This is such a powerful truth. Every human being is created in the image of God. We are theomorphic, created to bear His image in the earth. Each new baby is another revelation of His image and likeness. What an incredible privilege to cooperate with God to bring forth The image and likeness of God into the earth. #imagebearers #ilovemotherhood #powerofmotherhood #mothering #joyfulmothering #aboverubies
"Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb"
(Revelation 10:7-9).
Who helps to cheer the daily round?
A Mother!
Or smooths our cares when they abound?
A Mother!
Who makes the home a haven sweet,
With love and comradeship complete?
Where turn each night the eager feet?
A Mother!
Who softly croons a cradle song?
A Mother!
Or soothes her babe the whole night long?
A Mother!
Who tends with such unwearied care,
Her household, and her children, fair?
Who bears them up to God in prayer?
A Mother!
~ Anon
Painting by Michael Malm
BABIES DON’T KEEP!
Mother, oh mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing and butter the bread,
Sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking!
Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo)
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due,
(Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peek-a-boo)
The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for
stew,
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo,
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren’t her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
Oh, cleaning and scrubbing will wait ‘till
tomorrow,
But children grow up, as I’ve learned to my
sorrow,
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust, go to sleep.
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep!
~ Ruth Hulburt Hamilton
PAINTING BY MICHAEL GARMASH
What kind of aromas fill your home? Sweet or bad smells? The flesh gives off sour, bitter, grumpy, and horrible smells, doesn't it? They make everyone in the home feel bad and want to run! But Christ in us is a sweet-smelling savor, and He wants us to exude His sweet aroma throughout the home. Most husbands love fragrant perfumes (well, my husband does), but more than perfumes, we should constantly wear the perfume of Christ in our lives.
II Corinthians 2:14 (J. B. Phillip's translation) always challenges me: "We should have about us the unmistakable scent of Christ." What’s the fragrance in your home? Are your husband and children avoiding you or running to you?
(II Corinthians 2:14 (HCSB) says: “But thanks be to God, who always puts us on display in Christ and through us spreads the aroma of the knowledge of Him in EVERY PLACE.” God wants us to be a “sweet” aroma in “EVERY PLACE.”
Every place includes our home! It means in the midst of what we are doing--when children are making us crazy, when our husband is rubbing us the wrong way, and when we are doing the mundane chores like changing dirty diapers!
Keep sweet.
Love from Nancy Campbell
Painting: The Swing Art by Morgan Frederick
Isn’t it nice when everything is peaceful and lovely? We would rather not be in a battle, would we? But did you know that God leads us into battles? If you are facing a battle right now, maybe it’s God who has you the battle.
Exodus 23:20 says: “For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off.” That’s not one battle, but many! And who is leading them into battle? God!
But God does not send you into battles on your own. He is with you in the battle. He is with you to win. His promise to you is: “I will cut them off.”
But we also must remember that although God fights for us, He also expects us to fight in the battle too. God gives us many examples of this in His Word. Here are a couple for you:
God’s part: “When the LORD your God delivers them over to you . . .
Your part: “and you defeat them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy” (Deuteronomy 7:2 (HCSB).
God’s part: “The LORD your God will cross over ahead of you as a consuming fire; He will devastate and subdue them before you . . .
Your part: “You will drive them out and destroy them swiftly, as the LORD has told you” (Deuteronomy 9:3 (HCSB).
Are you fighting a battle and feeling discouraged? Thank God that He is with you. Acknowledge that with His help you will win and cut off the enemy who is seeking to destroy your family.
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
As you wait for the miracle of finance for the new magazine, I want to remind you that you can continue to be blessed in so many ways through the ministry of Above Rubies.
Although Above Rubies began as a magazine and it has always been my main thrust to get out God’s truth for families through this magazine, I continue to share the truth in many other ways. I hope you can make the most of these ways to be encouraged and inspired (and even challenged) each new day.
WEEKLY PODCAST:
FROM MY HOME TO YOURS W/ NANCY CAMPBELL
I know you will be so blessed by this podcast to encourage you as a wife and mother. It comes out each Tuesday morning.
You can go to the home page of Above Rubies to click on it.
You can go to http://ARPoddy.buzzsprout.com
You can listen on Google and Apple Podcasts on or your favorite pod app.
Oh yes, we also do TRANSCRIPTS for the podcasts. Go to the front page of the web page, www.aboverubies.org to pick them up.
WEEKLY LIVE TALK SHOW:
TEA TIME AND TALK SHOW WITH ERIN AND NANCY
This is a live Talk Show where Erin Harrison (Keeper of the Homestead Blog) and I talk with you about all the different aspects of marriage, motherhood, homemaking, and the joys and challenges of womanhood.
We are currently going through Proverbs 31. You can pick up the link each week from my Facebook.
WEEKLY EMAIL DEVOTION
These devotions are a little longer and meatier than the ones I send to you each day on Facebook. They are filled with God’s truths and will help you grow in God’s ways for womanhood. They come straight to your email box.
I am currently doing a series called ARE YOU IN A WILDERNESS? You will be amazed to find many surprises even while going through a wilderness experience.To receive them go to:
http://aboverubies.org/magaz…/subscribe-to-womens-devotional
SPORADIC ABOVE RUBIES NEWSLETTER
From time to time, I prepare a mini online Above Rubies to catch you up with news and encouraging stories and articles. If you subscribe to this, you will also hear when we have a sale and you can make the most of discounted books, etc.
http://aboverubies.org/magaz…/subscribe-to-womens-devotional
ABOVE RUBIES FACEBOOK
I seek to post an encouraging word to you EACH NEW DAY to motivate you as wives and mothers on this Facebook. I know you will be blessed. Check it out each day.
https://www.facebook.com/AboveRubiesUS/
ABOVE RUBIES INSTAGRAM
_above_rubies_
https://www.instagram.com/_above_rubies_/
TWITTER
https://twitter.com/aboverubiesusa
ABOVE RUBIES WEB SITE
www.aboverubies.org
Make the most of this website for ordering books and DVDs to inspire you in your high calling of mothering and parenting.
http://aboverubiesbookstore.mybigcommerce.com/
Also loads of articles and testimonies to read on about 40 different subjects regarding family life. You are sure to find great articles and testimonies on any issue you need encouragement.
http://aboverubies.org/index.php/articles-stories
I trust that all this is enough to keep you filled up each day and each week. Share these links with friends so they can also be blessed and encouraged in their great calling.
Much love to you,
Nancy Campbell
“Through childbearing God’s providence supplies humanity with problem solvers, world changers, and every other sort of individual. It is through this same mode that God Himself was able to come into the world to become human and become the ultimate problem solver and world changer.”
~ Bill Oord, BC.
Not only does God call mothering and homemaking a “good” thing (Titus 2:3-5 and I Timothy 5:10), but there's something else! He also tells us how to do these good things! How do you think we should do them? Grudgingly? Reluctantly? Complainingly? No, the word is “DILIGENTLY”!
Do you want to know the real meaning of the word? The Greek is “akribos” and it literally means "perfectly, exactly, and circumspectly." No room for slovenliness! No room for half-heartedness! No room for sloppiness!
Don’t forget who you are working for today—the King of kings and Lord of lords! That sets the tone, doesn’t it?
Have a blessed day,
Nancy Campbell
Did you notice I wrote the words, sacred AND secular, rather than sacred OR secular? God does not separate religious things with secular things. He wants everything in our lives to be touched with His divine presence. He wants everything in our homes—each person, each piece of furniture, and even all the pots and pans and utensils to be anointed with His presence (Zechariah 14:20, 21).
Everything that God created is holy. All His creation is holy. God doesn’t see a church building as holy and the trees and flowers as earthly. They are all holy unto Him. They all praise Him.
In Exodus chapter 30:22-33 God tells Moses how to make the anointing oil and what to do with it. They had to use a gallon of olive and oil and four different spices—pure myrrh, sweet cinnamon, sweet calamus, and cassia. It was well-balanced—two sweet spices along with myrrh which is bitter tasting. Myrrh and Cassia speaking of the fragrance of Christ through His suffering.
But most importantly, this oil was to be holy! It was called the HOLY ANOINTING OIL. Verse 32 states: “It is holy, and it shall be holy unto you.” And God commanded him to anoint every piece of furniture and every vessel in the whole place—and the high priest and his sons.
One of the pieces of furniture in the tabernacle was the table of shewbread. This table had to be anointed with this holy anointing oil too.
Everything in the tabernacle was a type for us today. God has now made us “priests and kings unto God” (Revelation 1:6 and 5:10) and therefore He wants us to be anointed with this sweet and holy anointing oil which is presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. He also wants every material thing in our homes to be anointed with His presence. He wants our tables to be anointed with His sweet and holy anointing.
You most probably feel that your dinner table is the opposite to sweet and holy! You are in throes of raising and training children who are not robots. They don’t like their food. They complain. Some may argue. They cry. Sometimes its bedlam!
Please don’t despair dear mother. Keep training. Keep praying and asking God to pour out His sweet anointing on your family meal times. Pray for His holy anointing to come to you. You will reap what you sow. As you little by little train your children and they grow older, you will move into such blessed and holy times together.
Without a vision nothing happens. But when we have a vision and we understand that God wants to come to our tables and manifest His sweet and holy anointing, we will press toward this vision in our family lives.
Be blessed in Jesus’ name.
Love from Nancy Campbell
God’s dealings with us can be gentle or powerful. God spoke to Isaiah and said: “My care for the people of Judah is like the gently flowing waters of Shiloah” (Isaiah 8:6). What a beautiful description of God’s care and watchfulness over our lives. He loves to be gentle with us as He convicts us of things in our lives that grieve Him and as He woos us on to be conformed into the image of His Son. Do we respond to His gentle proddings?
Or do we resist? When we resist, God needs to use stronger methods. The Bible says that that the people of Judah rejected God’s gently flowing waters. They wanted their own way. Instead, He had to bring a flood upon them, a flood that reached up to their chins! It was literally the King of Assyria wanting to take them captive.
We either experience the dealings of God one way or the other. We can live in the “gentle flowing stream” anointing as we respond to God speaking to our hearts. But if we let our hearts become cold and resistance to His voice, He may have to send a “raging river” upon us to get our attention.
Which would you prefer?
Let’s keep soft and tender hearts towards the Lord.
Love from Nancy Campbell
Are you satisfied with your life? In other words, are you content? We are always thinking of something we need, aren’t we? But do we really need it? We can’t afford it and so we go without, and we find we live life just fine without the thing we think we need! It’s amazing what we can live without.
Oh it would be nice to have this and that fixed in our home. I look at my floors and despair. I can’t wait to throw out all our old carpets upstairs and get some wooden or wood-substitute floors. Most the tiles in my office where I am typing now are worn down to the concrete. I am so ashamed when people work in. But really, what difference does it make to how I live, except my pride! So I am content.
Contentment is an anti-stress attribute. When we stop worrying about what we can’t have and accept what we have, we no longer stress.
I read this morning in Jeremiah 31;14: ”My people shall be SATISFIED with my goodness, saith the LORD.” Oh we are so blessed. We are overwhelmed with the goodness of the Lord. So much of the world lives in poverty and we live so well in America. Millions are being persecuted and we live in peace. We have a roof over our heads, food on our tables, and more clothing than we need to wear. What are we worrying about? Instead, we should be basking in God’s goodness.
I think of the children of Israel who lived in the wilderness in tents. They had no supermarkets to buy food, no entertainment centers, no mod-cons such as washing machines and dishwashers and so on. But God said in Nehemiah 9:21: “Yea, forty years didst thou sustain them in the wilderness, so that THEY LACKED NOTHING.”
Can we learn to be truly satisfied with God’s goodness to us? It’s a beautiful way to live.
Love and blessings,
Nancy Campbell
I am always challenged by Romans 3:4: “Let God be true, and every man a liar.” I have to ask myself the question: would I be prepared to stand true to God’s truth if I was the only one believing? The truth is not always popular! #abhorevil #hateevil #lovegood #standfortruth #speaktruth #repost #aboverubies
God hovers over the baby He is creating in the womb. He is the designer and creator. Every person in the world was a person from the moment of conception, a new and unrepeatable miracle planned by God. Life is precious. #lifeisprecious #lifebeginsatconception #unrepeatablemiracle #godgiveslife #aboverubies
What is the crowning moment of your day?
For me, it is sitting down to the evening meal, enjoying rich fellowship, and then the culminating moment—Family Devotions—when we read God's Word and pray together.
It makes all the meal preparation of the meal worthwhile. It crowns the day with God's blessing. I am always aware of the power and impact it has, not only on our lives, but on the people and nations for whom we pray!
Try not to let the interruptions of this day keep you from this crowning moment in your home.
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
Mother, you may like to share this poem with your growing up sons or you may like to pin it up in their room or the bathroom.
YOUNG MAN OF VALOR
Young man of God, will you guard your eyes
And keep them only for your greatest prize?
The wife God planned for you from the beginning,
She’ll be enough to keep your head a-spinning!
Don’t waste your emotions looking at other girls,
No matter how special or gorgeous their curls,
Instead, keep your eyes fixed on the Lord.
Follow His leading and you’ll never be flawed.
Young man of might, will you guard your heart?
Don’t give your feelings to any up-start,
Keep your heart disciplined and wait for the time
When God gives you His choice; it will be sublime!
A daughter of virtue who has kept herself pure,
Who follows after truth and trusts God for sure,
One who loves children and keeping the home,
And who delights to serve without a moan.
Young man of valor, will you keep your body pure
For your wedding day when it’s bliss for sure?
Will you start your marriage on a holy foundation?
For this is the way to strengthen the nation
And establish a family that will endure any test!
For God will be with you and you will be blessed,
Even in the storms, the wind, and the battles of life
If you keep the covenant with your lovely wife.
~ Nancy Campbell
Our public education system separates children into their age groups. Our church Sunday schools also separate children into their ages. However, this is not a biblical pattern.
When God wanted to speak to His people, or when God’s law was to be read to the people, everyone came. Moms and dads and all the children, even the nursing babies.
Here’s an example from 2 Chronicles 20:13: "And all Judah stood before the Lord, with their little ones, their wives, and their children."
Include your children in your walk with God. Don't send them off to be influenced by the peers of their age group. Grow in God together as a family. Read God’s Word together. Pray together. Work together and play together.
Proverbs 22:15 says, "Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child." When you put a lot of children of the same age together, you have multiplied foolishness!
God intends us to follow Him as “families,” not in separated age groups. This makes strong families for God; and when we have multiplied strong families, the nation will be strong.
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
Check out this post: http://bit.ly/ShouldChildrenBeInChurch
Your "down in the dumps" dress, your "grumble groaning" dress, or, maybe your “self-pity” outfit? Pretty ugly, aren't they?
Did you know that God gave you a new wardrobe when He came to live in you? He wants you to cast off the old clothes of the flesh and put on the new clothes He has given you—kindness, joy, mercy, humility, longsuffering, love, and forgiveness. These clothes make you look very beautiful, especially to your husband and children.
Each morning you choose what you will wear—the drab “fleshly” clothes of your old life or the new clothes of the Spirit which Jesus Christ has given to you at the great cost of His life and His precious blood.
Ephesians 4: 24 says: “PUT ON the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”
The NLT says: “THROW OFF your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. PUT ON your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.”
Oh . . . do you need to go and change your clothes? Won’t you look lovely in your “patience” outfit, or perhaps your new “joyful dress”? It will change the whole vibe of your home.
Enjoy your new wardrobe.
Love from Nancy Campbell
I remember seeing a cartoon many years ago. It was a picture of a mother looking at the adverts in the newspaper. Around her were children out of control and the house in utter chaos. The caption read: “I’m looking for a job, I need a rest!”
This may be just how you feel sometimes. Dear mother, I want to remind you today that you already have the greatest career in the nation. I know it’s not easy. It has the longest hours. It’s full of challenges. Sometimes you feel so tired you can hardly see straight. But no job that is nation-changing, generation-influencing, and eternity-investing is easy.
And to top it all off, God is with you all the way through. He does not give up on you half way through your commission. He is with you to the end. David reminded his son, Solomon that “God will be with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee, until thou hast finished all the work for the service of the house of the LORD” (1 Chronicles 28:20).
God is also with you as you build your “house of the LORD” and daily serve Him as you mother and train your children. And did you get the message? He will be with you UNTIL YOU FINISH THE WORK! Yes, in all the serving in your home. Not half way through, but all the way through. You may feel exhausted along the way, but because God is with you. You will make it to the finishing line!
God’s promise to you in Hebrews 13:5, 6 says: “Be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” Wuest’s Word Studies from the Greek New Testament reveal the full meaning of this Scripture: “I WILL NOT, I WILL NOT, I WILL NOT let thee down, leave thee in the lurch, leave thee destitute, leave thee in straits and helpless, abandon thee.”
Lift up your head today. You are not doing this on your own. GOD IS WITH YOU UNTIL THE FINISHING LINE!
Be encouraged.
Nancy Campbell
God intends babies to be nursed at the breast and enfolded in their mother’s arms. We see this in nature. Animals instinctively encircle their little ones to them without having to read books or listen to CDs. What I find hard to fathom is how human mothers can leave their little babies with someone else to look after while they do their career? This is not even instinctive. Mothers and new babies should be inseparable.
~ Nancy Campbell
AboveRubies
Email Nancy
PO Box 681687
Franklin, TN 37068-1687
Phone : 931-729-9861
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