Welcome to the podcast FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ NANCY CAMPBELL, Founder and Publisher of Above Rubies.

Nancy:

Hello dear ladies. We're continuing to talk about this wonderful Hebrew word, navah, which means “to dwell and live in your home, to make it a lovely home.” We're talking about different ways, and we're up to number four. We make our home a . . .

TRAINING AND EDUCATION CENTER.

This is where the bulk of the training of our children happens, in our homes. Not just going to school. Now, some may send their children to school. Many of you are homeschooling. I believe that today (maybe we could have gotten away with it years ago), but today we are facing more and more deception. Not only deception, but irate lies against God and His ways in our public-school system.

The gay agenda is pushing itself more and more and more into our public-school system. And it's touching the lives of our children. Even Muslim education is coming into our public schools and many schools. Even here in Tennessee, where I live, there are schools where they have been made to recite the Muslim prayers.

And yet we cannot have the Bible or pray to our great God in our public schools. And therefore, I believe that as godly, God-fearing parents, we have to think very carefully about the education of our children. I know we all want to raise godly, Bible-believing, God-fearing children. How can we do that when we send them to a school where they are taught the opposite? And this is happening today. Where they're being influenced by the gay agenda, where they're being influenced by alternative lifestyles, where they're being influenced by everything that is against God, where they're being influenced by socialism and everything that is foreign to our constitution and how this nation began.

And so, many of course, are now homeschooling their children. And we're so blessed that today, we have such wonderful homeschooling curriculums. There's just so much. In fact, there is too much because you hardly know what to choose. There are so many wonderful curriculums to get hold of for the teaching of your children so that they can have a very good education. But it's not only just learning facts that is education. Education is LIFE, and it's in our homes that we learn to live life.

I find in the public-educated children that I know, on the whole, (of course there's always exceptions), but on the whole, most of them as they come out of school and then they go onto college, they have no idea what home life is like. They are at school most of the day, they come home, they go out to extra-curricular activities, and they've got to do their homework. They don't become part of the running of the home, the chores of the home. They're not having time to learn to cook and how to manage a home. These are such valuable principles that are part of life learning.

It's so sad that so many young women today, they get to that place where they are getting married. Often, it's later and later and later today. The average age today in the states is 29 years for men and 28 for women. It is getting older and older and older for couples to get married. This of course is also opposite to God's plan and opposite to the word of God, opposite to His heart. It even goes against nature because when does God arouse that longing and desire for a mate? It's not when young people are in their mid, late twenties. It's when they're young. Now, does God do that to frustrate them and say, “No, you must not be married till you're in your late twenties or thirties?” No. God intends couples to be married when they are young, if they meet the right person.

Of course, sometimes couples don't meet until they're later in life, but I am so against couples meeting and just hanging out and going on and on and on in a relationship and never coming to that place of getting married. I believe it's totally wrong, and I don't believe, (well, there could be those who are truly walking in righteousness), but I think most of them are not living in righteousness, they're living in fornication. And therefore, it's all out of order and all upside down and opposite to the way God wants it. But in many of these, when they decided to get married at this later age, have no idea how to run a household. They have no idea how to cook. They have no idea even how to hold a baby. They've grown up in two child families, and they've never had younger brothers and sisters.

So, they've never seen their mother nurse a baby or had little babies around. This is one of the beautiful things of large families. Older children are able to see mothering and fathering right at hand. They see their mother nursing their younger siblings, and it becomes normal to them. They see how it happens and they are ready for it. They know how to cook a family meal for a big crowd. They know how to manage a household. They know how to go and get the groceries and they know how to do it all. They've been trained in it because they have been there on hand.

And so, we are not only educating our children with learning and facts, which are important. I believe, myself, that it's important to learn something new every day. I love that line from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow when he says:

"But to act that each tomorrow find us farther than today."

Every day of our lives should find us learning something new, stretching forward in a way we haven't ever done before. In fact, that's a great idea for you at the family evening table every now and then, to ask your children this question: “Children, tell us something new that you learned today.” And you go around the table. Each one having a turn right from the youngest to the oldest, including Mummy and Daddy. Oh yes. Have you learned something new today?

We should all be striving to learn something new. Apart from learning facts, we are learning life. That's even more important. Learning the principles of life, and how to live life, and also how to speak well. That’s a very important one. We talked about that on an episode recently, about how we're training children to speak.

Remember it says in Psalm 127 “Happy is the man that has his quiver full of them." Full of children. “He shall not be ashamed, for he shall speak with the enemies in the gates.” Well, I mean, “THEY shall speak with the enemies in the gates.” It's they, it's the children. We're raising children to speak, to speak well, to speak for God, to speak the truth, to be prepared to speak out, and to, maybe one day, speak in the gates of the city, or the gates of the land of this nation. Wow.

But we are preparing children for this. And that's why we need to always be training our children to speak clearly. I notice that a lot of young people mumble. (Incoherent sounds). They speak so fast and just mumble away to each other. They actually do understand one another, but I don't understand them. Maybe I'm getting a little deaf, but I think it is important that if our children are mumbling, we should say to them, “Hey, speak clearly, speak slower. Say that again, so I can understand what you're saying.” Because as our children grow up, their success is going to be determined on how they speak, how people hear them, how they speak to other people. Do they speak clearly? Do they speak in confidence? Do they know what they're talking about? And these are important things to prepare them for success in life.

And so, we're teaching them how to speak.

And this is another little thing too. Some people say, (well actually, it’s a big thing in some people's minds), you get people who say, when you talk about homeschooling, “Oh, but I send my children to school so they can be a witness.” Well, that sounds all very well and good, but it usually doesn't work out. What usually works out is your precious, vulnerable children are instead infiltrated and influenced by an ungodly culture at school. They'll just get completely rammed down if they try to speak, and they will be influenced instead.

But what we're doing when we're homeschooling is getting our children READY to speak. Oh, we're kind of looking after them now. We're hibernating them now because they're not ready. They're not ready to go out into this world yet, but we're training them. We are getting them ready because we're not keeping them forever. No, we are getting them ready to send out. There's a day when they going to go out. We will send them forth as arrows to shoot the mark. And we send them forth, oh my, we send them forth to the wolves because that's what Jesus said, that you will be like lambs in the midst of wolves. And our little children aren't ready to go out among the wolves yet.

We've got to get them stronger. They've got to know the Word. They've got to know the truth. They've got to know how to speak it. And they've got to have convictions. They've got to be able to contend for the faith, and so they have to be ready, because when they go out, they will face the wolves. When they face the wolves, they've got to know how to stand. And having done all to stand, as it says in Ephesians chapter six. Oh, I love those words. They're great words to take as a vision for your children as you're raising them. “I'm raising children who will be able to stand against the enemy and having done all, stand.” So that even when the wolves come, even when people come to knock them down, they'll still stand because they have the truth. And so, we're teaching them how to speak.

We're teaching them etiquette. Oh my, etiquette seems to be a dying art in our culture today. Young people don't know etiquette, and while we have our children in the home, we have opportunity to teach them etiquette and all the little things of life. Even at the table.

How do you run your table? Is it just bedlam? Does everybody speak at once? Well, maybe you don't mind that happening in your home, but I do. I do mind that happening in my home. We don't have everybody speak at once because it's bedlam. Nobody knows what anyone else is saying. And nor do we have private conversations because, did you know? They are rude. It is rude to whisper or have a private conversation with someone else at the table when there are others sitting around the table. And so, you teach your children etiquette, you teach them the right habits, so they know how to conduct themselves one day when they are adults and go out amongst people and have to dine with them.

Even last night we had a lot of young people at our table and they began to start off talking to one another, different ones having different conversations, and I had to say, “Hey everybody, we don't have private conversations at our table. We all join together. We're going to have one person speaking, and we're all going to listen and enjoy. So, we brought a subject to the table and different ones shared and we could all listen and laugh and enjoy what they were saying all together, and this is how it happens. But we teach this, we teach this kind of etiquette. It's so important.

Did you ever buy my etiquette posters? I have seven etiquette posters in a little package. You buy them all together and they are: Table etiquette, Home etiquette, Speech etiquette, Receiving Hospitality, Church etiquette, how do we conduct ourselves there? Work force etiquette, preparing your children when they go out into the workforce, and Daily Life etiquette.

Each one has a page full of just etiquette encouragement that we can teach our children. You can pin them up on your walls or put them as place mats if you like to, you know, put some plastic over them at your table just so you can teach your children. Or you can use them yourself, taking them one by one to teach your children.

I was talking to a friend just recently and she was saying to me, she said, “Oh, I'm so blessed. The young man who is courting my daughter, every time he leaves our home, he comes to me and he says, ‘Thank you so much for allowing me to be with your daughter.’” I thought how lovely that was. You can tell that that young man (he is a homeschooled young man), has been trained really well.

I think communication is a very important one, that we teach our children to communicate wherever they're going, whatever they're doing. If they are going out (because this applies to older children, as they are getting older), that we require them to tell us where they are going, what time they will be home and so on.

We, as parents, while our children are under our roof, have a responsibility (f they live in the home), to know exactly where they are and when they will be home. That is not overpowering a child, that is etiquette. That is what we train them to do, so they will be prepared for marriage. If we, as married couples, if one of us has to go out somewhere, we don't just go out. We tell our husband, and we tell him where we'll be. We tell him when we'll be home. We communicate. He does the same with us. We are training our children how to live life. We're preparing them for marriage. That communication is very, very important. We do not ever live lives just unto ourselves and do what we like. In fact, that is really the whole concept of etiquette: thinking of others, putting others first, putting others where we would like them to put us. And so, we are training them in this way.

So many areas of training in the home that prepare our children for life. And so, it is a training center.

Number five. We make our homes a . . .

PRAISE AND WORSHIP CENTER.

Our home should be filled with praise. It's wonderful to have the beautiful worship songs or hymns playing in our home. We're very blessed that we have so much music available to us today. And so, fill your home with beautiful music and the praises of the Lord. One time, (actually it was a number of years ago), I was reading in the Word, in Colossians. It’s in Colossians 2:7 and at the end it says that we are to be “abounding with thanksgiving.” Some translations say, “overflowing with gratitude.”

I looked up this word, abounding, to see what it really means, and it's a very powerful word. It means “to super abound, to be in excess, to do more than is necessary, above and beyond.” Wow, I thought, goodness me, how do I do that? If I'm going to be” abounding in thanksgiving,” how do I do that all day? I mean, I'm busy at work. I'm doing this. I'm concentrating on what I'm doing.

I was talking to the Lord about this and something came to my mind. I'm sure it was the Lord who put it into my mind and these words came: kitchen timer. “Oh, wow, what a great idea, Thank you Lord.” When I went back inside, because I was walking and talking with the Lord, when I went back inside, I got out my kitchen timer.

Well maybe you don't have one, but go and get one from Walmart, they're as cheap as dirt. I used this timer, and I would put it on for either a half hour or an hour. When it dinged, then I would remember to praise the Lord, and I would just take one little moment, “Thank You,  Lord for your goodness to me today. Thank You for Your faithfulness.” That was all, but I was brought back to a heart of thanksgiving.

Turn the timer on again, and you get busy. You forget all about it, but suddenly it rings again. “Oh, thank You, Lord. Thank You for my home. Thank You for blessing me with these children You have given me. Thank You for your presence here with us. Thank You, Lord.”  I turn the timer on again for another hour.

Of course, if your children are with you, then you're going to get them thanking the Lord too. So, you're bringing the whole family into an attitude of praise and worship. You can all do it together when it dings. “Okay, come on, children, let's thank Jesus.”

“Thank You, Jesus. We love You. Thank you. Thank You for all Your blessings. Amen.”

Get them all to thank with you. And as you are doing this throughout the day, it keeps you in that beautiful attitude of gratitude, and of thanksgiving. Maybe you've just got into a bit of self-pity and feeling sorry for yourself because everything's going wrong—and ding! Oh my. You can no longer be in self-pity. “Thank You Lord. Oh, I thank You that You are my joy. I thank You that I don't have to look at these circumstances. I look to You, Lord. You are bigger. I thank You in the name of Jesus.” And so, once again, you're back in the right attitude.

Maybe the children are bouncing off the walls and right at that moment you're ready to blow your cool—Ding! And so instead of screaming at the children, you confess: “Oh thank You, Lord.” “Come on. Come here, children.” You hold their hands and you pray with them. “Oh God, I pray that You will touch my children now. Lord, give them soft, tender, forgiving hearts to one another. Fill them with love for one another in Jesus' name.”

And so the timer can be a wonderful blessing in your home to keep you in the praises of the Lord.

Well, let's carry on, number six. We make our homes a . . .

PRAYER CENTER.

Well, this is very, very, very biblical of course, because we know that Jesus said that his house is a House of Prayer, and he was talking about his temple. And of course, it also means our home. And if you have dedicated your home to the Lord, it's His home. Every one of our homes should be God's homes, and therefore, they should be praying homes. They should be homes of prayer. How much is your home a home of prayer? How much time have you spent in prayer today?

Now, we do pray personally, and of course, we're going to be praying. We're going to be bringing things to the Lord in our hearts throughout the day because we're always needing Him. Oh goodness me, I'm always needing Him, aren't you? In fact, I think one of the prayers that I pray more than any other prayer is Zechariah four, verse six, where it says, “Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord."

“Oh God, I thank You that you are God, that You are bigger than this challenge that I face. I pray that You will come by Your Spirit, and You will move because I can't work this situation out. I can't change this person's life. Oh God, I can't change the attitude, but You can. I thank You. I pray that You'll come by Your Spirit. It's not by my might, nor my power, it's by Your Spirit. Come by Your Spirit and move, Oh God.”

Oh, how I constantly pray that prayer often throughout the day. And so, we pray personally, but we must pray as families because our homes are places for families. A home really is a family. That's what it is. It's a family, so we pray as families.

Do you gather as a family to pray? How often do you gather? Biblically, God has shown us the way to come into His presence—every morning and every evening. He shows us this way back in the teaching on the Tabernacle, and God reveals what is called the Morning and Evening principle. And God showed it in very practical ways. Everything that God teaches us, He also teaches it to us practically.

At the very beginning of their building the Tabernacle, God talked about the brazen alter. That was an alter made of brass where they were to do the sacrifices. And God told them that when they did this, that they were to come to that altar every morning and every evening. They were to take out the ashes of the fire, because there was a fire upon the altar, and then they were to put on wood to keep the fire going. This spiritually speaks to us of coming into God's presence every morning and every evening, bringing our children into His presence. In His presence is where He will convict us if there's anything that is hurting and grieving His spirit. That's where we take out the ashes, take all that dead stuff out and all that stuff that grieves the Holy Spirit. But then we've got to put on the fuel, put on the wood, and so we put on the word of God because that fuels us. And then we pray. We do it morning and evening. But that was not enough. That happened in the  outer court, but then you move into the Holy Place.

And in the holy place there was the Table of Shewbread on which they laid the 12 loaves. Then they had the candelabra, the beautiful seven-branched golden candle stick. And God said to the priests, “You have got to come once again every morning and every evening to keep that light burning. Every morning you've got to take off all the burnt stuff from the wick and get rid of it.” Always getting rid of all the bad stuff.

And then pouring in the oil, which speaks of the Holy Spirit, that renewing of the Holy Spirit, morning and evening. And he said, “You have to do this every morning and evening because this light is never to go out. If you do it once a day, it'll go out. You've got to do it twice a day to keep the light burning.” And that's why they had to do it twice a day at the altar, at that brass alter. Because God said, “This fire must never ever go out.” And he repeats it twice (Leviticus 6:12, 13).

Lovely ladies, if we want to keep the fire of God burning in our hearts, burning in the hearts of everyone in our family, we've got to come twice a day. Doing it once, the fire will go out. It's only as we keep it going. We've got to attend to it two times a day to keep that fire burning.

And then that wasn't all. Because before you went into the Holy of Holies, just at the entrance, there was the Golden Table of Incense where they burned the incense. Once again, can you believe it? They had to do it every morning and every night! God wanted His home where he dwelt there (where the God of the universe who could not be contained in the earth, and yet He deigned to live in a tent, to be with His people and to dwell in the midst of them), He wanted His home filled with a beautiful aroma, that sweet aroma of incense. And so, they would light it in the morning, but by the evening it would be dissipating, so they would have to light it again to keep it going.

And the Bible tells us that the incense is the prayers of the saints (Revelation 5:8 and 8:3-5). That's what it is. And as that incense went up, it was just like a beautiful sweet incense. It was like prayers going up to God. And so, God made a principal way back there, a precedent, a type for us to keep going, that we will continue to pray and intercede and praise and worship every morning and every evening as a family.

Let me read to you a couple of Scriptures from Revelation. These are amazing because I was talking to you about the Tabernacle in the wilderness, and you can say, “Oh, that's all very well, that's a way back then, back in the wilderness, that doesn't relate to us today.”  Oh yes, it does! Because everything regarding the Tabernacle was done according to the pattern that God gave. And it was according to the pattern of the Tabernacle in Heaven!

Yes, in heaven. This tabernacle, which now is! When we go to Revelation, it is John giving us a picture of the vision that he sees of Heaven and what is in Heaven. And we see, ladies, the very same thing happening in heaven that we were talking about back there in the wilderness. So, this is more up to date than today, because this is in the eternal realm. Revelation 5:8 says: "And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints."

Dear mothers, our prayers are going up before the Lord, even now, to His heavenly throne room. Oh yes. Those cries from your mother's heart. They're going up. They are not forgotten. They are before the throne.

Revelation 8:3, 4: “And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer and there was given unto him much incense.” Not a little bit . . . but MUCH! How much incense do you have going up in your home? A little bit or much? “That he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar, which was before the throne”

Dear ladies, this is now in the eternal realm! “And the smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of the saints ascended up before God out of the angel's hand.” So, we see how this is the prayers of the saints, the prayers of God's people, the prayers of families. Can I encourage you so much to make this time every day in your family?

I know it's not easy, but you have to make it happen. And lovely ladies, remember you don't try and fit it around your schedule. No. If you try to do that, you'll never do it. If you try and fit it around everything you're doing in your home? Oh goodness me, you'll never have time to do it. No. This is what you do. You fit every single thing else around this most important part of the day. This is more important than anything else that you will do. This is eternal, and this will affect your family, your children, and generations to come. It will affect the nations of the world as you pray for them.

As you come every morning and every evening before the Lord, you're bringing that incense, but you've got to make it happen. You've got to absolutely make it happen. You've got to make that time and make that place, and everything else fits in around it and if not another thing gets done, well, too bad. These are the most important things in our home.

We find the most wonderful time of the day is at breakfast and at our evening suppertime, because it's the morning and evening principle of course. But we find it works best at meal times because that's when the family gather. To gather your family is not an easy thing because everybody's going here, going there, doing this, doing that, especially as they get older. But it's an amazing thing, they all come to eat. Oh yes, everybody wants to come to eat because we're all hungry, so you've got them there. You get them, they come to eat, and so at the end of your meal, that's when you have your time to open the Word and then to pray and to cry out to God at your altar, in your home.

Now, back in the early days, not only did they have the brass altar in the tabernacle and they had the altar of incense in the Holy Place, but earlier than even that, the Patriarchs made altars. And why did they make them? They made them as a point of contact to cry out to God and to hear God speak to them. Now we are not in a day of making alters. You're not going to make a stone altar or any kind of altar in your home, but the altar we make is that time and that place where we make it happen. A beautiful place is around your table, but it can be what works best in your home. And so you make that time and you come together to pray.

Did you know that prayer is the greatest thing you can do as a family? There's no more powerful thing. Not only do you pray for one another, but oh, you pray for the nation, and you pray for the world, and you teach your children how to do it, and you become nation-changing families.

As I close this session, I've got to tell you something very important. Satan will try to stop you because he hates prayer. He will do everything he can to stop you doing this, and when he stops you, he'll be laughing up his sleeve because he has won a victory. Because when we pray, we defeat the devil.

Are you going to be a devil-defeating, world-changing family, or are you going to let the devil have the victory?

Let's pray. Lord, I pray that You will help us all to be praying families, to make our homes prayer centers, where prayer is part of our lives. Where our children grow up praying, interceding, and knowing how to pray. Oh God, teach us how to be interceders for the nation and for the world. I pray that You will pour out a spirit of prayer upon every family hearing this podcast today or tonight in Jesus’ name. Amen.