PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | Episode 96: TASTE IS A FOOD DISCERNER
FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 96- TASTE IS A FOOD DISCERNER
Rocky Barrett: Welcome to the podcast, From our Home to Yours, with Nancy Campbell, founder, and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Hello ladies it is lovely to be with you again.
Now, as I’m sharing with you today, all of the new Above Rubies magazines, issue 97, should have arrived throughout the USA. If you live in America, you should have received your Above Rubies magazine by now. If you haven’t you can contact me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. in case it may have gone astray.
If you live in the UK, I think you should have received it by now, too. Above Rubies goes out to over a hundred countries of the world so for some of you it will take longer to get to you. Just have a little patience as you wait for it.
I know those of you who have received it will have been so blessed. Don’t hesitate if you would like extra copies to share with friends (and enemies!) and anybody that you meet. Write in and email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and ask for more.
Our vision is to get this message out of wooing mothers back to the home and bringing marriages together and making them stronger and making families stronger. This is our vision and we don’t want to keep it in a small corner. This message needs to get out to every home in the nation.
I can’t do that. I don’t know every home in the nation. But we all have a circle of friends and we all meet people from day to day.
When I am going out to the supermarket, I love to pop a few Above Rubies magazines into my bag, so I have them ready just in case I meet someone. I meet a young mother, or I get talking to another lady and I can give them a copy of Above Rubies.
Always have them ready to give out to someone. Don’t keep the message to yourself.
A lovely idea is to put one in baby changing tables. Every restaurant and every supermarket have a baby-changing table in their bathrooms. That’s a lovely place to put a magazine. You can just open it up, pop in a magazine, and then the next mother who comes can find a magazine.
I like to put them in a plastic bag with a little message:
“For you to take with you, Mother”
“Be encouraged, Mother” Or
“Take this magazine home with you.”
And so we can keep on getting the message out. We’re all in this vision TOGETHER!
I have something new to share with you today. The other week I was reading Psalm 119, that beautiful Psalm, which is all about God’s Word, 176 verses all about the blessing and wonder and glory of God’s eternal Word.
I was reading verse 103. In the Knox Translation it says: “Meat, most appetizing are Thy promises. Never was honey so sweet to my taste.”
As I read that, I began to think about taste because here it is talking about tasting the words of God.
It’s interesting that God has given to us, His people, whom He created and to whom He gave a body, He has also given us the five senses of: taste, touch, hearing, smell and sight. He has given us these senses which we can actually experience through this body that He has given us.
In fact, although God is a Spirit, He created us with bodies that are able to reveal the image of Who God is, even though He is Spirit.
The Bible talks about how God hears, and God smells, and He tastes, and He touches. God has all the five senses. Even our physical bodies have hands and legs and other parts of our body. We read about God having those too, and yet He doesn’t in the physical because He is Spirit.
He has given them to us in the physical so that we can experience them and also reveal them.
I would love to talk to you a little more about this word “taste” because we can taste God’s Word. Isn’t that lovely? His Word is like honey to our taste. It’s so sweet to us.
God has given us the ability to taste foods and that’s how we usually think of it, isn’t it?
We love to taste food. I love to taste food, don’t you? I love food!
I think we all love food and why do we love food? It’s because of the taste. If it didn’t taste nice, we would never want to eat it! God has created foods with the most beautiful tastes and the most beautiful flavors. God is so amazing in every way, isn’t He?
Every country has different foods that are special. My husband and I have traveled to many different countries and we have ministered in many Asian countries. We love to go to the countries of Malaysia and Singapore and countries like that. You get these beautiful, exotic fruits.
When we were first married, we went out to the Philippine Islands as missionaries and oh the beautiful tropical fruits that we enjoyed in those countries!
One of my favorites is mangosteen. Maybe you’ve never tasted that in your life but it’s like tasting a little bit of Heaven. Mangosteens come in this little purple, hard, outer shell. Inside are these white and creamy segments that are so delicious to the taste. Only God could think of such a beautiful taste to our pallet.
Then of course you may have heard about durian, which you can get in Asian countries. Even over in Asian countries, where they absolutely love durian, the saying is: “It smells like hell and tastes like Heaven.”
If you can get past the smell, oh my, it has a terrible smell, but it does taste amazing! When I first tasted it, I didn’t really like it, but I grew to love the taste. The only thing with durian is it is so rich. It is the richest food you could ever eat. You can’t really enjoy it unless you eat it just on its own with nothing else.
When you do eat it on its own, it tastes like Heaven. Oh God is so wonderful, the way He gives us all these beautiful foods to taste.
But some foods taste horrible! Oh! And we want to spit them out! We have our taste buds and they show us whether we’re going to like the food, so we’ll eat it or whether we’re going to hate the food, so we spit it out.
Now the amazing thing is, ladies, that God has also given us an anointing of taste, not only for food, but to DISCERN.
This is the wonderful thing: We not only have the ability to taste food (and we’re going to talk about other areas of our body later on, too) but also the word “taste” also means: “to discern.”
When we hear things, we discern whether they are worth receiving and whether we are going to embrace them into our soul or whether we are going to spit them out. This is something we have to learn to do, lovely ladies.
We don’t embrace everything we hear or see. We have stuff all around us that’s not good. We have got to develop our spiritual taste so we can learn what to spit out and what we will embrace.
As I was studying this, I found three different words in the Hebrew that talk about taste.
The first one is ta’am and it means: “Taste, perception, intelligence, advice, behavior, discretion, judgment, reason, understanding.” Once again, we see that when we take a Hebrew word it has an unfolding of meanings in the English. It needs more than one English word to describe it. As we read here, it’s more than just a tasting of food. It’s a tasting to discern, to judge, to perceive, and to understand.
We read Scriptures with that Hebrew word where it talks about taste. It talks about the tasting of the manna back in Exodus 16:31. It tells us that the taste of it was like “ . . . wafers made with honey.” It must have tasted beautifully sweet.
In Numbers 11:8 it says: “ . . .And the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil.”
This word is used for tasting food, it’s also used in other places. Here are some examples:
Proverbs 11:22: “ As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion.”
Wow. In other words, a beautiful woman who doesn’t have discretion, it doesn’t give a very good description of her. It talks about her like having a pig’s mouth. That’s not very nice, is it?
Let’s read some other translations.
The New Living Translation says: “A beautiful woman who lacks discretion [in other words she lacks spiritual taste, or she doesn’t know how to discern] is like a gold ring in a pig’s snout.”
I would like to read you the commentary that The New English Translation gives of that Scripture. It says: “A beautiful ornament and a pig are as incongruous as a beautiful woman who has no taste or ethical judgment The term “taste” can refer to a physical taste, intellectual discretion, or ethical judgment. Here it probably means she has no moral sensibility, no propriety, no good taste. She is unchaste. Her beauty will be put to wrong uses.”
There it is. That’s a woman who doesn’t have that ability to taste in the spiritual sense.
The Amplified of that Scripture says: “As a ring of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a beautiful woman who is without discretion [her lack of character mocks her beauty].”
Here is another Scripture. This time it is a prayer in Psalm 119:66: “Teach me good judgment and knowledge . . ..” The word for “judgment” there is the word “taste” in the Hebrew. It is the same word that is used for tasting food or tasting what is right or wrong.
I believe, lovely ladies, that we need to heighten and sharpen our taste for knowing what is right and what is wrong. Even more than that, I believe we need to have a taste for knowing what the best is compared to that which is good.
I don’t really know you, but I am sure that you are one of those precious wives and mothers who only want to do that which is good. You wouldn’t think of doing that which is evil. And so you’re doing good things. Your life is filled with good things.
But many times, ladies, even the good things we do are not the ultimate. They’re not the best. Even good things can be time wasters because they’re not the best thing that we could be doing.
I want my tastes to get so sharpened that I can discern between that which is the best and that which is good. Don’t you want that?
I’m thinking about my daughter, Serene. If you listen to their podcast, “The Poddy” with Serene and Pearl or you have got their Trim Healthy Mama books, you will have got to know Serene. Now Serene has very, very heightened taste buds. She is amazing!
I taste foods and know whether I like that or not and if I want to eat it. That’s what we do. We eat if we like something.
I love to eat spicy foods. That’s my favorite. I don’t like bland foods although I was brought up on bland foods. I come from New Zealand and back when I was growing up, we hadn’t introduced into our nation all the different foods from the different countries.
In fact, back then, I think it was the same in every country, you just ate what you had around you. We didn’t have the refrigeration or deep freezes we have today so we couldn’t go like we can today to the supermarket and buy any product we want.
We can buy any fruit or vegetable from any country of the world during any season of the year. That is amazing. We never used to be able to do that. We eat in season. What we grew in our garden, that’s what we ate. If we didn’t preserve for the winter, we didn’t eat. That’s what it was. You can get away with all that today. You don’t have to preserve because you can just go to the supermarket. Back then we couldn’t do that.
We grew up in New Zealand and because it’s a sheep country we would mostly have lamb. We would have lamb, which was our meat, potatoes, and peas. That was about a basic diet in New Zealand. It was so bland.
Of course I still love lamb. That is my favorite meat. Here we don’t get to eat it as often, but we always purchase it for special occasions, for Thanksgiving and Christmas. For special times we always get lamb.
Anyway, since I have traveled and have gotten to experience all the different foods in the different countries, I just love it.
Then we adopted our children from Liberia. Oh my, then we went to a higher level of spicy, hot foods! By that I time I already loved hot food, but I wasn’t ready for their likings. They just loved it so hot!
I began to grow not only my jalapeños but also my habaneros. I would grow them every year and then dry them and ground them up so we would have our own ground habanero peppers. They were so hot.
The children loved to cook everything and throw in the habaneros. Of course I could eat the food, but I couldn’t eat the habanero. They would just pick them out and eat them. We would have the hot and spicy food on the table and our son John would put on his food another tablespoon of ground habanero pepper. He would never turn an eyeball! It was as though he was eating ice cream!
Anyway, I was talking about how I love spicy food, but Serene—when she tastes food, she knows exactly what’s in it.
She says, “Oh yes it’s got this in it and that in it.” I wouldn’t have a clue what it had in it! I just know it tastes nice or spicy or how I like it.
But she knows what’s in it.
I remember when she wrote her first cookbook (it wasn’t the Trim Healthy Mama one), she was talking about creating foods and how it’s like music. You have to put in the highs, and you have to put in the lows to make it just right. She has that anointing to do that, to put in the high parts and put in the low parts and make it to taste right.
I love to go to her place. There are always different foods she’s trying out or making. It’s so wonderful to taste the things! It’s so exciting. I love it.
Although I will tell you a little secret from behind the scenes. Do you want a little secret? I hope she doesn’t mind me telling you because this is behind the scenes.
Oh goodness me, I hope you don’t mind, Serenie-Beanie! That is what I call her.
Although Serene just imagines and creates the most beautiful foods for you and she knows how to make the perfect taste, you wouldn’t even want to eat the foods she makes for herself. Just for herself. Not for her family, just for herself because they are superfoods.
From the time she was a little girl, she has always wanted to just eat super foods. I mean from the time she was a little girl she researched foods.
She would say to me, “Oh Mummy, can you drop me off at the health food shop and I’ll just read the books?”
That was the most wonderful thing she could do. She would just sit and read the health books. That was her favorite thing to do.
Behind the scenes, not even anyone else in her family could try them, she will make smoothies. They look like some brown, horrible mixture or sometimes green or sometimes some other color. They are filled with all these superfoods. Half the time I don’t even know what they are. They are foods that maybe she hasn’t even introduced to you yet because she’s always researching and finding the best things.
It doesn’t matter how it tastes. She loves it. If it’s good for you she will put it down her throat! She loves the earthy feel.
There’s one other thing, too. Serene and I love to make what we call “Ugly Chocolate.” Now you have in the Trim Healthy Mama cookbook the Skinny Chocolate, which you just make with the cocoa powder, coconut oil and the sweetening and so on. Serene wouldn’t even eat that. It’s just too ordinary for her.
She makes what we have gotten to call, “Ugly Chocolate.” She would never make this recipe for you of course.
She puts in it loads of cayenne and loads of ginger and loads of tumeric and loads of maca and matcha and other things that you couldn’t believe. She loads it with that and puts in the stevia and so on. Somehow with just some of that healthy sweetening, this “Ugly Chocolate” still tastes nice.
I love it and Serene really loves it, not that she would make it for you, of course.
It’s amazing how you can put in, even into the basic THM chocolate, a few other things. Maybe you could try adding a few other things into it. You wouldn’t try it like Serene does, packed full of all these super foods!
Anyway, that’s just a little behind the scenes.
However, we need to be praying. I think we’ve all got it naturally, our taste buds heightened in food. But we have got to get our taste buds heightened up in discerning, don’t we?
Let me give you one more Scripture on that Hebrew word. I’m going to give you, first, the Passion Translation of that verse, Psalm 119:66: “Teach me how to make good decisions, and give me revelation-light, for I believe in your commands.”
Isn’t that a lovely prayer? Pray it right now: “Dear Father, Please give to us that anointing, that anointing to taste and to discern what is good and what is not good and to make good decisions. Amen.”
All right, here is another Hebrew word and do you know that it is spelled exactly the same and yet it is a different number in the Strong’s Concordance. It is the same spelling, but it means: “To taste and to perceive.”
Once again, this word is also used of the physical taste. There are quite a few Scriptures there, and of the spiritual taste. Let’s look at one of those Scriptures.
Job 6:30: “ . . . cannot my taste discern perverse things?” asked Job. You see we have to be able to perceive and taste whether things are perverse or not.
The New Living Translation says: “ . . . Don’t I know the difference between right and wrong?”
The Amplified says: “ . . . Can my palate not discern what is destructive?”
There we go.
The last Hebrew word is chek, pronounced, “cake” and it literally means: “The pallet, the inside of the mouth as the organ of speech; taste and kissing; the roof of the mouth.”
It is used in the context of lovemaking but it’s also used with the Scripture that I started with, Psalm 119:103: “How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”
We see that also in that beautiful passage in Psalm 19:7-11 about the Word of the Lord:
“The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul:
the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart:
the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever:
the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold:
sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward.”
Can I ask you a question, lovely ladies? What is your taste for the Word of God?
When you read it, is it like honey to you? It’s so sweet that oh, you just love it and you can’t get enough of it!
Or is it kind of just a little bit boring?
I think we once again need to just ask the Lord to help us to get a real taste for His Word, don’t you? Often, we have a taste for so many things about us in the world. The taste for them is greater than it is for the Word.
I think I talked to you about this in another podcast but maybe I’ll bring it up again. What do you do when you first wake in the morning? Do you go to the Word or do you go to your iPhone?
Well, maybe you go to the Word on your iPhone.
I do think this is something that we have to really work on and have a determination about and make happen in our lives: that we don’t go to that first little “ding” and notification when we wake because that is so easy to do.
MY FIRST PRIORITY
No! I am going to the Word FIRST because that is my priority.
I have the You Version app on my iPhone so usually that’s the first thing I go to before I even get up to open my literal Bible that I love to read. I’ll go to that and it has the verse for the day, and I will read that, so I know I’m getting the Word first.
If our love for the Word is not stronger than our love for our iPhones and our notifications and our social media and all this stuff that is around us, well, we’re out of balance. Our taste is not right, and we have got to kind of hone our taste for the Word of God. We have got to hone our taste.
Let me give you one or two other Scriptures here.
First Peter 2:2 where it says: “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.”
When a baby is born it comes to the mother for sustenance, nurturing, and nutrition. As the little baby nurses at the breast it grows and it is the same for us in our Christian life: When we are a newborn Christian, we come, and we feed from the Word of God. We suck from it and get the milk from it because if we don’t, we won’t grow.
Then as a little baby grows it gets on to solid food and then it gets on to meat. That happens in our Christian life, too.
Where are you, darling ladies? Are you still on the milk or are you getting up to chewing the meat? Oh my, we’ve got to get on to that! We can’t stay babies, can we?
I’m just turning to that passage in Hebrews, Hebrews chapter five.
Hebrews 5:12-14: “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age [who are mature], even those who by reason of use [reason of use— it’s your habit day by day] have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”
Here we see that word “discern” again, that tasting of the spiritual. I believe that anointing to taste and discern in the spiritual realm comes through the reading and the imbibing of the Word of God into our lives.
Let’s love it, ladies. Let it be like honey to us. Let’s get from the milk into the meat.
What does it say in Matthew 4:4? Jesus repeated these words that come from the Old Testament: “ . . . Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word [EVERY WORD] that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
Every word. When I come to God’s Word, I’m looking for God to speak to me from every word. Every word. Every word is powerful.
Yes, we are going to die if we don’t eat food every day but we’re going to die spiritually if we don’t eat spiritual food.
I love some of the old hymns. I love also some of the glorious anointed worship songs that we sing today that are so powerful. They are so anointed. But in enjoying and embracing and worshiping with those, I also don’t like to forget the old.
I love the Scripture in Matthew 13:52 where Jesus was telling this: “Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things NEW AND OLD.”
We’ve got to embrace the new, but we don’t discard the old.
That’s why at our family devotion times we love to sing some of the old hymns. Then we keep the balance: we have the old and then we have the new.
Don’t you love that old hymn, “Break Thou the Bread of Life”?
“Break Thou the bread of life, dear Lord, to me,
As Thou didst break the loaves beside the sea;
Beyond the sacred page I seek Thee, Lord;
My spirit pants for Thee, O living Word!”
But it is now time for this session to end. It always goes too quickly, doesn’t it?
I usually pray for you, but today can you pray with me? I want to pray this prayer again and perhaps you could pray it along with me?
“Dear Father, Please come, come, come and fill me with Your Holy Spirit. Please sharpen and heighten my taste buds for the spiritual realm. I long for sharp discernment. I want to know what is deception. I want to know the difference between what is the best and what is just good.
“Please, Lord, give me discerning taste buds. I ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen.”
Transcribed by Morgan Roth.