PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | Episode 44 – How Can We Change The World? - Part 10
FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell
Episode 44: HOW CAN WE CHANGE THE WORLD? Part 10
How can I live a blissful life in the middle of chaos? How can I have another baby if I have physical problems? What are the special blessings God designed for a nursing mother?
Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, From Our Home to Yours, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Here I am, with you again! And we continue to talk about this beautiful word, sozo, which is used in the context of motherhood. It's found in 1 Timothy 2, verses 13-15. I would like to read it to you in a couple of other translations.
This is the Ways translation, and it says: “Moreover, it was not Adam that was actually deceived by the tempter, but it was entirely true, her being utterly deceived, that woman has become involved in transgression. Yet, through her motherhood, shall women be saved.”
“Through her motherhood.” We found out last session that it doesn't mean only childbirth, but it's the lifestyle of childbearing, the lifestyle of motherhood, of embracing children, nurturing children. It goes on to say: “If your women swerve not from faith and love, and self-consecration, coupled with virtuous self-control.”
The Goodspeed translation says: “For Adam was formed first, and then Eve, and it was not Adam who was deceived. It was the woman who was deluded, and fell into sin. But they will be saved through motherhood.” There it is again, “saved through motherhood, if they continue to have faith, and to be loving and holy, and sensible as well.”
We realize that that beautiful word, “saved,” is sozo, and if I can remind you again, it means “to be saved, delivered, protected, preserved, healed, and made whole physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.” Wow, you can't beat that, ladies.
And that is the promise to you, as a mother, as you embrace motherhood. Isn't that beautiful? Yes, we are preserved and saved, both physically, but also emotionally and spiritually. We're also in the context of that Scripture, in those Scriptures there, the context is about deception. We are saved from deception.
That is so true. A mother who embraces her mothering and her home is saved from the deception of the enemy and the deception of the world. I have watched this so frequently, as women have given up their motherhood, and they put their children out to be looked after with someone else, gone out into the career world . . .
Of course, you can do both. Yes, you can look after your one or two children, and you can keep them fed and clothed. Of course, you can do that. And you can love them. Of course, every mother loves her child.
But you can't fully embrace the lifestyle of mothering, because you can't keep having children if you also have a career. That does not work. It's too difficult to fit them both in. And so, women get into a different lifestyle.
They go out into the marketplace, which is the world that God created for the man. And they become deceived. They often even, well, often their marriages even fall apart. You see, mothering, and mothering in the home, is a protection. It will protect. We are protected against deception.
And we're protected physically. I encourage you to look up “Preserved Through Motherhood” on the webpage.
Go to:
http://tinyurl.com/PreservedThroughMotherhood
But let me tell you a little more about this too. This word, sozo, is so wonderful. Hang on. Let me give you some more meanings.
Oh, I found other, more enlarging meanings as I studied this word.
It also means to deliver out of danger or destruction, and into safety.
It means to keep safe and sound.
To save a suffering one from perishing.
To restore to health.
To lift above trouble.
To cause something to change to an earlier correct, or appropriate state.
I think that's a very powerful meaning, because we are living in an age of deception, where so many women have moved from the estate of motherhood, the commission that God has given to mothers. As they have moved from it, they need to come back to this, to His original plan.
OK. Remember? We are made whole. Let me show you some Scriptures about this. This is such a wonderful promise to mothers. Often, we think, “Oh, how could I physically bear another child?”
But often, in bearing a child, you are healed. Oh, there are so many wonderful testimonies of women who are healed from physical ailments through childbirth. Remember in one of our last sessions, Serene shared how God completely healed her adrenals and her panic attacks when she became pregnant? She never, ever had another panic attack again. That's over nine years ago!
So, it is true that pregnancy preserves, and it heals. Look at these Scriptures.
Talking about the woman who had an issue of blood for 12 years: “And Jesus said to her, 'Daughter, be of good comfort. Your faith hath made (the word is sozo), thee whole (sozo).” That Greek word that occurs two times in that little statement, “Your faith has made you whole.” “Has made” (sozo); “whole” (sozo). You're getting it doubly there. So, we see that it means to heal. Jesus healed her. She was made whole.
What about when Jesus raised Jairus' daughter from the dead? And he went, and what did Jesus say to him? “Fear not: believe only, and she shall be made whole (sozo).” My, she was raised from the dead.
Mark 6:56 says: “And Jesus entered into the villages, and the cities, and the country, and they laid the sick in the street, and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment, and as many as touched him were made whole.” They were healed. The word is “sozo.”
When Jesus healed blind Bartimaeus, He said, “Go your way. Your faith has made (sozo), you whole (sozo).” Same word that is used for women, that we will be saved through motherhood.
Now, when Jesus healed the demoniac, it says: “They also which saw it told them by what means he that was possessed of the devils was healed (sozo).”
When Jesus healed the ten lepers, “Jesus said: “Arise, go thy way. Thy faith has made (sozo) thee whole (sozo).
And so, we get the message of the fullness of this word. It brings wholeness to our bodies, and not only wholeness, but so many blessings.
Oh, another wonderful article, I wonder if you read, in Above Rubies. It was “How to Live Stress Free in a Stress Filled World.” That was in Above Rubies #92. Do you still have that copy? It's the one with Rashida and Jack on the front cover, on the day of their wedding.
In this particular magazine, I write about oxytocin. By the way, you can also get that article on the webpage under “Motherhood.” You'll be able to pick it up there. Here is the link for it: https://tinyurl.com/StressFreeWorld
In this article, I wrote about this beautiful, wonderful hormone, oxytocin. The amazing thing is, the more I studied it, the more I found that this hormone is released so much in a mothering lifestyle, in the home. It is such a glorious thing. We don't really get a lot of oxytocin sitting in an office. We don't get much oxytocin, I would say we get none, when we're just working in a factory.
We don't even get much oxytocin when we're out, you know, in that career fast-paced world. No, that's not where oxytocin comes from. Shall I tell you just a few of the places where we get it? Now, of course, first of all, I've got to tell you what it's like. I mean, the descriptions of this hormone are amazing.
As I read scientific articles, these are some of the descriptions that they use for this hormone oxytocin, the most incredible molecule on the planet! It's called the stress-relieving hormone, the calming hormone. In fact, it reduces blood pressure, cortisol levels, fear, anxiety. It can even wipe out psychological and physiological problems. Yes, they have even found it helps in PTSD.
But it's also called the molecule of motherly love, the life hormone, the love hormone, cuddle hormone, bonding hormone, empathy hormone, trust hormone, and, get this one, the bliss hormone.
Now, with all those descriptions, wouldn't you love to live an oxytocin lifestyle? I want to. I just think it's a beautiful hormone. Of course, I'm isolating it, and God doesn't isolate hormones. He has all the hormones that he gives to us, He has them all working together in perfect symphony. Or they are meant to. When they get out of sync, and they're not working in perfect symphony, well, then we have problems physically.
But I just wanted to isolate this to tell you about it. It's not really meant to be isolated. It goes with other hormones. So, as I wrote in this article here, I'm just looking it up again here. I have, I think, yes, ten different ways we get oxytocin. And they're all very beautiful, practical ways. But I won't talk about them all. I'll just give you one or two here. Let me tell you this one.
No. 1. LIVE IN A FAMILY
They have found that just living in a family releases oxytocin. Because it's God's way, the way He intends us to live.
No. 2. CUDDLE AND TOUCH
When we touch one another and cuddle, give hugs and kiss, we're releasing oxytocin. And of course, this happens in the lifestyle of mothering. You've got a little baby. You're kissing that little baby. You’re cuddling and holding that baby nearly all day long. And as you're doing that, you're releasing oxytocin. It's so beautiful! We're meant to have babies around us.
Of course, I'm a grandmother now, even a great-grandmother. But, praise the Lord, I have still babies around me that I can hold. They are oxytocin-releasing. This is the lifestyle God loves for us. And it's not only with our little babies and our children as we hug them throughout the day.
But it's also in our marriage relationship. We need to hug and cuddle and touch and kiss our husband as much as we possibly can. In Titus chapter two, verse four, the older women are to teach the younger women to love their husbands.
Now, what does it mean, love your husbands? In the Greek, there are four different words for love. There's that beautiful word, agape love. Now that's a picture of God's love. We don't have this love naturally, because often, we love when people love us. But God's love loves the unlovely. God's love loves when we're not loved back. God's love loves even when we’re rejected and hated! Oh my. It's very hard for us to have that love. We don't have it unless we allow God's love to fill our hearts.
That's the wonderful thing. Sometimes things can happen in your marriage. Love goes out the door because you've been hurt. Oh, hurt can bring bitterness. Hurt just wipes out love in the natural. But you see, we have something beyond that. If you are born again, you have Christ living within you. And His love loves, even when you're rejected. So, you can still love with Christ's love that's in you! But that's not the word that is used in this passage in Titus, but it is a word we need in our marriage, because there are times we do need agape love. We need love that's beyond our physical love.
Then, of course, there's eros love, which is sexual love. That's very important in the marriage, but that's not the word that's used here.
There's another word, storge, which is family love.
But the word that's used here is philandros. That word is friendship love. It means to be affectionate and cuddly. Isn't it interesting that God uses that word? He wants us to be affectionate to our husbands.
Not just to know in our hearts that we love them. Yes, it’s easy to begin to live your marriage like that. You get into a bit of a rut. You know you love one another, you've got a good stable marriage, but sometimes you forget to actually show it. To every time you see your husband, to touch him, cuddle him, just have a little smooch. Love him.
These are important things. This is what the Bible tells us to do. And every time you do this, you release oxytocin! Wow. That is so cool! And so, we live this oxytocin lifestyle.
Also, we release oxytocin through eating. That's why it's so important (that doesn't mean just eating a sandwich in the car). No, it's eating together, sitting around a table together. The togetherness, the release of togetherness and discussion and fellowship and heart to heart talking, that releases oxytocin.
It's not just eating. It's eating and fellowshipping. It brings a calming. It's stress relieving. That's why it's so important, lovely, precious mothers, to make sure we prepare meals, that we set them on the table, and we gather the family.
We don't ever allow our family, our children, to sit around anywhere in the house eating their meals. No! Meals are to be eaten together. Together! Just get it together.
I just wrote yesterday on my Facebook. By the time you hear this podcast, it will be way, way, way, way down, but I wrote about how our table is an altar. If you want to just read what I wrote, you can email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. I'm always happy to send it to you. I haven't got time to go into that now. But I want to remind you that it's also a place of releasing oxytocin.
Of course, lovemaking in marriage, that's one of the greatest ways we release oxytocin, which is so wonderful. That's why you don't do it every now and then. It should be a very regular part of your lives. Even scientific studies say that this does not happen with people with one-night stands. The releasing of oxytocin through lovemaking happens in a stable marriage, where the husband and wife are continually together.
And of course, embracing children. Oxytocin is involved in childbirth, yes, even in birthing children. Oxytocin is a very powerful hormone. And also, in the afterglow of childbirth. Oh, have you experienced that? I cannot think of anything more incredible, of that incredible high! “The high,” also called the “afterglow,” that you have after you have given birth. Oh, it is so incredible! It's amazing!
Of course, you don't get that if you haven't gone through the birth process. Many will want to get panned out, and make sure they can't feel anything, and they don't really go through the labor. And they miss out! They don't know this incredible joy and high of the afterglow of childbirth. That's oxytocin too.
And then, of course, when you nurse your baby! Oh, precious ladies! When you nurse your babies, you're releasing oxytocin! And you're also releasing prolactin, too. Both are wonderful hormones.
If you're nursing, dear mother, oh, just embrace it with all your heart. Love this season of nursing your baby and don't try to stop it! Squeeze out as much oxytocin as you can! Because it's such a wonderful, calming, stress-relieving hormone!
God is so amazing! You see, He gives this hormone to mothers when they've have a little baby. It's stress-relieving. It's calming. It's bonding. It's loving. It's this hormone that makes you more motherly, and it also calms you.
Have you noticed, I think you'll notice this if you've got quite a few children, you may not notice it so much with your first baby? But when you have two or three around you, and they're all crying, and this one wants you, and this one's having a fight with another one! Oh goodness me, you feel like tearing your hair out! And then the baby cries! Ooooh!
And you pick up the baby and the milk lets down. Oooh, you relax. It's oxytocin. You see, God, the Giver of life, the Giver of blessings, gives you oxytocin to enable you in your mothering. Don't you love Him? Isn't God so good?
Prolactin, this is an amazing hormone, too. In fact, science says the more you feed your baby, the more motherly you'll become, because every time you nurse your baby, you release prolactin. And it's a very motherly hormone. It's also a very, very protective hormone. Oh my, when you are nursing your baby, you are a protective mother! You are guarding, watching over your baby! Look out! This is why a nursing mother finds it so hard to leave her baby because she has prolactin!
So, embrace this time. Oh, dear mother, remember you are actually, the Bible says, you are a suckling mother. Do you know that passage? I'm just thinking of it now, in Matthew 19. Let me go to it. The Pharisees, they came to Jesus and were tempting Him, and asking Him about divorce. And Jesus answered them in verse four.
He said: “Have you not read? That He which made them in the beginning made them male and female?” We all know that Scripture. We read it, and we don't think too much about it, because we say, “Yes, of course! He made us male and female.”
But when we look into the Greek word, oh wow! We see something so interesting, because the main word for women in the New Testament is the word, oh my, what IS that word now? Um, I'm just forgetting it. (It’s gune, meaning “woman or wife”).
But there's a different word used here. It's only used in this passage when Jesus spoke these words, and in Romans 1. It comes from the root word thele, which means “the nipple of a woman's breast.” The noun of this word means just “a woman's breast, or a suckling mother.” The verb means “to suckle a babe at the breast.”
Ladies, that's the word that is used in this passage. Isn't that amazing? Jesus was saying that when He made male and female, He made the female to be a suckling mother. Oh yes, this is only just a season of your life. But in a mother who embraces mothering, it will be quite a few years, quite a lengthy season. And as this becomes part of her life, she will continue to be a suckling mother as she suckles others (spiritually) and brings comfort and blessings to them. It's who we are as women, physically, literally, suckling mothers! But then also innately just nurturing and mothering. This is what it's all about.
The word for “male” is also interesting. It's a word that means “to lift up, to lift up a weight.” It's talking about a man who is stronger and able to lift heavier weights than the woman. It's talking about the greater brute strength of a man. So, these things come into the Greek words that are used there.
So, ladies, are you nursing? Don't try to wean too soon. No, let your baby nurse as long as your baby wants to nurse. Some babies might just want to wean at one year. Some may want to wean at two years. But some, they like to linger on for three, or even four years or so.
Of course, you're not nursing a little child like a little baby. No, it may be that little night time snack, or when they're very sick, or when they're hurting, or when they're just frightened. They still have that beautiful relationship. Just wean when they taper off, when they are ready to wean.
And don't schedule your nursing, and only nurse, well, at certain times. My goodness me! That is ridiculous. Have you ever seen in your life an animal ever doing that? “Well, I have to have my three-hourly or four-hourly schedule, and that's the only time I can feed”?
No, you watch a little lamb with its mother. It nurses a little and goes off a little way. Then it comes back and has a little nibble again. This little lamb nurses off and on all day. You watch that with all the animals, mammals. That's just how they nurse. It's just a natural way.
You think, “Oh goodness me! I just fed that baby about seven minutes ago, and it's still crying! Oh goodness me!” But you see, darling ladies, nursing your baby is so much more than only feeding your baby. No, nursing your baby is mothering your baby.
And so, when your baby is crying, and it's fretful, and you don't even know what's wrong, you can put the baby to the breast. As you do that, maybe you'll put it to the side that's a little emptier, because they're wanting to suck. It's not because they are always wanting to get milk.
They're wanting to suck. It's satisfying. It's comforting. It's consoling. You're bringing comfort and consolation and comfort to your baby. That's what mothering is all about, not just feeding at certain times. It's total mothering.
And as you do that, you are constantly flooded with oxytocin. And so, you live this beautiful oxytocin lifestyle. Isn't it wonderful? That's another amazing thing, too, that happens when you nurse this way.
God gives a picture of this in Isaiah chapter 66, in the very last book of Isaiah. God is giving a picture. It's an allegory about Jerusalem. But He likens Jerusalem to a nursing mother. And as we read these words about Jerusalem, it's amazing. We don't read anything about feeding a baby.
But this is what we read. I'm just turning to it now . . . all right, verse 11. “That ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations, that ye may milk out and be delighted with the abundance of her glory. For thus saith the Lord, 'Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream; then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and dandled upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted.’”
And so, as we read that, what are the words that we read? We read comfort, console, peace, delight. And we read about, not only a little newborn baby, but a baby that's being dandled on our knees, and carried on our side. An older baby, a toddler, still nursing at the breast.
Because it's mothering, it's beyond just feeding, but as we do feed, do this, mother like this, we feed our baby, and the baby gets plump and cuddly and fat and chubby, and so beautiful. And also, guess what? We actually have natural contraception! Wow!
Now, once again, time is going, so perhaps we'll talk a little bit about that next time, because I know you've got lots of qualms about that. People say, “Oh, I was nursing my baby, and I conceived!” Well, yes, that can happen. But let's talk about it more, shall we, and find out a few things.
All right, we'll do that at next time. So. let's pray.
“Father, we thank You, that as mothers together, young mums, middling, older, and even the teens and children listening, because Lord God, these truths are for us as women. And we need to know, Lord, Your plan and Your heart.
I pray that You will minister to them and bless them, Lord, with Your wonderful, wonderful Word. Oh God, precious mums who are nursing their babies, I pray that You will fill them with joy, the joy of being able to nurse, and to be who You created them to be. To receive these beautiful hormones, oxytocin and prolactin, and all the blessings You pour out.
Lord, as older mothers, help us to be encouragers and teachers of the right way for the younger generation, I pray. In the precious Name of Jesus, Amen.”
One Scripture as I close. We read it this morning in our family devotions. And it says in Jeremiah 10:23: “Oh Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” How true.
Ladies, we don't want to walk according to the steps of this world. Let's walk according to the steps God has chosen for us and that He reveals to us in His Word. Amen.
P.S. To read all the points about oxytocin, go to: https://tinyurl.com/StressFreeWorld