PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 270: It’s Time to Elevate the Table, Part 3
LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 270: It’s Time to Elevate the Table, Part 3
Colin and I continue talking about how to effectively feed the "inner man" of our children. This is more important than their bodies. Many children grow strong physically, but their spirits are starving. We must not let our children leave the table until we feed them body, soul, and spirit.
Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to The Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Hello! Here we are again with you. Welcome. It’s always great to be sitting here chatting with you. I do pray that you are so blessed as we encourage you. Do remember to pass these podcasts onto friends and everyone in your social media. Get the message out about strengthening families.
MORNING AND EVENING PRINCIPLE
My husband is with me again today as we continue talking about elevating the table. At the end of the last podcast, we shared how we would talk to you about how there is, in the Bible, a MORNING AND EVENING PRINCIPLE. That’s why we like to do family devotions, as we call it in our home every morning and every evening.
We go back to the Word of God. Let’s go over to Leviticus 6:8-13. God is talking to Moses how He wants him to build the brazen altar. He tells him exactly what to do and how the fire will be burning upon the altar all night until the morning: “And the fire of the altar shall be burning in it.” This fire that was burning on that altar, God told him it was a fire that was never, ever to go out.
THE FIRE MUST NEVER GO OUT
In fact, in verse 12, it says: “And the fire upon the altar shall be burning in it. It shall not be put out.”
And then, it goes down to the next verse. It says: “The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar. It shall never go out.” God wanted it to be a continual fire. Although that was happening back there in the tabernacle, it was a type for us today. God wants us to keep the fire of God burning in our hearts, and in the hearts of all the children in our families. He gives us a way to do that.
It’s interesting that when they had completed this altar and they were bringing it all into the tabernacle, and they were having all the dedication for it, that God came supernaturally and burned up the sacrifice upon the altar. God lit the fire! It was amazing! It was supernatural!
But then He told them they had to keep it going. They had to do this, and it tells us in this passage how they had to, each morning and each evening, take the ashes out of the fire, get rid of all the junk in the ashes, and then to put on wood to keep the fire burning.
That’s what we need to do. As we come to the Lord in the morning and in the evening, to get rid of anything in our lives that is displeasing the Lord. And then to add wood to our fire so that we can keep it burning. This wood is like the Word of God. It’s our sustenance. It’s that which keeps our fire burning.
When we come to Jesus, we’re born again. We begin a new life. We have a new life in Christ. But we have to grow this new life. We have to keep it burning, this fire that begins in our souls. The only way we can keep it burning is by keeping the Word going into it. If they only lit it once a day, the fire would go out.
I guess many of you have got wood fires. We have a wood fire here in our basement. If we only put wood on once a day, it would never keep burning. We have to keep adding the wood. The principle here is morning and evening.
Colin: It’s not the only one that had to be doing morning and evening.
Nancy: Oh, I know.
Colin: There were others.
Nancy: They had to keep the light burning. When you went into the Holy Place, there were three pieces of furniture. On the left was the candelabra, the golden lampstand made out of one piece of pure gold. God told them that they had to keep that light burning.
You see, we keep the fire burning and we’ve got to keep the light burning in our lives. It says here in Exodus 27:20-21 that they were to keep the lamp burning always.
Verse 21: “In the tabernacle of the congregation, Aaron and his sons shall order it from evening to morning before the Lord.” That means “in the presence of the Lord.”
When we read that phrase in the King James, it means, “in the presence of the Lord.” They were to order it. It didn’t just happen of itself. They had to do it. They had to not do it whenever they felt like it. They had to do it according to the order of morning and evening. “And it shall be a statute forever unto their generations on the behalf of the children of Israel.” And then . . .
Colin: The altar of incense.
Nancy: The altar of incense, yes!
Colin: Morning and evening.
Nancy: They had to keep that burning too.
Colin: That’s the prayer life. That’s the worship. The altar of incense is always going in the book of Revelation. It talks about the altar of incense again. It’s not just the Old Testament. It talks about in Heaven the altar of incense and waiting for the prayers of the saints on the earth. It says they waited for the space of thirty minutes, I think, for the prayers to come up.
Nancy: Yes, yes, we can find that in Revelation. Let’s go to it. But it actually says there, also for the altar of incense, that they had to come morning and evening, and light that incense. They would take burning coals from off the brazen altar, and they would put the incense on those burning coals and put it on the altar of incense. That beautiful, sweet aroma, because it was made of sweet spices, wasn’t it?
Colin: Yes. It speaks of praise and worship.
Nancy: It would fill the Holy Place with that sweetness, the beautiful, sweet aroma. But it tells us, even in the New Testament, what it means. We go to Revelation 5.
Colin: Also, I think when John the Baptist, even though it was New Testament, it was a carry-over of the old as far as the tabernacle was concerned in the temple. In the time of the announcement of John the Baptist coming . . . was Zacharias his name? He was ministering at the altar of incense and the people were all praying outside. He was ministering at that altar, which represented worship, prayer, intercession. We need to realize how important this is in our families and in our churches.
Nancy: Revelation 5:8 tells us about the four and twenty elders. They “fell down before the Lamb, having everyone of them harps and golden vials full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.”
That’s pretty plain, isn’t it? Explaining that the incense going up is the prayers of the saints. “And they sung a new song, saying Thou are worthy.” And so, we read on.
Then we go over to chapter 8. John is looking into the heavenly kingdom. We’re in the New Testament. We’re in Revelation, this last book of the New Testament. John is seeing into the eternal realm.
The amazing thing is, ladies, that what John is seeing is what we were reading about back in Exodus and Leviticus. He sees the altar of incense! You see, when God told Moses all these things to make in the tabernacle, they were a type of the heavenly tabernacle.
Some people think, “Oh, do I have to know anything about the tabernacle?” Well, if you want to know something about heaven, find out what’s in the tabernacle, because it is a type, a picture of what is in the heavenly! John looked and he saw it there! There was the altar of incense!
Colin: And the Ark of the Covenant was there too.
Nancy: Yes, so let’s read it here. Revelation 8:3: “And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censor. And there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of the saints.” Here it is again, “the prayers of the saints upon the golden altar, which was before the throne.”
That means it was in the immediate presence of God. The altar of incense was the closest piece of furniture in the tabernacle to the Holy of Holies. But in the heavenly tabernacle it is right before the throne of God.
Colin: Even in the earthly tabernacle, it was noted that it was before the throne.
Nancy: Yes! It was right next to it.
Colin: It was apart from what was in Heaven.
Nancy: “And the smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of the saints ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand. And the angel took the censer and filled it with fire off the altar.” That means there was even a brazen altar there in heaven as well. It was just like God planned it back in the tabernacle. It’s so amazing! “And cast it into the earth. There were voices and thunderings and lightnings and an earthquake.”
Colin: You can see that from the altar of incense, prayer, worship, seeking God, loving the Lord, praising Him, seeing Him, and so on is the closest thing to the throne. It’s the closest thing. It brings us close to the throne. That’s why we were having a prayer meeting last night and as we were worshiping, the presence of God came and filled the room.
IF WE DON’T ORDER SET TIMES, WE WILL FORGET
Nancy: They had to order it. Remember, we read that. They had to order it every morning and every evening. This is the pattern for us. God wants us to (of course we can pray unceasingly, we can be in His presence any moment of the day) but God does order times. He sets times because He knows what we are like. We get busy! We get taken up with everything in life. If we don’t order our times we will forget.
In our home, and in our family, we make it a precedent to keep this altar. Now, of course, we don’t have an altar that’s built, but it is an altar. It’s a time and a place where we meet with God as a family every morning and every evening.
Really, this really does show where God is in our lives. If other things come up and we’re just too busy to do this, well, what are we saying? What are we showing? What are we showing to our children that all these other things, which really are so unimportant, and which we won’t even take into eternity with us, they are more important that God.
Nothing is more important than Him!
WIVES PAVE THE WAY TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
I must tell you this little secret. I know some of you have already found the secret. But unless you, and I think especially we as the wives of the home, although it’s the husband’s responsibility to lead his family in speaking and reading the Word, and leading them, really, he can’t even do it without us. I have found that, in my experience, that really, most of the responsibility relies on me, as the wife. Because unless I pave the way, unless I make the way for this to happen in our lives, it won’t happen!
So, we love to have . . . Some families may like to have their Bible time at different times. You work out what is best for you. But we have found, in all our years of experience, that the greatest time is at the meal table, because it’s where we feed the body, the soul, and the spirit. We feed the whole man. Plus, we have the whole family together. Wow!
Colin: Yeah, we’re all together.
Nancy: They come to eat! Wow! You only have to say, “It’s time to eat!” And everybody’s running! They want food! And then you’ve got them there. But to try and get them to come from here, there, and everywhere, and no food is there, well, that’s pretty hard. So, we find it the best time to do it is at our mealtimes. We make it a priority. It doesn’t matter what happens. We do this first. Everything else can fit in around it.
Colin: In a sense, it is a discipline.
Nancy: Very much.
Colin: If we’re not disciplined, and we do not do things because we just act according to our feelings, well, this is never going to happen. It’s going to be very haphazard, and the family, as a result of that, will suffer for it.
Nancy: Amen!
Colin: And our own spiritual lives will suffer for it too.
Nancy: Yes. I have a little affirmation that I say continually.
“Things don’t just happen. You have to make them happen.”
It is true. You make happen what you want to make happen. You make happen what is foremost in your heart. Therefore, if God is truly foremost in our family, this will be the most pre-eminent thing that we will do each day.
Colin: We discipline ourselves as far as going to work. Often, a lot of work has a time slot. You have to be there at a certain time and press your little button saying, “I’m here!” Those disciplines we apply to normal living. And yet, somehow or other, it’s not applied to spiritual living, as it should be, that it should be applied. Discipline is a big thing. It’s an important thing.
Nancy: With our family devotions we have the reading of the Word. Then we have prayer. This really is the altar of incense, prayer. I was saying last podcast, and it is so true. If the devil can keep us, as a family, from praying together, he has won such a great victory. He’ll do everything in his power to do this. It seems that the whole way we live today takes us away from this.
When you think that most families are out on the sports field at this time of the day, when mothers should be preparing the meal, paving the way so that we can be at the table. To not only feed their bodies but feed their souls and their spirits. Then pray together. But we get home too late. Just grab something. There’s no time to pray. This is one of the biggest things that we can do as a family.
Praying families are nation-changing families.
Praying families are world-changing families.
Colin: In other words, the country and the world is what it is according to the way we have prayed.
Nancy: Yes. It’s according to how families pray. It’s not the church. Churches will be great praying churches if they’re filled with praying families. But sadly, they’re not.
PRAYER BOXES ARE SUCH A HELP
This is something that we do in our home, and that is, we have prayer boxes. Oh, dear ladies, I have found these the greatest blessings in our prayer times, not only with the children, but with everybody who comes into our home. It’s part of our daily devotions. I started back when I was raising the children. You start everything in a little way. You get a little idea, and it grows. Isn’t it fun? Everything grows and gets bigger, doesn’t it?
Well, I started first with a family prayer box. I thought, it’s so important for my children to be praying for one another and also to remember their aunties and uncles and grandparents. So, I wrote in the box all the members of our immediate family, and the aunties and the uncles and the grandparents and so on. So we would pass it around.
They would pray for someone in the family. Maybe it’s Auntie Connie. “Oh, goodness me! Who is she? I’ve just about forgotten who she is!” So, you have to remind them about her. “Oh, yes, she’s got a heart problem,” so they can pray for her. But they learn to pray for others. Maybe the name they take out of their box is their brother and they’ve just had a fight. Well, now they’ve got to pray for them. That was so good.
But then, I realized, “Oh, we can’t be insular and just pray for one another. There’s a world out there!” So, little by little, I added my prayer boxes. Now, currently we have nine different prayer boxes. And, of course, we don’t use them all every day. We’ll usually choose two prayer boxes and take a card out of them each.
The amazing thing is, ladies, that if we didn’t take those cards out, we would most probably never pray for those things. We would forget. They’re such reminders! And also, for the children! It teaches them how to pray, because children, how do they pray? “Dear Lord Jesus, thank You for this lovely day. Give us a good day. Help us today. Be with us.” It’s all just, “Lord, help me today.” They are not really thinking of persecuted Christians. They’re not thinking of things that are happening that even little children can pray for.
WHICH PRAYER BOXES WILL YOU CHOOSE TO MAKE?
We have, of course . . .
Number one, our family prayer box.
Number two, our world-changing prayer box with different things that are happening in the world that need prayer.
Our nation-changing prayer box, and oh my, we use this, I think, well, nearly every day, because, oh, the needs in our nation and where our nation is going.
We have so many needs, so we have all the different things that need praying for. They’re on a card. Each person can take them out. They get prayed for! We would forget to pray for them if we didn’t have them.
And another little thing too; children love to be part of something. They even love to hand the prayer box around. They always want, “My turn! I want to hand it around!” They love taking out a card. They love something tangible. You will find that it will so enlarge their prayers.
We also have our persecuted Christians prayer box. How we must teach our children to pray for the persecuted church! There are more martyrs in the world today than there ever have been in the history of this world. What is happening in North Korea? And Afghanistan? And Nigeria? So many middle eastern and African countries. As you begin to find out what is happening . . .
Colin: North Korea as well.
Nancy: Oh yes! And for our children to understand what they are going through and for them to get a heart to pray for them. The Bible tells us how to pray for them. We are to pray for them, as Hebrews 13:3 says. It says we are to pray for them, as though we were feeling their pain in our body, as though we were imprisoned with them. We’re to really feel that empathy with them and pray for them, and to teach our children how to pray for them. Of course, they will learn by hearing us pray for them. When they hear our passion to pray for them, they will imbibe that.
I remember, it was actually a couple of years ago, Serene was on a ladder, going up to the second story of their home. She was coming down the ladder. She had a long skirt on, and she tripped and fell on her back. She was in the most tremendous pain! I was always challenged by what she told me. She said, “Oh, Mum! Immediately, I just began to pray for the persecuted church!” “Because” she said, “every time I go to pray for them, I know I’ve got to feel their pain in my body, but I don’t feel pain. I feel so great! How can I pray for them? But I was feeling such pain, so I just cried out for the persecuted Christians!”
That was a real challenge for me. In fact, it was good she said that, because it was only a week later, and I fell over a bucket in one of our rooms. We were washing the floors, and I fell right on it and broke two ribs. You can get over that but they’re painful. If you’ve had broken ribs, you know they’re painful. Oh, I was in pain!
Colin: You fell backwards onto the bucket, I think.
Nancy: But anyway, OK! I can pray for the persecuted church!
We also have our Israel prayer box. That’s not a choice. We are commanded, we’re commanded to pray for the persecuted church. We’re commanded to pray for Israel. What does it say in Isaiah 62, I think it is?
Colin: Pray for Jerusalem.
Nancy: Yes, Isaiah 62:6: “I have set watchmen upon thy walls, oh Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace, day nor night. Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silent, and give Him no rest until He establish, until He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.” We are not even meant to stop day and night. At least have a prayer box!
Colin: And to think, and “making mention” of the Lord there, it reminds me, in the margin of my Bible it says, “You who remind the Lord of His promises to Israel.”
Nancy: Yes! In our Israel prayer box, I do have a lot of promises that God has given to Israel and are yet to be fulfilled. We pray over those. I love praying for our Israel prayer box. But also, if you would like to know some of the cards that we have in some of these boxes, you are welcome to email me, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and I’ll be so happy to send them to you.
When you make your prayer boxes, sometimes you can find cheap boxes at dollar stores. You can get them quite cheaply. But I save little boxes. Oh, whenever I can get them, I save them, and I make them up. I will get the children to put nice new paper on them, and pretty them up, and make them into a prayer box. You can do that with your children.
Colin: Especially one for praying for the nation. It’s a very, very important one. Praying for America, the United States, and whatever nation you’re from.
Nancy: Some other ones are marriage and family restoration prayer box, our salvation and healing prayer box. You may have those who you’re praying for to be saved, to be healed.
Another one we have is our countries and capitals prayer box, all the most strategic countries and capitals of the world, we pray for. That’s a great box for our children, too. Not only are they learning to pray for other countries but they’re learning about other countries. It’s not just them, here in their little place where they live. There are these other countries, and we can talk to them about them. What is happening in those countries? And how to pray for them. That’s a great box.
And our church fellowship prayer box. We have that too. We love that, praying for all the different families in our fellowship. You could also have a neighborhood prayer box, praying for all your neighbors. And what about a thank-you prayer box for all the answers to prayer you get?
You can make up whatever prayer boxes you want. But you will find that they are so helpful. They really take your children from just praying some boring prayer to learning to pray and to see the needs of the world. What happens? We become a nation- and world-changing family! It’s so amazing!
YOU CAN IMPACT THE WORLD FROM YOUR TABLE
Colin: Amen! Yes, around your table, you can rule the world. You can be involved in the throne of God as far as ruling and asking for what His will is for the different nations of the world. We can change communist countries.
We’ve been so praying for Venezuela because we have a Venezuelan man who’s recently come to our church who was talking to us about the persecution of communism now in Venezuela. Oh, my goodness me, we have really been praying for that country to be turned around. We’re still praying for it.
Nancy: Yes, and it makes us pray for America even more too, because this man, when he first came to us, he didn’t really know the Lord truly. He was a Catholic and loved God, but, oh, he came just so despondent, because he said, “What I am seeing here in America is exactly what I saw before the nation of Venezuela was taken over by communism. It was the wealthiest nation in the whole of South America. It’s now the poorest. There are millions of people in utter, abject poverty.”
Colin: Their financial situation is worth nothing.
Nancy: He himself has been under threats from the Venezuelan government. He has been paying them money just to protect his parents down there. It is unbelievable. Unless we pray for this nation, this is where our nation is going. This is what they’re trying to do.
What I cannot understand, ladies, I’m sure you are aware and you’re praying but I can’t understand that most of the Christian church obviously have to have their heads in the sand if they are not calling their family to prayer! Not only your family . . . yes, but we’ve also got to start praying as a family.
But then, why not begin another prayer meeting in your home each week? Gather some friends around to pray for the nation. We have two prayer meetings up here a week, amongst us here on the Hilltop. Really, that’s about the least we could have.
Colin: We have another one on Sunday morning.
Nancy: Yes, but our main two are during the week. Mondays and Wednesdays. They are just for prayer. Nothing else. We just worship and then we pray! Mostly crying out to the Lord for the nation. But you know what? If every family, if every family began to do this, and cried out for this nation, and children can learn to do this too, we would see a mighty turn-around.
Colin: Oh, we would.
Nancy: It all comes back to prayer. I just read this quote this morning from E. M. Bounds. It says here:
“How we estimate, and place prayer is how we estimate and place God. To give prayer a secondary place is to make God secondary in life’s affairs.”
Where we place prayer in our homes, lovely ladies and husbands listening, it is where we place God. Where is God in your life?
I’m reading an amazing book at the moment. It’s about the revival in the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides of Scotland. Colin and I have always known about this revival. In fact, we’ve longed to go and see the places where it happened. We plan to do that shortly.
It was so amazing why these revivals happened. There in Lewis, they didn’t just have one revival. They had many, many revivals. It’s like one revival would happen, and maybe another ten years or so later, it built on the previous one because there was something to build on.
In one of the very early revivals, it had such an impact upon the island that the Word of God began to be taught in the schools. Plus, every single school student had to learn the shorter Westminster catechism. They had to learn so many passages of the Bible. That didn’t mean that they were all Christians. There were the faithful few praying for revival. But because of that foundation, that the Word was there, the Holy Spirit was able to come, and come in mighty power, because the Word was there.
DON’T FORGET TO WORSHIP
But it’s getting to the end, and we haven’t finished yet, because we not only read the Word, and we not only pray, what else do we do? We sing and worship. This is also part of our time together, because back there in the tabernacle, they worshipped as they were doing the sacrifices. Morning and evening, the people would be worshiping outside.
We love to worship. In our fellowship, we sing the more current worship songs, but in our daily devotions, we get out the hymnbooks. We love the old hymns. They are filled with such doctrine and truth. Because I believe that we should have the new and the old. I don’t believe that we should only keep to the old and never embrace the new. No, because God is always doing a new thing. There is such an anointing that has come with the worship that we have today.
But I don’t believe in discarding the old. I think it’s sad that so many young people today don’t even know the hymns. So, we like to keep them. We love them, and then those who come into our home, we introduce them to them. What do you want to say about that, Darling?
Colin: I guess there’s not much more to say about it but it’s true that those grand old hymns, we just love them. “Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah.” Just wonderful hymns.
Nancy: I was going to say, we most probably couldn’t do it without you, because if I was leading the hymns, everybody would sing out of tune, and nobody would know how to sing. But Colin can sing the hymns, and he knows just about every hymn that there is. In fact, when he’s reading the Word, oh, he’ll start singing a hymn that the Word is really speaking about. Or he’ll start singing a Scripture song.
Colin: I love to do that. I love to do that. It’s just a wonderful thing. I think that God is in it. I think He’s in it. It makes things come alive. It makes the truth come alive. Worship is so important.
WORHSIP WITH HIGH PRAISES
Psalm 149: “Let the high praises of God be in your mouth, and a two-edged sword” (that’s the Word of God) “in your hand.” The two-edged sword is the Word of God coming out of the mouth of Christ in John’s revelation of Him on the Isle of Patmos.
The whole thing about that, the high praises of God. The high praises mean there are low praises. It means there are medium praises. But God wants us to come into the high praises where we really have our whole heart involved in heart-filled worship to the Lord. It’s the high praises of God. It seems like when David was bringing back the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem for the first time, he danced before the Lord with all his might. He twisted, he twirled. It says he leapt, and he jumped. He was so full of praises to the Lord, worshiping God. Of course, he got criticized by his wife for it.
Nancy: That means you can sing if you don’t know the hymns. You can sing worship songs. Sing whatever you like. But end with some praise.
Colin: It also says: “In order to bind the kings with chains (the wicked kings), and their nobles with fetters of iron . . . This honor have all his saints” (Psalm 149:6-9). So praise and worship will enable us to bind the wicked kings of the earth. That’s why we can pray for other nations with confidence, because we’re praising, we’re worshiping, and it releases. So often as they were going out into battle, they took the music, the trumpets, and everything with them. They praised right before the armies of Israel. Praised the Lord.
Nancy: Amen. I would love to give you this Scripture as we close.
Leviticus 26:7-8: “And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. And five of you shall chase a hundred.” Well, maybe you only have three children. But with you and your husband, that’s five. And as you gather together to pray, because this is the greatest way we can overcome our enemies is in prayer, you can chase a hundred enemies! Isn’t that amazing?
But “A hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight. And your enemies shall fall before you by the sword of the Lord.” The Word of God and prayer.
Colin: This will bring unity into your home. It will cause the arguments to cease. It will cause the battles that so many homes go through to fall down.
Nancy: Yes. Amen! And so, I’ve just a little challenge here. Many of you have got more than three children. Some of you have got six, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve! Man, you’ve got a prayer meeting in your home! Sometimes that’s bigger than some church prayer meetings! Make the most of it.
Just think of how many you can put to flight! Think of all the families. Look, a hundred families, with all these children, let alone every God-fearing family in the nation with all their children, we can save this nation as we pray 2 Chronicles 7:14. Amen!
Colin: Amen!
“So, Lord, we thank You. Thank You for this wonderful time. This is such, such an important subject. We want to elevate it. We want to lift it up. We want it exalted in our family life. We pray for all those who are listening, that they will take it, and they will practice it, and they’ll tell others about it, and get their whole Christian community around them doing this. Lord, their families are going to see tremendous victories. Great things are going to come from these families. In Jesus’s Name. Amen.”
Nancy: Amen!
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
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Transcribed by Darlene Norris * This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Book about the Isle of Lewis Revival:
Sounds from Heaven: The Revival on the Isle of Lewis, 1949-1952