FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

EPISODE 100: HOW CAN YOU ENJOY INTIMACY IN YOUR MARRIAGE WITH BABIES AND TODDLERS AROUND?

Rocky Barrett: Welcome to the podcast, From our Home to Yours, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.

Nancy Campbell: Well, hello ladies, again. Today is so exciting for two reasons! One, this is our podcast number 100. I can’t believe it that we’ve got up to this. It’s amazing! And, because that’s special, I have my daughter, Serene, with me today. I’m so excited because she is such a busy mom with all her children, her older children and her little ones and Trim Healthy Mama. If I can get her here on a podcast it’s amazing because she’s always doing her own podcast.

I’m sure so many of you listen to the Trim Healthy Mama Poddy and the Unshow. So she’s just poddied out.

Serene Allison: Oh I love podcasts! I love talking and I love talking when I don’t have to get dressed up at all.

NC: Oh I know! I love podcasts for that reason. Oh goodness me, when I actually have to go and do a talk show and you actually have to go and get all dressed up and put on your makeup. It’s just so lovely to sit here and talk, isn’t it?

SA: Exactly. You don’t have to wash your hair. It’s awesome!

NC: While everything is sort of happening here today, we send this podcast out every Tuesday morning to you but it’s actually Sunday that we’re here doing this. We had church here this morning down in our basement. It is our big Above Rubies packaging room, but we use it for everything and all our social gatherings and for church.

SA: Weddings and baby showers!

NC: Oh absolutely, everything! So we had that this morning and then fellowship meal, which we do every Sunday. Then Nadia, she has been filming in another room.

SA: Do they know who Nadia is?

NC: Well Nadia Mutana. She does a YouTube called “Loving Mothering.”

SA: There you go. I wanted plug them in. That’s awesome, awesome.

NC: She likes to interview anybody she can. She’s just been interviewing Evangeline and our friend, Pam, who’s here from Oregon, and they’ve been talking about that in one room and we’re here podcasting in another room.

SA: A bunch of loudmouth talkers, we are!

NC: Here we are just out on the hilltop but sending out our messages to the world.

Anyway, a couple of podcasts ago was number 96. I was talking about the subject of how taste is a food discerner. It discerns the food we eat, physically, but the word that’s used in the Bible is the same word that’s not only used to taste food but to discern, to discern whether something is right or wrong. You will have to listen to that podcast if you didn’t get to.

But on that podcast, I remember telling you how that Serene has these very sharpened taste buds.

SA: Well I’m not blowing my own horn about that.

NC: Well I’m blowing it. You won’t be blowing it!

SA: Okay.

NC: But she can! I taste something and think, “Oh that’s lovely!”

SA: Well not everybody might agree with me. I might taste a Dunkin Doughnuts doughnut and think it’s repulsive! People will think, “That’s not very discerning of you.”

NC: I don’t know but you usually do know what’s in things. I was telling you about how she makes these ugly things at home for herself. She doesn’t put them in Trim Healthy Mama because they’re filled with super foods!

SA: I don’t call them ugly things; they’re my “Yuck-Yums.”

NC: But we call our chocolate ugly chocolate.

SA: You call it ugly chocolate, yes.

NC: I call it ugly chocolate.

SA: But “yuck-yum” is my term for anything that is so yucky it’s teetering on the side of yummy at the end.

NC: Actually the other night when we went over to your prayer meeting, there were all the little children, Solly, Havey, and Remmy. They were all trying to get into your yuck-yum.

SA: Oh it’s delicious! You should try it. It’s actually in the Trim Healthy Table book.

NC: Yes but I think you put more things in.

SA: Oh I do.

NC: What are some of the things you put in it that you wouldn’t put in for anybody else?

SA: I think I was pretty descriptive in the book. It’s always a base of my double fermented raw kefir, which is always so creamy and delicious and sour. I just fill it with baobab, whatever berries I have whether it’s cranberries, raspberries or wild blueberries. I add that and then I do maca or any kind of ashwagandha or matcha or any kind of super food. I throw in all the super foods. It’s just a hodge-podge of different things.

Moringa, I throw in that. Turmeric, I love turmeric. Even raw turmeric root, not the powder but the actual root. It’s just delicious! I’ve bought it like a paste.

NC: Yes, you’ve told me you’ve found the paste at Walmart. Tell me about it.

SA: I found it in the gluten free section, maybe. It’s a paste but it’s processed raw and it’s totally no preservatives, amazing stuff. So a plug for that but I forget what it was called. But it’s amazing. I throw it in my “yuck-yums” all the time now.

NC: So what isle is it in?

SA: I don’t remember!

NC: Oh well they change the isles all the time! Doesn’t that upset you? You go to get something, you know where it is, and then it’s not there. They’ve changed the isle. They like to go around and change it!

SA: They do it purposefully, Mum! Just for you!

NC: Yes, just so they can purposefully send us around to buy other things.

Anyway, we have a special thing we’re going to talk about today. It’s a question that has come in and I thought, “Oh I’ll wait till I can get Serene to talk about it.”

But before we do, I’d like to read you something. Sometimes I read you a poem but today I’d like to read to you words from one of Serene’s songs. I think it totally personifies who she is.

SA: That’s embarrassing doing it right next to me, though.

NC: Ha ha, anyway! It’s a beautiful description of motherhood. It’s one of her songs from way back on their album, Peace all over Me. That was the first CD you did for mothers. Serene and Pearl were signed to a record company but when they came home and began having all their children then they began to record songs especially for mothers.

Peace all over Me, well, that’s just out and you can’t get it now. But you can go to my webpage aboverubies.org and you can download it. It’s there for you. You would just so love it.

This song is called “El Shaddai.” Let me read a little bit of it because I love these words.

Serene writes here, and it’s speaking about God Himself:

“Deep within Your heart You hold a source

For everything that’s tender, soft and kind.

To caress the world with warm affection

You thought of a mother, beautiful design.

“As I hold this baby in my arms

I’m like a picture of You,

To nurture with Your love

Is what You made me to do.”

I love those words, don’t you?

SA: It’s so funny because it reminds me of the time, we had my baby shower for Solace. You played the game where people read out a stanza or a poem of a famous speech and we had to guess who it was that wrote it.

NC: We wrote them out on cards and read them and asked, “Who wrote this quote?”

SA: Yes and I thought, “Some president or something.” Because it was my baby shower you decided to pop in something of mine. We were all guessing and even I was guessing who it was, and I had no idea, because I had written it a long time ago, that it was me!

It was what you just read. I was like, “Oooh, I’ve heard that before. That sounds familiar. I’ve heard that before.” But I didn’t even realize that it was me!

NC: Yes, you didn’t even realize it was you! I remember even putting in a quote from Evangeline, too, and nobody could guess that. It was quite fun! That’s right.

But I love those words. You can go and download that song.

How true it is that when we are embracing our children and embracing motherhood we are like a picture of God. We picture Him because He is the Source.

Where does motherhood come from? We didn’t make it up. It comes from God. He’s put this innate anointing to nurture in us.

When we do this, we’re like a beautiful picture of Him. I love that.

Anyway, what is this question? This person wrote in and asked, “How do we keep the romance going in our marriage when we have a little baby and little toddlers all around? We feel so tired.”

Yes, I can remember those times. It can be very real.

But I thought, “Well I need to get a mother who’s in that position to help me answer that question.”

Although Serene is maybe what you could call a . . . well how could I ever in the whole of the world call you an older mother! You’re only forty-three! But some mothers think that they are older mothers when they are forty-three!

SA: They think that’s old, yeah.

NC: They think that’s old, goodness me!

SA: Nah. I think I’m seventeen.

 

NC: I know. You only look like it.

SA: No I don’t, ha ha.

NC: But she already has children who are married, and she is a grandmother. But she still has little toddlers around. Her little baby, Solly, is now two but she’s her baby and you’re still hoping for more, aren’t you?

SA: Oh yeah, bring it on God!

NC: Yes.

SA: I love presents so it’s hard to not want a present when you’re a present lover.

Every time I have another baby it’s like opening up another gift like, “What’s it going to be? What personality will it be like?” It’s just so fun!

NC: Oh I know! And that’s the amazing thing when you look at your children and how they are all different. Some of them, you know, are very dark and have black hair and are dark.

Then you have different ones pop out!

SA: Red heads and blue-eyed babies.

NC: Little Vision popped out! Oh goodness me, I couldn’t believe it when he was born because he is redheaded and freckled like me.

Then Solly popped out with her blue eyes, little round face, and her personality that she has!

How can people not want another baby? How can they deprive themselves of the most awesome gift you could ever give?

SA: It’s like depriving themselves of a gift of love. It’s like love is born every time. It’s a best friend for you.

NC: And haven’t you said every time that when you have a new baby, not only are you filled with love for this new little baby but you are renewed in love for all your children, even your older ones.

SA: The whole household gets blessed, I believe. Your maternal instincts get renewed. I start to remember those older children when they were the babies.

I don’t know, I feel like everybody gets a dose of that new, fresh love I have for the little baby. They have that as well.

NC: Exactly, because you have those hormones of prolactin and oxytocin flowing. They not only flow out on the baby but on the whole family.

SA: Yes.

NC: Yes, it’s just God’s wonderful, wonderful way.

Well, we need to perhaps look at this question.

SA: And this goes into the question. It can flow out on your husband as well. You can let that love flow out on your husband as well.

NC: I’ve already actually asked the question; how can you have romance when you have toddlers and babies around you.

I think one of the things, and I can remember because I’m trying to remember now because I don’t have toddlers around now. But I can remember when I had my first three. I had my first three in seventeen months. Wesley was only 17 months when the twins were born, unexpectedly. Back then we didn’t have ultrasounds or anything like that.

I didn’t have a clue and out popped twins!

SA: Well let me just tell you this, I just had a little thought. You can still imagine it in your head, too, even though you don’t have the business of little babies all throughout your house anymore.

NC: But I do quite often!

SA: Oh I know, I know but through the night and everything. See, we fill our lives with something, unless we’re people who want to spend our lives painting our nails and staying in the bath all day, but rarely can people afford that.

We’re going to fill our lives with something. We’re always going to “can’t have that” excuse, “Well, I’m just so exhausted.”

Mum, you don’t have the babies to get up for but you’re up at four or five in the morning for other reasons.

So I’ve noticed, if I’ve had a little natural break between babies, which just so happens, I’m filling my life with a new hobby. I’m going to take up painting again or out comes the guitar. I’m up in the morning coming up with something.

You fill your life with something.

NC: Exactly.

SA: I’m looking at my older, now twenties, daughters that live in the home. They’re not married with children yet but they’re filling they’re lives.

One of my daughters works super hard. She has to be up at four in the morning. She is so busy and she’s exhausted. She doesn’t have children.

Hear my heart, I say this with compassion because I’m right there with you. I’m not even a scheduled person so my babies are right there in my room, so I understand, I’m right there with you.

But I feel like we have to take a step back and ask ourselves, am I, could I, be using this as an excuse?

As humans we busy ourselves. Maybe we’re exhausted with the children but maybe others are exhausted with their job. Other people are exhausted with huge projects or whatever, so maybe it’s not necessarily motherhood that’s exhausting us.

Maybe there’s practical things that maybe we can do to preserve energy. Mum and I can look at that as we go along but I just wanted to hit that nail on the head in the beginning.

Let’s not blame motherhood because it’s like my daughter blaming the factory job she’s working with. Hey, it’s something that she’s earning money and saving money for missions and there are blessings to motherhood.

It’s not necessarily motherhood.

I look at Pearl, my sister; she’s not necessarily in that season of having babies. In her season she’s older now. But she is such a productive woman. She’s not as busy with little ones but she’s doing so many incredible things because you just want to fill your life. You don’t want to be bored.

NC: No! You do, you fill your life. Who wants to be bored? So you do: you fill your life.

I think a lot of it is our attitude. I do remember those times feeling very tired. But then I had to think of ways, “How can I still be fresh for my husband?”

I didn’t always manage to do it very well. But I would try. I would get the children ready for a little nap after lunch and I would try and maybe have a little nap with them. You can do that if you take your baby to bed with you and just let your baby nurse.

SA: I think that’s the key. That was the key for me. I want people to hear me. I’m not saying everybody is the same. My babies love to just nurse anywhere and lay down with me and nurse.

But I’ve just started to realize, even in our family, not mine personally but just young mothers that I know, that there can be some babies who are just not the comfort kind of nursers.

They are just so enthralled and stimulated by distractions and things versus babies that just want to be held in an ergo.

But I feel like if your baby is prone to wanting to have that laying down and going to take a nap with you, that was my key, just using that time to rest. I’m not making my baby sleep by itself so I can go and get a bunch of stuff done. No, go lay down with the baby.

NC: That’s a temptation. Oh goodness me, when you’ve got these little ones around you, and really, to get things done in the day is well-nigh impossible. That’s all your doing.

You think, “Oh they’re having a nap! I can go and do those other things that I want to!” But you do them and you’re going to be exhausted later in the evening.

SA: I feel like there’s seasons that we need to realize and not push ourselves to be the supermom.

I think communication is a big key. Communicating with your husband and saying, “Listen, I would love to have a gorgeous dinner on the table for you and I would love to have a clean house but I need to have energy for you.”

Put priorities down. Maybe your husband would rather have a simple dinner and maybe the laundry not folded, and you have energy for him.

You can’t do everything. Maybe when you have older children and then they can start helping out you can start more bringing on the amazing meals and having the house a little bit more perfect.

Maybe your husband would not prefer a house that’s not always perfectly picked up but a woman who’s super excited that her husband is home and that she has preserved energy for him.

NC: Yes, I think that’s right. It’s your mindset and having the right priorities that we are wives. Yes, we’re mothers, but we are wives. God has created us to be one flesh. That’s what marriage is.

SA: And it was first. Marriage was first and then came the family. We’re not diminishing the children, but we don’t want that to be an idol in our lives to the point where husbands go by the wayside. Then on the other balance, where it’s all about dates with the husband, and you’re leaving the baby every second night.

NC: Yes, that’s wrong, too.

SA: Yes, there has got to be a balance.

NC: I think it’s amazing, too. Now you manage to have a good sex life.

SA: Yes, amazing!

NC: You have your two babies with you.

SA: Well, we just kicked out our four-year-old because it’s just a bit beyond. He tries to come in all night and we just walk him back to bed. He had a little bit of issues that we had to deal with, some emotional issues. He’s a special, beautiful individual and we just couldn’t train him like the others.

NC: No. And you still have Solly there at two years old.

SA: Yeah. She’s in a little crib there beside our bed but she’s totally connected and she’s escaping it all night and coming into bed. But it wasn’t that long ago that she was totally with us in bed.

NC: Right, but you still don’t use that as an excuse.

SA: No, exactly, I mean children sleep.

I feel like you said, Mum, its priorities. For me it’s preserving energy. It’s saying, “Okay, I’m going to put a particular worth on the intimacy in my marriage.”

It’s more important than the laundry. This may sound terrible, but sometimes my babies will just get a rag bath and they won’t have the full bath that night.

If I’m that exhausted I’m like, “If excellently perfecting the whole night time routine is going to take every skeric  of my energy where I can’t have night time routine with my husband, then they’re going to just get a rag bath tonight and an extra kiss on the forehead.”

Maybe they go to bed and it’s not their perfectly matching pajamas, but they got tucked in, they’re healthy and happy.

NC: I don’t think I’ve ever seen your children in matching pajamas!

SA: No, they don’t ever get in pajamas! I’m trying to put a good face on it. But I preserve energy for my husband.

NC: I love that. I think that’s the key, ladies, those three words: Preserving energy for your husband. If you don’t think about it during the day, you’re going to let your energy be taken up in so many ways.

SA: That’s the other thing: thinking about it. It’s not a worldly thing. That is not an ungodly thing. It is a beautiful thing.

That’s how a woman’s whole body was designed. Well that’s how every human being is designed. Our body follows our mind.

But because women are a bit more “crock-pottish” than a man, we need to think about things more. If we’re just thinking about laundry and to-do lists and errands and homeschooling all day and we don’t take one skeric to think about our gorgeous husband and how much he means to us, then when he comes home we just aren’t in the right frame of mind.

NC: No and thinking about how he is most probably going to be wanting you.

That’s another thing. We keep thinking of things, that is not only trying to have that little nap in the afternoon but going to bed with your husband.

There is another temptation because you’ve been so busy with the little ones and everything throughout the day, you get them to bed and then you’ve got “me time.”

You think, “Oh now I can do this and that” and your poor husband has gone to bed by himself!

SA: And not realizing that that “me time” really would be time with your husband.

Maybe it would be great to look into the fact of how healthy it is for you and how healthy it is for your immune system and how healthy it is for you physiologically and emotionally.

In so many ways, physical intimacy inside of marriage is actually an incredible immune booster. It actually takes away headaches. It’s a dopamine rush. It takes away depression.

I don’t think it’s exhausting at all when you have been thinking about it during the day and you have preserved energy. I think it’s a godly thing and you’re all geared up for it. It’s fantastic because you’re ready and excited.

But say you weren’t there, and you weren’t geared up. I think it’s more exhausting to say, “Oh not tonight” and push him away and start going through all those little uncomfortable conversations where you’re trying to move your foot over so it doesn’t begin anything.

I feel like that’s more exhausting because when I’ve done that, I go to bed feeling guilty and feeling awful. I don’t go to bed feeling relaxed or close to my husband. I go to bed knowing that I have deprived my husband.

I don’t go to bed feeling rested and so I don’t have a good sleep. That’s more exhausting. It’s better to just give to your husband and serve him.

It doesn’t have to be a big old lipstick and high heels. It doesn’t have to take a million years, you know! I think it’s beautiful to have celebration times, but it doesn’t have to be a big ordeal every time.

NC: I think that’s another thing, too. There are times that are lengthy times and celebration times where you put aside especially. But there are so many other times when you just say, “Okay, this is just part of life. Yes this is just part of our lives together because we are one.”

SA: Exactly.

I feel like that was a big thing in my life, realizing that it does not have to be this big thing where I have to be perfectly prepared like Esther in the Bible, soaked in milk and honey all day.

 I don’t have my hair washed or put on my mascara. Oops, I’ve got a little bit of baby spew on my nightgown or something.

I think sometimes in our culture we feel like we have to be Miss Perfect or Miss Beautiful. I just feel like WILLINGNESS IS BEAUTIFUL. Offering your body is beautiful.

A willingness to serve and love is an act of selflessness but it’s actually an act of giving back to you, like I said.

NC: It is because if you’re depriving your husband, you’re also depriving yourself of oxytocin, and that beautiful glory that you’re going to receive yourself.

SA: Exactly.

I put on a huge meal for my family on Friday nights. It’s a beautiful meal, like I pull out all the stops. I just cook all day and I’m so excited.

But for the most part during the week, it’s just soups and I’m throwing things together. It’s all hearty food but it’s quick. I think that’s like my married life. I don’t always feel like, “Oh I have to preserve energy for this big ordeal.”

You know, like the dance and I have to be like some Egyptian belly dancer there. No, it’s like Mum said: it’s part of life.

NC: Well you might do that on the odd occasion.

SA: Oh more than an odd occasion but that’s because I’m into this whole thing! It’s exciting! You see, the more that you do the more that you get an appetite for it.

I feel like as women, especially as nursing mothers, because nursing mothers have a different hormonal profile with the oxytocin and the prolactin. Oxytocin is a love hormone. Its released in marital intimacy and nursing. It’s a connection hormone. It’s wonderful.

But the sex hormones, the estrogens, they are dropped during that time. But I’ve noticed, when you think about your husband in a way, knowing it’s so godly and so beautiful, when you think about your husband, those hormones start turning on.

It doesn’t matter how many times you nurse. I have totally changed my brain just by my thought patterns in the day, not by thinking about my to-do list and all that I have to get done but by thinking about my husband.

I have beautiful dreamy days about it and the nights are gorgeous. I have all kinds of amazing energy because the hormones are where they should be. But it all starts in the mind.

NC: Absolutely.

SA: I’ve been nursing pretty much my whole married life. I could have used that as an excuse.

They’ve actually done scientific studies now where they’ve actually taken women who have lower hormones because of their season of life but with their thought patterns there were detectible changes. It was detectible changes even in blood tests.

NC: So ladies, so far, we’ve got two points that you’ve just got to get hold of:

One: Preserve energy.

Two: Think about your husband during the day.  Think of intimacy with him. Dream about it, yes!

SA: And communication. Ask your husband, “Would you prefer the roast dinner every night or would you prefer more simple meals because I am preserving energy for you?”

I think he might be all about it!

Maybe it’s like, “Would you like me to have all the laundry folded or do you not care? Would you just rather me be available for you? I can’t do everything.”

I feel like we as women just try to do everything, but we have to set worth on intimacy I feel like more than anything.

It’s exercise. I don’t know about everybody, but I feel like to me, exercise has always been important, and I like to tick that box.

But I’ve had to realize that if I’m going to have energy to make my body beautiful for my husband but I’m not going to be willing to give it away, that’s just wrong. There’s something perverted and weird about that.

Rather, just give your body away and spend that energy for that, than just making something beautiful andI’m denying my husband.

Preserve energy even if it means you don’t go for your walk. Use energy with him because that actually is exercise.

NC: Yes it actually helps you lose weight anyway, so they have found with studies.

SA: And remember this point because this was a huge one for me: Remembering it does not have to be a huge, big ordeal every time.

NC: That’s another one, yes, exactly.

SA: That really is what released me. I don’t have to save energy for this hour long, big Romeo and Juliet thing. It doesn’t have to be this huge thing. Maybe it’s just the simplicity of marriage.

NC: Yes, if only we could get that.

I love this quote that I read the other day by Matthew Henry, a commentator of the Bible. I hadn’t read it before.

He says: “A man’s children are pieces of himself, but his wife is himself.”

Don’t you just love that?

SA: That is beautiful.

NC: We are one. That’s the fact. God created us to be one. I’m his and he’s mine. We’re one together. If we’re one together how can we be depriving one another?

Maybe before we move on, I should read that Scripture. You most probably all know it but it’s good to read again. It’s good to bring in a Scripture.

First Corinthians 7:2, 3: “Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence . . ..”

Doesn’t that sound so unromantic? That’s the King James Version of it!

SA: Yeah. You need to get The Passion Translation on that one!

NC: We should yes! We better look that one up. Look it up in The Passion Translation.

First Corinthians 7:3-5: “ . . . and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.”

Incontinency—another big word from King James! That just means that you’re not coming together.

The only excuse that it gives there for not coming together is if we’re in a season of prayer and fasting. Do you notice it doesn’t say, “Except for when you have a baby or little ones”?

It doesn’t say that. It only gives that one thing.

I would love to just tell you what that word “defraud” actually means. Now listen, precious ladies, because we need to be reminded. It’s the Greek word apostereo and it means “to deprive, to despoil, to make destitute, to keep back by fraud, to steal, to rob, to bereave.”

Now that’s pretty powerful.

SA: It’s powerful because I feel like maybe some of us women in the church might think, “Oh my husband’s desire is a little bit yucky. Why are they thinking about that all the time?”

But it’s a godly thing. It’s an awesome thing. It’s a beautiful thing. His desire for his wife is beautiful. A good healthy desire should be there. It’s not a weird thing. It’s not, “Oh what’s wrong with my husband’s brain?”

No, what’s wrong with your husband’s brain when it’s not that way? That situation is sad, and some wives have to deal with it. They need to have compassion on their husbands for that and get them help with some hormones or something. It can be switched around.

NC: Yes, because as women get older or men get older, they can be lacking in hormones and sometimes that can be the problem. For both husband and wife, if we’re not thinking or dreaming about it, there’s something wrong with us. It’s not normal.

SA: The devil has tried to make us as Christians think, “Oh well, it’s not good to think about. It’s not very holy to think about it. It’s not very redeemed.”

Well it very much is! Yes!

NC: Do you remember a dear friend of ours, Sally Ott?

SA: Oh yes, that’s right, she was the mother of 16 children or something like that. She couldn’t nurse properly or something, do you remember? She had 16 children back to back. She was such a peaceful, amazing mum.

I remember being at a wedding shower that she had come to. I think I had three children at the time. All of us young mums were just sitting in a circle talking and having tea or something. We were all there for a wedding shower, so we were all about marriage and everything.

She came up to us or maybe we asked her advice on what she thought, but she said, “If I could give you advice, it would be: ‘Never be too tired for your husband. I made it my goal from the onset of my marriage that I would never say, ‘Oh darling, I’m too tired tonight.’”

She said, “I preserved my energy and I never turned him away.”

And this is the lady who had many, many, many children. It is such an inspiration.

NC: That’s beautiful.

That is another point you can make: never say no. That’s a point that I’ve made in our marriage is “Never say no” because you are depriving.

You think, “Oh I’m looking after myself. I’m too tired or I’m this or I’m that.” But really, you’re not blessing yourself because in the end you always get blessed yourself.

SA: Yes and it doesn’t take long even if you are exhausted and haven’t been thinking about it and haven’t been promoting the atmosphere in your brain.

It doesn’t take long for things to usually catch up if you’re very involved in your brain and not thinking about the laundry.

NC: One more question: What do you think about if people should make it certain times or just rely on the spontaneousness?

SA: Well you know, I think that’s involved with the personality. My personality is free spirit, so I feel like throwing up when I hear the word “Scheduling.” I don’t even know about the word schedule for anything in my life.

So if you’re the scheduled type, wonderful, it sounds fantastic. I just feel like whatever works.

My encouragement as a mom with children still in my bedroom and young children still getting up through the night is that there is always a possibility.

NC: I love that word: Always a possibility.

For me, we do have one special day of the week that we do schedule. Of course we make that a point no matter what. It’s our special time. But that’s just kind of like a foundation because we are always open to spontaneity.

Goodness me, it would be disgusting if we had a week where there was not more of our coming together. We just love it. We have that beautiful, special time that we put aside. That is just there but we are always open to spontaneity.

That’s why I believe it is important always to go to bed with your husband because you never know what’s going to happen.

SA: Well that doesn’t happen with my husband and me. I believe it’s a beautiful thing to go to bed at the same time, but I go to bed early, but my husband loves to stay up. He has such an exhausting job and so he has to kind of depressurize all the responsibilities that he has to do during the day.

And we have all the teens in the house and they’re all whoo- hawing and heeing and he loves to whoo-haw all around and I’m like, “I’m out of here! I’m going to bed with the babies!”

So I think everybody’s different but that doesn’t mean it’s an impossibility either.

It’s either like, “Come, put me to bed, darling” and then you can go up.

Or it’s like, “Come, be prepared to wake me up” and then be prepared if you don’t want him to put you to bed first then you can wake up. It’s always to be able to be available I feel like. We don’t usually go to bed at the same time.

NC: Well I feel like we don’t always either, but I like to. Then again, I think it’s good popping in that other thing for many wives who will use that time just to do other things.

SA: The worth of being together in intimacy has so much more value than ticking off another list than folding the laundry or checking homeschooling math tests.

Let them go by the way.

Women sometimes, they might be like, “Oh time for me. I’ll go get a massage or whatever.” You can think of that as your time, but you can go get your personal masseuse.

NC: I know, exactly! You get more than having a massage. Goodness me, it’s far more exciting!

SA: You can see that just as your time because you get somebody adoring you.

NC: That’s how it’s meant to be, absolutely. Anyway, thank you, because I think you’ve just shared so much wonderful blessing.

SA: If it can happen in my marriage it can happen in anyone’s because, like I said, we are just the total non-schedule type.

I can put my baby to bed now because she’s two. Up until then I was so gung-ho with my first set, train them all and all so wonderful; but I’m kind of like a grandmother now and they’re all a bit naughty and untrained.

I’m a bit relaxed and I’m like, “I’m sure they won’t be doing that when they’re twenty. They’ll be fine.”

I haven’t even started even potty-training my two-year-old!

The point is that if I can still have a rocking marriage, you guys who are more scheduled . . .

NC: With fourteen children!

SA: Yes! Then it can happen for you. My point is that there are no impossibilities.

NC: No, and we’ve been talking about mothers with little ones but then there’s another whole realm of women who are getting older, into their sixties or seventies or maybe eighties.

SA: That’s where you can talk!

NC: I remember reading when I was a young mom how this mother asked this eighty-year-old woman, “When will you be too old to have sex with your husband?”

She said these amazing words and I never forgot them: “Well dear, you will have to ask someone older than me.”

I love that. I thought, “Oh my, I wonder if that could be my testimony when I get older.”

Well, I haven’t got too long till eighty, so I think I’ll have that testimony!

Maybe I’ll have to say, when I’m in my nineties and you ask me, “Well my dear, I think you will have to ask someone older than me.”

SA: That’s fantastic. I say to my husband all the time, it’s a famous saying, I love this saying, “Grow old with me, darling, the best is yet to come.”

NC: I think that’s what we would say in our marriage. When Jesus made the water into wine, He kept the best wine until last. That’s what they said, “Wow, they kept the best wine until last!”

But that’s what God always does. In every marriage there’s challenges, there’s issues, there’s things you’ve got to work through. So many give up today, even in this area of intimacy in your marriage. But never give up. Keep going because as you do and you’re faithful, God always brings out the best wine at the last.

You think, “It couldn’t get better than what I’ve got.”

Yes it can. It gets better and better and better. Amen?

SA: Yes, amen.

NC: Let’s pray.

“Dear Father, We thank You, we praise You for the way You created us. Your plan, even for marriage, it’s beyond anything we could ever even dream about. That You could even think it up to bring such glorious blessing into our oneness together. Lord, You designed it. We can only say that You are so amazing.

“I pray for every precious married woman today, young marrieds with their babies and little ones around them. Even older women who kind of think they’re getting old, Lord God, I pray that You will just keep them, Father, in Your perfect plan. Help them to see this is Your perfect plan for marriage. While they’re married, this is what is meant to be happening.

“Lord, that You will bless them. Bless their marriages. Lord God, that You would come into their marriages and do beautiful things in both the wives and the husbands in the name of Jesus. Amen.”

SUMMARY OF POINTS FOR YOU:

One: PRESERVE YOUR ENERGY FOR SEX WITH YOUR HUSBAND

Two: THINK ABOUT YOUR HUSBAND SEXUALLY DURING THE DAY

Three: IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A HUGE BIG DEAL EVERY TIME (sometimes it’s a celebration; sometimes quick and simple)

Four: NEVER SAY NO

Five: GO TO BED WITH YOUR HUSBAND WHEN HE GOES TO BED (OR BE AVAILABLE WHEN HE NEEDS YOU).

Six: REMEMBER, GOD KEEPS THE BEST WINE UNTIL THE LAST

 

 

Transcribed by Morgan Roth

 

FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

EPISODE 99: WHAT IS OUR REACTION TO THE LOCKDOWN?

I share my thoughts in answer to the question: ”What should we be doing during this time, apart from praying, and preparing our children to be spiritually strong?” There's lots you can do. Check it out.

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

Nancy Campbell: Hello, ladies. Today I'm going to talk with you a little bit about this corona virus we have been going through. I haven't been speaking about it with you on the podcast, although I've been writing about it on my Facebook.

Actually, Serene, of Serene and Pearl with Trim and Healthy Mama, she did a very good podcast. It was called, you can go back and check it, ”The Eye of the Poddy.” It was nicknamed “Serene's Sermon.” Rather, instead of their bantering back and forth as they usually do, she got anointed, and she actually gave a sermon. It was very encouraging. That's something I think you would enjoy listening to.

After listening to her, I thought, “Oh, my, I don't think I need to do one myself.” But I had another question come in and I thought, “Yes, I'll just take one session on it.”

Now let me pull this up and give you this question here. “Nancy, can you please share what you believe we ought to be doing during this time? I've seen your posts about freedoms being taken away. But what are we supposed to be doing outside of praying and preparing our children to be spiritually strong?”

Well, I think that mother had a good answer herself. She mentions, what can we do, apart from praying? And she mentioned praying FIRST. That's where I would put prayer, NUMBER ONE on the list. And so I have a few points about things that I believe that we should be doing.

Now, of course, we are going into a different time. I believe this virus is easing. So many thousands of Christians have been praying, that by the end of the month of April, it would be just about over. And I believe that is happening.

I believe God has been answering our prayers  because God is a prayer-answering God. We don't come to Him not believing. We come in faith, believing. I do believe that prayer is the greatest thing we can do, as many of you have already been doing.

I'm sure you have been gathering together as a family, as we do every day. We've been praying for this end, praying for healing, and praying for this whole thing to be ended, in our nation, and in the world.

Also, praying for our President, who needs such prayer at this time, because he is bombarded with everything around him. He has people around him. I'm sure he has so many good people around him. But he also has the influence of very negative people. We're praying, as I'm sure you are, that he will have the mind of God, to know what this country should do.

I love that Scripture in the Word of God which speaks about the children of Issachar, one of the tribes of Israel. It says that the children of Issachar had “understanding of the times, to know what Israel should do” (1 Chronicles 12:32). I've always loved that Scripture. I've prayed that Scripture, I pray it for ourselves, that we will have true understanding, and know what we should be doing. I pray it for our President, that he will have understanding, and know what we should be doing.

So yes, dear friend, who wrote in this question, number one is prayer, and should be for all of us. We should not be lessening in prayer. We should be intensifying because this is a very, very strategic time in the world.

I believe we should be praying as a family, morning and evening. We should also have extra time for prayer. We've always had a prayer meeting in our home. It's just been part of our lives, right throughout our married life.

Currently, we have a prayer meeting for everybody around this area, once a week. We usually have it at our home, but we are currently having it at Serene's house. Over the winter we do it at Serene’s, so she doesn't have to bring all her little ones out and carry them home in the cold. But gathering a few extra people and pray together.

My husband and I have also felt lately that we need to pray three times a day, just as David did, as Daniel did even in the face of persecution, and being thrown in the lions' den. The Bible says that he prayed and bowed his knees before the Lord three times a day, as he always did, even though the decree of the king said if he was to do that, that he would be thrown into the lions' den.

We noticed that he not only prayed three times a day, but he BOWED before the Lord. So we're now doing that. Instead of just praying, sitting on our chairs, we are getting down on our knees, and bowing before the Lord. Showing our earnestness before Him. You just might want to do that too. I think there's a very powerful thing in kneeling before the Lord.

The other thing this lovely mother said was, “What else do we do but pray and raise godly children?” Wow! That is NUMBER TWO point, yes! In this hour, we need to be raising children who know the truth. Raising children who have Godly and Biblical convictions.  And raising children who know the Constitution, for those of us who live in America. Many of you are listening in other parts of the world. And also raising children who know how to live without fear.

Now I think this has been one of the most drastic things that has happened because of this corona virus. To me, it has not been the virus that has been the most scary but the fear that has come upon people. And even the fear that has come upon Christian people. I have been grieved to see so many Christians in fear.

Dear precious wives and mothers, we are not meant to walk in fear! God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, and of power, and of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). Fear does not come from God! Fear is Satan's weapon. This is the weapon that he uses.

In fact, those in witchcraft say that this is their greatest weapon, the weapon of fear. I believe that whatever is the origin of this thing, there's so many ideas and we don't truly know. But the greatest origin of it is fear which comes from the enemy. I believe we have to rise up against fear.

We're talking about raising godly children. Look, dear parents, dear moms and dads, if we are in fear, what are we teaching our children? If we are believers, and we are in fear, we're walking hypocritically. I believe we teach our children far more by our own attitudes, by our lifestyles, than anything else.

Our children should not see us in fear of this virus because God is bigger than this virus! Even though it is now waning, even in the peak time, God was BIGGER!

The sad thing is, is that the fear, the fear was actually often lies, because we were programmed and brainwashed by the media with all these projections that were horrific. That millions were going to die. But they were only projections! They were not reality.

That's the thing about fear. Fear is NOT reality. Fear is believing something that just might happen. You see, faith is powerful—Both fear and faith are powerful. They both are putting our belief in someone, and in trusting someone or something.

When we have faith, we are putting our trust in God, Who is bigger than any situation and bigger than any virus and bigger than anything we face! We put our trust in Him, and we can trust Him!

When we fear, we're putting our trust in the enemy. And we're putting our trust in lies. We're putting our trust in something, well it just might happen. It is not reality!

Let me give you a few Scriptures here, because I believe this is something very important, that we should talk about. Let's see here . . . yes, I wanted to give you Job 3:25. I have it written down here, but let me go straight to the Word, and I'll read it to you from there. This is a powerful Scripture. Job 3:25: “And Job said, for the thing,” actually that is the word fear, pachad, there, “which I greatly feared,” pachad again, “is come upon me. That which I was afraid of has come unto me.”

See, there's the power of fear. What you fear will often happen. Therefore, we do not want to fear! This is the sad thing. Many have feared, and that's, it's not a healthy thing, to fear at all.

In Job 15:21 it says: “The sound of fear is in his ears.” Now isn't that interesting? The sound of fear. Did you know that fear has sound waves? Yes, and we have been hearing the sound waves of fear through the government, through the CDC, through the media, and through leftist governors. We've been receiving the sound of fear. They have been wanting to put fear in us. This has been the plan.

Isaiah 24:18 says: “Whoever flees at the sound of panic will fall into a pit.” Do you know that just the sound (no reality), it's just a sound!

Psalm 53:5 says: “There they were, in great fear, where no fear was.” Now, did you ever read that Scripture before? This Scripture is a picture of what's happened in our nation. There they were! In great fear! The whole of our nation, and the nations of the world, were put into fear and panic. They thought they were going to die! Even if they went outside!

But it goes on to say: “where no fear was.” And that is the truth of the matter, especially now that we come to the waning of this virus as all viruses wane, they mutate and weaken. That's what happens. It happens with the flu every year.  They are now finding out, with all the numbers, that this flu is less, there have been less than one percent deaths worldwide.

Now, we grieve at every death. No one wants anyone to die. No loved ones to die. We don't want to die. It's amazing how God has put this thing of life within us. We want to hold onto life! And you've seen this during this panic time. You've seen how people have been scared of death.

I remember my precious father, who when he passed away, throughout his life and as he got older . . . he just, he was so healthy all his life. He was the fittest man you could ever meet. I mean, he would run, because he lived in New Zealand. He was the entertainer at the Agrodome, the big shearing place where they show the sheep, and do the shearing demonstrations.

Where he lived, which was, I guess, a couple miles, maybe not quite that, he would run to work each day, and he would jump the fences, even as he got older. He was just so fit, and so healthy. He never went to a doctor, and never went to a hospital. Never took an aspirin in his whole life.

Then in his later life, he got prostate cancer, which turned to bone cancer, unfortunately. But he would always say, “Hey, if ever I get bedridden, just get me out of here!” He just wouldn't know how to be bedridden because he was so fit.

But when that time came, and he was bedridden, he wasn't saying, “Get me out of here.” No, he was still hanging onto life, until that very moment that God took him. Because that's what God has put in us, to hold onto life. That is good. That is a great thing.

But even so, even in that holding onto life, we dare not fear death, we dare not fear, because God is in control. He is bigger. Fear is not reality. Fear is something that might happen! It's not definite at all! And so why do we put our faith in fear? Because it's putting our faith in something that is negative, into that which is not reality.

Isaiah 8:11-14 says: “For the Lord spoke to me with a strong hand and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying 'Say ye not a confederacy. Neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord of Hosts Himself and let Him be your fear and let Him be your dread.' And He shall be for a sanctuary.”

So I've just been so concerned about the fear. Well, I think I would have to say that I have not feared this virus at all, but I guess I do fear something. Because I'm talking about not fearing, so it's not that I'm in a state of panic about it. But I, what could I call it? I'm in a state of great concern about it.

That is, that this, there's more to this virus. I am concerned about the control that government, and even state governments, are wanting to take over their people, not only in this nation, but all over the world. There is a thing behind this of taking control of our God-given freedoms.

Precious ladies, I believe we have to watch that. You see, this virus is proof that yes, it was horrific for many people, but so is the flu, when people get very ill. The statistics are that there have not been more to die of this corona than have of the flu in the couple of past years.

So it's something we face in life. We never want to face these things. But never before has the world shut down because of a flu epidemic or pandemic. This time it happened. But there is more to it.

There is this wanting to take over and control our lives. This is what we must be concerned about. This is what we must stand up against. This is what we must teach our children to stand up against. And they must know what the Constitution says.

Now the First Amendment that we see, I can't say it from memory, so I'd better just look where I wrote it here. I have it right here! OK. We all know it, but let's read it so we get it straight.

“The first Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws which regulate an establishment of religion. Did you hear that? Which regulate an establishment of religion, that prohibits the free exercise of religion, or abridges the freedom of speech. The freedom of the press. The right to peaceably assemble, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

So that's the First Amendment, which gives us great freedoms, which we must not let go. Because these freedoms are being taken from us. We already know, all of us, of how many crazy things are happening, you know, with governments taking control, more or less in different states.

We know the democrat in Michigan, Governor Whitmer, how she limited, people could only go like, say, to Lowe's, or places like that. They could only have four people per 1000 square foot of customer floor space. They were not allowed to buy flooring, furniture, garden, or have garden centers open with plants, or they could not buy paint.

Now that is, what is that? That's nothing to do with corona virus. Nothing! When people are told to stay home, can men, men who are not, they're not programmed to sit around home. “OK, if I'm home, well, let me do something in the house! Let me fix up the house that needs fixing. So let me just go and get some new flooring, and get some new tools, and fix up some . . . ” No, they weren't allowed to do that!

“Well, here I am, stuck at home. OK, let's do some painting!” No, not even allowed to buy paint. Now that is ridiculous. They weren't allowed to go and buy seeds to put in their garden.

Of course, she even stopped the use of hydroxychloroquine. Some other states have stopped that too. Some are even going, taking those states to court now, because our President, he is always wanting to find out that which will bless and help our nation. He found out about hydroxychloroquine, and he made it known, and got it passed, and got Bayer and other places manufacturing it.

It is a drug that is been around for 70 years. It is being proved to help with this corona virus. If they get it early enough, they get well so quickly. In fact, there were testimonies of people, even on TV. One guy, he was in the very last stages. He didn't even think he'd last the night. He pleaded with them that they would give him hydroxychloroquine. They did, and he revived in an hour and a half, and was so well. But there are some states that will not allow it. That's allowing people to die.

Then today I read, Birmingham, Alabama. OK, we're going into the new phase. OK, some people can start getting back to work! Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!

But Birmingham city, Alabama, are now putting on more laws and overkill. Everyone from two years of age and up must wear a mask if they go outside their door, or outside their car. That is totally ridiculous!

Dear ladies, are we going to be victims to such petty little things as this? I mean, even the World Health Organization has revealed that masks don't help people. It's not going to stop you getting the virus if you were going to get it.

If you did get it, well, it wouldn't be too much of a worry anyway, if you're healthy. So many have been tested that didn't even know they had it. For many, they haven't had hardly any symptoms at all. It is good to get that herd mentality (laughing) Not mentality, but IMMUNITY!

That's important with a virus. The more people who are out and about, and the immunity, they gain their immunity by . . . they just sort of pick up things. Their immune system gets stronger. But hiding away in your house and hiding away behind a mask, you're breathing in your own carbon dioxide, and it's really not helping you at all. That's not helping. That's weakening your immune system.

I mean, yes, I think my husband and me. I think we've had the flu just about every year of our lives. When, you know, it's always at this time that it goes around, and you get it. Sometimes it's not so bad, and other times it's really bad. I've had it really bad. The amazing thing is, this year, neither of us have had even the flu or corona, because I think we have been on the offensive about it. I'll get on to that point in a moment, too.

Then I also heard today that California is now stating that churches cannot meet together for another three months! Now I don't agree with that. I never even agreed with it throughout this time of the lockdown.

Now I'm sorry, ladies. I guess some of you could not agree with me, and that's fine. We don't always have to agree. Like even my husband says often, I mean we have the most glorious marriage in the world, but we don't always agree on everything. But he always says, “Darling, we don't have to agree on everything, but we just have to love one another.” Isn't that wonderful? That's how it should be.

But you know, when I first heard that churches were giving in to this lockdown, I couldn't believe it! Oh yes, I know the motive of the many was that “Yes, we don't want to spread it and we want to care for our fellow believers.” But who are we? Are we the people of God or not?

Surely, if we are the people of God, can you imagine the people of God getting together, maybe not to have a normal service, but to cry out to God together in prayer! To cry out to Him to bring a hope to this thing, to bring healing! And the power of God is in our midst. Isn't that what we are meant to be as the people of God?

Of course, we are not going to expect the sick to come in, unless they come and ask to be healed. But those who would have infections or flu or corona, they would stay away. That's how it's meant to be.

Yes, there is quarantine. We quarantine the sick and the infectious. That is important. And that has always been what we do. Even in Bible times, they quarantined, they quarantined the lepers. But you know, they had lepers around them all the time. If they went near a leper, the leper was required to call out, “Unclean! Unclean!” so they would not come near. That was good. They had to stay that infection.

I think that would be a far worse thing to have lepers around than to have even the corona, which has been like a flu. Of course, when you have the flu, you're not going to go out and spread your germs! I don't want to get near anybody spreading their germs on me, thank you! And so that's etiquette. You will not spread your germs if you are even slightly sick, and think, “Oh, maybe I could spread them.” You'll stay home.

But if you are perfectly healthy, you should not have to be quarantined. Healthy people shouldn't be quarantined. Back in Bible times, they didn't stop society, or quarantine the healthy because there were lepers. No, they quarantined those who were infectious. And that is so important.

But can you imagine healthy believers coming together and praying? The power of God is there when we get together to pray. What did Jesus say? “When two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst” (Matthew 18:20).

And I often think of this Scripture in Romans chapter eight. Let me go, I just had my Bible upside down for a minute. Romans, chapter eight. It says here, in verse 11: “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken [make alive] your mortal body by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.”

That is so powerful! If the Spirit of God that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in me, imagine a gathering of God's people who have indwelling in them the Spirit of the living God Who raised Jesus from the dead! How can they spread sickness to one another? Oh my, let's be who we are meant to be as the people of God!

Oh wow, yes, let me just give you this. Now where did that go? I had that piece of paper there, which was very important, about the Constitution. It's disappeared. You gave it to me before, and here it is. I've got it. Ha-ha. Too many pieces of paper here!

OK. Now, this is the United States Department of Justice. “Law enforcement may not arrest, threaten, or intimidate citizens exercising their rights to peaceably assemble.”  Title 18, Section 242 of the Constitution says, “It is a crime for a law enforcement officer acting under color of any law, to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitutional laws of the United States.”

The Constitution specifically names the right to peaceably assemble as a right given to all citizens by the Constitution. This offense, that is to, you know, come after people who are doing that, who are peaceably assembling to do that, the offense is punishable by a range of imprisonment up to life term, or the death penalty, depending upon the circumstances of the crime.

Wow! Goodness me. Well, here we have the First Amendment that we have the right to peaceably assemble. Churches peaceably assemble. They're not protesting. They're not rising up against the government. They are peaceably assembling to worship God and pray for their nation. Pray for their city. There is nothing that they are doing wrong. They have the right under the Constitution to peaceably assemble together. If there is an offense, it is on those who are stopping them doing it.

So we need to know our rights, don't we? And learn to, it's time to stand up. So we not only raise our children to live without fear, but instead to stand on their convictions and trust in God. We teach them to be those who trust God.

But we teach them to know what is right, and what is true. I think, you see, why I am talking to you today. Sadly, my yes, I'm running out of time. But anyway, it's because I think of my children, well, my children are grown now, but my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren who are all coming along. What kind of, what kind of a nation, what kind of a situation are they going to live in if we are having all these rights taken from us?!

I mean, we dare not, ladies, we have got to stand up, precious ladies. Oh, I hope that you will do . . . I could go on and on with all the things that have been taking place, where people have been arrested for just, oh, being, walking alone at the beach, or walking alone at the park. I mean, this has got beyond a joke. And it's time we stood up.

Anyway, time is going, so I've got to just quickly talk about one or two other points. Yes, live in divine health. I believe this is what we should be doing. I mean, if we have, as I have just given you this Scripture, we have the Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, living in us. So we can claim His health. Our God is Jehovah Jireh, “I am the Lord that healeth thee.” We claim that promise. We live under the Power of the precious Blood of Jesus.

Right over this time, because it was Passover, but also it was . . . I had it as an emblem of protection. I had a beautiful red, sort of scarf, just flowing over my door, over the top and the sides, of course, where they put the Blood upon the door, as an emblem. We can do actual things like that. But I do believe.

OK, we do not fear, but we do live wisely. We live in divine health. We claim the healing that is available to us in God. And we boost our immune system. Now we should always be living healthily, and always casting out sugar from our homes. I hope you don't have any sugar in your pantry, or any foods filled with sugar. They weaken your immune system.

Now, we should do it any time, but if there is a pandemic, a virus that's serious, and it's going around, you're going to, if you are wise, you will boost your immune system, and the immune system of your children. And that's the greatest thing you can do.

Look, it's not wearing a mask. Did I tell you about how Birmingham, now Birmingham city wants everybody to wear a mask, from two years of age and upwards. I mean, that is totally ridiculous. Look, it's not wearing a mask. It's not hiding away in your home. No! IT IS LIVING FREE and boosting your immune system. In fact, your immune system will boost more by just getting out and about.

But eat a healthy diet and take extra supplements. At a time like this, you will take extra vitamin C. You can take 1000 milligrams in the morning and 1000 at night if you want to. And give extra to your children. This how to do it wisely.

I mean, I have seen precious mothers in the supermarket. Sadly, they are overweight, which is another thing to watch. So they're overweight, they don't look healthy, and they've got masks on, and all their little children have got masks on. They're putting into their shopping cart Coke, and packets of cereal filled with sugar, and all this refined junk! Oh, my heart wants to cry!

Now, if our governments were acting wisely, and our state governments, they would be telling people this. They wouldn't say, “Oh go around wearing a mask.” They would say, “Now people, this is the time to boost your immune system.”

Take extra vitamins, and the things that are so good to help you with coming against a virus. Vitamin C, and I listed a few others here that I want to tell you about. Yes, let me see here . . . goodness me, I've listed that down too because I wanted to list all the ones that I think are good. Here we go, all my pages . . . where did I put them all?

Yes, OK. Vitamin C. Now you don't have to take all of these, of course, but these are some that you could get. I would take at least two or three of some these that I'm listing for you. Vitamin C, yes, up to 2000 a day.

Vitamin D3, which is so important. Although now that we're moving into springtime, you're going to be getting out more, and in the sunlight. The sun will give you more vitamin D than you can get through a tablet.

And that's another thing. This hiding away in homes is not healthy. Get out in the light! Get out in the sunlight. The sunlight is healing. It kills germs! Oh yes, do you remember wonderful Florence Nightingale who ministered to the soldiers?

Oh, she found that the soldiers that they would put out in the sun healed much quicker than those who were in hospital. That was about the time where they were beginning to discover antibiotics. Then, of course, as we got onto antibiotics, well, sunlight got forgotten about. But sunlight is a great healer. It kills germs.

Anyway, garlic, olive leaf extract, elderberry tincture, L-lysine, zinc (zinc is really wonderful. oregano, Echinacea, all those things are marvelous for boosting your immune system. Decide which ones you want to take. Take at least two or three of them.

And of course, baobab. If you belong to Trim Healthy Mama, well, you don't belong, but you know about it. You may have already ordered baobab. That is the most highest form of vitamin C. It's marvelous if you can take that.

I think Serene and Pearl have just put out a new drink. Take every morning a cup of water with a tablespoon full of baobab and tablespoonful of whey protein. Whisk it around and drink it. Drink it three times a day. You will boost your immune system.

So, oh dear, time has gone, my precious ladies! But anyway, I didn't talk to you about half the things. I will just end with this one thing. Think positively. I have been, again, so grieved by all the doom and gloom, and people talking about death. Oh goodness, we've got to, we are the people of hope!

What does it say, Romans 15:13: “Now the God of Hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing, that ye may ABOUND IN HOPE by the power of the Holy Ghost, who lives within you.” We are meant to be walking in hope. Hope means to believe that God is going to do good things. We believe that He is going to keep us in health as we do our part and live wisely and not on all the junk food that God didn't create, butut on the wholesome original food that God created.

We speak health, and we speak hope, and we speak faith, and we speak the Word of God. We get the promises of the Word of God, and even those Scriptures I was giving you at the beginning about fear, give them to your children. Make them memory verses.

And the Scriptures about hope and the wonderful promises of God. Make them memory verses for your children so they know them. That your home becomes a home of speaking health, speaking hope, speaking joy.

And even in the midst of this scary time, because I believe that even as we're now getting back to work, but so many governors are taking it so slowly, and wanting people to still have all these controls put on them, and wear masks, and all the vaccines. Oh, help!

That's one of the sinister things about this thing that those behind the scenes, the powers that be, have been wanting this to be something by which they can bring in a vaccination to vaccinate everybody. Bill Gates says there will be, and this is his exact quote, “There will be no mass gatherings until there are mass vaccinations.”

Although it's going to take about two years to get one. By that time, of course, and even now, the whole thing is mutating and weakening, and that's what it does. Maybe next year, there'll be a different strain.

So we have to be ready, in faith, and with a boosted immune system, to face these things. But we're going to do it in faith and not come under all the doom and gloom. And not give in to all these things they want to do.

Don't ever take that vaccination, even if it comes out. I think that would be the worst thing you could ever do. In fact, they found that people who take the flu vaccination, that many of them got corona. Even only 50% of people who take the flu vaccination, it helps them anyway.

But I do have to stop, ladies. I could go on for so long. But the Lord bless you. Let's pray.

Oh Father, we thank You so much that we can trust You wholly. Oh, we thank You for the words of that hymn, “Those who trust You wholly, find Your holy true.” And Lord, we thank You, we praise You. We thank You that You are in control. We thank You that You are bigger than anything we face.

And Lord, as we move on into these next few months, and as we seek in faith, and as our President seeks to get this nation back to work, we pray, Lord God, that this will happen. And that those who are trying to continue to control people, that, Lord, this power and authority that they are taking, which is not theirs, will be broken, Lord God, and they will not have that authority.

We pray that Your people will rise up into the freedoms that You have given them, and the freedoms we have in this nation, in our Constitution. And the freedom to peaceably assemble as the people of God.

Oh, Father, we ask You that Your people will not be victims, that they will not be afraid, but they will rise up in truth, and what is right. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.”

Transcribed by Darlene Norris.

FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

EPISODE 98: HOW DO YOU TREAT YOUR HUSBAND?

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

Nancy Campbell: Hello ladies! I have a guest with me today, Erin Harrison. Erin and her husband and family are part of our hilltop family. They live nearby and they are such a blessing.

Erin has been with me before on the podcast. If you haven’t heard her before she was with me for podcast 59 and we talked about how motherhood is an eternal work. She was also on podcast 60, which was about how you are the queen of your home.

Last year Erin and I were also doing live TALK SHOWS together where you could watch us and listen. We enjoyed doing those together. Then Erin got rather busy doing something else and I’m going to get her to tell you about it. But we do hope to get back to doing them, don’t we?

Any way it is lovely to have you, Erin, love you and just tell the ladies what has been keeping you busy over these last few months.

Erin Harrison: Oh yes! Back about a year ago, just being a part of the community and the fellowship and getting to know Nancy and Colin and everything they stand for, there was one thing I wasn’t really accustomed to.

A lot of Christian circles don’t embrace the idea of motherhood and don’t want to embrace the idea of larger families. When we stopped at five because I had health concerns, I always thought I would adopt but it never came to pass so I had continually left it in the Lord’s hands.

Adoption can be a very lengthy and financially straining process for a lot of families but I had heard that there was another way to do it.

I heard last summer that there was a way you could take classes and join into the fostering care system. You could foster to adopt. There are different agencies that work with moms and dads that want to expand their family and welcome new little ones into the home.

It can be a scary and daunting thing. You hear a lot of horror stories of people that have had situations that have gotten really out of control and things like that. But I just felt a real call to do it because it’s free to adopt through the fostering system and you can get some beautiful children.

Sometimes they’re not able to be reunited with their family, but if they, are you know that you’re there to stand in the gap and help with that whole process and even minister to the family.

What is neat is that you can welcome these children into your home and adopt them after fostering them for six months.

We took the classes and we ended up getting our first child the end of October, a little four-year-old little boy. He has extreme special needs.

I thought when we were getting into it we were going to be getting a little newborn. I even got little newborn clothes and I got already for one of these little newborns that would maybe be coming into our home.

Well, God had different plans.

When I got the call I had waited for a month and I was just on bated breath and I was waiting and waiting and wondering why we hadn’t gotten the call and at last the call came!

They said there was a sweet little four-year-old little boy, African American little boy, and he needs a forever home. He was looking to be adopted.

My husband and I didn’t even pray about it. We just said, “Yes!” and we signed up!

We signed up and it was exactly the opposite of what we had thought.

NC: And you had no idea! They didn’t even tell you of all his medical needs, did they?

EH: No, no!

They were going to be dropping him off at the house and then all of the sudden they’re telling me to come to Vanderbilt Hospital. Not only do I find out the child is non-verbal but he’s not able to eat food with his mouth. He has a tracheotomy so he has this little hole in his throat that he breathes out of and he has a feeding tube.

He had seizures and had had countless surgeries. It’s just a miracle that he was even alive! He was a twin and all this stuff.

Not only did I find all this out on the first day but I also find out that he comes with, through the DCS, that they hire 24 hour nursing.

That right there was like, “What, what? What does that mean?”

There’s going to be these nurses coming into your home. Each of them takes a 12-hour shift but you have these people in your home, helping you take care of this child 24/7.

NC: Whew and it’s only Erin who would take on things like this, bigger than what normal people could ever do.

EH: The doctor said to me, “You didn’t know any of this?”

I said, “No!”

He said, “Well you can back out, we would understand” because that is kind of a lot.

NC: Yes. He doesn’t walk or anything.

EH: So I prayed about it and that night when I slept I had this vision or dream. It’s such a big decision to say, “Yes” to something like that.

It’s a life long decision because you don’t know how they’ll recover. I believe he will fully recover. He doesn’t walk either. He just had hip surgery. In my vision I saw all these people lying on the ground, all these lame people with all these different conditions. My hands were reaching toward them and the Lord’s hands were coming through my hands towards all these people.

He said to me, “What you do to the least of these you’ve done to Me.”

These are the least of these. These are the people that everybody discards and abandons because it’s too hard and too difficult. They need somebody with some grit. I guess the Lord knew that my husband and I could handle it.

I think the most difficult part for us is having the in-home nursing because think about it, you’ve got people monitoring you day and night. We’ve had all kinds of weird, crazy stuff. You wouldn’t even believe it. I can’t even get into all of the crazy stories.

I did see that the Lord takes everything and uses it for His glory.

NC: I must just say here: I think that anyone else would have given up by now but you have kept on. You have kept on keeping on and you have been through massive things. We wouldn’t have time to speak about all the challenges that Erin has faced.

EH: It will be in my book. Hopefully, I will get the first installment of the book coming out this spring sometime. You’ll get to read about it. It’s kind of an earth-shattering story. You have got to hear the story. You’ll be like, “Oh my goodness!” Your eyes will be bulging out!

NC: You can’t believe what all has happened to one person!

EH: But you’ll get to hear it at some point.

Any way, so we had all these nurses in the home all the time. I was kind of complaining about it here and there. It’s hard because you can’t just have your family. You’ve got the child in the living room and the nurse in the living room.

They are constantly picking up your child and parenting your child in ways you might not want to parent your child. You want to decide how you do the parenting and they just come in there and take over the whole scene.

I had to set ground rules and all this kind of stuff. But trying to have a good attitude about it has been a real challenge for me. I’ve had to change my perspective because everything is mindset.

One of the mindsets I had to come to was, “I am the queen of my home and I even have servants!”

NC: Yes, that’s a good way to think about it!

EH: I don’t even have to pay for it!

These women come into my home and they help me change diapers and they help me do all the dirty jobs of the complex medical needs type of stuff.

NC: But it is amazing how you have learned to do so much for him and you can do it better than even any of the nurses.

EH: Well, he nearly died a few times on the watch of the nurses, and I have had to intervene and help save his life. I took classes to save his life and I’ve had to do it a couple of times.

NC: You saved his life the other night when we were there! Oh goodness me, he was choking, and you just went over and fixed him up.

EH: I just popped him over and popping him on the back. The little part of the little plastic animal that he had chewed off shot right out of his windpipe.

There are all these things but another thing, too, is that God put these nurses in my home to minister to.

You wouldn’t believe the things that they come to me with that they are struggling with.

NC: You were telling me about the one who was going through a struggle in her marriage. Tell us about that.

EH: Yes, yes, well she was actually with tears in her eyes at a crossroads. She said she’s done. She’s done; she doesn’t feel like she loves her husband anymore and she was just ready to throw in the towel.

I know right then and there I just prayed and the Lord just gave me the courage to plow right through all of that junk because that’s what it is: it’s just junk.

No man and no woman are perfect. All of us have flaws.

God creates men with a different role than He does women. We don’t want men to be like women.

I think Hollywood and the media and the whole world has a different picture or portrayal of what a man is supposed to be. They are supposed to be so sensitive and all about our feelings and cater to all of our whims and our needs.

That’s not a real man! That’s a sissy man.

NC: I remember counseling a woman and she was sharing with me, and other women had counseled her to leave her husband because she said he didn’t really know how to sympathize with her. She said a while back her father died, and he didn’t really know how to really sympathize.

Goodness me, some men can, but often they don’t know how. We can’t expect our husbands to meet our deep emotional needs. Only God can do that.

EH: The sooner people realize that the better because I realized that about ten years ago and it’s been a work in process. It didn’t all happen over night.

I started to search the Scriptures about this because I wasn’t learning it in the churches.

I felt really frustrated because I was going to Spirit-filled churches and they were talking about speaking in tongues or they were talking about this or how you can serve in the church and all this kind of stuff.

I felt like everything I had read about the woman was to love your husband, love your children, and be a keeper of the home just like Titus 2 says: that the older women teach the younger women to be discreet, to love their husbands.

NC: To love their children.

EH: Yes and so I’m thinking, “Why am I not learning all this stuff about what the Bible is teaching me about motherhood?”

I was starting to have babies and I was thinking, “I need help with this season of life. I need help with how to be a better mother and how to be a better wife and how to be a better housekeeper.”

I was a slob. I had clutter everywhere. I had stuff coming out of my closets. If you opened my closet doors, stuff would come flying out.

There was dust everywhere and dirt and grime. I was yelling at my husband and crying all the time.

I was spending time just pouting in my room and feeling sorry for myself because, “I was abused! And oh my goodness, all this bad stuff happened to me.”

I wanted my husband to sit all day long and mourn with me and put his sackcloth and ashes on!

NC: So how did he get out of that?

EH: Well, he would just go to work anyway! He didn’t care! He had stuff to do. He said, “I can’t sit around all day!”

NC: You just had to woman-up!

EH: Finally I just started reading and I’m like, “Oh my goodness!”

One of the Bible verses I read says: “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as to the Lord.”

I thought, “Whoa, as unto the Lord!” So kind of like unto the Lord or as you would unto the Lord.

I’m a very visual person so I started trying to visualize my husband as Jesus.

When he would come home I thought, “What would I do if Jesus Christ Himself came traipsing through the door there?”

I would be like, “Oh Lord, please come in! I welcome you into my home! I’m so glad You’re here! You’re so amazing; You are the most beautiful Lord in the whole world!

“Please, have a seat, have a seat in the best seat of the house. Can I get You anything? Can I get You a glass of water? Would you like any ice in it?”

If He says two, “Oh yes, would you like two or three? Anything you want! Let me put this under Your feet. Let me give You a massage. Let me take my very hair and anoint Your feet with oil!”

NC: Wow.

EH: So I started to think of it that way.

When my husband would come home and I would lavish all of this benevolence to him and all this, he would just act like, “What in the world happened to my wife?”

The first day I got on my knees and I cried and said, “Forgive me. I’ve been so awful. I’ve been terribly selfish and always worried about how I feel. “Here you are working every day and providing for me and the children and I just want you to come home and take care of the children and help do the dishes when you’ve been outside all day long and I just keep thinking about myself.

“I keep nagging you about what you are eating and making you feel bad about this and making you feel bad about that. I just am very sorry. Do you forgive me?”

I was crying. I had tears. I think I had so many tears in my hair I could have anointed his feet with it. I wanted to wash his feet. I wanted to lay there and die I just felt so horrible about how I treated him.

He just sat there and wept and he held me in his arms and said, “Oh you haven’t been that bad.”

It just seemed to start a whole new chapter of life. I just started looking at him differently as I would unto the Lord.

The other day I told him that I had shared this with the nurse. He said, “You really do treat me like the Lord.”

He said, “You really do.”

We just love each other so much. We have the most amazing relationship and marriage.

I told this to the nurse the other day and she’s like, “But he’s so mean and he’s so terrible and he’s so rough and gruff!”

I said to her, “That’s sexy to be rough and gruff though. That’s what a real man is: rough and gruff. Yeah, that’s what you want!”

I tried to change her perspective.

I said, “Does your husband molest your children?”

She says, “No.”

“Does he beat you every day?”

She says, “No. He would never beat me.”

I said, “Does he go and get drunk and go cheat on you and go with all these women and everything?”

She said, “No, he’s never done that. He’s always faithful.”

I said, “You should be thankful! My goodness, shame on you! You’ve got a good one! He’s a keeper!”

“Really, you think so?” she said.

“Yes, you fight for your marriage! How much do you love Jesus?”

She said, “With all my heart.”

I said, “Then completely give yourself to the Lord and do exactly what His Word says” and I showed her that Scripture verse.

I said, “Put all your selfishness aside. Put Jesus first. He only asks you these three little things.”

You know, you see those memes all over the Internet. They say, “I gave you one job. And then you can’t even do that one job?”

So I said, “Love your husband. Treat him as you would treat the Lord Jesus Himself. Kill him with kindness. Get on your face before the Lord.

“The Bible says, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Your husband is your closest neighbor. Your neighbor is anybody that isn’t yourself.

“How are you treating him? Are you treating him the way you would want to be treated?”

She says, “No!”

She couldn’t believe all this stuff.

The next day I called Vange to come over and help me tag team and give her some confirmation.

Vange had some beautiful revelations, too. She was saying how sacred marriage is and how it’s a covenant in blood.

She said Jesus and the church is a picture of marriage and how when Jesus bled and died on the cross He shed His blood and it was that blood covenant and we’re covered in His blood.

When you marry somebody and you’re on your marriage bed, the first time a woman is with her husband, there’s blood that comes. That’s how they used to know that the marriage is sealed for thousands of years. They had a little cloth.

NC: They would put the little cloth on the first night of the marriage and then, if the husband ever came and accused his wife of being in fornication before marriage, the parents would bring the cloth before the judges and there was the proof that she was a virgin.

Also, it was a covenant sealed in blood.

EH: So it’s not a light thing. In the world people get married and divorced all the time. When people fall out of love with somebody you just give up and you just go find somebody else.

But Vange and I assured her and we guaranteed her. We said, “We can guarantee you that if you leave this one and you get another one he might woo you until he can get you in the bed and then you’ll be chopped liver again.”

It’s not how somebody treats you. It’s how you perceive it. It’s a whole different realm until you put it into the perspective of what do the Scriptures say and what God says.

NC: I am just going to pop in here and just give this little statement, this truth, that marriage, more than anything else in the whole world, is the reflection of the image of God.

I mean, marriage reveals Christ and His bride. This is the whole picture. This is what marriage is meant to be.

If we could only keep that in our hearts because how we’re going to treat Christ is how we’re going to treat our husbands. As you were saying, treat him like Jesus.

Anyway, what happened? Did she listen to your counseling?

EH: Well first she told me what a terrible person he was.

I told her just like I said in the beginning, with the dream of the foster child I had, that what you do to the least of these you have done unto Christ.

She thinks very lowly of her husband. In her eyes he is the least of these. I said, “What you have done unto to the least of these, you have done unto Me.”

The Scripture on that one was Matthew 25:40: “ And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

It goes back to “As unto the Lord.”

So if you’re treating him like trash and he is trash, you’re doing it unto the Lord. He is the least of these in your mind and so whatever you do to him you’re doing it unto the Lord.

You might as well just treat him like you would the Lord and skip all that other junk and have it wonderful!

After the weekend she came back to take care of the little child and she says, “Oh I have to tell you, it is so miraculous!”

I said, “What happened? Did you implement some of these things that Vange and I told you that come from the Scriptures?”

She said, “Yes and you wouldn’t believe it, my husband was so kind in return.”

NC: How wonderful.

EH: She said, “It softened his heart. He wanted to please me.”

He even cleaned the whole garage for her.

She said, “I couldn’t believe it! Nobody has ever told me this before. In my church everybody just told me to leave him. In my church they told me that he’s a bad man and that I deserve better.”

I said, “Oh my goodness!”

She said, “But you know what? I see it. I see the truth of it and I’m going to fight for my marriage. I’m not going to throw it away. It is a gift from God.”

NC: How beautiful.

I think this is such a wonderful testimony. How true: if only each one of us could try to treat our husbands like Jesus. That’s what we’re meant to do.

We need to realize, too, the great honor that God has put on marriage. I love that quote of John Piper. He says: “There has never been a generation whose view of marriage is high enough.”

EH: Oh that’s so true!

NC: I think that is so true. I don’t think any of us have really got the true revelation of God’s view that He has on marriage because it is to portray the picture of Christ and the church.

EH: You’ll never enjoy the fullness of His glory in your marriage if you don’t obey that Scripture verse. I’m convinced of it.

I have that fullness and it’s so overflowing! It’s so beautiful and so stress free and so peaceful and amazing when your marriage is good.

It’s so simple. All I had to do was just treat him with kindness and honor as I would to the Lord and it’s like, “Wow!”

NC: I know. You can’t just love on a man and serve him and treat him with sweetness and kindness . . .

EH: Yeah because he doesn’t deserve it, does he?

NC: Well maybe not, but that doesn’t matter.

EH: It doesn’t matter because it’s what God tells us to do.

NC: Yes, it’s what we’re to do.

EH: You’re doing it as unto the Lord. You’re not doing it for him; you’re doing it for the Lord.

NC: But then, the thing is, you can’t do that without them being softened and them returning it.

EH: Right, exactly. When you do it God’s way it just works.

NC: It does, God’s way works.

But I see, even in the church today, that more and more people believe that there must be this equality.  Of course, we are created equal. Man and women are created in the image of God.

There is only one Scripture talking about how Adam was created but a whole passage about how the woman was created. She was the crowning glory of creation.

We are so blessed to be women but we don’t have to vie for position and want to be like the man.

If only we can just see that when God created male and female, He created us equal but He created us with different functions.

That’s just so simple.

EH: How are you ever going to feel the fullness and the joy of being the queen of your home when you don’t honor the king? You can’t be a queen without a king.

But most women don’t treat their husbands like kings, do they? But they want to be the queen and they want their husband to be the servant.

NC: It is meant to be like that: king and queen. It really is.

EH: He will treat you like the queen if you treat him like the king. It’s such a beautiful thing. I don’t know how anybody can miss that mark.

NC: You see, also so many women today do not want to embrace their beautiful role in the home, which God gave to the woman.

EH: And it’s so easy!

NC: She does not want to be the queen of her home. Instead women want to go out and get a job like the men do.

They are getting into that realm and so they don’t have the time to be queen of their home. It takes time to be queen of your home, doesn’t it?

EH: It does.

NC: They’re not embracing it.

They are having what they call today “egalitarian marriages” where everyone has to do things. The man has to do so much in the house and so on.

Look, goodness, if a man’s out there working hard to provide, that’s his job! We don’t have to expect them to have to come home and do our job.

God has given us the privilege to manage our homes. We’re not inferior. We have a huge career to be the manager and ruler of our kingdom, or rather, our “queendom.”

EH: It’s pretty amazing, I know!

This lady is a nurse by day, by trade, and she worked very hard for that position and everything to get that, and then she comes two days a week here.

I told her, “Guess what? I get to be the nurse in my own home. I get to be the nurse and the doctor. I get to be the cook. I get to have all these different positions in my own home! I’m like the CEO. I don’t have to answer to anybody.”

 Of course my husband, ultimately, but he trusts me because we have such a wonderful relationship. He just delegates all these things to me, and he trusts me. I can go and do whatever I do because he knows I have his best interest at heart and the family’s best interest at heart and God’s best interest at heart.

He learned to trust me over the years because he used to be kind of strict about where I could go and what I could do. He realized. It just came with time. It isn’t all peaches and cream in the beginning.

The nurse and I were talking on a ride to the hospital today, because I have to do all these appointments, and she asked, “What if he is grumpy?”

I said, “So what if he is? It’s just part of the whole thing. You have to press in, keep going, and keep fighting. A fight isn’t over with one battle. It’s a fight so you keep fighting. You contend for it. You push in and you press in. You don’t just lay down and leave it go. You keep going and you keep pressing. It’s like the battering ram. You keep battering and battering. You keep working.”

I said, “With practice it becomes easier because in the beginning, treating him like the Lord, it comes so unnatural at first.

“You feel kind of like a fish out of the water. You think, ‘Oh he doesn’t deserve this. Why am I doing this? He’s being grumpy and it didn’t work. It’s not working and he’s still being mean.’”

Well Rome wasn’t built in a day, right? It just takes time!

I can tell you the truth that there were times that I slipped up and got selfish again, felt sorry for myself again, and had my pity-party again.

But I kept rising up and saying, “No, I’m not going to do that again! My life is worth more than that. I don’t need to sit in a wallow of tears and muck. I can treat my husband good again. I don’t care what he did.

The other day I was home alone and I had to take the little one and I didn’t have the help and everything and everybody was gone.

He was on his way to work and, I’ll just use this as an example, it was a Saturday and I thought, “Usually he never works on a Saturday. He’s home on a Saturday.”

In my flesh I thought and wanted to say, “You’re seriously going to leave me on a Saturday when he just came home from the hospital. You’re seriously going to leave me on a Saturday?”

You know how you want to do that attitude thing? It came to my mind to say it and I caught myself. Practicing all these years has proven to help me to overcome in those areas and have victory.

Instead I looked at him and I smiled, gave him a kiss and a big, huge hug and I said, “Oh well I love you so much! Have the most amazing day! Thank you so much for working and providing for our family.”

I said, “I’ll see you when you get home and I’ll try to make a really nice dinner for you!”

Then he left. He was happy and I was happy. It cheered my whole spirit up just by doing what was against nature and trying to have a healthy, wholesome perspective and be kind to my husband.

He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was just working! The Lord calls him to be a provider. So just being thankful for that and not judging him and having no bitterness, I felt better for the whole day!

I did myself a favor. He didn’t even know I was thinking that thought. I did my foster child a favor. I did the whole household a favor.

As a mother, we’re the heart of the home so our attitude kind of dictates the mood of the home.

NC: It all comes back to our attitude, doesn’t it?

I think one of the things we can gravitate so easily to as women and as wives is listening to those little self-pity tricks, “Oh poor me.”

Our husbands aren’t perfect but we’re not perfect, either.

EH: We surely are not.

NC: We can’t go by that. Sometimes, you know, maybe my husband will do something and maybe it’s not what I want him to do or maybe he doesn’t think like I do.

But then I have think, “Oh he’s not me. He’s not a woman. He’s a man and I love this man!” I think, “Oh I just love you just how you are.”

You’ve just got to get that attitude. It’s like we have to watch that we don’t bring God down to our level. We often do that.  We try to make God and bring Him into our thoughts and make Him fit in to our ideas.

We dare not do that!

Sometimes we do it to our husbands. We want to make them like women and we want to make them think the way we do and be that kind of sensitive in that “woman-like” way.

No! They’re men! Come on!

EH: If my husband were like that I would be laughing! Oh my goodness, that would be the most pathetic thing in the whole world. But he’s so manly!

I always say, “Oh I just love you! You’re a manly man!”

Then he says, “Yeah!”

Men like to be manly men and you just pump them up for being a manly man.

NC: Yes but bringing them down to our level and getting them to work around the house and do dishes is not letting them be a manly man!

It’s lovely when a mother has little children around her and her husband will come and just help her, that’s beautiful.

But we shouldn’t have to expect them to suddenly be taking on our role because that’s our role. Don’t you think that?

EH: It is our role! God designed us to be the nurturers.

NC: The very first thing that God spoke about the woman to Adam, because He said that it was not good for him to be alone, so God said to Adam, “It’s not good for a man to be alone so I will make a helpmeet for you.”

He said, “I will make a helper for him.” The Hebrew word is “ezer” and it means: “helper.”

A lot of women don’t really like the idea of helper. But it’s a beautiful word. It’s an anointing that God has put in women.

EH: It’s beautiful.

NC: It’s a God anointing because God Himself is called the Helper. He comes to our aide. He comes to help us. He does that just because He loves us.

EH: It’s a part of the image of God so we’re a part of the image of God, too.

NC: What I love about that Scripture, too, is He says, “I will make a helpmeet for him.” Do you know that sometimes we forget those little words at the end: “For him”?

We are a helper FOR HIM, for our husbands.

That Scripture in 1 Corinthians 11:3: “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.”

Yet there are many Christian women today that don’t receive that man is the head of woman. We’re equal. Of course we’re equal but there are functions, as there are even in the Godhead—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they function together.

But even in the Godhead the Son submitted His will to the Father. The Father is the head and yet He puts the Son above all things. There is such a beautiful honor amongst them all.

I don’t know why it is that some women find it hard to receive headship because when you receive that you realize your husband is the covering and you submit to that.

You begin to treat him like Jesus. Like you say, Erin, we’re not always perfect at doing it but as we have it in our hearts to do it you begin to have this blessed marriage.

EH: Yeah, really. Women forget that in that headship order there is also protection with our husband’s covering. Our husbands are responsible for so much more. They have to answer to God for so much more than what we would have to answer to God for.

I mean, these women don’t realize that men carry a steeper degree of responsibility.

NC: They do. It’s right at the very beginning when Eve took of the fruit and then she gave to Adam. But whom did God hold responsible?

EH: The man.

NC: Adam, yes, he held him responsible. God has given him that ultimate covering and headship to the man and he is responsible to protect, provide, and cover his wife and his family. That is a powerful thing.

EH: Right, and some women they get like, “Oh my husband is allowing this into the home or having me send my children to school. He’s deciding all these things.”

They’re really upset about it and they get really bitter about it. They end up living a “divided house won’t stand” kind of scenario. It’s really sad.

You pray for grace. If your husband says, “I don’t want you to home school. I want you to send the children to public school.” That’s a real issue. A lot of women want to do that. I understand how they feel but I know women whom God has given the upmost grace to go through that. They trust that their husband made the best decision before God that he was supposed to make and that he bears the responsibility of it and not her.

She just gives him grace every day.

If your husband puts his foot down and says, “No more children” or “No more homeschooling” or “You have to work” or this or that, those are hard things for a woman that wants to do those things with all her heart to not be able to do them. It takes all of the grace of God to receive those things as a woman.

MC: I think I should also pop in there that, okay, with a man saying those things, you don’t say, “Yes sir!” but you talk about it.

EH: Of course! But if you’re honoring him as to the Lord, his heart is more softened.

Approaching him like, “No, that’s terrible! Oh my goodness, I can’t do it!”

Or you could do it like to Jesus Christ Himself, but instead to your husband.

“Oh husband, thank you so much for being the provider and protector of this home.

I so appreciate you and I love you so much for everything. I love how you have our best interest at heart and everything. I’m so sorry if some of my ideas aren’t lining up with your ideas but these are the reasons why I feel it’s important: I so want the education of my children to be focused in on the Lord [or whatever the thing is he’s asking you to do with your children that you don’t agree with].”

If you come to him in a way that’s more reverent you have more of a chance that your husband’s heart would be softened than if you resisted him and got bitter with him.

If you make an appeal to him in such a reverent way it goes a lot further because he’s hearing your heart.

For example, one of the ladies, her husband is not a believer and he doesn’t want her to go to church.

But I said, “Instead you can say to him, ‘I feel that I can be a better wife and mother when I go to church and I love to get the fellowship. But I want to honor you in everything. This is one thing I love to do but I don’t want to dishonor you.’”

Then the husband just said, “Well if it means that much to you, then absolutely you should go.”

If she’s trying to be a better wife he likes that!

NC: Yes. Well time has gone so quickly again.

EH: Oh I know! But we’re going to be back for our TALK SHOWS!

NC: Yes, we’ll have to do that coming up soon!

Anyway, it was so lovely to have you with us. Thank you for sharing and reminding each one of us to treat, each one of us, to just treat our husbands a little more like Jesus.

Let’s pray:

“Father, We just thank You that we can share together as women and remind one another and encourage one another. We pray that You will help us to do it Your way.

“We thank You that You ordained marriage and it is a picture of Christ and the church. Oh Lord God, help us to reveal this picture to the world. We often fall so short, but we ask that You will come and fill us with Your Spirit.

“Give us that heart to walk Your ways. We ask it in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.”

 

TRANSCRIBED BY MORGAN ROTH

 

FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

PODCAST 97: Revealing the Image of God

Although God is Spirit, He has created us with physical bodies to reveal His nature and image. Are we being faithful to reveal His image?

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

Nancy Campbell: Hello, ladies. Last week we talked about how taste is a food discerner, in the natural, and in the spiritual. The Bible also says: “First that which is natural, then that which is spiritual.” We have natural bodies, but we're not only physical, we are spiritual too. And God, Who is Spirit, has created us with physical bodies that can reveal His nature, even though He is Spirit.

We're going to look at a few more of these today. We'll look at the senses. We think of our  ears. We have physical ears that God gave to us to hear with, but we also have to learn to listen with spiritual ears.

In Job 11:12  it says: “The ear trieth words as the mouth tasteth food.” So just since we eat food, and “Oh, I love it,” or we don't like it, and we want to spit it out, the same with our ears. Ladies, we've got to become discerners with our ears. So when we hear things, we discern that, “Can I taste that? Can I believe it? Can I make it part of my life?? Or do I spit it out?

Now we  really do have to watch that, because to our minds constantly come negative thoughts and self-pity thoughts. Just gloomy thoughts. Somehow, they come to us so easily! But if we're a good discerner, we know that we're not meant to receive those thoughts at all. They don't belong to us. They don't belong to God. And they don't belong to the Kingdom of God. We belong to the Kingdom of God, so why are we going to embrace them?

No. When they come to us, and we can't stop them coming, but when they come, we SPIT THEM OUT! We reject them. So we learn to have sharp ears that discern. Our ears are like the gatekeepers. They discern before we take it into us. So we're either going to spit it out, or we're going to take it in, if it's good.

So why did Jesus say over and over again, “He that has ears to hear, let him hear.” Because we've got ears, and yes, we can hear people talking to us but are we discerning what God is saying to us?

Oh, I have to pray about this every day. “Lord Jesus, please reveal Yourself to me as I open Your Word. I want to hear You speaking to me. I want to know Your truth. I know so little. I'm so shallow. Lord God, I want to know the deep things of Your truth. I want to understand all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are in You.”

And so we cry after it, so that our inner ears can begin to hear what God is saying to us. We're going to reject the deception that is all around us. It's amazing how we can be deceived. Even Christians are deceived. The Bible says even the elect will be deceived.

And how can we be deceived? I believe the greatest deterrent to deception is the Word of God, so that the more we get the Word into us, the more we have an ability to discern, because the Word, it's the Word that discerns.

And if we know the Word, the Word will, “Oh, that's not right, that's not Biblical, that doesn't belong. No, I'm spitting that out.” But if we're not familiar with what God is saying, we're going to become gullible. May God save us from being gullible saints! Let's be those who are discerning saints, who have ears to discern.

I love the old hymn, I'll just read one stanza from it. It's one of Charles Wesley's hymns.

Now, Jesus, now the veil remove,
The folly of our darkened heart;
Unfold the wonders of Thy love,
The knowledge of Thyself impart;
Our ear, our inmost soul we bow;
Speak, Lord, Thy servants hearken now.

When we come to the Word, we have to have hearkening, listening ears, don't we? It's quite something to have listening ears. We do have to teach our children how to have listening ears. Many children grow up and they don't have listening ears. Oh yes, they can hear all right. But they don't hear with true hearing, because in the Bible, there's quite a few different words for “hearing.”

One of the most common is shama. It means “to hear with sharp ears, ready to obey.” And so when we begin teaching our children, right from when they're little, when we say something to them, we get down to their level. We make sure their ears are hearing. And then we tell them, “Okay, what did Mommy say?”

You get them to repeat it. Okay, now you do it. And we teach them that what they hear is not something they just listen to and carry on doing what they were doing. But no, they listen to obey. That's what true hearing is all about. As I used to say to my children as I was raising them”

TRUE HEARING RESULTS IN ACTION!

Another statement is:

DELAYED OBEDIENCE IS DISOBEDIENCE!

“I'll do it when I feel like it.” No, we listen, and we obey!

Now what about sight? We've all got eyes, we can see, but do we see with our spiritual eyes? Psalm 119:18 is a prayer: “Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law.”

Do you love to pray that when you come to the Word? Because we can see the words, oh yes, easy. You can read the words, and not really get anything from them. You see them right in front of you. But are we actually beholding wondrous things? That word “wondrous” is the Hebrew word pala, which means “extraordinary, miraculous, amazing.”

Oh, incredible things, and they are there in the Word, but we can't see them with our natural sight. We can only see them with our spiritual eyes that become sharpened and heightened to be able to see. And so we cry for that, so that we don't only operate in the physical, but we're becoming sharper in the spiritual.

And then what about touch? You see, all these things, God who is Spirit, He has them. He talks about hearing. He that created the ear, doth he not hear? And He has eyes to see. He beholds what we are doing. He beholds the nations of the world.

And touch, oh yes, God has given us hands to touch.

But He also loves to touch. Isaiah 41:13: “I will hold thy right hand, saying, fear thou not.” God comes. He's so tangible. He's so real. And when you're going through something, and you feel so vulnerable, you feel so alone, He comes to you and He says, “I will hold you.”

Let's just read it. I want to read verse 10 to you also. Isaiah 41:10 and He says to us here: “Fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee. Yea, I will help thee. Yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness.” Do you notice in that Scripture there are seven promises? I love that. You can take one for every day of the week for seven days. Isn't that wonderful?

And then down in verse 13: “For I, the Lord thy God, will hold thy right hand saying unto thee, fear not, I will help thee.” Isn't that great? Oh, are you feeling something at the moment? Are you concerned? Are you full of worry? Take that Scripture. This is God speaking.

When you read His Word, it's God speaking to you. He says: “Fear not. I will help you. Just put your hand in Mine, and I will hold it.” Yes, God is Spirit, but He reveals that it's like His right hand is holding us. His right hand is His arm of power and authority.

He's given us hands. He gives us hands as mothers. And He wants to touch our children through our hands, but it's His hands, because our children need loving touch. They need caressing, holding, cuddling, loving, touching. Touching. Touching.

How do we touch? With our hands. Touch is one of the senses. But we feel it all over our body, of course. Our whole body feels touch. But we give touch with our hands. And so God, who loves to touch us, He's given us a physical body how we can touch others.

Our children, our husband, obviously need encouragement with our hands. How often do you touch your husband? Oh you can love your husband, you know you love him, but sometimes marriage can just get very boring. And really, you're not remembering to touch one another. You need to do it often.

Touching is showing God's care and compassion and love. As we show it to others, it's like they are feeling the hand of God.

We go over to 1 Timothy 5:10 and we read a description of a mother, of a woman who is living the way God intends for her. And we see here: “Well reported of for good works, if she has brought up children.”

The very first thing, number one, God always puts things in perspective. In the Word of God, nothing's here, there, or everywhere. It's in perfect order, and when He lists something, the most important is on the top of the list.

And here, the very most important thing about women is, have they brought up children? Raised children? Nourished children? For that is the word, “nourish.” “Brought up” is the word “nourish.” To feed, to nurture. It talks about feeding children, cooking meals. It starts off, of course, at nursing a child at the breast.

But then it goes on to feed. You're cooking meals every day, every week, every month, every year. You think, “How long am I going to do this? Forever and ever and ever?” Oh yes, you'll do it. You keep on doing it.

I've been married for 57 years, and I'm still doing it every day. And I'm using my hands. But as I use my hands to cook and to prepare meals, I am really, it's the hands of God through me. Because I'm ministering to my husband, to my children, and to those we bring into our home. And it's God doing it through me. He wants to touch people through our hands. He wants us to use our hands to bless our family and bless others.

And so she not only nourishes and nurtures and cooks, and raises and trains her children, but it says: “If she has lodged strangers?” Has she opened her doors in hospitality to those who need a place to come, and sit around a table where they feel loved and welcomed? A place to stay.

“If she has washed the saints' feet, if she has relieved the afflicted, if she has diligently followed every good work” That's all about touching and working with our hands. Yes, and so we are doing this physically, but God is wanting to do it through us. Because that's what He wants to do, He wants to reveal Who He is through us.

And then another one of the senses is our smell. We can all smell, but did you know God smells too? Did you know that all of our senses God feels and experiences? There are so many Scriptures about God smelling. I'll only read a couple to you, or we'll be here all day! And I know you've got lots to do.

Genesis chapter 8: 21. This is after Noah, after he'd come out of the ark, and how he offered burnt offerings on the altar. He made an altar and offered burnt offerings. “And the Lord smelled a sweet savor. And the Lord said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground anymore for man's sake.” 

Yes, so back in the Old Testament, there are hundreds of Scriptures about how they did the burnt offerings upon the altar. And every time they did, it was a sweet savor unto God. He smells the sweet savor. Not only was He smelling the sweet savor of the sacrifices.

Maybe I'll give you one more, let's see . . . Leviticus 3:5: Yes, and here is Aaron burning sacrifices upon the altar, and it says here: “It is an offering made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord God.”

Let's go over . . . Then we see a counterpart of this in the New Testament. So we go over to Ephesians 5:2 and now it's talking about Christ, because every sacrifice upon the altar pointed to Jesus, pointed to Yeshua, pointed to the Messiah, the Lamb of God, who would be THE sacrifice.

It says here: “Be followers of God, as dear children, and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor.” Isn't that incredible? That even though God had to give up His own beloved Son, Who was actually One with Him, part of Him. He had to give Him up to be the Savior of the world, because He wanted to get a Bride. And that sacrifice, the sweet-smelling savor unto God.

But not only back there in the Tabernacle where they did the offerings, was there the beautiful, wonderful sort of smelling savor going up toward God, but also in the Holy Place.

They had to make the anointing oil. They had to light the lamps, they had to light the menorah every morning and every evening. That anointing oil, oh my, it was sweet, too. It was made with beautiful spices. You can read about it in Exodus 13. It was made of pure myrrh, and sweet cinnamon, and sweet calamus, and cassia. It was just so beautiful, and full of aroma and sweetness. When they lit the candles, the menorah, the seven-branched candlestick every morning and every evening it filled the Holy Place with that beautiful aroma.

Now people love to get sweet candles with aromas and fill their home. I love to do that too, but I don't like to buy the usual candles in the shop. They're all very artificial, and I don't think that they're very healthy, the aromas that they give off. But you can buy natural ones, and I love to use them, what do you call them? The aromas, oh goodness me, I'm just trying to think . . .

Oh, the essential oils! Ha ha. Nearly went from my mind. The essential oils that give off such a beautiful, beautiful aroma. They're so healthy, and such a blessing to your physical body. It's beautiful to fill our homes with these aromas, isn't it?

But that anointing oil, that was all just so glorious, natural glorious spices. Now, not only was the Holy Place, and the whole of the Temple was filled with this glorious aroma, but they had to light the altar of incense, and the incense was also made of sweet spices. Sweet, it was sweet incense. Everything was sweet, because God loves to smell.

So we just see how amazing it is that we have the physical, and we have the spiritual. Then we begin to think more about our physical bodies, and how, yes, they are natural, but there is more to it. Let's think of who we are as women.

Okay, who are we? We are distinguished as female by our breasts and our wombs. Let's talk about our breasts. They are physical. Our breasts, they are nurturing. God created them to be something that nurtures life when God gives us a little baby. We put the baby to the breast, and they nourish, and they nurture life. They're life-giving, they are nurturing.

But that's physical. Did you know, dear ladies, we also have the same anointing, not just physically, but innately, transcendentally? God has given it to us, and He has put within every female a nurturing anointing. It is divinely within us. It's divinely in every woman.

And even a precious woman who maybe hasn't been able to conceive, to give birth to her own babies, and maybe she hasn't married. She may not be able to nurture from her breast, but she still has this nurturing anointing within her. Isn't that amazing? She does not miss out. She is still divinely a nurturer.

And this is who God has created us to be, dear women. We are nurturers. God, who is Spirit, has created our physical bodies to reveal His image, to reveal His nature. It comes right back to God, because where do we get nurture from? Nurture comes from God. God is the ultimate Nurturer.

Oh He is the One who wants to gather us in His arms and hold us to Him, to love us, to nurture us, to caress us. This is who our God is. And we see this in one of the Names of God. God has many names. Each one describes another aspect of His character.

To have only one Name of God could not describe who He is. Every name is another aspect of who God is. And there are not yet, even in the Word of God, enough names to reveal who He is. But God has chosen to reveal what He wants to reveal. Because He is God, we will never know Him fully. Even in eternity there will be things that we will still never know, because He is God!

But in His wondrous love, He has chosen to reveal what He wants to reveal of Himself to us. There are certain things that He wants to reveal through us. And he has created our physical bodies for the purpose of it.

So when we read “Almighty,” what does that mean in the Hebrew? It's the Hebrew word El Shaddai. Of course, you all know that word. What does it mean?

El means “might, power, strength”.

Shaddai. The literal word in the Hebrew for “breast” is shad. Shad. Every time you see the word shad, it means “breast.” And dai, it means “that which is enough.”

Now the literal breast, the literal breast is “that which is enough.” When the baby comes to the breast, the breast is enough, especially if the mother allows the baby to nurse as much as the baby wants. She doesn't give a pacifier. She doesn't give little bottles of water, or bottles of juice. No. The breast is total, and as she just gives the baby the breast all day, all night, as the baby wants, the baby grows and thrives.

Not only does the baby grow physically, but the baby grows emotionally, because the breast is more than food. The breast ministers physically, but the breast ministers emotionally. In every way, it is “that which is enough.”

But when it's speaking of God, who is the originator of nurture, it is “He Who is Enough.” You see, that's who our God is. The Nurturer. The All Sufficient One. The God Who is Enough.

He is enough, no matter what we are going through. No matter what sorrows, what heartache. If we will push into God, we will find that He is Almighty. He is El Shaddai. He is the One who will comfort us, and nurture us, and nourish us, and gather us in His arms.

Part of nurturing is gathering. You want to gather. That's what a mother wants to do. She wants to gather. She wants to gather her children around her. .She wants them around her. That's instinctive.

The sad thing is, we're being so brainwashed in our modern feministic, humanistic society that mothers today often don't want their children around. They're quite happy to leave them. That's not instinctive to nature, not even the animals do that. If you go out, walk amongst the sheep, you will find that when it's lambing time, those little lambs are right around the mother. The mother won't leave her lambs. No, she stays close by them. That's instinctive to a mother.

So we want to gather, we want to gather our children and our families around the table as we prepare meals for them. We want them around. This is all part of El Shaddai, the nurturing anointed. And ladies, we have it physically. We reveal it tangibly in our experience.

That's why a nursing mother is a beautiful picture of God to the world. When painters want to paint mothers, they love... there's many beautiful paintings, not exposed paintings, just beautiful discrete paintings of mothers nursing babies because it's the ultimate picture of nurture. That's who our God is.

Now I hope you have received the latest edition of Above Rubies. In this edition, there is an article called “Nurturing the Nations.” No, it's called, something about that anyway. You'll see it there. It's by Daryl Miller. It's a wonderful article. Yes, it's called “Home is the Nursery of the Nation.” That's it. If you haven't read it, read it again.

And it's talking about nurture. This man has also written a book called Nurturing the Nations. I did a big sale on it before Christmas and sold out every single copy that they had left. They didn't have too many left. We sold them out.

Praise the Lord! They have reprinted it, and it's now available. You can go to my website. You can get it. And I would encourage you to get it because I had this book years ago. It sat by my bedside, like many, many books sit by my bedside. I don't get time to read them.

And this book, it, oh well, I didn't get round to reading it until one day, I felt I must read it. Then I couldn't believe why I hadn't read it before. It was filled with the revelation of truth about women and what God had already showed to me. I couldn't believe it, here was someone else who was speaking about it, writing about it. So I really want to make this book available. It's filled with truth. Do get it!

Here is a quote from his article in the magazine:

“Motherhood is beautiful, wonderful, and vital to the health of families, children, and the future of a stable and flourishing nation. No amount of cold, hard plastic toys will replace the warm human touch of a mother. No amount of staring into a screen will replace the loving gaze of a mother's eyes. No amount of material things will replace the art of being there.”

The art. Did you know, there's so much about mothering that is an art? It's an art we have to learn. We've not always “just got it” with our first baby. We learn it more and more.

Breastfeeding is an art. There's a wonderful book called the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, by La Leche League. It's a good book to read.

There is the art of birthing. The art of homemaking. The art of being there. There's the art of wifing. It all takes time to learn to be a wife, doesn't it? I'm still learning, nearly 57 years later! And so there is an art. Don't give up, ladies. Press into the art of all that's contained in our glorious and beautiful role of mothering and nurturing and homemaking.

And so he says: “Nothing will replace the art of being there. Our children, communities and nation are starving for the presence of the maternal nurturing heart.” God wants His nurturing heart . . . By the way, I've finished the quote. I'm speaking now. God wants His nurturing heart revealed in the earth. This is how He's revealing Who He is.

When we embrace motherhood, when we embrace who God transcendentally created us to be, not only physically with breasts, but innately to be a nurturer, and we reveal it to our families, and out into society, we show what God is like.

When we don't embrace it, when we resist it, and we say, “No thanks, I've got other things to do,” we no longer reveal the image of God. We blaspheme His image, because we're not showing who He is.

Another quote says:

“Our generation is becoming so busy trying to prove that women can do what men can do, that women are losing their uniqueness. Women weren't created to do everything a man can do. Women were created to do everything a man cannot do.” Amen!

Well, we not only have breasts. We have a womb. Our womb is our most distinguishing characteristic as a woman. We are a womb-man. But precious ladies, we not only have a womb, physically, where we can conceive and grow a precious eternal soul in our wombs, but our womb is the very seat of our emotions.

Our womb is a very powerful place. It's from where the anointing of pity and compassion and mercy flows. And God has also put that in us as a woman, innately, transcendentally. And once again, a woman who may be, is not able to conceive, she is still able to release that anointing of compassion from the very depths of her being. But there is a powerful thing when we can do it physically. God gave the physical to reveal this anointing.

Now here's something interesting, ladies. The word, well, there are four different Hebrew words for “womb” in the Bible. And I don't have the time to talk about them all today. I'd love you to get the book The Power of Motherhood, if you don't already have it. If you don't already have it, please get it. Go to the website and get The Power of Motherhood. I have a chapter called “The Womb,“ and I have about 18 different points about the womb.

Oh there is so much revelation about the womb. But did you know that the womb, there's four different Hebrew words, and they are interchanged. Sometimes it is speaking of the physical womb. Other times it's speaking about God's mercy and compassion. It is the same word! It's unbelievable.

Let me just give you a couple of examples. Olay, here we are, Deuteronomy 7. Just as we're winding down, ladies. Okay, Deuteronomy 7: 2-13. And God is talking here. “The Lord thy God shall keep unto thee the covenant and the mercy.” That word is racham. It means “compassion” and “mercy.”  It's God revealing His mercy.

But it's also a word that is used for the physical womb. And He's going to keep that mercy that He has promised: “And He will love thee and bless thee and multiply thee. And He will bless the fruit of thy womb.” And it's exactly the same word!

Yes. And so, and we see that when He shows His mercy, His racham, it's His wombness. When He reveals that, He says: “I'll love thee and bless thee. And then I'll multiply and bless the fruit of your womb.” That's how God wants to bless us.

We go over to chapter 13 in a rather negative story here, where there are some, God says, that there's some people who are going out to other gods. And if you find out it's really true, after you've searched diligently, you've got to smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, and totally annihilate them because, the reason was, if you don't do that, well, the little leaven leaveneth the whole lump, and soon the whole nation will be going out to other gods. But God said if you will do that, verse 17: “There shall nothing cleave to you of the cursed thing. Then the Lord will turn from His fierce anger and show you mercy and have compassion on you.”

Now both those words are racham, the word “womb.” Have mercy, have compassion, like it's a double whammy there. He repeats Himself. “Oh, I'll show you my compassion, and then I'll multiply you.” How will I multiply you? Through the physical womb.

And so the womb, once again, is a revelation of God. Another word for womb is meah, which means to be soft. It's talking about the internal intestines, including the womb. It's interesting how God uses every part of our body to reveal something of Himself. Here it's talking about a softening. It's the opposite of hardness.

Have you noticed when women turn away from family, and away from embracing their children, out into the career world, and into a real adamant feminism, that they become hard? You see, when you embrace your nurturing anointing, and your womb anointing, there comes a softening, there comes a compassion, there comes a wombness.

Yes, there's such a word, the wombness of God which He reveals through the physical womb. Oh, ladies, can we embrace who we are? In every way, in every physical aspect, God wants to reveal who He is through us. Isn't that beautiful?

Let's pray:

“Oh, Father, we thank You so much for the revelation of Your truth. Oh, God, help us to get it, to get it into our very being, to understand that we're not only a physical being walking around, but we are a physical being whom You created to reveal Your image, to reveal Your nature, to show what You are like.

Oh Lord God, help us to embrace our nurturing anointing, both physically and innately. Help us to embrace our womb anointing, physically and innately, Lord. Being nurturers to our own babies and children, but out to those who need Your love.

Oh God, that we will have open wombs, to reveal, Lord God, who You are. You are so amazing. You did not do one thing by mistake. Lord, every part of our body is for Your purpose and for Your revelation. Help us to be the revealing of You to our families and to the world. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.”

Transcribed by Darlene Norris

 

NURTURING THE NATIONS

Reclaiming the Dignity of Women in Building Healthy Cultures

By Darrow Miller

This book is one of the greatest books I have read about women. It deals with the abuse and poverty of women in the nations of world but gives God’s answer. It exposes how the wrong concepts of women have led to prostitution, abuse, and suffering for women in the nations of the world. But it does not leave us in despair. Darrow Miller reveals God’s heart for women and the truth that sets them free into the glory God designed for them. It is a must read for all women, revealing God’s value and dignity of women and their highest purpose on earth.

Some of the chapter headings:

A World of Abuse of Women

The Crushing of Women

The Transcendence of Sexuality

God’s Motherly Love

The Dark Years and the Coming Dawn

The Wedding of the Lamb

God’s Design for Women: Nurturers of Nations

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THE POWER OF MOTHERHOOD

What the Bible Says About You as Mother

By Nancy Campbell

This book is for every mother--young, middling, or older. It shares the revelation of God’s heart to mothers. Young mothers desperately need this encouragement. Older mothers need a refresher course in God’s plan for mothering, so they can take their place as the older mothers who teach the next generation.

This is the classic manual for mothers. Mothers need it by their side continually.

To order go to: http://bit.ly/PowerOfMotherhoodUS