PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | Episode 73 – THE GLORY OF WOMANHOOD (PT 6)
FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell
Episode 73: The Glory of Womanhood (Part 6)
Rocky: Welcome to the podcast, FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy: Hello, dear ladies. Today we are continuing our series of living in the glory of womanhood. We are continuing Point Number Seven which is raising young men to be strong is our glory. Well, it's their glory, but it's also our glory because we are the ones who are raising them. I'd like to share a little poem with you as I'm thinking about young men. I wrote this for young men. It's called, “Young Man of Valor.”
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 upstart,
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?
This is the way to strengthen the nation.
Establish a family that will endure any test?
God will be with you and you will be blessed,
In the storms, the wind, and the battles of life
If you keep the covenant with your lovely wife.
If you'd like to have that poem for your young boys growing up you can email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and I'd be happy to send it to you.
We are continuing our thoughts on raising young men to be strong in the Lord for that is their glory. We read in the last session in 1 John 2:14: “I have written unto you, young men because you are strong and the Word of God abides in you, you have overcome the wicked one.” How do they become strong, mothers? It's by having the Word of God in them. Therefore, as mothers, of course along with our husbands, their fathers, we need to get the Word of God into our sons, right when they are little.
We don't start when they are older, we start at the beginning. When is the beginning? I believe the beginning is in the womb. You can speak the Word of God over your little babe in the womb. Then, when the little babe is born, and you're nursing your little baby at the breast, you're sitting around the table with your older children, and the father is reading the Word to the children, your little babe is there, and the Word is going into their hearts.
They won't understand, but somehow, it's going in because the Word of God is not an ordinary book. The Word of God is alive and active. The Bible tells us that in the homes of those who love the Lord and where His Word is read, it prepares our children for salvation. 2 Timothy 3:15, this is Paul writing to Timothy and he says: “That from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures.”
Remember, in another passage it talks about his mother and his grandmother who taught him the Word of God (1 Timothy 1:5). It's interesting that there's no mention of a father even, or a grandfather, in that Scripture. Maybe his father didn't walk with the Lord, yet this mother and grandmother were faithful to teach Timothy in the Word.
Perhaps you are a mother listening and your husband really isn't walking with the Lord or maybe he is resistant about reading God's Word to your family. Well, dear mother, you can still get the Word into your children. God will show you how. Maybe, as your husband goes off to work early, you can take devotions with them at the breakfast table. You can read the Word to them. You can get the Word into your children just like Timothy's mother and grandmother did, even though there was no mention of a father.
It says here: “That from a child thou hath known the Holy Scriptures.” From a child. That word, child, in the Greek is the word brephos. That word is used of a babe in the womb. It's used of when Jesus was in the womb (Luke 2:12) and then again, it's used of a newborn babe. That was used of Jesus too and how the shepherds came to see Him, and the angel said, “You'll find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, in a manger. It speaks of a newborn (Luke 2;16). Brephos speaks of a toddler and a little child. It's from the womb, and birth, and growing up as a little one. It's not waiting until they are older. It's when they are little that you are putting the Holy Scriptures into their lives.
“From a child (from a little one), thou hast known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus.” In a home, where the Word of God is being constantly read and the little ones are hearing it, they can come to a readiness for salvation quite early, even four years of age, maybe even three years of age.
I remember when little Breezy, our granddaughter, was only about three years of age, and she was with us at family devotions and my husband was reading the Word, and he saw the presence of God all over Breezy, and he felt she was ready to receive Jesus. He said to her, “Breezy, would you love to ask Jesus into your heart?” She said, “Oh yes,” and she followed him in prayer, asking Jesus to come into her heart. It was amazing.
The next few days she was going around singing and making up songs of how Jesus was in her heart. Breezy will be ten in a couple of weeks, and she is still walking with Jesus. I love watching her in church, without any pressure from anyone, on her own, and we are worshiping the Lord, and she has her hands up raised in worship to God. Such a beautiful thing to see in a young girl.
Most of our own children came to know Jesus at about four years of age. They are all continuing to walk with the Lord today. That experience wasn't something that was forgotten. It was something that they remembered in their lives, and they continued to walk with the Lord. I believe that it is important for our children to find Jesus at a young age because the enemy is after their souls. The sooner that Jesus comes into their lives and there is an openness to Christ, to His Word, to come into their world, that the more they can walk with him.
Even we, as adults, have to learn to walk in victory. We have to learn in all the situations we face to say no to the devil and yes to Christ. Because we have two natures living within us—we have that old fleshly nature, but of course, we have Christ who dwells within us, and we want Him to fill our lives. We don't want that old nature to rise up.
When we face temptation, when we face situations when we want to blow it and yell and scream and get mad and angry, or when we have a bad attitude toward our husbands, that's the flesh! That doesn't belong to Jesus. We have to learn to say no to the devil and yes to Christ.
“Lord Jesus, I thank You that You dwell in my heart. I thank You for Your love that is within me. Thank You.” You're saying yes to Christ, yes to His nature. We teach our children this. We don't have to wait until they are older for them to learn to walk in victory. When they face these little things and they get mad and angry, we teach them, “That's the old nature, but darling, you have Jesus living in you now. His nature wants to love. His nature doesn't get angry and mad. His nature forgives.”
We teach our children about how Christ dwells in them. They can say yes to Him and the more they get in the habit of saying yes to Him, the more they learn to live and abide in Christ and live in the nature of Christ and be conformed to the image of His son. We start when they are young, and we keep going. We get our children into the Word.
My husband was reading an article this morning before we started out family devotions, and it was saying Bible illiteracy is at a crisis point in our nation. I have to agree with this writer. Bible illiteracy is at a crisis point in our nation because I find that so many young people in our church today don't know God's Word. They know so much about sports, so much about the latest movies; they know so much about social media, but if you ask them Scripture, they don't know it.
Oh my. I have been doing a little competition recently at our family camps and different family gatherings that we've been at and asked to speak. I've been speaking about the Word of God and encouraging parents to get the Word into their children. I've said, “Let's see how well we know the Word of God, shall we?” I have quoted a few very familiar Scriptures, ones that I learned as a child, ones that we as Christian parents should be teaching our children. I would say half the Scripture and say, “Ok, what's the rest of it?”
Well, I was so sad to realize nobody answered me, not the moms and dads, not the children, not the young people. Nobody knew the rest of the Scripture. In some places, one or two would get a couple of them right but mostly, they didn't know them. Dear ladies, that means we are Bible illiterate. This wasn't just the children; this was the moms and dads. How can we, as moms and dads, get it into our children if we don't know it? That means we are not in the Word of God. We've got to get into the Word ourselves.
There's one way I find is such a blessing. Although I love to have my own time in the Word of God in the early morning, I also love our gathering as family for family devotions or whatever you like to call it in your family—family Bible reading, family worship, or whatever. When we come together, and the father reads the Word and we are hearing it every morning and we come together again at the evening meal at the end of the meal we are hearing it again. We are getting the Word into our hearts. I would have to say that most of the families are not doing this, or they would know these Scriptures.
How about I have a little try on you? What do you think? Is that a good idea? Maybe it's not a good idea. Well, I think I'll give you a little competition anyway. I'm going to say it halfway through and see if you can, in your heart, say the rest of the Scripture:
“Thy word have I hid in my heart that . . . ” What comes next? Did you get tit? I know some of you got it. “That I might not sin against thee” (Psalm 119:11). That's a wonderful Scripture to teach our children, isn't it? And also to have in our own hearts. “Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee.” You see, we've either got the Word in our hearts or we can be tempted to sin. As one little statement says: “The Bible will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from the Bible.”
We've got to get it into the hearts of our children. Here's another one:
“Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way . . . ” Can you get it? “By taking heed thereto according to thy Word.” That's Psalm 119:9. That's an important word for our young people to know because it's talking about the young man. How can a young man keep clean? This is the way—having the Word of God in his heart. Amen?
What are we talking about? Raising young men to be strong. 1 John 2:14 says they will be strong if they have the Word of God abiding in their hearts. Lovely mothers, get that Word into your children and into your sons. Amen?
Here's another one for you. “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you . . . ” How is it meant to dwell in you? How is God's Word meant to dwell in our hearts? Did you get it? I'll give you the answer in case you didn't. “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly” Colossians 3:16). Not a little bit, not just here and there. It's not enough, darling ladies, to take our children to Sunday School on Sunday or church on Sunday or Saturday, whenever we worship. No, we've got to get it into them richly, filling their lives. That means every day, every morning, every evening. Amen?
Alright, John 6:37: “Jesus said, him that cometh to me . . . ” What? Can you finish it? “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”
What about Romans 6:23? I learned this as a child, so important for our children to know Scriptures about salvation if they are going to be able to lead people to Jesus. Romans 6:23. Do you know it? “The wages of sin is death but . . . What's the rest? “But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Such an important one to know, isn't it?
Romans 10:13: “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall . . . ?” “Shall be saved.” Amen?
Let me give you one more. Are you getting them all? That means you are one who knows the Word. If you're not, that means, my lovely darlings, you're a little bit illiterate, and we don't want to be illiterate in God's Word. We want to be familiar with it, don't we? One more. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock . . . ” That's Jesus speaking. What does He say next? Do you remember? Say it with me, I'm sure you know it. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me” (Revelation 3:20).
Lovely ladies, these are not obscure verses in the Word of God. These are very familiar ones. They are ones we should all know. They are ones we should be teaching our children to memorize.
It's a great thing to teach your children to memorize the Word of God. I think that was one of the greatest lessons of my childhood, perhaps even more in my growing into youth and my later teenage years. In those years, I really began to be more purposeful in memorizing the Word of God. I did learn many Scriptures as a child, but I really went into memorizing. It was such a great blessing because as I memorized those Scriptures, they are still with me today.
I was blessed to have a father who loved to memorize the Word of God. My father never slept very well. All his life, he only slept a little bit off and on through the night, but he never got into a state about it. He would memorize the Word, and he would go over and over the Scriptures, and we would learn Scriptures together. Even in his late eighties, he was still memorizing Scriptures. In fact, he would memorize whole chapters of the Word of God. When he got up to preach, Scriptures would just come out of his mouth, and he would quote whole chapters of the Word.
That was a great blessing in my life. I would encourage you, dear ladies, to do this because we are raising young men to live in their glory, remember? If they are going to be strong, they have to know the Word of God and know how to overcome the wicked one. How did Jesus overcome the wicked one? We go to Matthew 4:1 when Jesus was taken out into the wilderness, and He didn't just land there. The Bible says that he was led. God led him into the wilderness. Satan came to tempt him.
You know, don't you, that every temptation Jesus came back at the enemy with, “It is written?” The first one was: “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” We live physically by bread, by food to keep us alive, but we live spiritually by the Living Bread, the Word of God, which keeps us alive spiritually and keeps us strong from the enemy.
If Jesus used the Word, He showed us the way. We have to do it. We teach our children to do it. We teach our young sons growing up to do it. Amen!
Do you remember how Jesus was only twelve years of age and they had come up to Jerusalem for Passover? They all began to go home. All the families and Jesus' mother and father didn't even notice that he wasn't with everybody. When they noticed, oh goodness me, they were looking for him everywhere and they thought, well, we better go back to Jerusalem. Three days later, they found him in the temple, discoursing, debating, talking, and listening to the teachers in the temple. There he was speaking over the things of the Word of God. He was only twelve at the time, but we say, “That was Jesus, the Son of God!” But he became flesh and blood and sometimes we think our children don't really have to get interested in the Bible while they are young. One day, they will. No, no, no.
Why was Jesus able to talk about the Scriptures with these teachers? Because he would have grown up learning them in his home. Back then in those days they learned the Scriptures, they learned the law, they learned the Torah. They memorized it. Back then, young men were mature in their youth, even the disciples.
Now, most people often think of the disciples as older men. You see pictures of them with their beards, and they look older or at least the age of Jesus, who was 30 years of age when He became a rabbi and gathered disciples to Himself. The law in Israel was that you had to be 30 years of age before you could be a rabbi, and there were lots of rabbis in Jerusalem at that time and each one would gather disciples around them.
Ladies, we often get it wrong because the disciples were young. Back then, rabbis didn't gather grown men around them. No, grown men were either a rabbi themselves or they were in their business, their family business. They had to provide for their families. They gathered young men. Back then, in the time of Jesus, most young men finished their education at about 13 - 15 years of age. That seems young to us today, doesn't it? But they had a good education. By that time, maybe some of them could recite the whole first five books of the Bible. They were serious in their education, and they knew the Word of God.
Then they would come out about 13 or 15 and they would either go be with a rabbi, perhaps like going to college, and learning more from the rabbi, or they would get into their father's business. It was like this with all the disciples that Jesus called to be His disciples. He called Peter, James, and John from being fisherman. They had already got involved in their family business as fisherman. He called them from that, and they became his disciples.
Later, we know that Peter was the only one who was married. It speaks of his wife, well not really, it speaks of his mother-in-law and that they were in his mother-in-law's house and how Jesus healed his mother-in- law, so he was obviously married. Usually by about 18 years of age. They liked to make sure that the young men were married by that time. I know that sounds so young in our society today, but these young men were ready and mature and ready for marriage. They were ready to take on the responsibility of a family.
Not long before the death of Jesus, Jesus said to Peter, “Hey Peter, go and get a shekel for you and me.” Every person who was 20 years of age and over had to pay taxes. It was half a shekel a year, so Jesus told Peter to go and get a shekel, half for Him, half for Peter because they were the only two among his disciples who needed to pay. The others were all younger. They were young men, but they had grown up to be mature in their youth and to take responsibility, and they would have also been very familiar with the Word of God, with the whole Torah, and the Tanakh, the whole of the Old Testament. They had been grounded in it. As young teenagers, they were not unfamiliar with the Word of God when Jesus called them to be His disciples.
Dear lovely ladies, I must give you this Scripture. It's found in Hosea 8:12. It says: “I have written to him the great things of my law.” Here, God is saying, “I have given you great things in my Word. That means ‘abundant, excellent, multitudinous.’ There's multitudes of wonderful things in my law, people.” Sometimes we think ,the law, oh that's just the Ten Commandments. No, the law is the word, torah, and it actually means teaching. It's all the teaching that God has given in His Word.
He says: “I have given you great things in my law, but they were counted as a strange thing.” Isn't that sad, ladies? May that never be in our families as you raise your family. Don't let that ever be a testimony of your family, that the Word of God is a strange thing. Don't ever let that be a testimony of your children or your young sons growing up, that it's a strange thing.
That Word has got to be in them; it's got to be richly in them. It must not be strange; it must be familiar, these basic Scriptures of the Word of God. If they don't know them, start making them memory verses so that your children can, when you say or speak a very familiar verse, they can finish it, they know it. It's in their hearts. Not only in their hearts but in their mouths. You see, lovely ladies, it's not enough to get the Word into our children's hearts. We have to get them into their mouths. This is the mandate God has given to us as parents. Isaiah 59:2, I'm sure I've shared this Scripture before, but I'm reading it again because it's so powerful, and it is the mandate that God has given to us.
It says: “'As for me, this is my covenant with them,' saith the Lord, 'My Spirit which is upon you and my Word, which I have put in your mouth.'” Did you notice that, ladies? It doesn't just say the heart. “My word which I have put in your mouth.” That's in the mouth of us parents. Fathers and mothers, we've got to have it in our mouths so that we can get it into the mouths of our children. It says, “'I've put it in your mouth, and it shall not depart out of your mouth nor out of the mouth of your children, nor out of the mouth of your children's children,' saith the Lord, 'henceforth and forever.'”
Do you see God's plan? We are getting God's Word into the hearts and mouths of our children so that they will pass it on to their children and their children will pass it on to their children, for every generation. Amen?
God's word is the anecdote to deception.
Dear mothers, we are raising children in an absolutely deceived world, and the only anecdote to the deception that's all around us and in the world is God's Word. Now, what does it say in Matthew 24:24? “For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and they shall show great signs and wonders: insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.”
Yes, the deception is so powerful that God says even the elect can be deceived. Therefore, we have to be girded up and filled with the Word of God. We've got to get our children filled with the Word of God so that it's coming out their mouths, so that it's familiar with them so that when they face deception, they discern, they know that's not right because they've got that Word in them, which is the anecdote to deception. It discovers and discloses the deception.
This is the thing today, even Christians are being deceived because they don't know the Word; they haven't a clue, so they go along with what society is doing.
2 Peter 1:4: “Whereby give unto us exceeding great and precious promises.” He hasn't just given us promises, no. “Exceeding great and precious promises: that by these we might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
If you want your sons to grow up pure, cleansed, and holy young men of God, they've got to have the Word of God in them, for it is the Word that delivers from corruption. It is the Word that keeps us from the lust in this world today. Amen? Lovely ladies, raise your children and your sons to live in their glory which is to be strong in the Lord and have the Word of God in their hearts, so they can overcome the wicked one. As you do that, you are living your glory. Amen?
“Dear Father, we thank You for Your precious Word. Yes, You’ve given to us great things. You've given to us exceeding great and precious promises. Lord, Your Word is that which keeps us from corruption. Your Word keeps us form the lust of this world. Father, we pray that You will anoint us. I pray for every precious mother. Amen.”