PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 201: THE LAND OF MOTHERHOOD, PT 12
LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 201: THE LAND OF MOTHERHOOD, Part 12
We talk about how to get sweet honey flowing in our marriages and homes. And also, the amazing and miraculous benefits of Manuka honey to heal the body. My grandson, Arrow Johnson, joins us today to tell his testimony of how Manuka honey saved his face from terrible burn scars.
Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to The Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Hi, ladies! We are still on the point of THE LAND THAT FLOWS WITH MILK AND HONEY, flowing with milk. Not only in nursing our babies, not only in continuing to nourish them with good, wholesome food, but also, ladies, we’re to be Word nourishers. The Word of God is also likened to milk, and also likened to honey.
We read in 1 Peter 2:2: “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye may grow thereby.”
Just as babies have to have that milk to grow, so we’ve got to give our children, our little children, our middling children, and our big children, we’ve got to give them milk so they can grow. Of course, as they grow, we’re going to pass on from milk. We’re going to give them some meat. Yes, that’s very important, because we don’t stay on milk all our lives, do we? We wean from milk onto meat. That is important, too.
As they are little, we start, even when they are little, to not only nourish them physically, but to nourish them spiritually, to nourish them with the Word. Dear mother, you are a Word nourisher.
1 Timothy 4:5. Paul writes to Timothy, saying: “You are nourished up in the words of faith, and of good doctrine.” Dear mothers, are you nourishing your children with the Word? Now, I know you are faithful mothers who give your children three meals a day, and most probably they have lots of snacks in between as well.
So how many spiritual meals do you give them a day? Well, we could even give them three. I know families who, at every mealtime, they will also read something from the Word to their children, so they’re getting fed physically and they’re getting fed spiritually.
But the minimum that we are meant to feed our children with the Word is two times a day, morning and evening. The Bible talks about the morning and evening principle. That’s a minimum. We can do more! We can do three times a day.
But the minimum is the morning and evening. I hope that you are getting into that habit in your home, where every morning and every evening, at the minimum, you will be nourishing, nourishing your children with the Word of God, with the words of faith, with good doctrine.
So many children, even in homeschooling families, can grow up, and not really know the doctrine of the Word of God. They’re not, oh yes, they know some things, but they’re not really nourished. What does it mean to be nourished?
When we nourish our little baby from the breast, and then when we go on to giving them solid food, we’re so concerned about nourishing them up and fattening them up. We always want our babies to be so fat, don’t we? We all love fat, cuddly, babies. We’re wanting to nourish them.
Do we have that same concern to nourish them up in the Words of God? Because it’s both. Our children are not just of flesh and blood. They are spirit, and that’s the most important part of who they are! That is the eternal part. That is what will live forever, and that’s what we have to be more concerned about in nourishing them up.
BECOME A WORD NOURISHER
Dear lovely moms, become Word nourishers. Now, I know that takes time out of your day, and you’ve got to make it happen. You’ve got to put aside other things. But this is number one! It’s up there with feeding your children physically. You’ve got to feed them spiritually.
We are physical nourishers and spiritual nourishers of our children, aren’t we? So much so, that as our children grow, we’ll be doing, as I said before, we’ll be getting them onto the meat of the Word of God. They won’t grow up just being people who still only take a bit of milk.
Do you know that there are so many adults today in the faith, who go to church, and they’re still on the milk! I can’t believe it! They don’t even read the Word during the week. They go to church. They open their mouths, like little birds, and let the pastor or the minister pour some milk in. And away they go. They don’t really even know to how chew on some real meat!
What does it say in Hebrews 5:12-14? “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”
So, have that vision, dear moms, to be graduating your children, as they get older, to be able to take the strong meat. Don’t let them leave your home still on the milk, like babies! No, you’re not sending babies out into this world. You’re sending men and women who are strong in the faith and strong in the Word. Amen? That’s what we’re doing. Read 1 John 2:13, 14.
IT FLOWS WITH HONEY
Let’s go on to our next point. This land, the land of Israel, was called the land that floweth with milk and honey. Our land of motherhood is the land that floweth with milk and honey. Let’s talk about the honey, now, shall we?
Yes, honey. We all know that honey is so sweet. I’ve got five different points here about honey. The first one.
a) HONEY NOURISHES
Just like we’ve been talking about nourishing our children with food and with the Word, honey is also a nourisher. It is filled with the most wonderful nutrients. It’s so good for you.
In fact, the manna in the wilderness tasted like wafers made with honey. It not only tasted like honey, but I’m sure it was filled with all the nutrients they would ever need. It kept the children of Israel alive and healthy for 40 years.
The Word, also, is like honey. God likens the Word to milk. He also likens it to honey.
Psalm 19:10: “More to be desired are they than gold (talking about God’s Word) Yea, than much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey, and the honeycomb.”
Psalm 119:103: “How sweet are thy words unto my taste. Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth.” The Word is like honey. You’ve got to give that to our children too, to nourish them.
b) HONEY SWEETENS
This land of motherhood, dear ladies, is not a land of complaining and sourness. It’s a land of pleasantness and delightfulness. It’s a land where we are sweet and kind. It’s a land where we speak sweet words. It’s a land where we try to sweeten our marriage. It’s a land where we try to sweeten the atmosphere of our homelife, to bring sweetness to it, to make it like honey. Because it’s a land that flows with honey! So, you’d better make it like honey. And honey tastes sweet.
We go to the Song of Songs 4:11. This Scripture has always been such a challenge to me. It’s the Bridegroom speaking to the bride. Or we can also relate it to the husband speaking to his wife:
“Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb. Honey and milk are under thy tongue.”
Now, is that a picture of you and your relationship with your husband? Can your husband say to you, “Darling, oh, your words are just like honey to me. They drip with honey.” Of course, what does the honeycomb drip with? Sweetness. “Oh, darling, you’re so sweet. Your words are so sweet.”
Well, that’s what the Bridegroom is saying here, to the bride: “Honey and milk are under thy tongue.” Sweetness and nourishing words. These are the kind of words that should be dripping from our mouths. We want to make our marriage and our home like honey. Well, we’d better speak the right words.
In this land that flows with milk and honey, we’re speaking beautiful words, caring, comforting, considerate, cheerful words, delightful words, encouraging, enriching, forgiving words, gentle words, helpful words, joyful, kind, loving, life-giving, pleasant, positive, sweet, soft, supportive, wise words. We’re dripping these words. This is the land that FLOWS with milk and honey. Not just a little drip. Flowing with honey.
Let’s also go to some other Scriptures.
Proverbs 16:24: “Pleasant words (or that means “delightful words”) “are as a honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.”
Proverbs 15:1: “A gentle answer turns away anger.”
Song of Songs, here’s another Scripture from the Song of Songs 4:3. In the Knox Translation, it says: “Thy lips are lines of scarlet, guardians of that sweet utterance.” In other words, our lips are guarding that sweet utterance. They’re guarding that nothing comes out of our mouths unless they are sweet words.
As we’re talking about sweetness, what does it really mean? Because sometimes sweetness can be a little bit sickly, or sweetness can be a reality. Sometimes people can be sweet, but somehow you think, “Oh, goodness me, I don’t really feel the genuineness of it and it’s a little bit sickly.” You’re a little bit . . . “Do they really mean it?”
We get a more understanding of sweetness out of a story in the Bible of Samson. It was in Judges 14. Samson was on his way down to meet this woman that he was in love with, which wasn’t good, because she didn’t belong to Israel. That was not what he should have been doing.
However, on the way, this lion attacked him. He was able to kill the lion because of his strength. But then, on another visit, he’s going down again to meet this woman and he sees this lion, the carcass of the lion. But in the lion were all these bees. There was this honeycomb. He put his hand in and pulled out all this beautiful honey and just devoured the honeycomb.
He’s going down to his wedding, and he decides, as it was the custom in those days, to give a riddle to see if the people present could decipher the riddle. This was his riddle. “Out of the eater came forth meat. And out of the strong came forth sweetness.”
Well, we know the answer to the riddle because we know what happened. The people at the wedding didn’t know what happened, and they couldn’t answer the riddle, until they got onto his wife. They plagued her and plagued her until she got the answer out of him.
The answer was, of course, the sweetness came from the strong, and who was the strong? The lion. What could be sweeter than honey? Nothing. It was the honey that came out of the lion. The sweetness came out of the strength.
That’s rather powerful. We see such a teaching there, that sweetness is not just some little sickly thing that doesn’t mean anything. DSWEETNESS COMES OUT OF STRENGTH. It’s from that strength that we can be sweet.
There are some people who are in a marriage relationship where the husband, maybe he’s not a Christian, or maybe he’s not acting like a husband should act. In fact, he’s not very easy to live with at all. Now, how could you be sweet to a husband like that?
You can only do that when you have the strength of God in you. You can only do that in His strength, His ability, His enabling. Out of that strength, you can be sweet, even in the midst of something that is so difficult. So, sweetness can come out of strength.
It reminds me of a little thought that I’ve been discovering this last couple of days. That’s about meekness, which relates to gentleness and sweetness. At the moment, in our church fellowship, my husband is encouraging us all to memorize the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7, because he says that, although Jesus gave so many sermons, this was the one sermon that was recorded.
If we are truly disciples of Jesus, if we’re truly faithful followers of Him, we’ll at least know the one sermon that was recorded. Just the one! So, he’s encouraging us to memorize it. We’re doing it little by little. I’ve managed to learn the first 26 verses. I’ve got a way to go yet.
But I’ve been also meditating on these words, and as I’ve been learning the Beatitudes, I came to “meekness.” I thought, “Well, I have to look up, what does “meekness” really mean?” I was quite amazed. I’ve written that down here to tell you about it, because in the lexicon in my Hebrew-Greek Study Bible, it tells me here that, how do we pronounce this word? It’s P-R-A-U-T-E-S. Prautes. I think that’s how they pronounce it in the Greek.
According to Aristotle, this word is the middle course of being angry, standing between two extremes--getting angry without reason and not getting angry at all. Therefore, prautes is getting angry at the right time, in the right measure, and for the right reason. Prautes is not readily expressed in English, since the term “meekness” often suggests weakness. But prautes is a condition of mind and heart which demonstrates gentleness, not in weakness, but in power. It is a virtue born in strength of character.
So, once again, meekness comes out of strength. Sweetness comes out of strength. Gentleness comes out of strength. Because in many situations, we cannot have sweetness, we can’t have gentleness unless we have the power of God enabling us to do it. It’s not some sickly thing that has no meaning. It comes out of strength.
Now, in the Strong’s Concordance, it has another meaning here, prautes, “displaying the right blend of force and gentleness.” In other words, it is strength in gentleness. It means “to avoid unnecessary harshness, yet without compromising or being too slow to use necessary force.” For the believer, prautes is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and can never be something humanly accomplished. It’s only through the strength of the power of God within us. Amen?
Let’s bring sweetness, even when it’s so hard to do, ladies. Can you do it? No, you can’t. You can’t do it. You could only do it through Christ, who dwells within you, who gives you His strength to do it. When everything is not sweet, you can bring sweetness into anger, sweetness into chaos, sweetness into hatred. You can bring it by the power of God, in the strength of God that is within you.
c) HONEY SOOTHES AND HONEY HEALS
Honey is a healing property. Did you know that? Honey heals the body, and honey heals the soul, because He heals us through His Word. Our task as mothers is to soothe and heal heartaches, the broken-hearted.
We all know life’s not perfect, and there will always be conflicts in family life. However, instead of being part of the conflict, our job is to bring healing and soothing and sweetness to the problem. That’s what we’re meant to do, is we’re making our land, this land, where we live in our home, making it flow with honey.
Now I want to tell you, ladies, some very interesting stories about how honey can heal the body. Of course, knowing it can heal physically, we know it can heal spiritually. I cut my heel, or my ankle, somewhere down there, on a sharp door. It got very infected. After a while, I began seeing that this wasn’t getting better, and it was starting to ache. A red line was coming up my leg.
Oh, wow! That’s time to go to the Emergency. So, I popped up and said, “I think you’ll need to give me some antibiotics to get rid of this.” They did, and I began to take these antibiotics. They didn’t touch it! They didn’t even touch it.
Just at the time, I was meeting with a friend, and she gave me a little gift. It was a jar of manuka honey. I said, “I can’t believe it! Why didn’t I think of manuka honey? This is my answer to my foot. Thank you so much!” She didn’t even know that I had this infected foot.
It was the answer, because I remembered how my mother had cured a very, very bad ulcer on her leg that had come through ulcerated veins. She had varicose veins and she had developed an ulcer, and nothing could get rid of it. It was eating into her leg. Then she found out about manuka honey. She began to put it on this ulcer, and it healed up beautifully.
Now, what is this manuka honey? It’s not just normal honey. This is a honey that comes from the manuka tree in New Zealand. Back when my mother was healed, we were living in New Zealand, of course. In fact, where we lived, we lived in a little town called Te Puke. Now, Darlene, my lovely transcriber, Te Puke is spelled T-E P-U-K-E. It’s a Maori word, meaning “the hill.”
And just very near us, just a few miles away, was another little town called Paengaroa. There at Paengaroa was the Comvita store. We were forever passing this little store, and there was hardly anything else at Paengaroa, just a few families we knew that lived there, and the little store, and this Comvita shop which sold manuka honey.
Back in those days, we didn’t think anything of it. Manuka was all around us. It was just like a shrub that grew everywhere in New Zealand. We didn’t, back then, even know the powers of manuka honey! They have now discovered them. Now manuka goes worldwide. In fact, this little wee store that I would pass when I was a child, they’re most probably multi-multi-millionaires now! Because of the miraculous powers of manuka honey!
Anyway, as I said, I put this manuka honey on and it miraculously healed my foot. It miraculously healed my mother. It’s amazing, actually, when I think back. Here, as a child, I grew up in this little town of Te Puke. I didn’t know that manuka honey that was sold nearby would become famous.
Nor did I know that this little town of Te Puke would become the kiwi fruit capital of the world! Of course, you all know what kiwi fruit are. When I was growing up as a child, we didn’t even call them kiwi fruit. They were called “Chinese gooseberries.” We had huge vines of Chinese gooseberries growing outside my bedroom window.
In the time of harvest, my father would fill boxes and boxes and boxes of them to send away, just to get rid of them, make a bit of money on them. We had so many! They were so prolific. They seemed to grow so well where we lived there that eventually people began to realize this. They began to grow them for the world.
I remember they started up, at Number Three Road in Te Puke. It became the Kiwi Fruit Road, and all these people who bought land up Number Three Road and began to grow the kiwi fruit. They changed the name to “kiwi fruit” because kiwi is the emblem of New Zealand. The kiwi is a little bird. It’s a flightless bird and a nocturnal bird. People who come from New Zealand are called “Kiwis.”
So, they called it “kiwi fruit.” It began to expand across the world, and they all became millionaires. My father used to say, “Oh, why didn’t I buy some land up Number Three Road and become a kiwi fruit grower?” But there were some negatives, and that, sadly, many of those kiwi fruit growers, quite a lot of them did get cancer because of all the sprays that they used on the fruit. Maybe that wouldn’t have been a good thing after all.
But anyway, in this little, wee town of Te Puke, we ended up with the Paengaroa Comvita Company, and then the kiwi fruit became the kiwi fruit capital of the world.
Now, I want to tell you two more amazing stories, ladies, about manuka honey that have happened in our own family. This is something that you can use in your family. If your children have cuts, they have anything that happens to them, goodness me, this is a miraculous remedy that you can use.
I have sitting with me, right at this moment, in fact, he’s just crept up the stairs, because I called and said, “Arrow, come! I want you to share this testimony about what happened to you.” Arrow had this pretty bad accident where he was fixing his sister-in-law’s car, and it blew up in his face! Tell us what happened, Arrow.
Arrow Johnson: I got a free facial! It was very, very painful.
Nancy: How did it actually happen?
Arrow: I actually don’t remember how it happened, but I know the radiator blew up in my face. I burned off all the skin on my face. It was very painful. It was like 30 minutes, I couldn’t see. As soon as I opened my eyes, my hands were full of skin from my face. It was like, oh, it was really bad. That happened, and then my mom was like, of course, she remembered you telling her. . .
Nancy: But even before we get to the honey, you did amazing. Didn’t you put . . .
Arrow: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. My dad told me, yeah. I went straight to a mud puddle and stuck my face in a mud puddle. I couldn’t see, so my brother had to lead me over to it and tell me to stick my head in it. Then we got a hose. Actually, the hose had been sitting in the sun, so all the water was superhot. And I sprayed my face with hot water. That was painful, too.
Then, as soon as it got cold, we stuck a bowl, had a snorkel, and I stuck my head in the cold water for like. . . We live in the country, you know? The ambulance took about 30-something minutes to get here. So, I had plenty of time to get that cold water on my face.
Then, after the ambulance came, they were trying to get me full of drugs and random stuff. My mom was trying to get manuka honey on my face at that time. As soon as they got to the hospital, they scraped my face to make sure it wouldn’t blister. It was very painful.
When I got out of the hospital, we started doing cucumber juice. I’d drink like a gallon of cucumber juice a day. I’m not a huge fan of cucumbers anymore. [laughter] Then I think I did about two or three weeks, probably, of just having manuka honey on my face the whole time. It helped so much. It was a little painful, having the manuka honey on the fresh skin, but it was one of the things that healed my face, well, that, and prayer.
Nancy: Yes, yes. Lots and lots of prayer, because it was unbelievable. In fact, we had to tie Arrow’s, and he asked himself, to have his hands tied down so he couldn’t touch his face, because you just naturally want to go and scratch.
Arrow: Because the manuka honey will make your skin heal so fast that it starts to itch because all your cells are coming back, or whatever. So, it starts being really itchy, because it’s healing so well.
Nancy: Yes, yes. And they used a very high grade manuka honey. You can get manuka honey in different grades. It goes up higher and higher. Of course, the higher it is, the more expensive it is. But I noticed that jar of yours, Arrow, and it was 20+ UMF, which is the Unique Manuka Factor. And it was 830 MGO, which is the methylglyoxal, which is the chemical that’s in the honey that is so powerful. You had the 830.
Arrow: I knew the stuff that I was running with was pretty high grade. It was expensive, but it was very worth it. Yeah, for sure.
Nancy: It was amazing! If you could see Arrow’s face today, it is absolutely perfection! There’s not one scar, not one blemish, not one thing. Without that, it could have been pretty horrible.
So, that is just such a miracle, and of course, we were all praying. We watched this miracle happen, of God actually healing through these things that He has made! Because he makes these!
Arrow: Yeah, yeah. It was cool to see. Didn’t Granddad Bowen have manuka honey, right? He had a manuka honey farm?
Nancy: Well, no, he didn’t have a farm, but he did honey, of course, so yes, he did manuka honey. I was telling the ladies before, because you’d just come up the stairs, how that just a few miles from where we lived was the original Comvita store where they sold manuka honey. And we never really thought much about it at all.
Arrow: Now it’s super-sought after. Everybody wants it.
Nancy: Oh, absolutely! Well, thank you for coming over and sharing that with us, Arrow. Arrow is my wonderful grandson. He’s rather short. He’s only 6 foot 8. [laughter] He’s reached the same height as my eldest son, who is 6 foot 8. Or are you taller?
Arrow: I’m taller. Yeah, I’ve taken the crown from him.
Nancy: He’s just beat him! Wow! I think, that at the moment anyway, Arrow is holding the record. I don’t know of anyone else in the fam.
Arrow: If somebody tries to take it, I’ll go to Japan and get my bones stretched! [laughter]
Nancy: It’s been so good. Thanks so much, Arrow. Well, ladies, we’ve come to the end of this podcast. We’ll pray together.
“Lord, we thank You so much for all the things that You create for us, the healing foods, the healing herbs, the healing things. We’re filled with wonderful healing remedies. Thank You, Lord, for this manuka honey, which is so miraculous, Lord. We thank You for it. I trust that it may be a blessing to many who are listening, too.
“We bless You today, Lord God, in the Name of Jesus. I bless everyone that’s listening with Your blessing, and with Your favor, and Lord, with learning more and more of Your ways, so that we can live in the fullness of all that You have for us. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.”
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Testimonies from other mothers who have found the wonderful remedy of honey:
HUGE FEVER BLISTER. Applying honey a couple of times a day caused the swelling to go down tremendously.
Very affective on wounds to prevent infection.
ACNE. Can be cured with honey.
STINGING NE3TTLES. Immediate relief from burning pain after applying honey.
ARTHRITIS. Honey can relieve the symptoms.
Use honey for the heart muscle.
Take at night to have a good night’s sleep.
HAY FEVER. Eat honey daily from local hives.
Helps with MIGRAINE HEADACHES.
Use for EYE INFECTIONS, CATARACTGS, and GLAUCOMA.