PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | Episode 76 – THE GLORY OF WOMANHOOD (PT 9)
FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell
Episode 76- THE GLORY OF WOMANHOOD- PART 9
Rocky Barrett: Welcome to the podcast, From Our Home to Yours, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Hello again ladies. I can’t believe that I still haven’t finished our point that God wants to fill the earth with His glory.
We’re going to talk a little more about it today. I want to turn to Psalm 127. This is a family psalm. I know you know it so well. Psalm 127 and Psalm 128 are family psalms. It’s good to read them frequently and go back to them because they keep us in the right place because we live in a deceived and twisted world.
It’s so easy to just get out of the way God wants us to live, but these are beautiful pictures God paints of the family and it’s good to come back to them.
Verses 3-5 of Psalm 127: “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.”
Once again, we see that word “filled.” This is what we’re talking about, these Scriptures that have this word and here it is again.
The word “happy” is a plural word in the Hebrew. It literally means “Happy, happy.” “Happy, happy” or “Very happy” is the man who has his quiver full of them.
People have different ideas of how many arrows you can have in a quiver. It all depends on how big your quiver is.
But the main thing is that this warrior (because it’s talking about our families in the context of war and a warrior whose raising sons), it says here that he will have his quiver full. Any man who is going out to war is going to want to have his quiver full because he’s not going to go out to war with one arrow in his quiver because he won’t stand much of chance staying alive. Nor will he go out to war with 1.7 arrows in his quiver, which is the average number of children per family in the US today.
That is not enough to win the war against the enemy. It’s not enough to be “more and mightier” than the enemy. So it is just natural that a warrior will want to fill his quiver. God says that man will be happy. This is the picture God gives.
It’s interesting. Lots of people laugh about it, but isn’t it sad when you hear people laughing about God’s Word and just taking it so lightly and joke about it? I’ve even heard pastors joking about this subject.
There are so many pastors today, wonderful men of God, and I’m sure that they have such great revelation and understanding on God’s Word, but somehow, they’ve never really gone into God’s Word to see what He says about having children. They’ve just imbibed what society says and what they’ve imbibed in their education growing up, so they don’t know the truth and they joke about such things.
How dare we joke about God’s Word. This is His Word.
Here is another one about having our quivers filled. Let’s go to Zechariah chapter 8:4-5. I think that this is in the context of the millennium.
It’s a beautiful Scripture: “Thus saith the Lord of hosts; There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with his staff in his hand for very age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.”
Don’t you love that picture? Full of boys and girls playing in the streets! Once again, we get a picture of God’s heart. We see as we read these words what He loves.
God loves to see children playing in the streets, happy. They’re filled! The streets are literally filled with boys and girls! Isn’t this amazing? That’s just what God loves. I think that’s a picture of the millennium. It’s not something we could even see today without a miracle.
I remember when I was growing up that we used to play in the streets. We’d come home from school, throw our bags into our houses, and go out. The other children would come out and we’d play on each other’s lawns or in the streets because it was safe back then in those days.
You really can’t, if you live in the city, allow your children to play out on the street today. You just could not do that. My, it’s just too dangerous!
In fact, can you believe it? When our first child was born in our little town of Te Puke in New Zealand, I remember when it was time for our son to have a little nap and if it was a beautiful day, I would put him in his pram.
Back in those days we had those big prams. We used to wheel our babies down the street in these big English prams. They were very beautiful with the hoods over them. In fact, when my husband and I went out to the mission field in the Philippine Islands when our son, Wesley, was only three months old, can you believe it? I took that pram.
It was so psychologically in me at that time that that’s what you had to do: You’d wheel your baby in the pram. I didn’t even know about baby carriers then. Oh, how sad!
But anyway, it was just such a nuisance to take this big pram. Because we didn’t fly, back then. We had to go by boat and so we took this. I remember one time wheeling this big beautiful English pram down the streets of third world Philippines. We were living way down on one of the islands.
Along the route would be balut, just out on the side of the road. What is balut? Those were the eggs that they would let sort of mature until they were nearly a chicken. Then they would eat it!
They would be singing out, “Balut! Balut!” and they wanted us to buy it.
But I have to tell you: I never actually ate one. I couldn’t bear the thought of eating a raw chicken in the egg.
But anyway, I remember the one time, all these little Filipino children were running behind me, because they had never seen such a thing in their lives. They were saying that they thought it was a funeral and they thought I was wheeling a hearse down the road.
But anyway, I don’t know why I did such a thing as take that all the way over there. It was a bit ridiculous.
Anyway, I would leave my little baby boy in this pram and I would leave him out on the lawn. Yes, the front lawn, not the back lawn, because there was a beautiful tree there. I would put him under the tree and when he woke up, he would see the leaves fluttering in the breeze and they would entertain him.
Our dog would sit by the pram and guard over him and I would go out to check every so often. It was safe.
You could not even think of doing such a thing today!
It was actually a lovely thing back there because it was so beautiful for babies to sleep outside and so healthy. He would come in with these rosy cheeks and it was so beautiful.
But we can’t do such things today. But one day, obviously that will happen again, because here is a prophetic Scripture of boys and girls filling the streets. This just shows the heart of God and how He loves, not just seeing one child in the street, but streets being filled with boys and girls.
We go to Luke chapter 14:23 in the New Testament. Jesus says here: “ . . .Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.”
God is the God of the full house. He wants a full house. God doesn’t want an empty eternity. He wants a full eternity. That’s why He sent His precious, beloved Son to die.
Jesus came and died so He could bring many sons into glory.
I believe, how can we have many sons in glory if we don’t bring them into the world?
A few sessions ago I talked about how some think, “Oh we don’t have to have natural children any longer, just spiritual children.” But how can we have spiritual children without having natural children? It’s when we bring natural children into the world that then these natural children can be born again and then they can be ready for eternity, to enjoy eternity forever.
We’re helping God to bring many sons into glory.
It reminds me of John 15. Of course this is speaking about the spiritual here, but it’s the same. The Bible speaks first that which is natural and then that which is spiritual. What applies in the natural applies in the spiritual. What applies in the spiritual applies in the natural.
We see that all throughout the Word of God.
In John 15:2 it tells us how He wants us to bring forth fruit: “Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.”
Do you know the progression? God is not satisfied in our spiritual lives with a little bit of fruit. He wants us to bring more fruit.
But it doesn’t stop there. We go over to verse seven: “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified [we’re talking about glory, and we’re to the praise of His glory], that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.”
God is not satisfied with fruit or more fruit. That applies in the natural and the spiritual.
I believe that because God wants His house to be filled, well, how is God’s house going to be filled if we don’t fill our houses along the way?
We fill our homes with children who then are born again by the Spirit of God and then they are sealed with the Holy Spirit and they have the earnest of the inheritance that they have an eternal inheritance and will come into glory. Amen?
Wow, well it took three sessions for me to share with you these Scriptures about how God wants us to fill the earth.
Oh, I must give you one more Scripture. It’s in Revelation. You see, we go from Genesis to Revelation and all the way through the Bible. I wrote a book called “Be Fruitful and Multiply” just writing about all the Scriptures right through from Genesis to Revelation on this subject. It is currently out of print, but you can still get it on Amazon.
We start with Genesis 1:28: “ . . . Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion.”
Then we go over to the very last book of the Bible and we see in Revelation 7:9, 10 when John looks into the eternal realm and he sees. What does he see: “ . . .I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number . . .”
See, this is the fruit, dear ladies. This is the vision that God has. He wants us to be fruitful, to fill the earth, to bring forth the natural fruit so that they can be born again and be conformed to the image of His Son and come into the eternal realm.
God doesn’t want a little few in His house; He wants a multitude and John saw that: “ . . . and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.”
Amen?
But then we look at the negative. We have been looking at the positive.
I don’t think that this is the testimony of any of you that I am talking to today, but we still need to talk about it because it is prevalent around us. So many, even in the church, are seeking to stop having children. What happens when we stop having children? We deprive ourselves.
Apart from salvation there is truly no other greater gift we can receive from God than a little bundle of cuddles and love. There is no greater gift than a little baby. So precious! What greater gift can a young couple receive?
This morning Arden and Esther came in. He was setting up the computer for us to do the podcast. They had their little darling baby, Gethsemane, with them. Oh and to see them so happy with this little baby, this little baby that is a miracle that God has given to them. There is nothing more precious.
Every baby that we say no to, WE DEPRIVE OURSELVES.
Sometimes when you have two or three little ones around you, or even four little ones around you, you think, “Oh! I couldn’t have any more! I’m just overwhelmed! I’m just up to the top and I can’t do one more thing!”
And it is true; I think that when you have your first two to four little ones, that is your most overwhelming time of motherhood because you don’t have older ones to help you. You’re doing everything for them.
Now I still believe that these are glorious days. I look back and I remember when I had three under 17 months and four under four and oh my! They were such busy days. I hardly had time to go to the toilet or I hardly had time to sleep.
But I look back and they were glorious days. Oh yes, they were sleep-deprived, and both my husband and I were tired. But I would do them all over again because they were still precious days.
Make the most of these precious days, mother, because they go by so quickly. You think, oh, I’ll remember these sweet little times and the sweet little thing my little one said. But the years go on and they fade, and you forget.
I wish I had written so many things down. Of course you’re so busy you don’t even get time to write them down! You need to have a fulltime recorder, don’t you, who you can say to, “Oh, write this down please!” so you can remember it forever.
Make the most of these precious times.
Don’t stop then, because if God does bless you (because it is God Who gives the baby, it is God Who gives conception) with another baby you will find that these little ones are getting older and you have helpers. Everyone wants to hold the baby. They can do little jobs and get this for Mummy and get that for Mummy.
You’re sitting on the rocking chair nursing your baby and you can have little ones running around getting things for you, doing this and doing that. You can also mother them at the same time as you sit on your rocking chair, nursing your baby. You can say. “Come children, come and gather round!” If you have too many you can gather on the sofa and you can all read a story together. Oh, they can be such precious times!
I have written down nine ways we are deprived when we stop having children.
The next one: WE DEPRIVE OUR CHILDREN.
The greatest gift we can give our children is another sibling, a friend for life. The more children in the home means the more fun, the more fellowship, the more friendship, the more exciting things that happen! Oh! Family life is fun!
That’s why God said “He makes families like a flock” because life in a flock is so much more fun and glorious (Psalm 107:41-43).
Each new child that comes into the family is another blessing. Children would rather have a baby than another toy which brakes and gets lost and is soon forgotten about. But no, they have another baby and another friend for life.
My children are all grown now, but I see how they are friends. They are best friends.
I remember one time going to a special function at a church. We were all going as a family. The food was there, and people were there talking to one another. I was going around saying hello to this one and that.
I noticed some of our family members, our children and their spouses, just sitting together in a group. I thought, “Oh goodness me, what are they doing?”
I went over and said, “Hey guys, aren’t you going around talking to everybody?”
They said, “Oh no, we love each other best.”
They were a bit naughty, weren’t they? But it is true, they find more fun just fellowshipping together than going out and talking to someone else, which, of course, they really should have done.
They are best friends and as they were growing up, you know, some would be closer friends. Then as they grew older it would change and they would be more friends with another one in the family. It just changes at different times throughout family life.
WE DEPRIVE OUR GRANDPARENTS.
I meet so many grandparents who are waiting for grandchildren. They don’t have any. They raised maybe two children, sent them off to college, and they got brainwashed about family. Sometimes they’re not even married yet and if they’re married, now they’re doing their careers and they don’t have time for children.
These grandparents don’t have grandchildren. The glory of grandparents is their grandchildren and they’re deprived.
Sometimes I meet grandparents and I will say, “How many grandchildren do you have?” They will put on such big smiles and beam with joy and say, “Oh, we’ve got two!” They’re so happy because, oh, at last, they’ve got two grandchildren. They are the joy of their lives.
But you know, grandparents are meant to have many grandchildren.
Sometimes I’ll say to them, “Oh that’s so wonderful. Currently we’re at 48 grandchildren.” They just about faint on the spot.
WE DEPRIVE SOCIETY.
Children who are raised in the ways of God have the opportunity to bless society and bring God’s love, light, truth, and salvation to this hurting world. This is how we fill the earth with God’s glory: bringing children into this world and raising them for God.
This is the way we impact the world. The more children you have, the more you impact the world for His glory.
If we say no to children, WE DEPRIVE GENERATIONS TO COME.
We often forget about this, don’t we? We just get caught up in the now and get taken up in our circumstances and what we think we can cope with now.
But family is far bigger than just today. We are building a family for the generations to come. We are mothering for generations to come.
When we say no to one baby, we are not saying no to one baby. We are saying no to a dynasty because that baby will grow up to have children and more children hopefully. What children will their children have and who will they be? How will they affect society? How will they impact the world for God?
It is so huge.
I think of that Scripture in Hebrews. It talks about Levi who was the great grandson of Abraham and it says that Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek while he was yet in the loins of Abraham (Hebrews 7:9, 10).
Now Abraham had not even thought of Levi. Goodness me, he wasn’t even in his brain! And yet God saw Levi already in his loins. God thinks far beyond our human thinking. He thinks like God because He is God.
We don’t think like God because we are human. God said that Levi paid tithes. Now who is Levi? I’m sure you know. Abraham had Isaac, that’s second generation; Isaac had Jacob and Esau, so that’s third generation; then Jacob, this is fourth generation, has his twelve sons and one of them is Levi.
So this is fourth generation down from Abraham and God is already sees His name in his loins.
God sees the generation to come. God sees those whom He has planned to come into the world before they come into the world.
And yet so many of these destined human beings are not here because our parents, our grandparents and even God’s people in this world have said no.
Who else do we deprive? WE DEPRIVE THE CHURCH.
Just as every shepherd wants to increase his flock, every pastor wants to increase his church. Of course he tries to increase it with new converts. He has evangelistic crusades and he thinks of ways to get in new converts.
But the greatest way to grow churches is with godly families. The more children families have, the more it fills the church. What an exciting church! A church filled with growing families is the most exciting church to belong to.
Next one: WE DEPRIVE GOD because God is looking for godly offspring to come from every marriage union.
In Malachi 2:14-15 it says: “And what does God want from your union?”
Then we look and we read the answer and we hear God speaking and He says: “I want a godly seed.”
In other words, “I look for godly children.” That’s what He looks for from our marriage union.
That word godly is the Hebrew word Elohim. It’s one of the names of God. It’s the first name of God that is used in the Bible.
“In the beginning God . . .”, which is ‘Elohim.
Now God says, “I want ‘Elohim, children in My likeness. Children who will show forth My glory and My image on the earth.
So when we say “No, no, no God! I don’t want any more children,” we think we are just saying no to having another child. But no, we are saying no to God because He is looking for this godly seed. He’s looking for more children to fill the earth with His glory.
Next, WE DEPRIVE GOD OF HIS CREATIVE POWER.
Because God is a Creator He doesn’t stop creating and He loves to create new life.
Every new baby He creates is a new creation. He doesn’t create robots. He doesn’t create people just the same. Every single new life is a new creation.
When you have a new baby that God gives to you, there has never ever been another person in the history of the world like this baby God gives to you. It’s a new creation that God has delighted to create. He will never ever create another baby just like this one. Even twins— they’re not the same. Even identical twins are not the same.
My sister-in-law is an identical twin. Of course I know them both and when we first met, we couldn’t tell them apart.
But as we got to know them, we saw the differences in them. One has a higher voice than the other. The one has this different than the other. There are so many differences.
(Did you ever listen to Podcast No. 3, where my sister-in-law, Judy, tells the most amazing story of how she and her twin sister were switched at birth and it wasn’t noticed until they were about two years old—and what happened after that)!
Even in identical twins there is distinction because God is a fresh Creator and He loves to create. We deprive Him of creating this new incredible human being.
My daughter Serene, many of you know Serene, and you listen to the THM Poddy and you get to know Serene and Pearl from Trim Healthy Mama.
Serene has 14 children, nine of which are biological. She says to me, “Oh mom, I do hope that the Lord will bless me with maybe two more children.”
She is hoping, as she is getting older (43 years now) that she might be able to fit two more in if the Lord blesses because it’s always God Who does it.
She said, “It’s just so exciting! I can’t wait to see what this new baby will be like!” Because everyone one of their babies, like your precious children, each one is so different.
I mean, she has children who are very dark. They have this very dark olive skin and they’re so beautiful. Then Vision popped out and he’s got paler skin with freckles and red hair! He took after me! Oh goodness me! He doesn’t even look like his brothers.
She had all dark brown-eyed babies, but then her last two babies came and little Remmy came out with light blue eyes and now little Solly, her latest little baby who will be two in the new year has these bright blue eyes. She just looks so different than the others! You just don’t know where on earth she came from.
It’s just so exciting because you never know what God is going to give you. It’s just amazing, isn’t it?
Lastly, WE DEPRIVE ETERNITY.
I have been talking about Hebrews 2:10 where Jesus came and died for the express purpose to bring many sons into glory. Oh, that is His whole purpose to fill eternity with redeemed sons and daughters. How glorious.
Do you know, precious mothers, that as we say no to a baby, we deprive a little child of the glories of eternity.
I don’t think any of us, including me, have a clue of what we are depriving a child from. Eternity will be beyond what our minds can ever even fathom on this earth. We can never even fathom the glory of it.
This will be the ultimate glory and it’s for eternity.
What a blessing to bring sons and daughters into the world, to teach them of Jesus and teach them of how they can ask Jesus into their hearts and be born again and teach them of the ways of God and prepare them for eternity.
How glorious to bring sons and daughters into eternity. They can experience eternity.
When we get to eternity, we will wonder how we could have ever deprived children of coming into this glorious place. Why did we say no? We could have brought another child into eternity.
Let’s just get our minds off this humanistic age, see God’s glorious plan, and see that all this talking about children is all for eternity, the glory of eternity. Amen?
Shall we pray?
“Dear Father, we thank You for Your glorious plan of redemption.
“Dear Lord Jesus, we thank You that You were willing to leave the glory of the eternal world and come to this sin-sick, hurting world and become a man and humble Yourself and become obedient to death, even the death of the cross so You could bring us into eternity.
“That is Your joy. For the joy that was set before You, You endured the cross.
“Oh God, we don’t have to endure the cross. Sometimes we endure some sleepless nights and we endure some of this and that. But we don’t endure the cross.
“Oh God, give us strength to endure t our little wee trials and challenges we face as we raise our families, for the joy of eternity and knowing that we’re raising sons and daughters for eternity.
“Help us to understand Your eternal plan. Take us from this earthly understanding and we will live in the glory of that heavenly understanding. We ask it in the name of Jesus.
“I pray, Father, that You will bless every mother listening today, every daughter, and every grandmother. Pour out Your blessing upon their home, their marriage, and their family.
“I pray that you will give them grace and strength to build their families and make them strong so that every family will become a light in the midst of this deceived world.
“I pray that they will stand for truth and not be intimidated by their antagonists but will stand for Your truth and bring Your glory into their community in the name of Jesus. Amen.”