In this compelling installment of ‘Call to Freedom,’ listeners are welcomed into a conversation about the transformative nature of God’s love and grace. Barbara Carmack leads a poignant discussion on maintaining faith amidst life’s challenges, sharing insights that resonate with believers seeking renewal in the new year. Hear about the power of gathering in fellowship, the importance of embracing uncertainty as an opportunity for growth, and the assurance that comes from knowing that God is continuously making ‘all things new.’
Welcome to Call to Freedom with Barbara Carmack. This is Jimmy Lakey, and I’m delighted that you are joining us for this half hour. You can reach Call to Freedom at Box 370367, Denver, Colorado 80237, or by going to the website at www.freedomstreet.org. If you want to leave a message or order a Word Power Daily Reading Bible Guide or a Freedom Street Express newsletter, you can call us toll free at 1-877-917-7256 and leave your name and address, including your zip code. If you want to talk to Barbara right now, she is expecting your call. You may call that same toll-free number, 1-877-917-7256 to speak to her. And now, let’s join Barbara in the studio.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to Call to Freedom. Oh, I have sunshine coming in my window and it’s just so nice to have that in my window in the studio. I had to park my vehicle in a garage and it’s total concrete for three floors and it is icy cold. I was so happy to get out in the sunshine from the garage. Oh, praise God. He just, he brings the most wonderful, beautiful things right in the middle of maybe some really challenging issues for us. And I know you have experienced his wonderful grace and strength and comfort during those times, my friend. I know you have experienced that. May God strengthen you with his love. Fill you with his assurance. Bless you with his peace. And hold you in his arms as you trust him. Trust him with every detail of your day. That’s so important. And right now I’m praying that God’s mercy would just pour over Los Angeles and Pacific Palisades and even where I went to school in Pasadena. It was just up alongside the San Gabriel Mountains is where the school was located. And I’m thanking God that he’s going to just be merciful, bring a rain, bring a storm that would absolutely still the winds, the Santa Ana winds. Those precious people, I know a lot of them may not have depended on the Lord, and I pray that they will begin to talk about God. and to ask him to rescue them. So in Jesus’ name, I thank you, Father, for pouring your mercy and your grace upon these people. As you did for us while we were yet sinners, you died for us. Oh, Lord God. Oh, Lord Jesus, thank you. And I pray that things will settle down and be still, and that the fire would be put out in Jesus’ name. Praise the Lord. There are about 400,000 without electricity there, and I can’t imagine what that would be like, especially with the raging fire. So I appreciate it, friend, that you will be praying for Los Angeles, California. They have limited resources because of the horrible regulations that the left has put upon that beautiful state for so many years. And so the fire department has limited resources. They don’t have the things that they should have. They’ve been doing the climate change and the green thing for so long that they have ignored and not listened. kept up with the things that should be kept up with. So I pray that it’s going to be a real difference between all these states that thought that woke and DEI and all this was so good. and that they will come to their common senses. I just wrote a note to a friend in Oregon, and I said, one of these days, these blue states are going to get some common sense, going to realize that the way they had it was pretty good. It was pretty good. Thank you for listening to me. I’m kind of on my soapbox right now. You are blessed to dispense, for in him you live and move and have your being in him. And I’m so grateful to Crawford Media Group because they’ve provided a way that you can listen to programming of the Christian stations and the Christian broadcasts through going, just podcasts, going to 670kltt.com slash podcast. And if you want to listen to Call to Freedom slash Call to Freedom, and you can go and look through all the teachers on that list, 670kltt.com slash podcast. And thank you, TJ, for doing that for all of us people that have teaching and sermons and all of that. We appreciate that. Our meeting is this Saturday, January the 11th. And it’s going to be cold. Yep, it is. And it’s winter. So I look forward to being with you and seeing you. and having a wonderful time with praise and worship, talking about our Lord Jesus and how he’s always by our side. If you would like to stay for lunch, I’ll be fixing my cowboy stew, and I love that stew. It’s just so nourishing, and yet it’s very simple. And if you would like to bring a side dish and your name begins with A through M, bring a salad or finger food. And if your name begins with N through Z, bring a dessert. And we’ll start the new year with fellowship and good eating and good praise and worship. Call me for reservations at 1-877-917-7256. God bless you and hope to see you Saturday. Oh, and Kimberly, I wish you were coming on Saturday. I wish I were too.
SPEAKER 03 :
I just wish I lived a little bit closer or maybe had an airplane of my own that I could just…
SPEAKER 02 :
Pop right in. That’s a pretty big commute. I know. It is. But we always enjoy having you join us and some of our other friends that are long distances. I really appreciate them coming to the meeting because it’s just friendship. It’s friendship. It is. Friendship. It is. Yeah, it’s just really wonderful.
SPEAKER 03 :
And there’s a real hunger in the group. And every time I’m there and I feel that, I just… Really, it is a very tangible presence of the Lord that falls on the group and fills that hunger. And I am so satisfied with that. I just want to stay in the presence of my hungry brothers and sisters longer. So, yes, I’m going to miss that this month.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, it’s such a privilege to serve God and be around people that love the Lord. We get enough of the world every day when we go to work or we do, you know, go to grocery store or we go to other places where we need to buy things. But when you get together with people that love the Lord Jesus, it’s just special. It really is special. It is.
SPEAKER 03 :
It is. And this is my first time to get to talk on your program for this new year. So that whole idea of a new year and a new year and a new you in the new year. And you’re right. When we gather together and we have others that we can enjoy together, And it does make up the difference for being out in the world and not having that. It makes up the difference. It seems like it really pours into us. And at the same time, I have been asking Father God to just show me how he is present all the time. And in his presence is fullness of joy, even when I’m out in the world and I’m hearing the news and I’m walking the grocery aisles and seeing conflict, that I am more aware of his presence than ever. And I really like how you opened up this program today with this saying, trust in him all the time. Just trust him. Trust him all the time. Yes. We’re so weak. We just don’t know how to do that. We get confronted with something in the news or something that happens in our family or something happening to our cars breaking down or something happening at our job. And all of a sudden, the trust just crumbles away. And we don’t remember that he is still on the throne. And he can be trusted in the middle of all of this. And… I love your little soapbox part of being in the red state or in a blue state. And the reason why I love your little soapbox is because it’s just true about me that the blue part of me, the left part of me, takes me off into places that I don’t really want to go. The parts of my humanity that are not hooked in to trusting God all the time They do. They crater and they panic and they have anxiety. And I’m talking they, me, the parts of me that are still just so human, so human. I was reading this at the beginning of this week here, Revelation 21.5, the one sitting on the throne. He sits on the throne. He knows what he’s doing. And here’s the thing. I’m not sure he’s always in control. because he gave control to us and here we are making a mess we’re just making a mess all the time as human beings this world is very broken because of our self-centeredness and our selfishness and yet he is still on the throne and i just have this picture of him with a heart that is aching, a heart that’s breaking as he watches some of this destruction. And yet he says, the one sitting on the throne says, look, I am making everything new. Yes. And He’s able. He can do that. He does make everything new. Look back. Look back on your life and see the things that have happened and how He’s pulled us up and out of a pit of despair. How He has restored. He has. How He has renewed our thinking and helped us come alongside Him and trust him in new ways. So anything else that comes up in this life, he’s still worthy to be trusted. Yes. I heard a conversation between my children this past New Year’s Day. They were talking about the slogan that they hear so frequently, and I think I’ve already said it, New Year, New You. And it’s something that they hear mostly at the gyms and fitness places, and they like to use that slogan at the beginning of the year. Well, this is the time of year for New Year’s resolutions, and people like to get a fresh start. You know, okay, I’m going to exercise more. I’m going to diet. I’m just going to have a lifestyle change. And then you just find yourself struggling after the first week.
SPEAKER 02 :
I know. I know. That’s why I gave up on it years ago. I said, that’s it. I’ve had enough of these resolutions.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I heard my daughter just declare that she hates New Year’s resolutions, that they don’t do any good for her. They just set her up for failure. Well, that’s true. Yeah, well, it is. I can see that point of view, and I’ve been there. I’ve thought the same thing. And it does feel like you’re making promises to yourself that really are doomed to be broken at some point, at some point. Mm-hmm. We don’t know exactly when that’s going to be, even if it’s when you leave this world, that you’re no longer keeping that promise because you don’t need to in this life anymore. But I personally really like that desire. to be better, the desire for goodness, the desire for newness, for something to be new, the desire for a refresh. And I think we all need it. We all need something to refresh, something to be new. And desiring newness and having new clarity, being able to discern our Lord’s voice and guidance in a new way. That’s been the focus of my prayers at the beginning of this year. And I am looking forward to that newness. I actually started a Bible reading plan much like all the others that I’ve ever done, which starts in Genesis. And I usually like to read something from the Old Testament and something from the New Testament at the same time. And so I started that on January 1st. I was reading in Genesis 1 and reading in Matthew 1 and planning to go through this plan that I had found and just check it off my list every day. And I stopped. I threw it out. I threw the plan out. Okay. Just two days ago, I found a different plan that was so different. And I just decided, you know, I’m going to do this instead. And it actually follows the New Testament chronologically. And it starts at where they believe would be the beginning of the New Testament. That’s in Luke 1, where it describes Zacharias and David. him being in the temple and hearing from the angel of the Lord that his wife would bear a son. And he didn’t believe it. And so then he was mute until that son was born. And that son is John the Baptist. And then what they do with just that little section of the New Testament is they go back to the Old Testament to all the prophecies where it was prophesied that John the Baptist would come before Jesus. And I’m looking forward to reading this new plan, but I had to scrap an old one. I had to throw it out and have another restart. And I don’t want us to be afraid of that. You know, if you’re listening today and you’ve already had some detours on what you thought you were gonna do this year, it’s okay it’s really okay because our god is constant and he is faithful and he’s got so much grace for a detour for a turn in the path and for bumps on the road he’s got so much grace i also began a fast and i had a certain just a certain way of fasting in my mind that i’ve done in the past and It’s something changed. Something changed. And I started thinking about eating a certain food that I would not that I wouldn’t do on this fast. And well, it was the Lord. He used my husband. Matthew came in and he prayed over me and he he specifically mentioned that food. And it happens to be honey. Honey, you know that I like honey. I’m always stopping for more honey at my favorite honey spot. But Matthew prayed that over me and just asked the Lord to release. Well, I had already been thinking about the honey, that I wasn’t going to have it for 21 days. And when Matthew prayed that, I knew that was the Lord’s grace releasing me to do something new that I wouldn’t normally do. And I believe He wants every one of us to learn His voice and to know His voice, that the old things are gone, behold, the new things have come. And it’s being able to hear His voice so clearly and follow that guidance and not resist it, thinking that it might be a temptation. Oh, that’s a temptation for me to have honey. I could have thought that. But I chose rather to believe that that was guidance into something new and something sweet. I do believe that our Father is leading his people, all of us children, into sweeter things and trying to balance that out with people who are experiencing great loss today. You know, the fires that you mentioned at the top of the hour here, that is devastation and that is so hard to watch people going through these disasters that really do change their lives. And it appears to change them for the worse. It appears so devastating. But are we going to remember there’s someone on the throne today that says, I make all things new. Behold, the old things are gone and behold, new things have come. And yeah, that was their old homes. And some of those homes don’t look old. They’re beautiful. You know, mansions, the millions of dollars that are burning up, you know, that doesn’t look like they’re old. And we grieve when we see those things being lost. This is the very time where we need to stretch our faith. And my friend Janine, she used a term that I hadn’t heard in a while, and I just sat with it and went, oh, she said, there’s a tolerance. let me make sure I’m saying this right, a tolerance for uncertainty. And when you’re uncertain about the future, you’re uncertain about what will be next on your path, it can cause worry. And when you’re uncertain about what you did last week, last year, 10 years ago, you can live with so much regret That you’re not living in the present moment believing that what God said in His Word is true. You can be worrying so much about the future because you’re uncertain about the future. And when you’re worrying, that does not help the future. It does not help your path to worry. It only produces pain. Yes. And so the idea of building a tolerance for uncertainty, it’s okay to be uncertain. It’s okay to be uncertain about what happened in the past, and it’s okay to be uncertain about what’s going to happen in the future, because it’s going to work out. Yes. It is going to work out because we have a really good God on the throne. And he’s declaring, look, I’m making everything new. You’re in the mess and in the brokenness, but I have not left you. I’m right there with you. My heart breaks with you. And… I am making everything new for you. There’s so many ways that we have testimonies of that. There’s so many times in our pasts that we can look back, that there was a car wreck that we were involved in, and God provided something so much better after losing that car. There are so many testimonies of losses or brokenness that has been turned to something even better. And that is our God. That’s Him. He’s doing that. Constantly working. He is at work. I don’t know how He’s not worn out by now. Because we really have made a huge mess in this world. And I know that it’s time to align ourselves with him and be in agreement with him and just say, you know what? I don’t want to do this my way anymore. I want your way. And let him lead us and guide us into good things.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m just talking and talking and talking. Did you have anything you wanted to add?
SPEAKER 02 :
No, this is great. I’m just listening, listening, listening. I’m listening to that because he is doing a new thing and we need to be really aware, Kimberly, and cognizant of his voice. And I believe if I talked to a lot of you listening, you would say, well, I don’t hear his voice. You are. You’re listening to his voice. And as you read the word, you’re going to be hearing it more and more and louder and louder. And then he’s going to begin to guide you and lead you. It’s a process. It really is a journey and a process. But he is there. He is there to do his bidding on your life. That’s right.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, yeah. When you talk about being in the word and reading the word, what we’re doing is we’re filling ourselves with his commandments and his ways. And hopefully we’re longing to obey those things, you know, to walk in those things. John chapter one and verse 16 says, It says, For of his fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. And it’s good. It’s good. We want to be reading the basics from Moses. The basics are really a good pattern for us, for all of us. The law was given through Moses, and then grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. There’s grace upon grace, grace upon grace. I heard Joseph Prince, I can’t take any credit for this vision, but he was talking about looking at a wave of, an ocean wave and ocean waves are huge you know just watching them just come up on the shore one wave after another wave after another wave and realizing this is like god’s grace wave upon wave upon wave of his grace coming into the dry areas and especially when you see a wave crashing against rocks those rocks are so hard they’re so hard and they’re so stubborn really that makes me think of me you know just a hard human stubborn human and and his grace just continues to crash over me just keeps lavishing me with grace and grace and more grace It’s such a beautiful picture to realize that’s what Jesus came to bring us, grace upon grace, and let us see his love and everything that he has in store for us. Why would we not want to align ourselves with him and be in agreement with him?
SPEAKER 02 :
Why would we not? Why would we not? That’s a really great question to ask. Why would I not want to serve him? Why would I not want him to pull me out of this pit I’ve been in and give me a new, fresh start? Why not?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. I know that building a tolerance for uncertainty in our lives, it takes faith. You must have faith to believe that the discomfort, that the brokenness that you have just experienced or are experiencing today, that that is not the end. There is something much greater and to be able to sit in the brokenness or to sit in the discomfort, the pain, to sit in the suffering. That’s how we share in the sufferings of Christ is we’re in it. We recognize that we’re in it and it’s okay that it’s not fixed right here in this moment. It’s okay because We have a God who declares, I am making all things new. He’s doing that for us, for you, for you personally. And to believe that is how you build that tolerance for uncertainty. You’ve got to believe. And that’s what faith is. Faith is believing. So we continue to build and Jeremiah 33. I was just reading that this morning in verse six of Jeremiah 33. Actually, I’m going to back up. Verse three says, call to me and I will answer you, says the Lord. And I will tell you great and wonderful and marvelous things that you could never figure out on your own. That’s right. And verse six says, behold, I will bring to it health and healing. It is the city of Jerusalem and the wickedness when he turned his back on them because of their wickedness caused it to be a waste place. Yes. But God says, I will restore the fortunes. I will rebuild them as they were at first. I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, which they’ve sinned against me. He is in the business to clean and to renew and to pardon them. And we can trust that in the middle of the situations that we find ourselves in that are dark and really hard. We can trust. So I hope you’ll join me this year in building a tolerance for uncertainty and gaining faith in the goodness of our God.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, yes. I’m with you, Kimberly. I’m in agreement that we will build that faith that we need to be the person that God has called us to be. We’re all on a mission and he’s given us all a call, each one of us a calling. So thank you so much for being here, Kimberly. And we appreciate you so much. God bless you and keep you. And to all of you out there, take joy.
SPEAKER 1 :
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SPEAKER 01 :
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