Israel & Rachel Campbell "SOUP" Podcast
Join us for an exciting Season 2 of our podcast, which garnered over 7000 downloads last year! Your hosts, Rachel and Israel Campbell, are back to take you on an incredible journey. In this podcast, we invite you into the ongoing dialogues about life, love, parenting, relationships, spirituality, and whatever else sparks our interest!
Our motivation for creating this podcast remains unchanged: we believe that discipleship should encompass more than just a classroom experience; it should be a way of life. Drawing inspiration from Jesus' interactions with his disciples, we see that it was far from a traditional classroom setup. Instead, it was a continuous exchange of teachings and discussions encompassing all facets of life.
Imagine savoring a delicious bowl of soup – that's what our podcast is like. We're here to engage in honest and unfiltered conversations, covering a wide spectrum of topics. And now, we invite you to share this podcast with your friends, family members, or coworkers, just as you'd share a great meal. Just like Jesus and his disciples, we're here to explore the richness of life together!
So, come join us for another season of candid conversations as we dive into a little bit of everything – from the profound to the lighthearted!
Israel & Rachel Campbell "SOUP" Podcast
Embracing Gratitude and Celebrating God's Goodness: A Thanksgiving Special Israel & Rachel Campbell SOUP | Season 2 Episode 11
Ready to unlock the power of gratitude and celebrate Thanksgiving like never before? Prepare to lay your envy to rest as we reflect on life's blessings, both big and small, in this heartwarming episode. Drawing inspiration from Jesus and Paul, we reveal how thankfulness can keep us grounded, even amidst today's digital hustle and bustle. So, gear up to embark on a soulful journey that promises to expand your understanding of gratitude and its profound impact on our daily lives.
We unmask the enemy's attempts to steal our joy, and emphasize the significance of celebrating God's bountiful goodness without hesitation. Remember the grace and forgiveness that God has showered upon us, and stand firm against attempts to make our celebrations seem extravagant or unnecessary. We're here to remind you that it's not just okay, but absolutely essential, to rejoice in the divine gifts we've been blessed with. So, let's hold our heads high and declare our gratitude with a resounding voice.
We're not stopping there! We're arming you with practical strategies to cultivate a heart of thanksgiving. From reciting God's goodness to breaking free from our selfish tendencies, we're sharing ways to elevate your sense of gratitude. And guess what? Even something as simple as jotting down your blessings can have a remarkable effect. As Thanksgiving approaches, we're exploring how being grateful for God's past, present, and future works can instill a deep sense of contentment within us. So join us, stretchy pants and all, for a heartfelt conversation that's guaranteed to leave you uplifted and imbued with a renewed sense of appreciation.
[♪AT&Tチ miseria. Intro chime music沒關係. Let me know if you liked our LIGHTS guide book ques. Downly wait for some more music. Let us know if this helps. Www. Частоendulinacom. Yes, yes, yes, it's Thanksgiving season. Rachel. Are you thankful, grateful and thankful? It is Christmas light season, it is Thanksgiving, it is family.
Speaker 2:Did you just say I think you just gave me permission that it's Christmas light season?
Speaker 1:Well, it is officially the day after Thanksgiving. You can do it, but anything before will cause a flood in the house, because that's what happened last year no floods, nothing. And it's Thanksgiving. What is your favorite Like? What's your favorite side dish?
Speaker 2:Thanksgiving dinner. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:That's the hardest question. Do you think the leftovers are always the best the next day? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And my favorite of all time. You're going to love this, Isra. My favorite side dish is sweet potato souffle. I can think that, for dessert, that we should end the podcast with a moment of silence.
Speaker 1:With that.
Speaker 2:No, he hates the sweet potatoes.
Speaker 1:Yes, the only thing on the planet that I hate is sweet potatoes, and I definitely think in hell they'll be serving masses of those. But here on earth, if you want to dabble in it, that's okay, but yet mine, you know what? I love turkey sandwiches the next day and I love dipping turkey and mustard and I love cranberry stuff and it's important, it's the sauce, but I like it in the can. Cheap stuff yes, don't do any of that other stuff.
Speaker 2:He likes it to have the shape of the can when it comes up.
Speaker 1:I want the shape of the can. I love it. So, yes, so here we are. We should have said that our favorite food is soup, since this is the Campbell Soup podcast, but no, we are not that cool, so we will just jump right into. And I think you know, with this season it's it is a season of thankfulness, and I think we do something almost every year we stop the family and we give every single person an opportunity to say what they're thankful for, and that is a really good thing that I think we do yearly. But don't you think that if it's yearly, that's probably not good, rach, that it's probably something that we should be doing daily, if not on the hour, or just a lot more frequent than once a year? And so we kind of want to talk about that with this season going on and really creating it to be not a once a year thing but a lifestyle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and we were just talking about this this week too, about how it can be so easy to get caught up in our little lives and forget the big picture. And I think thankfulness helps us remember the big picture. You see all through the New Testament, where Jesus gave thanks knowing he in a few days he was going to be going to the cross. Paul gave thanks from prison and he says I've learned how to do well with little and with much. And I think that that's a key to our life as Christ followers is to practice Thanksgiving but also cause it to grow like, make it a muscle memory where we remember to be thankful.
Speaker 1:It's really important. Well, yeah, and last week we talked about digital hygiene and one of the things that the one of the bad Parts of digital always absorbing is you start seeing what everybody else has and, of course, what everybody else is posting. They never usually post their bad days, they never post the times they didn't get the promotion or that they're you know all those kind of things, and so it's easy to sometimes then in a sense, um, get, you know, get envious, get jealous. Well, with me, my life stinks and you forget to be thankful for what we have and how blessed we actually are. And I know even sometimes you and I can. It feels like with the pandemic. It feels like we could be church planting again. It feels like, man, we should be past this already. Why are we doing this? It seems like again, or starting this again and then forgetting. Oh, my goodness, but we're so grateful for the team, that we have the people, that we have the 80 degrees on Halloween.
Speaker 1:That we have, you know, and so thinking about those things is so easy to not become Thankful. And really a stat that I think is pretty important is Jesus does the stat where there were 10 lepers and only one came back that gave thanks and the one leper that came back, it's pretty significant that it was a Samaritan. So it's not only a stat of one and ten, but it's also this stat of it's not even really, in this Analogy, a Christian or really not somebody that was going to church or in the faith, it was an outsider, and so that's just ow, when we look at our own lives to make sure, are we actually being Thankful?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think that Thanksgiving always reminds us to be people who carry a different spirit, and I think that's really important, especially in the world we live in. There's bad news everywhere and you know it's all about. I guess I want to encourage everybody with. What I found over the last 47 years of living, and even beyond that, with watching my parents and watching my grandparents, is that there will always be battles and there will always be hard things that we're facing. At the exact same time, there will always be blessing, there will always be the goodness of God, and I don't think that. I think a trap for a lot of us to fall into is to wait through the hard for the good and thinking somehow in our mind that those are two different seasons, and I think that, as People of faith, we need to realize that there are going to always be battles and there's always going to be blessings, and they go side by side. And then we're given the opportunity by God to Decide which one we're going to focus on, which one we're going to make big in our life, and all of those things.
Speaker 2:And I heard two quotes Just to get us started. I love the first quote that I love and I've just been saying it for a year. You've heard it if you've been in church or you go to our marriage classes. But it's such an important quote and I want to even say it again is I Love the quote that says if you want to ruin something good, compare it to something else. And I just think that that's the main point. Right is when we're thankful, we stop comparing other things to our lives and we begin to look at the good things in our lives and we begin to feed that instead of feeding the bad things in our life. And then, all of a sudden, thankfulness grows, which is what we're calling today's lesson. But I love, love, love this quote. It says be thankful for the little things you have Sorry, I just lost it, I think we have bad internet but be thankful for what little you have and you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever, ever have enough.
Speaker 1:Wow, isn't that good. I love that. It really is a focus thing. Thankfulness is a focus thing. I love when I remember hearing something to the analogy of when NASCAR drivers drive. When there is a car wreck, they teach them to never look at the car wreck, because you have a natural inclination to steer slowly, even a little bit into what you're staring at. If you stare at the wreck, you will cause another wreck. If you steer at the way out, you will be able to get through that. I think that that is a huge, huge thing. Thankfulness is the way to get out. Thankfulness is the escape route. Thankfulness is the. I am going to focus on what God has already done. I even think you can be prophetically thankful for things that maybe haven't even helped started yet. Let's talk about some of those things. What are the practical things Rich on? How do we do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's really important to practice thankfulness around your home. Israel and I hold each other accountable with this. It's so easy to walk through valley seasons and seasons that have a lot on your plate or there's bad news or there's some faith trials that you might be facing. It is so easy to be overwhelmed by that. I know I can be. Israel will just say. He'll begin to just list the good things that God has done.
Speaker 2:I think about the children of Israel did that too where it says that they would complain about where they were and forget that they got delivered from Egypt. You know that portion of scripture. It's in Exodus and it talks about how they're saying we're just craving the spices from, we're craving spices from where we came from. They're talking about Egypt and they had been set free by God and they weren't where they were going to end up being, but they weren't in shackles as slaves anymore in Egypt. It's so crazy, but it's such a depiction of all of us.
Speaker 2:Is we can look back at the good old days and forget the hard there and think that everything was good. Here they are going. Oh, my goodness, I'm just craving those spices from Egypt. The time when they had those spices to eat were times when they were slaves, they didn't own anything and God was bringing them into a season of goodness and they couldn't see it because they were overwhelmed with the grumbling, the complaining, the seeing, the problems that hadn't been fulfilled yet. I don't want to be that kind of person. Thanksgiving interrupts that.
Speaker 1:I mean, such a good analogy is they were being beaten, they were slaves, they had these quotas that they had to fill for the blocks, and then they're like but they had really nice pepper, really good curry, really. Then now they're free, being given food from manna, from heaven. It really is those stories. I don't know about you, rachel, but those stories you can see it and you see somebody else doing that and you're like those guys were morons. Then you realize, though, that Jesus, god, gives us those texts because this is the human heart.
Speaker 1:This is what happens not just to the children of Israel, my children or the children of Israel in the Bible, but it happens to all of us is that we get so focused on our predictor, the predicament that we're currently facing, that we forget God's faithfulness, and it will revolutionize your marriage, it will revolutionize your children. It will even revolutionize how you go to work. If you and I can begin to start pumping up the muscle group of thankfulness and at the gym, rachel, there's all these guys that will pump up all these the upper body muscles. They have these big arms and then they got these teeny little legs because they never do the leg muscles. I think that there's some things that, as Christians, we're doing really well, but thankfulness is one that you want to go. Hey, I want to be balanced in this. I want to make sure that I'm also developing that muscle of thankfulness and doing it often, not just during Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2:I think, too, something that is a good thing to talk about is, as we're entering into this holiday season and it starts with Thanksgiving and then we go straight into this beautiful. It's a holy season where we're really slowing things down, celebrating what God has given us, celebrating our family and celebrating the birth of Christ. I just see so much where the enemy tries to steal, kill and destroy. We know that scripture verses says that the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy, but God has come to give us life, and life more abundantly. I think about how much we really do need to be aware that the enemy tries to steal, kill and destroy. In the last couple of years there have been some pushes for people to even cancel Thanksgiving because of what the horrible pilgrims did back in the day. You know what I just want to talk about that. Can I just talk about that?
Speaker 1:Go do the soup, do the soup.
Speaker 2:This is the soup that I feel really strongly about is that the enemy steals, kills and destroys the Bible. All through the Bible. It talks about entering His presence through our Thanksgiving. When Paul and Silas began to thank God through their praise, the prison doors were opened. We go through all of this scripture on Thanksgiving and the power of our thankfulness.
Speaker 2:Then culture police tried to tell us to cancel Thanksgiving, which is the one day that everyone works on and disciplines themselves to be thankful. Now, I am not saying that what happened and how Thanksgiving started was good, but if any of us look in our own cultural history, no matter what nation you come from, there is deeply entrenched gross sin and that is something that we have to. You know. When we ask you just to forgive us and we're set free, we are free. We don't go back to that, we don't celebrate that, but at the same time, we don't have to live in shame where we aren't allowed to do things like celebrate Thanksgiving and bring in family members and begin to exercise our thankfulness and acknowledge the goodness of God and spend moments of not only just celebrating God's goodness to us but giving goodness to others who don't have what we have around us. All of those things are being exercised and Thanksgiving is a day that we acknowledge the goodness of God. And I just want to say that that whole cancel culture of you should be ashamed. To celebrate Thanksgiving is so wrong and really it's an agenda to neutralize that we can never exercise these things because of things that had happened in the past. And I just want to say, as a Christian, you should absolutely be celebrating Thanksgiving, you should absolutely be giving glory to God, you should absolutely be walking in the grace and forgiveness that we do not live in that hatred, in that overcoming, but at the same time, don't let the enemy steal, kill and destroy these moments. And you know Israel.
Speaker 2:One thing I think about is the suicide and depression rate is higher than it has ever been in America right now, and I see a correlation to the shame driven agenda, that shame on you for this. And every single holiday has something bad attached to it. And so we're taking away celebrations, we're taking away the ability to move forward in freedom, and I think that we need to be as Christians. We should be light carriers, we should be freedom bringers that go, that we are going to celebrate the goodness of God boldly. We are not going to back down from his for being thankful for all these done. We're not going to stop bringing our families together. We're not going to stop doing these things because of past sin that we cannot go back and fix. But we can say, okay, we need to cover that, we need to repent of it by the blood of Jesus, we need to acknowledge that it happened, but we also need to become free and move forward and we need to celebrate Thanksgiving. That's my message this morning.
Speaker 2:You can send me what you think about that.
Speaker 1:I wished I would have put a timer on that. I wished I would have put a timer on that one because that was a long and passionate Israel.
Speaker 2:Don't you think that there is an agenda to neutralize being able to celebrate the goodness of God?
Speaker 1:I don't even know. But now, after listening to you, I do believe there is, and you will fight it, and that is the start of Hallmark Christmas. Don't you dare mess with it, we there is this point? No, I get it. I get it. No, I think it's really good.
Speaker 2:We don't apologize for God's goodness.
Speaker 1:And you know, I mean right now, who, like I mean, come on, everybody is upset with anything, looking to be upset with everything, and I think, as Christ followers, we really cannot even try to go that way. Try to fix it. I was just talking to a pastor just a few weeks ago talking about, you know, the Halloween stuff, and they do this big event for Halloween and of course, they got the naysayers out there, because you've got a couple of people that are just like, you know, this is the devil. How could you give the devil a day or, you know, celebrate something on the devil's day, and all of these things that are, I think, just nonsense. And they actually had their thing that they were doing right after a Sunday morning service, so they had more people than they had on Easter and they had more salivations than they had on Easter, and it's just like lighting a candle in a dark world, not just trying to blow out all the candles on everybody. And so I think that that's a really good thing. That you're saying is, yeah, let's really find out what the good things that are about Thanksgiving and really, really focus on those and don't let the naysayers who are, you know, aren't even thankful, anyhow decide what our future is gonna be, so I like that.
Speaker 1:Maybe let me re-steer it for a second, now that we got the passionate response of it. What are some practical ways that we actually grow our Thanksgiving? What's a practical way? Rachel, your Thanksgiving level was at a four last year and this year you're wishing it to be a five or a six. What are some practical things that you would say?
Speaker 2:Yeah, for me, one of the practical things that I mean I'm sure that all of us already do is just reciting the goodness of God, the things that he has done in the past, to remind us of the goodness of God that we are looking forward to as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and a practical thing to just add that how to do that is I like to do my ABCs and, and what you can do is just begin to go God I'm thankful for, and start with a and just say I am so thankful for a. I'm going to be thankful for all of our friends in Australia. What a privilege and an honor. They've added so much into our life. God, we've gotten to go there several times. We're going to go there in the future. God, what a blessing. Be I am going to thank God for the bassets who are pastors in Toronto, and God, they've added value into our relationships. See Campbell's.
Speaker 1:I'm praying for all the cam so grateful for. The cam was grateful for my heritage D, e, f, g, h, and just go through the alphabet. It gets weird towards the end because I can't remember some of those W, x, y, z's and have to go through. What am I thankful for? A Z as only Xerox or zebra. But I find something in there and just keep on praying. So that's a practical way that I do that because you're exercising.
Speaker 2:Exercising, you're strengthening the muscle, you're making your thankfulness grow. Yes, that's what we're doing, and I can never talk about the holidays, starting with Thanksgiving, entering into Christmas without talking about Connie, my mama, who is in heaven, because she taught me how to be grateful and she had nothing. My mom had nothing, I'm telling you guys. Our house was filled with secondhand things and she was stretching pennies left and right. My dad was usually in the hospital, like it was. There were so many reasons why she could have not exercise and that thankfulness grow, but my mom was the most thankful woman that I've ever met, and one of the things that my mom did was when life was hard, she always interrupted.
Speaker 2:You know, when we're going through pain, we become the most narcissistic will ever be because we feel. We feel pain and so it's a constant reminder of the heart, and my mom used to interrupt that by. You know, pain makes you selfish. Pain makes you self centered. Pain makes you think about yourself. You talk to someone who's chronically ill and they just talk about themselves all the time and we love those people were praying that they walk through that season.
Speaker 2:But if you don't want to be so self focused during a hard season, interrupt it by doing things for others, and my mom used to make us go pick flowers. Those costed nothing and we would put them through like a cheap little paper plate and hang them on a door and run away and we would do it all over our neighborhood. It costs us absolutely nothing, but it got us to stop thinking about ourselves and start thinking about someone else, and there have been so many times. As a pastor, I have nothing else to give and there is a requirement for me to go to the hospital or meet with someone who just lost a loved one, and I'm telling you that is the best thing for me to do in those moments, because all of a sudden I feel that compassion and the heart of God towards them. And then I begin to look at my life and go why am I complaining about this when I'm blessed compared to what these other people are having to fight through? And I just think, interrupting our selfishness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Another practical thing that I do is just in my. I know it's old school, but like in my planner, or old school would call it day timer. Remember when it was called daytime, aren't those things?
Speaker 1:But, a planner is just there is actually it built into my planner a little thing that says gratitude, that you know what are you grateful for, and I think that that's even really important in, like our soap when we do our devotions, is. Yet there's some scriptures and some observation applications in prayer, but also so Spelled with a G, something that where we really take a moment and do and go through Gratitude, what are we grateful for, and writing it down. There is power in in writing things down. When John the Baptist's father finally wrote his name shall be John, he began to speak again.
Speaker 1:Bible talks all about write the vision, make it plain. There's something about writing that just says I am grateful for this. It takes, takes a little bit at coordination. Your mind is being, you know, just not going through the motions of it and you're really having to think about what I'm writing and something does that. And so if you have a time that you're Journaling or you're doing devotions, making it that it's something you write daily Really really can help you go from, like we were saying, growing in your Thankfulness from a four to a five. Anything else, rach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just think about how Paul is. Paul talks about Learning in Philippians, for it says that he learned to be content in all things. I love that line because I like that. He didn't say I've always been content, it just came naturally to me. He didn't say that. He said I've learned to be content.
Speaker 2:And sometimes our contentment takes discipline and it takes practice and it takes mindfulness to just stop and be content. I don't need a new car to be happy. I don't need my husband to be a different person for me to have a great marriage. I don't need more money in my bank account to have a really great holiday season. Learning to be content takes stopping the you know all the all the reels, all the things that are happening in the world, all of the Pushing of advertising of what the perfect holiday season looks like and stopping it and going what I have, if I have what not, if I don't get one more thing, if my life isn't added to in any way anymore, what can I be content with? What I have now? And you know that takes a lot of discipline and it also takes just working on, like being aware I need to be content and I need to not go out and get one more thing for the perfect holiday. No, we've got what we need.
Speaker 1:Everybody heard that. Did you hear this recording?
Speaker 2:going to solve my sadness. Even though I try it, I think if I have one more read, that's gonna be better. Oh, my good so you should like my point Israel. I love that, but don't you love that idea of like Paul learned to be content.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I loved the, the word. Like you said, it's so good. I haven't always been content. I wasn't. My dispensation isn't to be content, but it's actually. We have to learn that and it is difficult to do that, and the more. What's amazing to me is, I think, when we were younger and we had less, we were Content now that we're older and we have more.
Speaker 1:It didn't change. We're still having to learn. And Paul said you know, I've learned to be content in both and I think that sometimes we have not done that. We've been content when we're broke, busted and disgusted, but then, when we start to have God's favor, it can be easy to still be Discontented, even though you, we've come from such a long way by God's grace, isn't it true, yeah? And then we start trying to add it with wreaths and I just rebuke it in the aim.
Speaker 2:But the word content doesn't mean to be passive, it doesn't mean that we don't have any passion. You know, you can be content but still expecting and and not be satisfied, because we always are supposed to be passionate and hungry. We want more of God, we want more of the of the family unity we want, you know, we should always be wanting more, but we should also be good with what where we are. Does that make sense? And I think sometimes we think, if we ask people to practice contentment, it means lay down and die, and that's not what it means. It means expect, but expect for the good things, the right things, and don't fill your life with just stuff.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that. Maybe we can close with this one, and I mentioned it earlier. It's just, you know, I've, a couple weeks ago, a month ago, we talked about getting into God's time zone and that he's the God of yesterday, he's the God of today and he's the God of tomorrow. And I think, with thankfulness, it's good to get into God's time zone of thankful for what he's done, like looking back over the course of your life and really saying God, I'm so thankful for what you've done, and then Also getting in a zone of thankful for what he's doing right now. Right, oh God, I'm so thankful for what you're doing right now, but it's also good to sometimes thank him for what he's going to do in the future, and that can be a big stress relief if you can begin to. I'm so thankful the future is in your hands. I'm so thankful that you're in control. I'm so thankful that we're gonna see this breakthrough. I'm so thankful and so aligning even your thankfulness so.
Speaker 1:God's time zone and thankful for what he's done. Thankful for what he's doing, but thankful for almost what you're saying. Content but not dying. Thankful that he's gonna continue to do what you need in the future.
Speaker 2:I love that and I'm just gonna, if I can, read Philippians 4, 4 through 7 really quick, because I think this kind of wraps up what we're talking about. But basically it's just saying, before I read it, it just says thankful, and they thankful people are people who carry the presence of God. Hmm, those two things go hand in hand. And it says rejoice in the Lord. Always, again, I say it rejoice, let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. I love that. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving in your heart, present your requests before God, and the peace of God that transcends all Understanding will guard our hearts, in our minds. So if you want to be a peaceful presence of God carrier, be thankful in your prayers. Don't worry your prayers. Thank God that he's taking care of you and you'll be someone that has a different spirit in the world, and that's what we need right now more than anything else. Thankful people carry God's presence and that's what I want to be.
Speaker 1:I love that and we are so Thankful for you. Yes, it's always our why it is always a Just a humbling thing when we see you've been listening, or we get comments back or we run into somebody at church and said that was just what I needed, and so we're so thankful for you and Can't wait to see you afterwards. But only words of wisdom that I would say With this week's coming is wear stretchy pants, because Thanksgiving is a fun.
Speaker 2:And try sweet potatoes one more time everybody we're in the show with that.
