PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | Episode 112: MAKING A HOME OF REST— PART 3
FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell
Podcast 112: MAKING A HOME OF REST— PART 3
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 always great to be with you again.
I started off a couple of sessions ago, talking about all the beautiful “ness” words that belong to marriage and family.
We are actually talking about one of them at the moment, which is restfulness.
Let me give you just a few others: Peacefulness, pleasantness, positiveness, prayerfulness, pureness, respectfulness, restfulness (which we’re going to talk more about today), righteousness, sacredness, selflessness, sensibleness, sereneness, steadfastness, softness, soberness, songfulness, submissiveness, sweetness, teachableness, tenderness, tenderheartedness, thankfulness, thoughtfulness, togetherness, trustworthiness, truthfulness and I will leave some more for next time.
All these beautiful words relate to us in the home and in the family. I hope to talk to you about some of them. We have too many to talk about each one.
Currently we are on our third session of how to make a restful home, a home of rest for God because He wants to dwell in our homes, and He wants a place of rest where He can dwell.
David had a vision to make a home of rest for God.
We are up to point number five.
Number Five
ERADICATE ALL TENSION
Of course you know you’re not going to have any rest in your home while you’ve got turmoil in your home.
Last session we talked about how sometimes we have to have a battle before we can have rest because we can’t have rest until we conquer the enemy and also, until we’ve eradicated all tension, strife, turmoil, and all moods, too.
Moods are a terrible thing. They don’t bring rest into the home. They bring such a horrid atmosphere. Many times children grow up being allowed to have moods and then they take them into the marriage.
If perhaps that’s been in a habit in your life and maybe, though I hope not, if you’re doing that in your marriage that’s something you have to work on. Because if we get into a mood because our husband has said something we don’t like and we feel hurt and get into this silent treatment and give him the cold shoulder that’s not what we’re meant to do.
That doesn’t bring restoration. That doesn’t bring rest. We have got to sit down and gently talk about it. We have to seek to eradicate these things that upset the atmosphere of our home.
Number six
WALK IN FAITH NOT UNBELIEF
We go over to Hebrews. Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 talk about rest; they are all on the subject of rest.
We will start reading at verse 12 of chapter 3: “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.”
Wow, they are pretty strong words, aren’t they? It says an EVIL heart of unbelief. Sometimes we are so used to being unbelieving that we don’t think there is anything really wrong with it.
We think, “Oh well, I don’t have much faith.” But the Bible calls it an evil heart of unbelief.
When we don’t believe the words that God has written that He has given to us, His eternal words that can never lie, if we don’t believe them, God says we have an evil heart of unbelief.
We go down to verse 18 and it says: “And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in [enter in the rest] because of unbelief.”
Unbelief stops us living in rest. This is something we often have to work on, too.
Let’s have a look at some more Scriptures in Hebrews chapter 4. Both these chapters are all about rest.
Verse 2: “For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.”
In other words, when we read the Word of God but if we don’t believe it and don’t mix it with faith to act upon it and live those words, we might as well have not read it because it doesn’t do anything for us. We have to mix the Word of God with faith when we are reading it.
We go down to verse 3, the next verse: “For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.”
Verse 6: “Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief.”
The Passion Translation of chapter 3:12-13 says: “So search your hearts every day, my brothers and sisters, and make sure that none of you has evil or unbelief hiding within you. For it will lead you astray, and make you unresponsive to the living God. This is the time to encourage each other to never be stubborn or hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”
And so let’s watch unbelief, dear ladies.
Sometimes I have mothers saying to me that they are so concerned about having another baby because they don’t know how they could provide for another child.
Often it seems to me that it is more husbands who are lacking in unbelief than wives regarding this subject. Often, they don’t want to have any more children because they don’t believe that they can provide for those children.
But when we don’t believe, what does the Bible say? We have an evil heart of unbelief because when we get to the bottom line, what are we really doing? We’re saying, “God, I don’t believe You. Goodness me, I don’t think I can provide and really I’m god in my home.” Because if we think we are the ones who provide, we’re making ourselves as God.
But when we trust God and His words, even when we cannot see it happening in the physical, when we trust Him, we will find that God is faithful to His Word.
In Psalm 78:19-22 it says: “Yea, they spake against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Behold, he smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed; can he give bread also? Can he provide flesh for his people? Therefore the Lord heard this, and was wroth [angry]: so a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel . . ..”
Why? “Because they believed not in God, and trusted not in his salvation.”
We say, “Can God really do this? Can God really provide for another baby?”
Why do most Christians stop at two or three children? Maybe because they think they cannot provide for them. Maybe they think that when they get older, they wouldn’t be able to provide a college education for them.
Of course, sometimes we wonder if that would even be a good idea with the state of our colleges today. They have become breeding grounds for socialism. Unless we can send our children to a very conservative college they are going to be brainwashed in this socialism and Marxism.
We’re seeing the fruits of that happening in our nation right at this time.
Getting back to believing God: What does God say? Let’s go back, shall we, to Deuteronomy chapter 7. I love these verses.
Deuteronomy 7:12: “Wherefore it shall come to pass, if ye hearken to these judgments, and keep, and do them, that the Lord thy God shall keep unto thee the covenant and the mercy which he sware unto thy fathers: And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee . . ..”
Interesting, isn’t it? Here God is sharing His heart and how He feels for His people. He says, “I’ll show mercy to you.”
That is the Hebrew word racham, a beautiful word that is a word that is also used for the womb. It means compassion, and mercy, and pity.
“I’ll show mercy and compassion to you and I’ll love you and I’ll bless you.” God says.
How is He going to show us His love and His blessing? He says, “By multiplying you.”
“And I will multiply you and bless the fruit of your womb.” That is how God wants to bless us. Here is the Word of God and that is literally what it says. How does He want to bless? By blessing our womb.
Sometimes mothers may think, “Help, I don’t know if that’s a blessing. I don’t know how I will provide for this child that’s being formed in my womb.” But you haven’t read the end of the Scripture yet because God goes on. He starts off first blessing. Always the first blessing is the fruit of the womb.
He says I “ . . . will also bless the fruit of thy womb . . .” and listen to what He says next: “and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee.”
Do you see the progression there? When God blesses with the fruit of the womb He doesn’t stop. He says, “And I’m going to bless your land and your sheep and your cattle and your fruit and everything.”
Why? To provide for the fruit of the womb. The whole reason for the blessings of wine and the fruit of the land and the cattle and the sheep to feed us is all to feed the fruit of the womb.
Let’s go over to Deuteronomy 28. This is the blessing chapter, which I like to read. It is also the cursing chapter, which I don’t like to read that quite so much. In fact, there are more verses about cursing if we are disobedient to God’s ways than there are blessings if we follow God’s ways.
Anyways, it starts with the blessings.
Let’s start at verse three: “Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field.” I love that. God will bless you wherever you are placed.
Some people think, “Oh if only I could get out to the country. It would be so much easier to raise my family there. It would be so much easier to have children out there in the country. But I’m stuck in the city, right in the heart of the city. How do you expect me to do that here?”
Well, God says that He will bless you in the city and in the country. If God has placed you in the city because that’s where your husband’s work is, He will bless you there.
I know it is a blessing to raise children in the country. Currently many of our grandchildren live out here on the hilltop in the country. Not all of our grandchildren live in the country because some live in the city, too, but those who have lived out here in the country have had a beautiful blessed life.
But I didn’t raise my children in the country; we raised them in the city. In fact, when my children were teenagers living on the Gold Coast of Australia, right in Surfer’s Paradise, right in the heart of nightclubs (it was a holiday place where everyone came to party).
Our house was right underneath the big Jupiter’s casino. The church that we planted was opposite the casino. Our children lived looking out on a casino and the heart of sin city. How do you raise teenagers for God in that kind of place?
Well, God is true to His Word. You see if that is where God has you, He will bless you. He kept our children. He blessed them even in that environment.
Of course, my, I had to pray. Every day I walked the beach. We weren’t far from the beach. Every day I’d go down and walk the sand with the Pacific breakers rolling in and I would be crying out to God, crying out to Him to keep my children from the evil in that place. He was faithful to do that.
We’re talking about how God blesses not only the fruit of the womb, but He blesses everything else to provide for the fruit of the womb.
That’s right, I haven’t read you the rest yet, have I? Verse four: “Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body [here it is again but it carries on] and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.” That means all the provision that you need. You’ll be blessed with it.
“Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out.” Now all these blessings come after the blessing of the fruit of the womb.
You may think, “Well I don’t know. The way we are living, I just don’t know how we could manage.”
Dear ladies, God doesn’t give you these blessings before the fruit of the womb. They come after the fruit of the womb. When God blesses you with conception, then He will provide for that precious child. God is faithful.
Let’s go over to Deuteronomy 30:9: “And the Lord thy God will make thee plenteous in every work of thine hand, in the fruit of thy womb . . ..” Notice how God always mentions the fruit of the womb first and now again, the third time we’re reading it.
“ . . . And in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy land, for good: for the Lord will again rejoice over thee for good.”
And so you get the pattern. That’s what happens.
I could give you so many Scriptures. In fact, you may like to go to my webpage aboverubies.org and go to articles and stories and go to “Can God Provide?” There is an article there called “Is God able to Provide for Another Baby?” It gives you so many Scriptures. If you are feeling full of doubt and unbelief go to that article and print it off.
Read the Scriptures because it is the Word that will encourage you. As the Word gets into your heart it will give you faith. You see ,faith doesn’t come out thin air. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
As the Word of God fills our souls it generates faith to walk in that Word. You can’t do it if you don’t have the Word in you. So I would encourage you to go and read those wonderful Scriptures. Let me just give you one or two more in the meantime.
Deuteronomy 2:7: “For the Lord thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand: he knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing.”
Nehemiah 9:20-21 says: “Thou gavest also thy good spirit to instruct them, and withheldest not thy manna from their mouth, and gavest them water for their thirst. Yea, forty years didst thou sustain them in the wilderness, so that they lacked nothing; their clothes waxed not old, and their feet swelled not.”
They lacked nothing and yet, ladies, the children of Israel going through that howling wilderness didn’t live in homes like we do today. They just lived in temporary tents. They didn’t have all the mod cons that we have. They lived in the heat of the desert.
They didn’t have refrigerators. They didn’t have freezers. They didn’t have washing machines or dishwashers or vacuum cleaners. They didn’t have the nearest shop they could run to if they ran out of milk or bread. They just had to trust God each day.
They had the same diet of manna every day for forty years and yet God said they lacked nothing. We think that we have to have this and that and everything. We have such a high standard today.
But we don’t have to have everything to have what we need. In fact, we don’t even have to have a huge house. It’s amazing how even a big family can fit into a small home. Well, I do love big homes because my husband and I are lovers of hospitality. We love to have people.
God has been so good, and we sometimes have lived in little homes but often we have been able to live in large homes. But you don’t have to have a large home. You don’t have to have a bedroom for all your children.
People say, “How can we have more children, we haven’t even got enough bedrooms? “Well let me tell you: children don’t want to sleep alone. They hate it. They love to be together. They love to all sleep in the same room together.
You can have one bedroom for girls and one bedroom for boys. That’s all they need. They love to be together.
I remember when our children were growing, and we were moving into our first home we had built. We were so excited because had a few more bedrooms. Not that we all had a bedroom each ( the girls had one and the boys had one).
We’d put the children to bed and then we’d go back later as my husband and I were going off to bed and goodness me! What’s happened to the bedrooms? There are all these empty beds!
We found they were all in the one bedroom together. They had made a bed way up in a cupboard or something or the boys had gone outside to sleep out in some tent shack they had made. That was far more exciting! Children are quite happy to sleep together.
In fact, the Johnson children, some of my grandchildren, as they grew up, those boys, I don’t think they’ve hardly slept on a bed in their whole lives. They just slept on the floor in their sleeping bags.
Sometimes we think we have to provide so much to have everything perfect when really all our children want is togetherness, unity, and love.
I love Psalm 37:25: “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.”
Amen! Are you saying, “Amen,” with me? Yes. There are so many Scriptures in the Word of God about how He will provide for us. Look up that article and read them over.
Let’s be those who walk in faith and mix faith when we’re reading the Word of God.
Number seven
DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEART TO GOD OR YOUR HUSBAND
This is one of the things that come up when we are reading about rest in Hebrews chapter three and four.
We’ll read Hebrews 3:7-15: “Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, TO DAY if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation . . ..” That just means in the times of rebellion when the children of Israel rebelled against the Lord.
When the spies went into the Promised Land to check it out, they came back with amazing reports of how incredible this land was. They brought back bunches of grapes that took two men to carry.
But ten of the spies brought back an evil report, the Bible says. It was a report of doubt. It was beautiful but, oh, there were giants there! They didn’t think that they could go in.
“We’re too little,” they said, “We’re just like grasshoppers and they’re giants!” They put fear into the people and so they were afraid to go in.
It’s a bit like what we’re facing now. Not quite the same, but we are in a time of so many people facing fear in our nation, fear of this COVID-19.
I’m truly amazed at how so many believers are filled with fear. Many of them are still too fearful to go back to their churches and yet we are not seeing thousands of people dying from this. It has flattened out.
Even though now there are many people testing positive but they’re not dying unless they’re a person who maybe has other underlying medical problems and it makes it worse for them. But if that is not the case, they’re not having anything much more than the flu. Why are believers filled with fear?
Oh yes, it was true; there were giants in the land. They weren’t telling lies. It was true. There were giants and when they went into the Promised Land, they had to face those giants and they conquered those giants.
It doesn’t mean to say that facts are not true but why are we filled with fear? We as the people of God are not meant to be filled with fear. We trust in our God. Therefore we’re not victims of fear and becoming filled with unbelief.
Here we are, they were filled with unbelief. This Scripture goes on to say: “When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do always err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)”
That generation did not enter into the rest and into the Promised Land that God had promised them. They all died of unbelief and hardness of heart.
We’ll go down to verse 15: “While it is said, TO DAY if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.”
Then we go to Hebrews 4:7: “To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”
Three times God repeats those words.
TODAY. That happened way back, back there. We read about that way back in Exodus but now it’s TODAY. You see every word of God applies to us today, right now. Today.
If there is any hardness in our hearts, any stubbornness, any unbelief, we better repent of it now, today, because God says: “TODAY if you hear His voice, don’t harden your heart.”
We mustn’t harden our hearts to what God says in His Word. We have to be open to it, responsive to it, and obedient to it.
When we keep a soft heart to God, we keep a soft heart to our husband. The Bible tells us that the reason for divorce is hardness of heart.
We go to Matthew 19:8. The Pharisees had come to Jesus and they had asked Him if it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife.
Jesus said in verse 4: “ . . . Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” or let not man separate.
Then He goes on to say in verse 8: “Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.”
And so it happens through hardness of heart. Of course it is true that when we’re married it is God’s intention for us to be one. One together, one flesh, one soul, one spirit, one in unity; but we’re not perfect and life’s not perfect and that doesn’t always happen. Strife comes into marriage and sometimes things are said that hurt and then bitterness comes in.
Oh precious wives, don’t allow bitterness to ever get hold of your heart because it destroys you and it destroys your marriage and ultimately it destroys your children because they are affected, too.
Bitterness and hurt, oh, they are such destroying attitudes and that is why God says: “TODAY if you hear His voice DON’T HARDEN YOUR HEART.”
You’ve got to get down on your knees and let the Holy Spirit work in your heart. Our hearts are flesh and sometimes they just don’t want to do it. I’ve found that I’ve sometimes had to get down on my knees and say, “Holy Spirit, come, come into my life. Come and work in my heart. Work Your Spirit in my spirit that I would have a spirit of submissiveness, gentleness, softness toward You and toward my husband.”
So we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our hearts. We don’t let them get hardened. We don’t carry on holding this in our hearts.
What does it say in Ephesians 4:26: “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” You might get angry but let not the sun go down upon your wrath. You do not go to sleep tonight until you’ve got things right.
That’s the Bible way. That’s the way that works. That’s what keeps our hearts right.
If we want to have rest in our homes, “TODAY if you hear His voice, don’t harden your heart.” There will always be things that happen in life and when they happen, on the day they happen, we allow God to work in our lives.
We let Him move in our hearts so we can get our hearts right with God, with our husband, say sorry, seek restoration AND THEN REST COMES! Praise the Lord!
That’s what this is all talking about: Rest. Do we want rest, or do we want strife? Are we going to continue to live in strife or are we going to do it God’s way so we can live in rest? Amen?
Well, I love The Passion Translation that says: “ . . . ‘They will never enter into the calming rest of My Spirit!’” That’s because of unbelief and hardness of heart. But if we yield those to God, we can live in the calming rest of God’s Holy Spirit.
In fact, this morning at our family devotions we sang the beautiful old hymn that says: “I am resting, resting, resting in the joy of what Thou art.”
I wish I could remember the rest of the words but anyway, let’s pray, shall we?
“Father, We thank You for Your precious Word. What would we do without Your Word, Lord God? It keeps us in line and shows us the way You want us to live. I pray that You will continue to work in our hearts. Expose any hardness of heart, any unbelief, bitterness, and hurt.
“Oh God help us to keep our spirits pure before You because we want to live in rest. We want to enjoy the rest that You provide for us. We want to make our homes a place of rest for You where You delight to rest. We ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen.”
Transcribed by Morgan Roth.
Words of the hymn:
1 Jesus, I am resting, resting
in the joy of what thou art;
I am finding out the greatness
of thy loving heart.
Thou hast bid me gaze upon thee,
as thy beauty fills my soul,
For by thy transforming power,
thou hast made me whole.
Refrain:
Jesus, I am resting, resting,
in the joy of what thou art;
I am finding out the greatness
of thy loving heart.
2 O how great thy lovingkindness,
vaster, broader than the sea!
O how marvelous thy goodness
lavished all on me!
Yes, I rest in thee, Beloved,
know what wealth of grace is thine,
Know thy certainty of promise
and have made it mine. [Refrain]
3 Simply trusting thee, Lord Jesus,
I behold thee as thou art,
And thy love, so pure, so changeless,
satisfies my heart;
Satisfies its deepest longings,
meets, supplies its ev'ry need,
Compasseth me round with blessings:
thine is love indeed. [Refrain]
4 Ever lift thy face upon me
as I work and wait for thee;
Resting 'neath thy smile, Lord Jesus,
earth's dark shadows flee.
Brightness of my Father's glory,
sunshine of my Father's face,
Kep me ever trusting, resting,
fill me with thy grace. [Refrain]
Author: Jean Sophia Pigott (1876)