Episode 23: You Are Queen Of Your Home

FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

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

Nancy: It’s a joy to be with you again today. Last week, we talked about the headship of the male in the home, how God has given governing to men, but we also talked about how He has given the mandate to the women to reign. I want to talk a little bit more about that today. I would like to read you a quote.

This quote comes from Dr. J. Holland, and he says: “Home, based upon a Christian marriage, is so evidently an institution of God, that a man must become profane before he can deny it. Of this realm, woman is queen. The home takes its cue and its hue from her. If she is in the best sense womanly, if she is true and tender, loving and heroic, patient and self-devoted, she consciously, or unconsciously organizes and puts into operation a set of influences that do more to mold the destiny of the nation than any man, uncrowned by power or eloquence, can possibly effect.”

There is another beautiful quote written by Reverend T. DeWitt Talmage. He says: “Thank God, O women for the quietude of your home and that you are queen in it. Men come at eventide to the home; but all day long you are there beautifying it, sanctifying it, adorning it, blessing it. It may be a very humble home. There may be no carpet on the floor. There may be no pictures on the wall. There may be no silks in the wardrobe; but, by your faith in God, and your cheerful demeanor, you may garniture that place with more splendor than the upholsters hand ever kindled.”

I want to remind you again today, dear wife and mother, of the blessing of being a queen in your home. I want you to rise to this queenship, to this realm where God wants you to reign. There is a beautiful Scripture in the Song of Solomon. Now, you know that the Song of Solomon is a picture of Christ and His bride. It can also be read from the husband to the wife.

In Song of Songs 4:8, in the Knox translation, the bridegroom says to his bride: “Come to me, my bride. My queen you shall be.” I loved those words when I read them. The bridegroom wants his bride to be a queen. He is king and she is to be queen, and there is queenliness in every woman. I believe we innately desire it. Our husband desires it, for he is king, and he wants you to be his queen.

We see this even in our little daughters. Do you notice that when they are little, they play with their dolls, and they love to be mommies? They are practicing without realizing it. They are practicing to one day be a mommy. Then, when it’s time to play dress up, as I know your children love to do (my children always loved to dress up and my grandchildren love to dress up). I have a dress up box. That’s one of their favorite things when they come to my home. They go to the dress up box.

When the little girls go to the dress up box, what do they do? They always dress up as princesses. I don’t always have the most beautiful princess dresses in my box. I try to keep some there. I will put in old lace curtains, things like this that they can make up to pretend to be a bride or a princess. I’m amazed at their creativity. How they dress up is unbelievable. No one tells them, “Now children, it’s time to play dress up.” We never tell them that. They just want to do it anyway. We never say, “I think you should dress up like a princess.” No, we never say anything like that. That’s just what they do. They inherently do it because it’s in them to dress like a princess. They want to be a princess. There’s nothing they want more.

I remember, on some occasions, we have celebrated Purim. That’s when you tell the story of Esther. We love to do that with the children. Evangeline’s husband, Howard, likes to tell the story. He is very good at telling stories and making it exciting. Whenever Haman is mentioned, they all have to “boo.” When Mordecai is mentioned, they all have to cheer, and they love that.

Everyone comes dressed up. The guys will all get dressed up, some as Haman, some as Mordecai, some as the king, but the girls, oh, everyone that’s coming is Queen Esther, everyone, because they love to dress as a queen.

It’s interesting how the inherent things that are in us when we are little somehow seem to fade out as we get older. Why do you think that is? I think one of the reasons is the society we live in. As children go to school, as children are gradually brainwashed by society, this inherent desire leaves them. When they were little, they wanted one-hundred babies. Now that they are older, they don’t want any! When they were little, they wanted to dress like a princess. Now, they don’t look anything like a princess, hardly even feminine. I believe, if we keep to our inherent thing that’s in us, that’s really what we are meant to be doing, isn’t it?

We should continue with this queenly attitude, just as our husbands should walk in a kingly attitude. Well, some of them don’t live like that. Do you think that if we became more queenly in our homes, that that would inspire them to be more kingly? I think so. You may not live in a palace; you may live in a little humble place. That doesn’t matter. Whatever you live in, small or large, ordinary or palatial, it’s the attitude of queenliness that makes our home a palace, a castle.

One of the meanings of queen in the dictionary is “a woman who is eminent or supreme in any given domain.” That’s you, dear mother. God wants you to be supreme in your domain. He’s given you a domain. This domain is your home and your family and all the creative ideas that God is going to put in your heart to do in your home to bless your family and to bless others around you who you bring into your home. You are supreme. You reign over this realm. I want you to see that.

Sometimes when someone asks a mother, “What do you do?” “Well, I’m just a housewife.” No, lovely mother. You are a queen. You are supreme. Yes, your husband is the head, and you submit to his covering and protection of headship, but he gives you the supremacy to manage your home, to manage your home well. That’s what we are to do. It’s managing. That’s what it says in Timothy 5:14: “I will therefore that the younger woman marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.” Those words, “guide the house” mean “to manage and rule over the home, not rule over our husbands but to rule and manage the home and keep it in good ship-shape.” That’s what it means to be a queen.

You queen over your whole home. You rule over your kitchen, making sure your husband and children are daily nourished with life-giving meals. You preside over the education of your children. You manage the cleaning of your home. You direct the ideas and projects and plans that you want to do with your children in your home. You practice hospitality, and you scheme and think about who you are going to invite and what families you are going to bless, what young, single mother you can ask into your home to encourage her. You work on assignments with your children about reaching out to the poor and the needy. You’re constantly making your home a creative, interesting, glorious, sacred place to live. 

Then, you plan and plant and work in your garden. Your life is full. There is so much to reign over. Are you like me? You never have enough time to do what you want to do in your home, to make it beautiful, to make it a sacred place, to make it a sanctuary for God. You never have enough time to invite all the people you want to gather around your table, to bless them and encourage them. All the ideas you have that you want to do, you can’t fit them all in.

I don’t know how people have time to leave their homes and go out and do something else because the home is such a powerful place. Not only for you and your family but from which to impact and to influence so many people and to bless so many people. You are queen of a queendom. It’s so amazing! How do you get bored? I don’t know.

I was an English subject; well, I guess I still am because I still hold my New Zealand citizenship. We belong to the English commonwealth, but I am now a U.S. citizen and also belong to the U.S.A. We grew up always being aware of the queen, Queen Elizabeth II. In fact, when we were children, back in New Zealand, it was part of every child’s life, well, every little girl’s life, to keep a scrapbook of pictures of the queen and the princesses.

Every day, we would look at the newspapers or a women’s magazine. “Are there any new pictures of the queen? Or of the princesses or the princes?” We would cut them out and paste them into our books. It was something that every little girl did back in those days.

The queen of England has a number of castles, and when she is visiting or dwelling or residing in a specific castle, they fly the flag, so everyone in the country can know the queen is there. When they see the flag flying on that castle, they know the queen lives there at this time. Dear precious ladies, you’re queens of your castles.

Are you flying your flag? Let’s fly the flag. Let’s let everyone know that we are in our home. We delight to be in our home. We have such vision for our home and for our children and for our family and for building this dynasty. We are here. We are doing something powerful in the nation. There is nothing more powerful, I believe, that can affect a nation more powerfully, than to build a godly, strong marriage and to build a godly, strong home and to build and train godly strong people, who will eventually go out into the nation. Let’s fly our flag, fly the banner of motherhood. The banner that says “I love motherhood. I love being in my home. I’m queen in my castle.”

Lovely lady, are you queen in your castle today? Perhaps today you were feeling rather miserable. Perhaps you were groveling. No, come on, that’s just the enemy putting those thoughts into your mind. Rise up to who God wants you to be. Remember these words of Song of Solomon, when the bridegroom says to his bride, and that’s talking to you, “Come to me, my bride, my queen you shall be.”

One day, there is going to be a great wedding feast and Christ is going to be there as the bridegroom to welcome His bride, the one Who He died for and shed His blood. The whole of the Bible is the theme of marriage and of how God Himself wants a bride. There’s going to be a day when we have this great wedding feast, and we will be His bride, His queen.

Let’s get practicing now and begin to act like a queen. Often, we don’t feel like it, but it’s not how we feel. It’s embracing the truth and walking in it. Lovely ladies, why not start walking like a queen? Think about it . . .  walk like a queen. When you go out with your little ones, you go out into the street and into the supermarket, don’t just look so haggard and bent over and “poor me with these little children.” No, put your head up, put a smile on your face. Walk with dignity, walk like a queen, for you have come from your castle, where you rule over a domain, and you are a queen.

Speak like a queen. Dress like a queen. When you dress like a queen, you will act more like a queen. In fact, when you get up in the morning, how do you dress? Do you just put on your dressing gown? I don’t know what you call it here in America. We call it a dressing gown in New Zealand . . .  or your housecoat. I don’t know, whatever you put on. It’s not getting dressed. It’s something that’s between bed and work. No, you are getting up to be queen of a domain: dress accordingly. When you get dressed, you know you are ready for the job.

You’re not going to do everything. When you have little children, you are going to be doing everything for them, and you don’t have any helper, but lovely moms with little ones, these little ones are going to grow; they are going to get bigger. You can begin to train them. As you train, you will begin to reign more and more.

Now let me read you a little testimony. This was part of a testimony that I printed in Above Rubies many years ago. It’s written by Candy Zacky who is a wonderful mother of many children, and then she adopted many children. She ended up with a very large family. She writes here:

“Are these all your girls?’ asked a young mother, recently at a baby shower. Her eyes were bulging out as she watched me interact with four of my daughters.

“Oh no,” I replied smiling. ‘These are only half of my girls.” I let the news sink in. Now her eyes were not only bulging, her jaw dropped open. She was struggling with her squirmy two-year-old and had that frazzled young mother look about her.

“You have eight daughters?” she asked in amazement.

“Yes, and three boys,” I added.” (By the way, she has had more since, and she adopted about six or seven or eight children as well).

“The next question was the one that always follows this conversation, the one that I love to answer: “How do you do it all?” This dear mother in under the misconception that I am doing for each of mine what she is doing with her two under four. I smile and tell her that, believe it or not, it was much harder for me when I had only two or three. I remember the days when our third (we jokingly call her our last child). I had three under three and a half and that was hard.

(By the way ladies, one time I had three under seventeen months because I had cheated, and I had twins for our second pregnancy. But three in seventeen months. Wow, that was rather overwhelming. Then I had four under four. My, those were hard days but wonderful days. Do I regret them? No! I would bring them back tomorrow if I could).

Anyway, let’s get back to Candy. She says: “I remember putting on my sneakers in the morning and not resting my feet until I crashed into bed at night, never sleeping the night through. I remember lining three up on the floor to diaper them all before bed, in cloth diapers I washed myself of course. Those were exhausting, wonder-filled, precious days. Wonderful days I don’t think I’d have the energy to repeat.

“But thanks to God I do not have to do it myself anymore. Now, I am a royal queen in my household. I don’t wash dishes or do laundry. I don’t clean the kitchen or scrub toilets. I don’t vacuum the carpets or sweep or wash floors. I don’t even make meals and rarely ever shop for groceries or anything else. I now live the life of a queen. Why should I do all these things when I have all these ladies and gentlemen in waiting who need practice and training to run a castle, for my home is a castle. Where else would you raise children of the King of kings but in a castle? I have princes and princesses around here. One is lord of lunches; one is chief dishwasher. One is head maid of the bathrooms and so on.”

Then she goes onto say” “Mothers if you train, you will reign.”

That’s a very true statement. Do you want to take that one? If you train, you will reign. Young mother, if you have little ones around you, and this is your season, your season where you are doing everything for these little ones, don’t despair. The season will change. The seasons of motherhood change. This is when many mothers think, “Oh, I can’t do this.” They stop having children. They don’t understand. They haven’t got to the next season yet. They haven’t even got to the reward time. They haven’t yet got to be queen. That is coming . . .  but be faithful to train.

Start training your little ones. As the next baby comes along, you’ve got helpers and then, when the next baby comes, you’ve got bigger helpers. Then, it gets to those days when you have teen children. You have girls who are eighteen or nineteen, and they know how to run a home; they know how to run everything. A new baby comes and you sit in your rocking chair like a queen because everything runs smoothly all around you. There are the different seasons in motherhood.

Precious, lovely ladies, as we finish these few thoughts about queenship, I want to encourage you. Proverbs 12:4 says: “A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.” A crown is a symbol of royalty. Embrace it. Become more like a queen, and your husband will become more like a king.

QUESTION TIME

Another question, ladies. “What do you say to people when they say, ‘I’m done.’”

Of course, you know what they’re meaning, don’t you? That means they are not having any more children. I’ve often had people say this to me. When you ask them, “Are you planning to have another baby?” “Oh no, I am done.” I wonder where that statement come from? I think it is something that we do need to look at. I have a few thoughts about it. You may have thoughts too.

No. 1. It doesn’t come from God’s heart.

That’s not His plan and not His heart. As we read the Word, we find all the way through that God’s heart is for children. His very first words He ever said into the ears of the very first man and woman were: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” That was His plan from the very beginning. He didn’t say it once. He repeated it again after the flood. He came to Noah. He said the words, twice this time, not just once like He did the first time. Two times we read in Genesis 9, and then it is continued throughout the Scriptures.

I love that Scripture in Deuteronomy 7 12-13. God is speaking to His people, and He says: “God shall keep unto thee the covenant and the mercy.” That is a beautiful word. Chesed in the Hebrew. It’s a word which means “lovingkindness, and it’s a picture of God’s kindness and love towards His people. In the Old Testament, it was towards His people, Israel and how He would always be true to them. In fact, because they sinned against him and their sin become so vile, He eventually had to spew them out of the land, out of the promised land that He had given them.

This word, chesed. Because of His love, because of His commitment to them, because of His lovingkindness to them, and because of His covenant (we’ve just read the words “covenant, to give the covenant and the mercy,” even though He had to do this, but there will come a time when I will bring you back. We are incredibly living in these days and have been since 1948, even before that, when God established the nation of Israel again. The people of Israel, of Judah, the Jews, have been coming back to the land from the four corners of the earth.

If you’re talking to somebody, and they say they are an atheist and don’t believe the Bible, they are being ridiculous. It’s totally ridiculous to not believe the Bible when we have it unfolding before our very eyes. I mean, here we have Jews coming back from all the nations of the world, coming back into Israel, speaking all their different languages, over 80 different languages. They have to go to an ulpan and learn Hebrew, so they can all speak the same language. Because God is fulfilling His promise. Not one promise but hundreds of promises.

He said, “I’ll bring you back.” I wonder, have you ever read the story of Eliezer Ben Yehuda? He was the man who God raised up to restore the Hebrew language. The Hebrew language was lost. It wasn’t a spoken language. It was still there but not spoken. There were literally thousands and thousands of words that were no longer in Hebrew. God raised up this man, before Israel ever became a nation, to restore this language. It was a massive task. He gave his life to it. He was persecuted for it. He suffered for it, but he was faithful to it, and he did it. When God caused this nation to be born again in 1948 and the people began to come back sovereignly, according to the promises of the Word of God, there was the language. The language was waiting for them to speak. God is amazing. You can read about this in the book, Tongue of the Prophets: The Fascinating Biography of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Father of Modern Hebrew by Robert St. John.

How did we get onto that? Oh yes, God keeps his covenant, and it is His lovingkindness toward His people. It says here: “I will keep the covenant and the mercy that I swore to your fathers, and I will love you and I will bless you.” How is He going to do that? How does He show His mercy? How does He show us His love? How does He bless us? His next words are: “And I will multiply you, and I will bless the fruit of your womb.” Those words seem foreign to us in our society, but these are the words of God. This is His heartbeat. This is how He wants to bless us, how He wants to show us His love and mercy, by blessing the fruit of our womb. “I’m done” doesn’t come from God’s heart.

No. 2: It doesn’t come from God’s eternal Word.

His word, which was settled in Heaven forever. The Bible says: “The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times” (Psalm 12:6). From the beginning, from Genesis 1:28 right through the Bible, we see God speaking of the blessing of the fruit of the womb, the blessing of fruitfulness. “I’m done” doesn’t come from the Bible.

No. 3: It doesn’t come from our innate femaleness.

We kind of got to be real here, don’t we? We have to look at ourselves and say, “Who am I? Look at me, I have a womb where a baby can be conceived and grow and come fourth into life.” Not only for this world but for eternity. “I have breasts to nurture and nourish and sustain a life. These members of my body are not just appendages, popped on my body to make it interesting. No, they are part of who I am. They are me. They are femaleness because this is how God created me, a female.”

When ladies say, “I’m done,” they are really speaking against who God created them. They are speaking against their body. Come on now, we get used, in our society, to all this deception that we think deception is truth. We think it’s normal. It’s totally abnormal! We are growing up in a society where woman think that to have another baby is detrimental to them. No, it is a positive because this is what our bodies were created to do.

Genesis 49:5 speaks of the blessings, blessings plural, of the breasts and of the womb. The “blessings” is plural, and the word is “blessings.” The womb and the breasts that God gave to the females are our blessings and for the blessings of the world. In fact, when a mother is pregnant and when she is nursing and using her womb and her breasts, she has hormones operating in her body which are such a blessing to her.

One of the hormones that is elevated a thousand times when you’re pregnant is estriol. It’s one of the estrogen hormones, and it’s, as I said, elevated a thousand times when you’re pregnant. Did you know, estriol is one of the anti-aging hormones? They put it in anti-aging creams for your face. You don’t have to buy expensive creams, just have another baby.

When you’re pregnant and you’re nursing, you have prolactin and oxytocin. These hormones are stress-free hormones. They are calming hormones, love hormones, bliss hormones. These hormones bring blessing to our lives that, when we aren’t pregnant and aren’t nursing, we aren’t even enjoying. 1 Timothy 2:15 says that we will be PRESERVED. Our bodies will be preserved and delivered through childbearing.

No. 4: It doesn’t come from the true essence of Christianity.

Let’s get back to the root. What does Jesus say in Mark 8:34-35? Jesus said: “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life, will lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life, for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall find it.”

Here is a basic principle of Christian living. We are to deny ourselves. When we say, “I’m done,” usually, we are trying to look after ourselves. We are not prepared to maybe have another baby. “I’ll have to have some sleepless nights, I’ll have to work, oh poor me.” We are not even prepared for a little bit of denial of ourselves for the sake of life.

What does Jesus say? When we seek to save our lives, we actually lose them. When we are prepared to lose them for the Gospel’s sake, for the blessing of the world, for bringing in children who bring God’s love and salvation to the world, we find them. This is God’s principle.

2 Corinthians 5:15 says: “And Jesus died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again.” That Scripture is such a challenge to me. Is it a challenge to you?  We are not meant to, any longer, live for ourselves. When Christ Jesus comes into our lives, no longer do we live unto ourselves but unto Him. We are living a life, not just to please ourselves but to please God, to do His will.

Well, if “I’m done” doesn’t come from these, where does it come from? I have four more thoughts. Let’s start at the bottom, the most negative one.

No. 1: Does it come from rebellion?

Now, I know that wouldn’t relate to any of you that are listening today, but in our society, there are many young women today who have rebelled against their femininity, against who they are as a women. They don’t want anything to do with it. They want to abort their babies, and they demand abortion, right up until, as in many states in our nation, the day before birth. This is what they demand. They have rebelled against, not only their own bodies, but against God. 

No. 2: Does it come from selfishness?

Often, we say “I’m done” because we are too selfish. We want to live our own life and do our own thing, but life is so much more than that. It’s when you lay down your life; it’s when you die to yourself that you find life. Jesus said that a seed has to go into the ground and die before it can bring forth life (John 12:24). There’s so much in life that we have to die to ourselves if we are going to bring forth life.

No. 3: Aare we listening to our own wisdom?

Often, our own wisdom looks really good. Our own wisdom always looks good, feels good, sounds good, so we listen to it. Often, it is opposite to God. In Psalm 147:5 it says: “His understanding is infinite.” But my understanding is finite. I don’t always think straight. I’ve got to get into the Word. I’ve got to find out what God says, or I’m not thinking straight at all. Let’s not rely on our own wisdom. Let’s go to the Word.

No. 4: Is it deception or ignorance?

Many mothers are deceived by our society, by their education that they have received, from the media, by all the atmosphere of our humanistic world around us. They are deceived. They are ignorant of God’s perfect will for them, of His plan, of His blessing. Precious ladies, my answer to that question, “I’m done,” well, I’m so sorry, but it has nothing to do with God. It has all to do with self and ignorance and deception.

I know because I was there once. I was deceived; yes, I was deceived. God had to come into my brain and waken me. It was like a whole new revelation I had never thought of or understood before. At first, I couldn’t receive it, but I wanted God’s will. As I sought God, as I searched His Word, I had to see my thinking had been opposite to God. I had to get in line with His thinking. I had to walk according to His will. I began to come into the full revelation of God that’s in His Word.

Ladies, let’s never let those crazy words come from our mouths. When you hear people saying those words, well, you won’t be able to give them a great big lecture like I’ve given you today, not that I’ve given you a lecture. I’m just sharing these answers, but you can maybe take one thing from this. Ask them, don’t just say, well, well, well, ask them, “What do you think about this?” Take just one of these thoughts that I’ve shared with you today.

Let’s pray.

“Father, we thank You so much for Your wonderful Word, Lord. This is our roots; this is our rock. We can go nowhere else except to Your Word. Help us to be woman who only go to Your Word. We don’t go elsewhere. We don’t go to our own wisdom; we only go to Your Word. Help us to be faithful to embrace Your Word and to walk in it and to be living testimonies of it. Father. I pray for your blessing on every mother and wife listening today, every daughter, every child, in the name of Jesus. Amen.”