PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | Episode 38 – How Can We Change the World – Part 4
FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell
Episode 38: How Can We Change the World? Part 4
Rocky Barrett: Welcome to the podcast, From Our Home to Yours, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Hello ladies. Well, Arden has just come in to do the podcast, so I’ve had to stop everything else I was doing. I was actually doing tomatoes. We were out in the garden to harvest our tomatoes. Oh, it’s such a wonderful time of the year! I love harvesting from my garden. Although, I have to admit, my garden isn’t quite as good this year as usual. I’m not sure why.
But at least we’re getting lots of tomatoes. I had my Above Rubies girls helping me. We were cutting them up and then I put them in the big pot and simmer them a little.
When they’re cool I puree them in the blender, put them in plastic bags and put them in the freezer. It’s so quick and easy. Then throughout the year I’m able to get out a bag of tomatoes, pureed and ready to go, and put them in my soups, casseroles, or whatever I’m making. ( I have also canned or “bottled” loads of bottles of tomatoes too).
So I’m using lovely tomatoes out of the garden all through the year. But when I have come to the end of my harvest, I actually don’t eat another raw tomato until next year’s harvest. After eating such lovely tomatoes out of the garden I can’t bear to buy them from the shop. They just don’t taste anything like homegrown, do they?
So we were doing that, but now Arden has come in with a new mic, so I hope this sounds really good! The other mic we were using belonged to THM. Arden now needs that down at the factory where the girls will be doing their YouTube cooking videos. Arden does all their filming for them.
We have now had to buy one here for ourselves, and Arden says it will be better than the THM Poddy! What do you think about that? I hope it sounds really good.
Any way, it’s so good to be with you again today. It’s hard to believe that we have now finished our series on “How Do We Change the World?”
Did you know that I had talked about this for 24 weeks? Can you believe it? That’s how long we talked about how we can change the world as wives and mothers. I had 20 points.
By the way, one of our lovely listeners emailed me and asked if I would make a list of the points that I could send to her. I have now completed that.
But, lovely lady who wrote to me, if you’re listening, I have a big confession to make— now I can’t find your email. So if you’re listening, would you email again, and I will send them to you?
If any others are listening would like to get a list of all the points, just email meat This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and I will send them to you.
Now, what happened along the way was that we lost two of our podcasts. You may have realized that as we were going along. We thought they were all recorded, but somehow they could not be found on Arden’s computer. So they were gone— forever.
I am now going to do them again. There were four points, numbers 9, 10, 11 and 12. They were podcasts 38 and 39, which I am going to do again, although I can’t remember what I told you when I first did them.
But we’ll do those points again because sometimes people like to go back and listen to the podcasts again. Some are just hearing about the podcast. Or if you have missed some from this series on “How do we Change the World?” you can go and listen to the whole series— that’s 24 podcasts! Any way, if you want to do that marathon, you’re so welcome to.
So now we’ll catch up. Today we’re going to do what was podcast 38.
The point in this podcast, which was No. 9 in our series, was about salt.
No. 9. TASTY SALT, NOT BLAND
God not only wants us to be the salt of the earth, but to be tasty salt.
I’m sure you know the passage in Matthew 5:13 where it says: “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.”
We have to watch, dear ladies, that we don’t lose our salty flavor. If salt is insipid or bland it is good for nothing. What is the point of even using it? It may as well be cast out.
The word for “if it has lost its flavor” is actually the word “foolish.” It just means “how foolish for salt to lose its flavor.”
If we, who are meant to be the salt of the earth, lose our flavor or lose our saltiness, we’re really good for nothing.
The Passion Translation (TPT) translates it as “bland.” If the salt becomes bland, it’s no good for anything. I picked up on that word bland. Bland— it’s such a boring word, isn’t it?
I don’t like bland food, do you? Well, there was a time when that’s all I was used to was bland food. I come from New Zealand. They have got more flavorful food there now, but back in my day it was just the same thing, meat and vegetables.
We’d cook up a roast of lamb and there would be vegetables with it. But there was no actual spiciness or spices added to the food. I loved it!
But then I started to go to other countries where they had hot food that was quite hard to get used to. And then we adopted our Liberian children, and my, they loved hot food. They loved to have not jalapeño peppers, but habanero peppers.
I used to grow habanero peppers for them and even hotter ones if I could get them. They loved them in their food. Every dish they wanted their habanero peppers.
I’d make it pretty spicy and we got used to spicy food when they were living with us (they’ve all left home now, of course, they are in their late twenties). That is when we really got used to the spicy food and we still love it spicy!
I remember my son, John—he would not only have the peppers in his food. After harvesting the peppers, I would dehydrate them and then I would put them in the blender and whiz them up into powder. Then he would add a tablespoon of habanero peppers to his food and not even blink an eyeball.
But any way, we do like spicy food. We love Indian food. If Colin and I go out for a meal for a special occasion, we usually choose to go to Indian because of the curry flavors— we love that.
My son, Rocklyn, and his family they are Indian freaks! If he doesn’t go to Indian every week he goes through withdrawal! Sometimes he goes more than once because he loves the flavor of it.
I remember when my oldest son, Wes, was married, years and years ago, he decided to have Indian food for his wedding reception. Well, that was in New Zealand and it was a failure because most of the people were not used to it and they couldn’t handle the hot flavor. They were all drinking Coke and water and whatever they could find to try and get down this hot food!
But we’re all used to it now and we love hot food. I usually don’t like just bland food.
I think, too, in our daily lives we should be salty. Flavorful. Bringing flavor to everyone we meet. Of course it starts in our home. Everything starts in our home. This podcast is From My Home to Yours, so I talk about my home and we go into your home.
This is where we live and so this is where our saltiness has to work. It has to work in our marriage.
Now, what kind of marriage do you have, precious wife and mother? Is your marriage bland? You know, that horrible, boring word BLAND.
It’s easy to get into a rut in your marriage. I have to confess, there have been times when I’ve got into a rut.
My husband and I have always loved one another, but there’s sometimes when we’ve got so used to each other, have taken each other for granted, and we’ve just become a bit boring and bland.
But our marriages are not meant to be like that. They’re meant to be spicy! That’s the opposite to bland. We have to try and keep them spicy.
They don’t just become spicy without us doing something. We have to make them spicy, make them salty, and make them flavorful.
When we’re making a dish it can be bland or if we add some spices, we add some cayenne pepper, curry, or some other flavors, we spice up the dish. We make it more enticing to eat and more exciting.
That’s what we have to do with our marriage. If you’re getting a little bit boring or you’re getting into a rut, think of some ways to spice it up. Just think of some ways you could show love to your husband or some creative ways you could make your life a little bit more interesting together.
Do something different! You don’t have to pay a lot of money to go out to some exotic place to spice up your marriage. You could even do it at home! It’s amazing if you just get your brain thinking of the creative things you could do in your home or around your home or not too far away from your home. It’s amazing!
I’m just going to let you think. But ask the Lord for some imagination and some creative ideas to make your marriage spicy.
I love the Scripture in Proverbs 5:15-19. It’s here talking to the husband, actually, but of course it includes the wife because this can’t happen to him without his wife: “Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well . . ..”
Most commentators say that this is an allegory about private property or common property. Now in a marriage, our marriage is private property. It is for our own. We drink waters out of our own marriage, our own well. We confine satisfaction and excitement in our own marriage. We don’t have to go out and find it in other places. It’s amazing how you can find it in your own marriage!
“Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets. Let them be only thine own . . ..” Do you get that? That denotes possession, personal possession “.And not strangers' with thee. Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth . . ..” That’s an interesting phrase, too. We often read this phrase in the Bible. We often read “the children of your youth” and “the husband of your youth.”
The Bible talks a lot about that. Back in Bible days they married young. They didn’t wait till they were older. They got married when they were young.
In fact, in Jesus’ day, most young men were married by the time they were 18. Now that’s different than today when the average age for men is 29 years and 28 for women. I think they’re getting a little bit on the shelf there.
Sometimes I think that some people don’t meet that person that God has for them until their late twenties, or maybe their thirties. But on the whole I think that most couples meet when they’re young.
I don’t think they have to wait around to get married and go to college first, get their home first, or do this first and that first. No! They’re meant to get married young and do it all together.
We’re not meant to waste those beautiful, youthful years in our young twenties when we’re full of energy and the joy of life. These are the most wonderful years to have children.
Often as we get older it is harder to conceive. Sometimes this can be a ploy of the enemy who wants couples to be kept from having children and bringing forth the godly seed.
But here we see again, the wife of thy YOUTH and if we look up the word “youth”, we see that it just means “to be adolescent, in your adolescence.”
It carries on: “Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.”
And how can the husband be ravished unless his wife ravishes him?
So in our marriages we have to watch that we don’t get into that boring, bland rut, but we keep that spice and we make times to ravish our husbands.
Some of the other translations say to “intoxicate him,” “for him to be transported with delight. “Another translation says: “the ecstatic joy of a captivated lover.”
So, not only do we keep our marriages salty and spicy, but what about our mothering? Oh my, that can get pretty bland and boring, too, can’t it?
We just get up in the morning, we do our duty for the day, we do the household mundane tasks, watch over our children making sure they don’t die and don’t kind of kill themselves with all the things they can do!
No, there’s far more to it than that, isn’t there? I believe that we are meant to be spicy, exciting mothers!
Our children shouldn’t have to look at a boring, downcast face. They should look at a happy mother full of excitement—“Children! Hey! Why don’t we do this? I’ve got this neat idea—come on! This is what we’re going to do today!”
When you go to bed at night, sometimes as you’re going off to sleep, or if you’re having trouble getting to sleep, start thinking about “What are some exciting things I could do with my children?”
Maybe it’s your little ones. Or maybe you have middling ones or even bigger ones. But think of some different, new and exciting things that you can do. Become a spicy mother.
Even at our mealtimes I think it’s a good idea, at least once a week (you can do it more than that), to think of something special we can do at our mealtime when we all come together to sit around the meal table.
I could just start you off with one or two ideas.
When our children were little, or not just little, but younger or middling, I would say, “Okay children! We are going to have Red Night. I want you all to go to your bedrooms and find red things. When I say supper is ready, you’ve got to come out all dressed in red. Nothing else!”
They would think that was so exciting and they would have fun finding all their red clothes! I would set the table with a red tablecloth, red plates, red knives and forks. I would make all the food red. I would color the potatoes or the rice with coloring to make them red. I would cook beats and all the things that are red. Then we would have red jelly for dessert or other things that were red. Anything I could find that was red.
In fact, from time to time we would do different colors. I think we went through every color of the rainbow! It was just fun! Children love doing things like that.
You would have to prepare for this a bit before, but maybe another night you could say, “Okay children, today we’re going to think of something special you can write to Daddy.” They can make cards and write something special to him, how they love him and what they love about him.
They could make these beautiful cards with a picture and what they want to say. The little ones who can’t write yet, well, they can dictate to you what they want to say to Daddy, and you can write it down.
Then when he comes home and comes to the meal table, they can all have their cards, letters and pictures waiting for him and he can read them out. They love things like that. You could even do this for homeschooling. Forget all your paces and curriculums today.
Another night you may want to do special name places for all your children. I often used to do this. I would do different ones. Sometimes I would write their name, then another word underneath it that would say something special about them.
Perhaps, for example, your son’s name is Blake. You could put underneath it “Bold for God.” You could think of some little phrase starting with the same name as your child.
Or you could write a little rhyming couplet. I would often do that. I’d have to work on those a week or so ahead, thinking about each child and what I would write for them. But you can have those things ready for another special night.
Oh! There are so many ideas! I know you will think of wonderful ideas yourself.
Keep it spicy! Once a week have a spicy mealtime. I’m not saying you have to spice up your food if you like not-so-spicy food. But you can spice it up with doing fun things!
You could get your children to come dressed up as someone from a different country.
Or you can say, “Tonight I want you to find a poem that you can come with to bring to the table and read.” You could have some other idea you can ask them when you’re at the table. There are so many things you can think about.
But let’s keep our marriages and our mothering spicy, flavorful, and filled with salt! Amen?
Let’s be salty when we go out from our homes, out into the neighborhood, out to the supermarket. Let’s go with a smile on our face with the joy of the Lord upon us, ready to just speak a word for Jesus wherever we go. To speak a word for motherhood when people ask us about our children. Yes, we’ve always got a little seed of truth ready to share with someone. We’re impacting the world wherever we go. Amen?
The next point is . . .
No. 10. FERVENTLY PRAYING
We all know that God wants us to pray. The Bible exhorts us to pray. But how often do we pray?
My sister called a few days ago and said, “I’ve got a joke for you. I heard it on a podcast I was listening to.” She told it to me. Actually, I didn’t think it was a joke— I thought it was very profound and challenging.
But anyway, this couple invited another couple to their place for a meal and they had a lovely meal together. After they had gone the wife said to her husband, “You know. I’ve got a spoon missing. I wonder if that guy stole my spoon.”
I was thinking when she told me that story, “Goodness me! I wouldn’t even notice a spoon missing!” We have a lot of spoons because we have so many people living here and coming and going.
“Anyway, this wife, she noticed the spoon that was missing.
Well a year went by and they invited this couple over again. They were good friends and they invited them over again for a meal.
She thought to herself, “You know what? I think I am going to ask him about this spoon.” So she said to him, “By the way, did you by mistake take a spoon when you were last here?”
“Oh no,” he said, “I put it in your Bible!”
Oh my, was it a year since she had opened her Bible?”
I thought that was a little bit more than a joke. That was pretty profound, wasn’t it?
That was talking about our Bibles, but I think the same applies to prayer. How often are we praying?
Our church fellowship that we have here is called a “House of Prayer.” We love that because we believe in prayer. But I think all of our homes should be called a house of prayer—don’t you?
Jesus said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer.” Now I’m sure that you have dedicated your home to the Lord.
If we have dedicated our homes to the Lord, if we have dedicated our homes to Him, it should be a home of prayer, a place where prayer is part of the place. It’s quite normal to pray throughout the day. We also have special times that we pray.
In our home, we put aside every morning and every evening to pray as a family. We do that after breakfast and after supper.
You may have different times in your family. But I love those times because I believe the table is a place where we feed the whole man. We feed the body, the soul and the spirit. We like to eat and feed the body, but we love to open the Word of God to feed the soul and spirit. Then we love to pray because that’s all a part of our spirit just communicating with God.
So we love to do that every morning and every evening, which is also a Biblical thing. It’s a Biblical pattern, the Morning and Evening Principal. You can go to my webpage, aboverubies.org and do a search for the Morning and Evening Principle. There you can read up all the Scriptures that tell you about this wonderful principle.
God not only wants us to pray, He wants us to pray FERVENTLY. Do you go to prayer meetings where sometimes everyone is praying, but no one is really praying fervently?
I love to be in a prayer meeting where people are praying fervently, don’t you? In James 5:16 it says: “ . . . The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”
It doesn’t just say “prayer avails much,” but the FERVENT prayer of a righteous man avails much.
The Amplified Version says: “ . . . The earnest (heartfelt, continued) prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available [dynamic in its working].”
The Passion Translation says: “ . . . tremendous power is released through the passionate, heartfelt prayer of a godly believer!”
God not only wants us to pray fervently. He wants us to pray CONTINUALLY.
I have got lots of references for that, but we won’t have time to go through them all. Although I will read Colossians 4:2 which says: “Continue in prayer . . ..”
God wants us to pray PERSEVERINGLY.
He wants us to pray EARNESTLY.
He wants us to pray BELIVEINGLY.
He wants us to pray EXCEEDIGNLY.
These are all Scriptures. First Thessalonians 3:8-0 says: “For now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord. For what thanks can we render to God again for you, for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God; Night and day praying exceedingly that we might see your face, and might perfect that which is lacking in your faith?”
Night and day, praying exceedingly. And who was Paul praying for? He was praying for the believers in Thessalonica. He also says here “For now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord.” He was praying for that end. I often think of Paul praying for his new believers who had just come to Christ. They weren’t his flesh and blood, but they were so precious to him.
What about our children? Isn’t that how you feel? That’s just how I feel. That’s my longing for my children and my grandchildren. I can live if they stand fast in the Lord.
My greatest prayers and longings for them are that they will stand fast in the Lord. I pray that they will be passionate for God and never be mediocre or ordinary, but totally sold out to God, to prayer, and to His Kingdom. That is what we long for and so that is what we pray for.
I go back a chapter in 1 Thessalonians, chapter two, and here Paul uses “night and day” again. My! He just poured out his life, didn’t he? Poured out his life “night and day.”
We read from 1 Thessalonians 2:7 where Paul is speaking as a man, but he is speaking as a mother: “But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children.” He longed for them like a mother longs after her children.
We continue in 1 Thessalonians 2:8, 9: “So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us. For ye remember, brethren, our labor and travail: for laboring night and day [here he has this night and day again.], because we would not be chargeable unto any of you . . ..”
This is how he poured out his life for these young believers. Night and day praying for them. Night and day laboring for them, just as a mother pours out her life for her child.
Yet sometimes we can complain when we have to get up in the night to our babies and to our children. And they’re our flesh and blood.
I was always challenged by this Scripture as a young mother. If Paul could do this for his believers, how much more can we do it for our very own children that God has given to us, to nurture and to train and prepare for His purposes?
So, here we go, praying EXCEEDINGLY. The Greek word “exceedingly” is perissos. It means “exceeding some number or measure, over and above, more than is necessary, much more than all, surpassing the ordinary.”
We’ve talked about this meaning quite a few times in our series, “How do We Change the World?” because it comes up so much and this is the meaning. So much of our walk with God is never meant to be ordinary. It’s meant to be more than the ordinary, surpassing the ordinary, over and above.
This comes to our prayer life. It’s the same word here, the word that is used for our prayer life.
What is our prayer life like, dear ladies . . . dear mothers . . . dear wives . . . dear grandmothers? Are we praying? I know I long to pray more. I don’t pray as much as I long to pray.
We do have our time of prayer every morning and every evening. I just thank the Lord that we set aside this time. There may be days we pray more than this, but at least we have those two times.
If I didn’t put those two times aside and establish those two times morning and evening as a habit in our home I wonder, how much would we pray? Because life is busy— it just takes hold of us. It takes over us sometimes. If we don’t establish those times, we don’t take time to pray, let alone pray exceedingly. Praying night and day.
It’s so good, too, to have a prayer meeting in your home. Have you ever had a prayer meeting in your home? You can gather people to pray.
We’ve been married for 56 years, and most of our lives we’ve had a prayer meeting in our home. We’ve lived in different countries—New Zealand, Australia, and now here in the USA.
We’ve had prayer meetings for different needs. For years I had a prayer meeting for Above Rubies in my home. I had a prayer meeting for praying for Israel in my home.
Currently we have a prayer meeting praying for whatever need we need to pray for. We do pray for Israel, we pray for the persecuted saints, we pray for our nation, we pray for the nations of the world.
We came out to the land here in Primm Springs about 19 years ago now, and we started our prayer meeting here in 2001, so that’s 18 years ago now. We’ve never ever, ever, ever stopped this prayer meeting. For 18 years we’ve been gathering together.
And it’s been different over the years. When we first started we gathered in neighbors around us who were Christians. They all came from different denominations. Some were Methodists, Seventh Day Adventists, and Pentecostals, and it’s amazing because we all came together, and we all prayed in unity.
Our hearts were concerned for our area that we lived, for the nation, and for all the other needs that God would put on our hearts. Some of those neighbors have passed away now, some have moved on and our prayer meeting is different now.
I think now our prayer meeting is mostly filled with young people! It’s just so wonderful. Often our whole lounge can be filled with young teens praying. I think this is one of the most exciting times of our prayer meeting.
You will find that you have different seasons in your life. But it’s a wonderful thing to gather people into your home to pray.
When you have a prayer meeting in your home, you don’t have to put all the children to bed because you’re having a prayer meeting. You can let them stay up. You can let your baby stay up if you want.
You can hold your baby and nurse your baby with a nursing cover and no one really knows what you’re doing. Your little toddlers can be there till they just go to sleep or you can pick them up and take them to their beds.
Your older children can stay and pray. The most wonderful thing for children is to be in a prayer meeting and learn to pray.
Because we have little ones come, often Colin will say to them at our prayer meetings, “Okay, all you young ones pray first before you go to sleep,” because lots of them throughout the prayer meeting gradually go to sleep. But they pray first and they all know how to pray.
It’s the most wonderful thing for children to be part of prayer meetings. Why would we go and put them to bed when this is the most powerful thing that they could ever do?
Let’s be motivated to pray, amen? We don’t change the world, dear ladies, by praying a few little prayers here and there. We will become world changers by being committed to prayer, wrestling in prayer, persevering in prayer, pouring out our hearts in prayer. Praying continually, perseveringly, exceedingly, which, do you remember means, “surpassing the ordinary, much more than all, more than is necessary.” You’re not going to just pray some little wee prayer; you’re going to pour out your heart.
These are the prayers that are going to change the nation and the world. Just imagine if every believing family would begin to pray for this nation, every morning and every evening at their family worship time at their family devotions.
My, the Bible says that five of you can put one hundred enemies to flight! That’s in Leviticus 26:7, 8.
Now, have you got three children? Mommy, Daddy, and three children are five of you. The Bible says five of you can put one hundred enemies to flight.
We have enemies in this nation. We need to be praying, pushing back the devil, pushing back the enemy, pushing back the evil, taking authority in the name of Jesus over the deceptions, over the evil and over all the wicked things in our nation.
As we do this, we can be nation changers.
We have prayer boxes and one of our prayer boxes is Countries and Capitals of the World. We will just pick out a card and it will have the name of the capital city and the nation. We will pray over that city and nation.
And here we are, just on the hilltop, in little Primm Springs, surrounded by trees and nobody knows what we’re doing. But I’m telling you, really, prayer is mainly hidden. But—we are affecting nations of the world. Nations that we could not even go to if we tried and if we wanted to preach the Gospel our heads would be cut off.
But we can pray and see God move because prayer has power! Let’s be those who move into world changing prayer, praying exceedingly so that we will see great and mighty things happen.
Oh, I think my greatest longing in this hour is to see revival come to our nation. I just see so many broken marriages. I see so many who have named the name of Christ walking away in rebellion. It grieves my heart. I see worldliness in the church. I see luke-warmness and my heart cries out for a revival of turning back to God. My heart cries out for the turning back of fathers and mothers to the home (Malachi 4:5, 6).
Do you have this burden on your heart? Oh, if only we would all begin to pray and pour out our hearts to God, we would see this revival come because it comes through prayer. Amen?
“Dear Father,
“We thank You that You have given us the privilege and the responsibility to pray. So many things You talk about in Your Word You tell us to then pray about them. You tell us to cry out to You.
“We ask that You would make us those who are pray-ers who pray exceedingly, who pray continually, who have such a love and a heart to pour out our hearts to You, oh God.
“I pray that You would pour out the spirit of prayer upon every precious wife and mother listening. That You would pour out the spirit of prayer upon their husbands and their children.
“Pour out the spirit of prayer upon Your people today, that we would become a praying people. For we know, O God, that it’s only as a praying people that we will be a powerful people to impact this world for You.
“We ask it in the precious name of Jesus, Amen.”