PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | Episode 51 – How Can We Change The World? - Part 17
FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell
Rocky: Welcome to the podcast, FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy: Hello ladies, so wonderful to be with you again today. I'm looking out the window; it's a beautiful spring day here in Tennessee. The leaves are such a rich green. I love the awakening of spring, don't you? I love it when the Bradford pears first appear in all their white glory. Then the daffodils come out, and then the beautiful pink blossoms, and then we have the red buds here in Tennessee. I love them. Then we have the dogwoods. We have lots of dogwoods around our property, and they're so beautiful. Now, all the blossoms have gone and now we have this beautiful fullness of the green trees.
Of course, it’s gardening time as well. I'm a bit behind in my gardening this year. I seem to have so many things going in the spring, and I didn't get my garden in at the right time. I'm working on it this month, the month of May. I hope to have it all in this week. I already planted 107 tomato plants, and I planted my peppers and planted lots of other things, but I still have got some beds I haven't finished yet, so I've got to finish them.
I have 13 raised beds, big long raised beds, so I have a big garden and every season I look out at my garden that's waiting to be done and I think, how am I going to do it? Such a big job. Not just planting, that's easy. It's getting the beds ready and getting all the stuff into the soil we need to get in because, really, your vegetables are only as good as your soil. Gradually, we've got it going, and we are getting it in again, and I am always so glad that I make the effort because then we can go out and harvest every day. It's so wonderful.
Anyway, back to talking about your home and about motherhood because that's what this podcast is all about. It's about encouraging you as a wife and as a mother. This encouragement is so needed in this hour in which we are living. I was talking to the folks who were around our breakfast table this morning because we always have extra people with us, and I was sharing with them what it was like when I was growing up as a child in a little town in New Zealand.
Down the street where I lived, I can remember going off to school each day with my friends. We would all walk to school. A few of the children would bike to school but most of us walked. We walked over a mile. We all walked to school and often we would walk back for lunch (although often we would take a cut lunch) and then we would walk home again.
Most of the folks down our street were secular people; they weren't Christians. I think we were the only real committed Christians in our street, but all the families had the same values. Even though they were secular, they still had these Christian values that were still there in our culture. All the mothers were at home. They were there making their homes a wonderful place. They were there for their children when they got home from school. They were there to have a meal on the table as their husbands came home from all their various careers and jobs that they did in the township.
It was a beautiful, lovely way to live, but I look back and see how different it is now, how quickly our culture has eroded. It would be difficult to go into any town today and go down a street and find every mother in the home, every mother enjoying being in the home, happy with her children, happy to be in the home, happy to cook and home-make, and it was the normal thing.
A woman, a mother, a wife in the home would not even think of anything else but having a meal ready for her husband when he walked in the door. That was the number one thing. You did that, and you never thought anything of it; that was part of life. Now today it's such a different story.
Maybe you live in a street and perhaps you are the only one in your whole street that is home looking after your children. I can remember that when we moved to Australia from New Zealand. I remember the street we lived in, well we lived in two or three different streets, in different homes at that time but in all the streets that I lived in, I don't remember any other Christian homes. I don't remember any other homes where the mother was at home. They would all get up each day, get into their business clothes and off they'd go. The cars would drive out with the mothers and the children, dropping them off here and there and the husbands, and all the homes were empty, except mine which was filled with children and filled with people, and filled with those who we would ask into our home. It was a hub—a hub where everything was happening, and it was such an exciting place.
Most of the ladies must have wondered, “What's that lady doing in her home?” They didn't understand what I was doing. They didn't even know the power of what I was doing. They were dropping off their children at day cares and school. My children were in my home. I was raising them and preparing them for their destiny, and I was fulfilling the greatest career that any woman could have.
I want to encourage you again today. I would like to read you something that I read in a book I was reading recently, and it shows you the agenda of what is happening in our society and what you are facing today as a wife and a mother. This happened 50 years ago. This person writes:
“It was 1969 and she took me to a meeting at her friend’s place.
“At a consciousness raising (an idea imported from Mao’s China), twelve women gathered at a large table. They opened with a type of Litany from the Catholic Church. But this time it was Marxism, the church of the Left.”
In a moment, I'm going to read to you how they started off that meeting. Very interesting that twelve women gathered around that table and from that table, you will see how they have changed the world, how they have made it what it is today.
Then I think back further, I think back to the disciples. Actually, most of the disciples were rather young when Jesus called them. Maybe I'll do a podcast on that one day and tell you all the reasons why I believe that most of them were even teenagers when Jesus called them to be his students and his disciples. After the resurrection, it tells us in Acts that these young men were the people who turned the world upside down, such was their impact.
Here we see twelve women who also impacted the world in a negative way.
“The meeting started. . . .
“Why are we here today?” the chairwoman asked. “To make revolution,” they answered.
“What kind of revolution?” she replied. “The Cultural Revolution,” they chanted.
“And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” she demanded.
“By destroying the American family!” they answered.
“How do we destroy the family?” she came back.
“By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly.
“And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she probed.
“By taking away his power!” “How do we do that?”
“By destroying monogamy!” they shouted. “How can we destroy monogamy?”
“By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution, abortion and homosexuality!” they resounded.
The book says: “Such antics might seem insignificant except for the fact that these women achieved all of their goals.”
Now, we are facing a society where the patriarch is demeaned, where they have sought to destroy the American family, starting with the patriarch, starting with the man. It is an interesting thing that whenever I have been asked to do an interview on TV or with some Talk Show, especially secular, there is one of the questions they never fail to ask and that is, “What about patriarchy?” They have this concept of the man who is lording over his family, and they're all little servants who bow to his every word, and this is the concept that they have promoted.
Of course, we still have so many great men, men of courage and strength, but there are so many today who are not. They are wimps. They have been put down by the feminist agenda. There are so many men today who just go along with it. They are scared to stand against it; they go along with it. They go along with these women standing up for their rights and it’s ridiculous. They are no longer men. Goodness me. God didn't create two males or two females. He created a male and a female. He wants men to be men and to stand up and be who they are, the loving protectors and providers of their homes. Patriarchy is a beautiful thing in God. In God, it's a safety to the nation and a protection to society.
Many demean motherhood and take the mother out of the home. Two things that they cannot stand, one is motherhood, the other is virginity. They seek to rob every young person of their beautiful, God-given pure virginity and then they want to rob women of motherhood, which is the greatest career God has given to her because dear precious mother, you were created in the image of God to reveal His nurturing heart. This is who you are as a woman. God created you to love being in your home. Now, if somehow you don't feel really happy, you love your children but you feel pulled in all these different directions and you're not really happy in your home, well, let me tell you something, let me tell you the bottom line. You are deceived. You have been victimized by our feminist, socialist, humanist agenda that wants to woo you out of the home and out of the role that God intends for you.
Because you have all this pressure on you, and all this victimization, and all this propaganda, your mind is filled with that and you think, “I'm just wasting away here in my home.” No, that's not the truth. We have to know the truth, and I'm here to encourage you in the truth because the truth sets you free. When you really get down to bed rocks and get rid of all this agenda and all this stuff that's being poured into you, and you get down to who you really are, you find there's nothing you love more than being in your home, nothing you love more than being a mother with these precious children around you. THIS IS THE TRUE LIFE!
Now, I'd better get on to where we are up to. We are still talking about “How do we change the world?” This is an amazing subject. As I've been talking with you for a few weeks, we have been finding that even at home, even as a mother, we have the power to change the world. The point that we are still talking about, point number 15, is in our homes we are going to SERVE THE LORD WILLINGLY. Not just, “Here I am in my home, as a mother in my home, having to work in my home. I better just do it. It's a duty.”
No, not doing it as a duty but doing it as a delight. Not just doing it because we have to get the job done because no one else will do it for us but doing it willingly. We've been looking at all the different ways that God wants us, how He wants us to work in our homes. The last one WAS No. 10. IN THE FEAR OF THE LORD.
Today, number 11, it says that when we work, how do we work? Your husband, wherever he's working, has to have the same attitude. We are working in our homes, so these are the attitudes that we are to have. Each one of these attitudes that I'm giving you are all in the Word of God and showing us the attitudes that He wants us to have toward working. How many do we have? 25 different attitudes that are mentioned in the Bible on how God wants us to work. It's so good to see them. The Word of God is so wonderful, ladies. It doesn't leave anything out. It's all there for us. It shows us how God wants us to work. He gives all the adjectives; they are all there. It's good for us to know them, isn't it? We are up to . . .
No. 11. IN THE NAME OF THE LORD JESUS
Colossians 3:17 says, “And whatsoever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” This Scripture relates to every part of our lives. No matter where we are, what we do, or what we are saying. It relates to our husbands. It relates to us in our homes because we've got to relate it to where we are.
When I read the Word of God, I read it as though God is speaking to me personally. He's speaking to me as who I am and who He has called me to be. He has called me, commissioned me, to be a mother, so I read it as a mother. I read it personally. He says to me, “Nancy, whatever you do, whatever words you speak, whatever action you do, I want you to do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
This is for all of us. I have to confess dear ladies, oh goodness me, I'm not always perfect at doing this. I'm sure there are many things I don't do in the name of the Lord Jesus. That's why I need reminding and that's why I need to remind you. We all need reminding, don't we? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could get into that habit?” We get up each morning and pray, “Lord Jesus, please help me today to say every word in Your name. That every word I say to my children, every word I say to my husband, I can say in the name of Jesus. I can put the name of Jesus to it.” Wouldn't that be wonderful? Wouldn't that bring such a difference to our homes? Every action, everything we do and the way we do it in our homes, even when we are cooking meals and scrubbing floors and cleaning up messes after children and after cats and after this and after that, everybody who doesn't clean up after themselves. We do it in the name of the Lord Jesus, and it changes everything.
No. 12. JOYFULLY
God wants us to work joyfully. He wants us to do everything that we do, whatever it is—great things, little things, mundane things, happy things but to do all of them joyfully. Deuteronomy 28, you can read the passage again in verses 45-47 but this is the passage in the Bible, the Deuteronomy 28 passage which talks about all the blessings that will come upon us if we are obedient to the Lord and His commandments. I love those first few Scriptures in Deuteronomy 28 but then it goes on to all the curses if we are disobedient to God's ways.
Sadly, there are a lot more curses than there are blessings. I don't like reading them so much. It says here: “All these curses shall come upon you because you do not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart.” We are meant to serve the Lord joyfully. We're meant to work joyfully. Ladies, when we can get a hold of this, it not only changes our attitude, but it changes the attitude of our children. Do you find it hard to get your children to work? Do they groan and complain and it's terrible trying to get them to be happy doing their chores? Well, my lovely darling ladies, have they been watching your attitude? Because if they see its joy for you to work, that you do it with joyfulness, and you're not complaining about it all, they are going to catch on to that too.
Let's have a look at a few more Scriptures here. I love Psalm 113:9 where it says: “He makes the barren woman to keep house and to be a joyful mother of children. Praise ye the Lord.”
It's interesting that the adjective, the most prominent adjective that is related to motherhood is JOY. God says here that He wants to make a mother a joyful mother. This word joyful is an amazing word. It's the Hebrew word, simcha, and it means “to be full of glee, to be merry-hearted.”
It's exactly the same word that is used in Proverbs 16:13: “A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance.” Isn't that good, ladies? If we are merry and joyful in our hearts, it will be seen on our faces.
We show off who we are, don't we? There's a Scripture in Isaiah 3:9 that says: “The show of their countenance hath witness against them.” Our face shows what we are on the inside. If our eyes are bright and our mouth is smiling, and we have a happy disposition on our face, well, everyone knows that we have merry heart. Yet, I see so many women, so many others, where their faces are, I don't even like looking at them, not because they are not beautiful but because they look so boring and so frowning and so down in the mouth. You get depression looking at them. I don't know how their children survive if they look at this mother all day long, and she's got this sour face on her, and it's all down in the mouth and frowning, I mean, help, did you know our children actually grow into our likeness?”
I love that Scripture in 2 Corinthians 3:18 where it talks about how “We, beholding the Lord, we are changed into that same image from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord.” As we spend time in the presence of the Lord, as we spend time in His Word, as we look to Him throughout the day instead of sighing and looking at all our problems and what we've got to do, we get into that habit of looking to Jesus, we will grow into His likeness. His glory will be upon us, and we will grow from glory to glory.
It's the same with our little children. They look at us, and if they see that we have a happy face, they see us smiling, they are going to get that same kind of face. If they see us frowning, well, you're going to have frowning, complaining children too.
Proverbs 17:22: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” It's health. “But a broken spirit drieth the bones.” A merry heart with a happy face, with a smile on your face, brings health not only to you but to your children. I believe, mothers, we bring health to our homes, we bring health to our children. Have you noticed that in some families there is such a lot of sickness? I think that if we have a negative attitude and we are always talking about sickness, always talking negative things, and we're down in the mouth, and we've got a frown, and were always sighing, these are negative things and they bring it into the atmosphere in our home. They affect our children. The Bible is true. Let's get it, ladies. We read it and we just gloss over it but what does it say? “A merry heart does good like a medicine.”
The best medicine for your children is for your children to see you with a happy face, joyful, smiling, doing all the things you have to do with joy. They are seeing it. This affects not only their souls and spirits but their bodies. I believe you can have health in your children as you have happiness in your home. You may think I'm a bit weird, but as we raised our children, we never even had a doctor. We never had a family doctor the whole time we raised our children. Now, I do admit we often went to the emergency section at the hospital because children would break a bone or cut their leg, and they would do this and they would do that, and I'd have to go and get them stitches and get them this kind of thing. That's just a part of children growing up and boys especially. For goodness sake, they are always doing something to themselves; they were so adventurous.
Of course, there were times when the children were sick, yes, but we didn't go running often to the doctor. We were always able to minister to them. Another thing, the other day, someone was here, and they said, “Do you have a thermometer? I need one for my child.” I said, “Sorry, I don't have one.” Forgive me, ladies, because I've never owned a thermometer. Can you believe it? How did we survive?
Well, I raised all my six children and then we adopted four more, and I never had a thermometer. Oh yes, I know there were times when our children had temperatures, and I could just about tell. I could tell when they were normal. I could tell when they were about 100. I could tell when there were times that they got up to 103 or more, and wow, we had to look after them. You learn how to bring that temperature down. You can feel it. Sometimes, we get so use to having to use other things that we forget how to actually discern and feel ourselves. Y
ou know, it's like our society today, isn't it? I used to know all my families’ phone numbers. There are so many of them, and I always remembered them, all the numbers of my family and children and grandchildren and friends. Do you know? Now, I don't even know if I know a number? That's about all because I use my iPhone and say, “Call so and so, call so and so.” Isn't it disgusting? So lazy that my brain is no longer remembering numbers.
Now we use GPS, although I have to confess, my husband, he is so old school. He'll be 80 next year, and he never trusts the GPS. I'll have it going, and it says, go here. “I don't believe that.” He thinks he knows best. You know, he would always get out the map and check it all out, but now, we don't even know how to read maps because we just listen to GPS.
I think it's a bit like caring for our children. We've lost the art of being aware and understanding whether this is serious or no, that's fine, that's normal; we can cope with that. I believe we need to be able to do that as mothers. Anyway, I haven't finished about this joyful mother yet, and it's time to stop. We will get onto it next session.
“Dear Father, we thank You so much for Your Word. There's nothing You leave out of Your Word. You show us everything in the way You wants us to live, and we thank You for this. I pray for every lovely mother listening today, grandmothers, teens, children. I pray Your blessing on each one of them. I pray, Father, that You will fill them with Your joy.
I pray, O God, that You will expose all the lies and deceptions that have come to them through our society and the education system and our media, everything that's around us, even in the church. Lord, we get this brainwashing but Lord, we do not want to be brainwashed by society. We want to be brainwashed by Your Word. That Your Word will fill us, Your Word will change us, Your Word will become flesh and blood in us. This is how we will live. I ask this for everyone listening today in the name of Jesus, Amen.”