PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 299: Is There a Better Word Than “Kids,” Part 3
LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 299
: Is There a Better Word Than “Kids,” Part 3
Check out more names that God delights to call our children. Yes, they are better than the word "kids."
Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to The Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Hello, ladies! This is podcast 299. That means next week will be 300. Well, I think that is quite special. So, I thought that if there are any of you who maybe listened to the last 300, no, not 300. That would be just about too much. But anyone who’s listened to the last 100, and you haven’t missed one, email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and tell me. I will have to send you something special, because I think that would be pretty amazing. So, if you haven’t missed one in the last 100, do write and tell me, won’t you?
All right. Now, I must remind you about our coming retreat. We have one this coming weekend! This is for ladies. It’s in Washington state in Olympia. I have been doing ladies’ retreats here for so many years. Here we are again, this coming weekend in fact, at the Black Lake Bible Camp on March 8-10. That’s this weekend. I know it’s last minute, but you can still get in. We always take ladies at the last minute at our Above Rubies retreats. If you want to find out about it, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. OK?
And we also have coming up very soon our Family Camp. We have ladies’ camps, and we have family ones. Our biggest family one is in April at the Laguna Christian Retreat Center, right on the beach in Panama City, Florida. It’s such a beautiful spot. We have families coming from all over the nation, even from up north in Canada, coming down to get some sun down in Florida.
If you would love to come to this retreat, it’s a week long. We used to have only a weekend retreat, but it just wasn’t enough for the families. So, now we have a week long. It’s such a popular retreat for the whole family. You bring all your children, all your teens, all your older adults in your family. In fact, there are usually more young people than even parents. And of course, loads of children.
It’s such a wonderful time of great fellowship and teaching and encouragement, interaction and fellowship together. Marvelous times for the young people. Wonderful fellowship for them with other godly young people, and great sporting competitions with basketball and volleyball, and so many things going on. This camp just “goes” from beginning to end. It’s so amazing. I know you’ll just love to be part of this.
If you want to register, you can go to https://AboveRubiesGulfCoast.com. For more information, call Allison Hartman, who is the great organizer of this retreat, at 850-995-9090. They still have some housing left, but it’s going so quickly so be in! You can come down. You can be on the beach and have a wonderful time with your family, and be encouraged, and blessed, and fortified in your wonderful walk of raising godly children in this deceived hour. Come if you can. We’d love to have you with us!
Now we are continuing our series called “IS THERE A BETTER WORD THAN KIDS?” I started off telling you how most of us use the word “kids,” or we used to. I’ve kicked the habit. I hope you have too. This is our third part in this series. You’ve had a couple of weeks or so. I wonder if you’ve kicked the habit yet, to stop calling your children “kids,” which is a very humanistic word. Go back and listen to the other podcasts if you didn’t get to hear them.
Now I’m in the middle of telling you some other words that you can use. Of course, these words that I’m giving you are biblical words of what God calls our children. They may not be the everyday words you will call your children. You’ll find your own words, your own endearing and special words that you have for your children. It’s such a wonderful thing to call your children endearing words. Think of wonderful, endearing, and loving words to call your children. But these are biblical ones. They are very good for us to know. You can sometimes call them these names as well.
We are up to number eight. I have 20 different biblical words.
No. 8. GIFTS
They are gifts, gifts from the Lord. Let’s read a few Scriptures, shall we? We’ll go to Genesis 33:4-5. This is when Jacob is coming back to the land to meet his brother Esau again. It says in verse four: “And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him: and they wept. And he lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children; and said, Who are those with thee? And he said, The children which God hath graciously given thy servant.” Jacob acknowledges that the children that God has given to him are given to him by God. He didn’t get them. No, God gave them to him.
We go over to Genesis 48:8-9. This is when Jacob, called Israel in this particular verse, is blessing his children: “And Israel [also called Jacob] beheld Joseph's sons, and said, who are these? And Joseph said unto his father, They are my sons, whom God hath given me in this place. And he said, Bring them, I pray thee, unto me, and I will bless them both.” But do you notice once again that Joseph also acknowledges: “These are the children who God has given to me.” You see, it is God Who gives us our children. We don’t get them by ourselves. They are gifts from God.
Let’s go over to Joshua 24:3-4: “And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac. And I gave unto Isaac Jacob and Esau.” So, here God is saying about Abraham, “I gave you Isaac.” Once again, he didn’t get him all on his own. God gave him Isaac. And then God gave to Isaac Jacob and Esau. God is the giver of children.
I love the passage in Ruth 4:13 where it says: “So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife: and when he went in unto her, the LORD gave her conception, and she bare a son.” Who gave her conception? It wasn’t herself. It’s only God who can give conception.
Then we go over to 1 Chronicles 25. This is a passage that is talking about the temple musicians, the musicians that David chose to worship God and prophesy on their instruments in the temple. There were three very anointed and incredible musicians. They were Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun.
When we go to verse five, it’s talking about Heman (Hey-mahn), I think that’s how you’re meant to pronounce it. It’s spelled “HeMan.” It says: “All these were the sons of Heman, the king's seer in the words of God, to lift up the horn. And God gave to Heman fourteen sons and three daughters. All these were under the hands of their father for song in the house of the LORD.”
But what we see, of course, is that God gave Heman these children. He gave him 17 children! Wow! Fourteen sons and three daughters and He gave them all to help him in his ministry of the song in the temple of the Lord.
OK! Some more Scriptures yet. I love Psalm 127:3 in the Message Bible, where it says: “Don’t you see that children are God’s best gift? The fruit of the womb His generous legacy.” Yes, they are our best gifts, aren’t they, dear mothers? God forbid, but if any of us had a fire in our homes, what would we do? The first thing we want to do is save our children! All the other stuff is only stuff that can burn up, but, oh, our children are our best gifts, given to us from the hand of God.
Let’s read Jeremiah 1:5. And God, speaking to Jeremiah, says: “Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee. Before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.” One day I was checking out that word “ordained,” and in the Hebrew, it is the word nathan. It’s a primary word, meaning, “to give.”
In other words, God is saying, and it’s an amazing Scripture, because He says to Jeremiah, “Even before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee.” Even before you came out of the womb, I sanctified you, and I gave you, I gave you to be a prophet unto the nations. What a powerful Scripture! God planned Jeremiah’s future before he was even conceived.
But dear ladies, every child that God has given you, God knew them before He gave them to you. Even before they were conceived, God knew them. He knew them before the foundation of the world. He knew their destiny. He planned their destiny, and He gave them to you as a gift. But not only to you.
He gives your children as a gift to the world, because every one of our children have a purpose. God has made them unique. He has put a destiny upon them. He has a purpose for them and they are a gift, not only for us, but they are a gift to the world. That’s why our great blessing and responsibility is to prepare them for their destiny that God has for them.
Who knows what our children will do in this life? I’m looking back now. I’m not just a grandmother, but a great-grandmother. I’m seeing the things that our children are doing for God in this world, things that I could not even have ever dreamed of, or imagined. But now there are our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. What will they do? How will they serve God? Who is God going to raise them up to be?
Of course, we pray that they will all be great godly mothers and fathers, but many of them will have destiny upon them, to reach many people for the Lord. They are a gift to the nation and to the world. Isn’t that wonderful? So, lovely ladies, remind your children that they are gifts from God.
You can tell them, “You are my gift from the Lord! But do you know what? You’re not only my gift that God has given to me but you are a gift to the world. God has got a special anointing, a special purpose for you that He wants you to fulfill. Yes, you are a special gift that God has brought in to bless this world.” Remind your children that they are gifts from God. Not only to you, but to the world. Amen?
No. 9. OUR GLORY
Our children are not only gifts, but they are our glory! This is number nine, and we’re going in alphabetical order. Glory. Now, we see this in the Scripture in Hosea 9:11. This Scripture is actually in the context of God bringing judgement upon Israel.
But even in this context, we realize that our children are our glory. It says: “As for Ephraim,” often God uses the word “Ephraim” for Israel. “As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird,” because God is bringing judgement on them. What is their glory? It goes on to say: “From the birth and from the womb and from conception.” God was going to take away their glory. Their glory.
God is revealing here that the glory of the nation is our children, from conception, from the womb, from birth. These are very precious to God. They are the most precious things of the nations. Dear ladies, when conception, when the womb, and when birth are taken away, there will no longer be a nation. It will disintegrate to nothing, because everything, everything begins with the womb.
It is from the womb of the woman that children come. It is children that make the nation. Without children coming into the world, we would not even need to build houses. We would not build cities. We would not have a nation, because children come into the world and into the nation to make that nation. They make it go round.
They make it happen, because every child is going to need a home, and then, of course, they need cities, because they need shops and they need hospitals and they need everything that we build for cities to make life happen.
It all starts in the womb. In fact, every great thing that happens, or has happened, in this nation, happens through a person. And that person comes from the womb! They would not happen without the womb. So, conception, the womb, and birthing are the glory of the nation. Our children are our glory. Yes, they’re not only our glory, but they are the nation’s glory.
That is why there was a time when women were put on a pedestal. They were cared for. They were treated with honor which is how God wants us to treat women, how He wants men to treat women, how He wants the nation to treat women.
It talks about this in 1 Peter 3:7, how men are to honor their wives, and to treat them in a way that they are precious because they are the womb of the nation. There was a time when it would be unthinkable for a man not to put a woman first or to always open the door for her. To let her go first, to rescue her first. That is what a man does! It’s all because the woman brings forth the glory of the nation.
We also go to the New Testament, 1 Thessalonians 2:19-20. It’s Paul writing, and he’s talking about the young Thessalonian believers. He says: “You are our glory and joy.” He’s talking about when he will stand before the Lord, and present them before the Lord. But dear mothers, we have our children. Oh, yes! They are also our glory. Our glory, not only for now, but one day, when we bring them before the Lord, and present them before the Lord on that day.
No. 10. GODLY OFFSPRING
We read these words in Malachi 2:15. This is in the context of marriage. God is talking about how He hates divorce. He loves divorced people, but He hates the spirit of divorce, because it touches the godly seed. Every child from a divorce is negatively affected. There’s no one hat escapes the negatives of a divorce. That’s why God hates it because He is looking out for the godly seed.
In this passage, it asks the question, “What does God want from your union?” What does He want? And then the answer comes in verse 15: “I want a godly seed. I want godly offspring.” That’s what God looks for from a marriage. From everything thing else from our marriage, the primary thing that God looks for is offspring to come from our marriage. He looks for it. He longs for it.
When a couple get married, that should be the first thing that is on their hearts; the bringing forth of the godly seed. Isn’t it sad that today there are so many couples who go into marriage and there’s hardly one thought of having a baby? In fact, if they think about having a baby, well, the first thing they think about is “How can we stop this for a few years? Because we’ve got other things we want to do.”
Well, I have to tell you, they’re not ready for marriage. Any couple who is not ready to bring forth offspring is not ready for marriage because that’s what marriage is all about, and that’s what God looks for from the marriage union. But not just offspring. No, it’s godly seed. Godly offspring.
That word “godly” in the Hebrew is the word Elohim. When I realized that, to me it was awe-inspiring. It was actually awe-full to realize that, as I am raising my children, God is looking for godly children, children in His image who will show forth what He is like. Children, who as they grow in the ways of the Lord, and we prepare them, will go out into this world to show what God is like.
That word Elohim is the same word as Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God. In the beginning, Elohim.” Yes, that’s the word He uses. He wants Elohim children. Oh, wow! That is such a challenge to us as parents, isn’t it?
Well, when you’re telling your children that that’s one of their names, “Did you know that God calls you godly offspring? Yes, children, He’s wanting you to show what God is like so that your life will represent Him, that you will show forth His salvation and His love, and His kindness, and His justice, and His truth wherever you go.” That’s what God is looking for. Amen?
No. 11. THE HERITAGE OF THE LORD
Psalm 127:3: “Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD.” That word “heritage” means “possession, property, inheritance.” Now, we’ve found that God gives us children. He gives them to us as gifts, but ultimately they belong to God. Ultimately, they are His possessions.
They are His property, and they are on loan to us from God, for He brings them to us on this earth to prepare them for their purpose and for the heavenly realm. That’s what we’re ultimately preparing them for, for the heavenly realm, for eternity, where they will live forever and ever. Isn’t that awe-inspiring?
To think that this is our career,
To raise children for the heavenly sphere!
I’m a poet, but I didn’t know it! I think that’s quite good.
Yes, this is our career, to prepare children for the heavenly sphere! Yes, dear ladies! Oh, imagine! Even in the embracing of children, this gets back to couples who want to stop having children. Imagine, when we stop, or try to stop, having children, when we deliberately try to stop, we are deliberately stopping someone from having the opportunity of one day living in the glory of eternity forever and ever. How can we deny someone that, that God wanted to come into this world? Because God knows who He wants to come into this world.
Sadly, there are thousands missing who God intended to come into this world, because parents have stopped them. They have stopped them. They have stopped eternal souls coming into this world, who were coming in not only for this world, but for the heavenly sphere.
Not one of us can even dream or imagine. Sometimes I try, but I can’t. It’s impossible for me to even imagine the glory of heaven. It's beyond what we will ever dream. We are destined to this. Every child we bring into the world and bring into God’s kingdom will enjoy this. How terrible to stop someone from enjoying this glory! Yes, and so, they are our possessions, but ultimately God’s possessions.
No. 12. OUR HOPE
In this passage in 1 Thessalonians 2:19, where Paul is writing about the unbelievers, he uses quite a number of descriptions. Another one is hope. He says: “For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming?” Our children are our hope. Yes, our hope we will be presenting before the Lord. So, hope is another wonderful thing. Not disaster, but hope.
No. 13. OUR JOY
In that same Scripture, “For what is our hope, or joy? Are not even you our Joy in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ?” We’re going to present them before the Lord. Oh, we’re going to pray, and we’re going to do everything in our power to woo them into the kingdom of God, and into His ways, that they will be ready on that day when Jesus comes, or when they go to meet the Lord. That they will be ready, so we can present them with great joy. Our children are our joy, of course. Yes. Our joy and our hope.
I’m thinking of another Scripture there. Let me go over to it. It’s just coming to mind now. Here it is, ladies. Luke 1:13: “But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. And thou shalt have joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth.”
I love that Scripture, because God is telling them, when this son is given to you, you will have joy and gladness. But I believe that is for every mother. Yes, it was especially for Zacharias and Elizabeth, but it is for you, mother.
Of course, I know you’ve experienced this with every new baby that comes. Oh my, maybe when this beautiful child was conceived, you thought, “Oh, wow, how are we going to manage? How are we going to fit this baby in?” But when this baby arrives, this baby always fits in. There’s never a baby that doesn’t fit in. And, oh, you experience such joy, and such gladness. This is what God gives us children for, to give us joy and gladness.
Don’t forget to remind your children. Yes, you can call them “my joy.” “Yes, Susie, you are my joy! You give me such joy.” I know some of you even call your children joy, or joyful. You can call your children wonderful names like that. But remind them that they are your joy. Yes, these are the names that God speaks over our children, so let us speak them over our children. Amen?
Let me give you just one more for this session. Then we’ll have to do the rest next session.
No. 14. LAMBS
Isaiah 40:11: “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.”
This is the opposite of “kids.” We are kicking that habit of calling our children “kids.” It’s a humanistic word. We don’t want to belong to the goat mother company who leave their children while they go off to the career, or to do their thing. No, sheep mothers never leave their little lambs. Yes, we are His sheep, and the sheep of His pasture. We are sheep mothers and we have little lambs.
You can call your little ones (you won’t be calling your big ones your lambs) but your little ones, you can call your lambs. I know my daughter Serene often calls her little babies, and her little ones, her lambkins. It’s such a beautiful name. When you call your little ones your lambs, it brings that beautiful tenderness in your heart. Oh, it’s such a much better word than “kids,” isn’t it? So, don’t forget that one.
We’ve come to the end of this session so quickly.
“Dear Father, I thank You that You have given us all these beautiful names to call our children. Lord, they lift us up to the truth of what You believe and see about our children. Help us, Lord God, to refrain from using these humanistic words, and instead, to use the words that You give us, and to use loving words and endearing words, because words have such power. Help us, Lord God, to bring such affirmation and encouragement to our children through the words that we use, and even the words that we call them. We ask this in the Name of Jesus. Amen.”
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
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Transcribed by Darlene Norris
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DON’T FORGET TO TELL OTHERS ABOUT THIS PODCAST, “LIFE TO THE FULL” WITH NANCY CAMPBELL.” DON’T KEEP THE BLESSINGS TO YOURSELF. IT IS ENCOURAGEMENT FOR ALL WIVES AND MOTHERS.
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