mary was told: “Don't be afraid, you're going to be overshadowed with the Holy Spirit, and you're going to be carrying the Son of God,” when she conceived life by the Holy Spirit. then the angel, at the same time, says: “Elizabeth, your cousin is six months with child.” She goes down to Elizabeth, and the life inside of Elizabeth's womb leaps and Elizabeth says: “What honor do I have that my Lord has come to see me?” (Luke 1:43). The Bible calls the baby in her womb already LORD!

Nancy: Yes, isn't that amazing?

Serene: The Bible says she stays with Elizabeth for three months. At the time of Mary's conception, the angel says Elizabeth is six months. She goes and stays for three months because it says she stays until the baby is born. When he basically told Mary, “you are now carrying the son of God,” that was the first moment, so it was already considered to be the Son of God.

Nancy: I know, isn't that amazing?

Serene: The time-frame was given. Isn't that interesting?

Nancy: It's beautiful and the fact, Serene, I think this is incredible that, “my LORD.” Isn't that revelation that Jesus, in the womb, was the age many babies are being aborted at that time.

Serene: Before that because when she went to Elizabeth, Elizabeth was six months and then she stayed three months from there, so at their greeting, Mary was just a few days from conception.

Nancy: That's right!

Serene: That's what I'm trying to say. He's called “LORD” right at the conception time (Luke 1:43)!

And adding a little bit here for you ladies. The word LORD in the Greek in this Scripture is kurios and mans “supremacy, supreme in authority, Master, God, Lord.” He owned this name at the very beginning of conception, the time when many babies are being aborted)!

Nancy: Yes, at the beginning,” my LORD.” Goodness, not even a child in the womb, but “my LORD.” Have you got it, precious ladies?

Another little article, I wonder if you noticed it. It was way at the back in the new issue of Above Rubies #96 on page 28. I have a little article called, “What do you call a Pregnant Mommy?” I speak here about how the Word of God so often says when a mother is pregnant, she is “with child.” Now, there are three different Hebrew words that I used to explain “with child,” and then we go over to the New Testament and there are two Greek words that I used.

One of them, I love the word brephos. That word is used of Jesus. Again, it was used of Jesus, and it says how she was with child of the holy Ghost and that's the word, brephos.

Then we come over to chapter 2 of Luke and verse 12: “And this shall be a sign unto you. Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in manger.” The word brephos, was used of a baby in the womb. Now it's used of the baby who's just born and again, in verse 16: “You'll find the babe lying in a manger.” Brephos.

Then we go over to 2 Timothy 3:15 where Paul is writing to Timothy, and he says: “From a child, thou hath known the holy Scriptures.” Well, how old was he as a child? Well, I'm sure they began giving the Scriptures to him at a very early age. The same word is used of the baby in the womb to the little baby that's born and now the little baby who is a child. We are seeing this one in the womb is a child from the time of conception. Isn't it amazing?

Serene: Science calls it embryo, whatever, the child, when inside the womb, when it only weighs 1/30^th of an ounce. It has all the internal organs of the adult in various stages of development. It has little lips, an early tongue and buds for twenty milk teeth. Its sex and reproductive organs have begun to sprout.

Now, I'm allowed to say it. This is the most incredible news. It's your podcast so you can say it.

Nancy: No, you're allowed. You're the mother.

Serene: No, I'll say it on my poddy.

Nancy: You're the mother. I'm only the grandmother.

Serene: No, you can say it on your pod, and I'll say it on my poddy.

Nancy: Well, it is so wonderful. Now, many of you have been those who have faithfully prayed for our grandson, Arden. You know that he did have cancer. God has miraculously healed him. We thank you for your prayers as we went through those trying and terrible times while he was stage four, but God has brought him through. One of the things that we kept crying out to God for as we were praying through this was that he would not lose his fertility. When Arden and Esther were married, they just longed to have a baby. In fact, I think they took a pregnancy test on their honeymoon. Is that right?

Serene: Bought one.

Nancy: They longed to have a baby, and yet, of course, they went through all this instead. They have longed and waited and hoped, but now, we have the news. They have conceived and are now expecting a baby! September isn't it, Arden?

Serene: Yes!

Nancy: God has been so faithful

Serene: We have seen the little baby on a sonogram. We've seen the little hands and the little feet, the two eyes and the beating heart. It's unbelievable. I can't wait! Bringing that all up, because when they had the sonogram, the baby was eight weeks.

Reading this book by Randy Alcorn, it says by eight weeks, hands and feet are almost perfectly formed. Now Arden and Esther are now entering in to the ninth week of the baby. They are inside of the ninth week. By the ninth week, a child will bend fingers around an object placed in the palm. Fingernails are forming and the child is now sucking its thumb. The nine-week baby has already perfected a somersault, back flip, and scissor kick. The unborn nine-week old baby responds to stimulus and may already be capable of feeling pain.

Now, the reason I want to say that is because abortions at this time are called early abortions. They are already capable of feeling pain. Already they are doing back flips and somersaults and kicks, putting their hand and enclosing it around an abject.

Nancy: That is a child!

Serene: I'm saying, the only difference where we are celebrating all these amazing things that this sweet baby is doing and learning and growing in, we are celebrating it because this baby is wanted. There is no difference with the facts that the baby is a baby to the nine-week-old baby that is being aborted. The only reason they say it's a clump of tissue is because it's not wanted. The facts are the facts. These poor beautiful ladies are being told not to look at the screen of their baby when they go into these abortion clinics. Why? Because the facts are the facts. It's sad because the baby is a baby no matter if it's wanted or unwanted.

Nancy: Yes, exactly. It is a baby being created in the image of God. Isn't it incredible all the little things that baby is already doing? It's so exciting and amazing. For people to stop the life of this little child is nothing less than murder, and we should call it what it is because so many things in society now are called names to lessen what is really happening, but we need to call things what they are.

Serene: Yes, and I want to say this too because this is just incredible. After the first three months, nothing new develops or begins functioning. Nothing new. It has all happened in the first three months. It's growing but nothing new. It's all done. But we are growing for the rest of our life. A three-year-old isn't fully grown, so we just lop it's head off? That's the point.

“God, take the wool off of all of our eyes and our society’s eyes.” Because this fully intact child is just growing and maturing as it goes through life. Every abortion, unless life is lost through miscarriage, every abortion, it's an undisputable, scientific fact that it stops the beating heart and stops already measurable brain waves.

Nancy: I know; it's incredible. We are talking in this series about changing the world. Dear lovely ladies, you can help change this in our society. I can help it as we stand up for what is truth, as we educate our children in what is truth. We have got to do this, and we have got to be a voice.

Serene: Sometimes, like we said yesterday in the pod, sometimes it takes opening up your eyes again. Sometimes it takes viewing things that aren't comfortable to view. I notice with my children, you know, they would go down to abortion clinics, and not at all in any disruptive, awful way, but in a very gentle way, just praying outside of abortion clinics and holding up signs that Jesus loves babies but nothing at all in any violent way or violent message or anything like that. Just standing up for life.

But sometimes they would get exhausted and say, I can't be bothered, I'd rather just hang out at so and so's house. After watching Gosnell, that's all they want to do. The reality of it can fall away from your brain space. Even if you're about the work, sometimes you can forget the purpose and the meaning behind the work you're about. It's like Martha. She was running around serving Jesus and the disciples. Maybe she forgot what Mary knew, who was at Jesus' feet. It's great to be about the work of life and being an activist for life, but we've got to remember sometimes and reeducate ourselves so that there's PASSION behind it.

Nancy: Yes, we do. We have to keep reminding ourselves and also the fact that we are constantly, well science, is finding out more and more wonderful things. We need to keep reeducating ourselves so that we are up with the information so that we can share with people. Once again, another reminder, don't forget to get Gosnell if you haven't seen it yet. Do watch it with your children, especially your teens and bring in others.

Serene: Another thing too, I'm getting my children for homeschooling is Randy Alcorn's, “Why Pro-life: Caring for the Unborn and their Mothers.” It's a great read for older teen boys and girls. I'd get the updated version because it's the updated facts.

Nancy: Yes, that is so good. Maybe I should get that and have it available through Above Rubies too.

Serene: Another thing I love about it is that he goes into the beginning, why abortion. He goes into the whole history about Margaret Sanger and genocide. Oh, my goodness, the heart behind it was evil, was the devil, was demonic. The Nazi whole thing was just a tiny window into all that's behind abortion. The interesting thing he goes and talks about is everyone these days is about women's rights, women's rights, women's rights, but abortion is actually the most opposing of all women's rights because abortion has opened up for more female death than ever before. In India and in China, these nations, they want the men to be able to provide so there are more girls killed and murdered through abortion than boys. If a woman, through sonogram, finds out she is pregnant with a girl in China and India, 80 something percent of them are aborted.

Nancy: It's horrific, isn't it? It's hard to even take in. I had a few little interesting thoughts. I mentioned before that when the 23 chromosomes of the egg or the ovum and the 23 chromosomes of the sperm come together, they are yoked and it's called a zygote. I was interested to notice that it's actually a Greek word. It comes from the Greek word, zygotes, which means “to join, to be yoked.” When the ovum and the sperm are yoked together, then they become this living organism. They were living cells, but now it's a living organism, which is the very beginning of this new life.

It's amazing how you pick up things, and I noticed that we have a word in the Bible that's also so similar to zygote, and it means exactly the same. It's zogos and it's the word in 2 Corinthians 6:14 where it says that believers should not be unequally yoked together with an unbeliever. That's interesting because they use that same word meaning to be joined or yoked together. Isn't that interesting?

There are lots of types in the Bible. You know that when the egg and the sperm meet, they keep finding out new things all the time. Science is exciting. We have to keep up with it because a lot of things they used to think are no longer valid because they are finding more understanding. Both the ovum and the sperm have a protein around them which helps them come together. If they didn't have that, they wouldn't be able to. After they've come together, then that protein disappears. One of the reasons is that another sperm will not be able to come in and penetrate the ovum.

Also, another thing happens, it becomes hardened around the edges so that no other sperm can penetrate once it is joined together. That's an interesting thing, and it just made me think. You see, there are little types all the way along in God's plan, and I thought of the type of marriage. How that when a couple are married, when a man and wife come together, from that moment, they are yoked. You see, it's the word, zygote, yoked, they are joined together, they are couple together in a yoke and that yoke is not ever to be separated. Around that yoke, like the newly formed, it's now a zygote, it has this hardening around so that nothing else can penetrate.

This is something we need to know in our marriage, even young couples getting married. From the day you get married, that is the last day you have another special male friend. Of course, you'll have lots of male friends that you enjoy with your husband along with others but never on your own. You will never ever go out, out to lunch, out to supper, out to have an afternoon with another man. No, no one ever comes and penetrates your marriage. No. What are our marriage vows? “FORSAKING ALL OTHERS”. I thought that is a little type that goes back to the baby.

Serene: So amazing.

Nancy: It is amazing. There are so many types. God is so amazing. Even in the way He planned sexual intercourse. Now, the sexual part of the man, it goes forth, it stretches forth, and that's who the man is and that's who he is in his life. He's the one who goes forth; he goes out to provide; he's the leader. That's how God has made him.

Now, the woman, she embraces the seed, and it is taken and hidden in the heart of her being. This is how God intends her to be in the home. It's a picture, once again. Now, a lot of women don't like to know this, but this is God's picture. Psalm 128:3: “Your wife is like a fruitful vine in the heart of the home.” In the heart, there in the home, but not wasting her life. No, she has the greatest career of all time, raising and nurturing and teaching her children and building the nation to be a great nation. Of course, Satan knows all this stuff, and he tries to wipe it out. Just interesting, a few little types along the way.

Serene: So good. Another word, when you're talking about words, I don't remember what it is, but when it says in the Bible about Adam, it says that God breathed life. What is that Hebrew or Greek word? What is it? Do you know what it is?

Nancy: He breathed life. Well, we better have a look.

Serene: I think it’s plural, lives. The breath of lives into you. He breathed into Adam the breath of life, but in the Hebrew and Greek, I believe it's a plural word. The breath of lives.

Nancy: Well, we will just check it out because we always have to be absolutely right exactly what we tell people.

Serene: Breathes into his nostrils the breath of life and man becomes a living soul. I think it's plural. Then I'll tell you my thought about it once I found out.

Nancy: Genesis 2:7. We’ve got to be absolutely right in what we share with all you lovely ladies. It is the word, chai.

Serene: Is it plural?

Nancy: It doesn't say it's plural. I'm so sorry.

Serene: Well, I just read a book, and it says the breath of lives, but is there another word?

Nancy: Could be another word.

Serene: There's another word, and they said it was plural. When it said, the breath of life, when he breathed in the breath of life, this one book said, “the breath of lives.” It wasn't just for you to be a life, it was for you to be a life-giver. It was in interesting book. It was actually a book encouraging people after abortions and miscarriages. I'll have to look up the word.

Nancy: Yes, it could be in another Scripture. Talking about life, this is the thing too that we have to see, is that God's kingdom is a kingdom of life. God is all about life; it's who He is. He’s a life-giver. He's the one who gives life. No one else can give life. Of course, Satan hates this. You know why, ladies? Because he can't give life. Satan has no power or capability of giving life, so he is against life. He hates it.

That is why Jesus said in John 10:10: “I have come to give you life abundantly.” What does the devil do? He comes to rob, to kill and to destroy. It's very interesting that there are three things mentioned there, a trio. Isn't this what Satan has today? A trio. A trio to stop life—contraception, sterilization, and abortion. It is a trio of destruction to stop life.

Of course, I know, I am sure each one of you listening today are against abortion. It horrifies you, but I think that a lot of us haven't quite got it yet that contraception, sterilization, and abortion are all the same thing, in different ways, of course, but they all have the same motive, the same purpose to eliminate and destroy life. In fact, abortion is really only the back-up plan.

Contraception is the very first thing on the mind of Satan, the devil, the one who comes to rob, kill, and destroy because he wants to eliminate life as much as he possibly can. If he can eliminate it through contraception, he's just won a great victory. Of course, a lot of times it doesn't work, so abortion is the back-up plan.

Now, I do feel, lovely ladies, until we really understand this as the people of God, I don't think we can win the victory in the abortion issue. How can we win this victory for life when so many Christians, and I know so many are just doing it ignorantly. They have not been educated or informed. They come to church faithfully, but no pastor gets up and teaches them the truth about this; this very, very powerful truth that should be taught in all churches. About life and that when we contracept, we are stopping, we are contracepting life from going into the world. We are stopping life. We are stopping, many times, life that God has intended to come forth.

I believe that one of the reasons why we are in such a place in our nation today, where there is such a fight to hang on for righteousness and life and godliness and now we have the socialists, and the extreme feminists  and leftists, and progressives with their communist agenda which is against life, and we are trying to fight it. Wow, are we really winning? We should have so many more to stand up as a voice against it, to vote against it, but we haven't got them. They are not here because God's people have stopped them coming into the world. They have stopped the godly seed, so we have eliminated the godly in the land, when God intends his people to fill the land.

Serene: Amazing. Sorry, I was listening, and I was actually being naughty because I was looking up that Hebrew word.

Nancy: Oh yes, do, because we want to find out about it.

Serene: The Hebrew word for life I was talking about there is the word chayim. It's a plural noun.

Nancy: Chayim. Yes, it's plural. It wasn't in that Scripture, but it could be in other Scriptures. Chayim is the plural definitely.

Serene: Of breath of life.

Nancy: Yes, because when they have “im” on the end of a Hebrew word, it's plural.

Serene: Yes.

Nancy: We've got to get the Scripture where that word is. While you're finding that, let me just read you from Exodus 1, and this is how it's meant to be. This is talking about the children of Israel in Egypt, and it says in verse 7: “And the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly and multiplied and waxed exceeding mighty and the land was filled with them.”

Dear ladies, this is the picture of how God intends the land to be filled with His people. The godly giving glory to Him, filling the land with His glory. Raising children, filled with His spirit, who will take His salvation and His truth and His justice into the land. This is God's plan, but we have forfeited His plan. We have stopped His plan. All because of many times, selfishness, sometimes rebellion, but perhaps mostly ignorance. We have been educated with lies, so we don't know the truth, and we don't know God's plan.

If we want to win, we've got to multiply. Do you know why? Because God's principles never change. God's first commandment, but it was also His first principle, the very first words He ever said to man. Well, before He said them, He did something. Before God spoke these words, He blessed Adam and Eve. He poured out His blessing on them and then He said: “Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.” But He didn't stop there. He went on to say, “subdue and take” (Genesis 1:26). It is a progressive law of God that those who are fruitful are those that will subdue and take dominion.

Dominion comes through fruitfulness, multiplying. This picture we are reading here in Exodus chapter one how they waxed exceeding mighty because they filled the land. In verse 9, the new pharaoh said, “Oh goodness me, these people, the children of Israel, are “more and mightier than we are.” That is what God intends for His people. Now, we could be that, if we brought the children forth that God wanted us to and raised them for Him. Think of the thousands and millions of godly people filling the land with His joy and His love and His salvation and His truth and justice. It's unbelievable.

But then, of course, we know what happened, that they were so scared of the people of God that they began to afflict them. But verse 12, “The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew” and so on. This is how it's meant to be. This is what God wants. Let’s be who God intends us to be. We are either on God's side, which is His kingdom, which is the kingdom of light, or we are in the devil's kingdom which is the kingdom of death. If we stand for stopping life, can we say that we're in God's kingdom, which is a kingdom of life? There are only two kingdoms. One, the devil’s, who comes to rob, kill, and destroy, and God's kingdom which is a kingdom of life, which loves life and wants to bring forth the godly seed.

I'm thinking of Malachi 2 where it's talking about marriage. What does it say? The married couple, they come together, and God looks. What does He look for in the marriage? It says, “What does He want from this marriage?” and then it goes on to say in verse 15: “I look for the godly seed.” There's that word zera again, the word that is used for sperm and the word that is used for children. Most translations will say: “I look for godly offspring,” or “godly children.” That's what God looks for in our coupling and joining together. He wants a godly offspring. He wants them to fill the world, and this is His plan. Let's not forfeit God's plan. Amen? I'm going to pray, and I think we might need one more session on this subject.

“Lord, we thank You. We thank You for Your divine truths. They are so amazing and Lord, You're allowing scientists to see more and more and more of Your divine truths, as we see and behold the glory of the baby in the womb. It's unbelievable.

“Lord God, we pray that You will awaken us more and more to stand for Your truth. We pray that You will awaken Your people across this nation. You'll awaken your church, You'll awaken pastors and teachers, You'll awaken every God-fearing person to stand and be a voice in this nation against murder of precious life that is being created in the divine image of God.

“Lord, help us not to be dumb-downed, to be deceived, but Lord, to know the truth. We pray for Your truth to come forth in a mighty way in the name of Jesus. Amen.”

 

 

UNPLANNED

Don’t miss the moving coming soon, UNPLANNED, released March 29.

Abby Johnson becomes the youngest clinic director in the history of Planned Parenthood, then a life-changing experience turns her into an anti-abortion activist.

 

And also this….

 

WHY PRO-LIFE?

Caring for the Unborn and their Mothers

By Randy Alcorn (Award winning and best-selling author)

This book must get into the hands of EVERY person in the nation. In this critical hour of states in our nation wanting to freely murder babies after they are born, we have a responsibility to know the truth. This book is grounded in medical science and psychological studies and offers answers to this abortion debate in a concise and informative manner.

Selling for ONLY $5.00.

Purchase extra copies (two or upwards) to share with friends and give to everyone you can for ONLY $2.50! Let’s get the message out.

Order from our Bookstore: Why Pro-Life?