[Music] Welcome to Call to Freedom with Barber Car Mag. 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-powered 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. Oh, this beautiful. I would love to say, “Oh, what a beautiful mort, but it’s not morning.” But what a beautiful day. It’s in the 80s. I mean, there’s a slight breeze. That’s ideal weather for me. It really is sunny and beautiful and I love weather like this. I was telling the Lord as I was coming to the building today. Oh, you could have this every day, Lord. It’s going to be really good. Oh, I don’t know if you… Well, yes, I know he listens to me, but sometimes his plans are so much better than my plans. So I just thank God for you listening and hope that you are in a situation where you’re peaceful and joyful and comfortable in what God has brought you to. God is faithful, my friend. And he knows the unspoken needs of your heart. You can rest in the assurance that he’ll meet them on time and generously. You are in agreement with God. I am prophesying over you right now that you are in agreement with God. You have the mind of Christ. And your mouth, your mouth, is the faith switch that either takes you to the negative or to the positive. And I’m going to say you are a person of faith. In Jesus’ name, praise the Lord. You are blessed to dispense for in Him you live and move and have your being. And I asked Kimberly to come back on today because she had just mentioned thorns and thistles. And I thought, wow, that’s really good because we heard about that in Genesis with Adam. He’s going to live by the sweat of his brow and the thorns and thistles. And I thought so many of us live among thorns and thistles before we know Jesus. And then all of a sudden he pulls up all these weeds like you did Kimberly. Welcome. Like you did Kimberly from my yard. Oh my goodness, girl, you are a worker. In fact, I have one of your gloves up on my little bulletin board. And they were new gloves when you started to pulling weeds. I think it was like a maybe a couple years ago. And it’s got a big hole in the index finger. You were so hard at that afternoon. And you wore out the glove. And so I don’t know. Well, maybe it wasn’t a very sturdy glove in the first place. Well, it’s a well. I mean, it’s from a sits one of those big leather gloves. So you just work hard. You do. You’re a hard worker. And so I praise God for your bone structure and anatomy, your skeletal system. Everything that God has given to you is just wonderfully made. Even though the doctors say you’re not wonderfully made, God sees you as wonderfully made. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I received that. If you can see me right now, my arms are just outstretched with my hands upward just receiving that. And we speak that over you listening to that if you’re struggling with something in your body that God has made you here fearfully and wonderfully made by the uncreated God. And he knew exactly how to knit you together. He knows how to repair. We just speak reparation. We speak repairs to you who are listening right now. We bless you with those repairs. And mom, I just love that you brought up the thorns and thistles from Genesis. I wasn’t thinking about those when I brought that up because the scripture that I was reading from is from Isaiah 27 verse 4. And it says, this is God speaking. It says, there is no anger in me. If someone offers me thorns and thistles, I will march into battle and burn them up. I will set them all on fire. Let him rely on my protection. Make me his refuge and let him make peace with me. It says that twice. Let him make peace with me. I love thinking about giving him my thorns and thistles that’s the things in my life that are causing obstacles. And you’re right when we come to Jesus, he just pulls up the thorns and the thistles. He just weeds that garden for us. But we do need to make the choice of bringing them to him. That’s right. And letting them be burned up. And you know what? Sometimes we cling to our thorns and thistles. Sometimes we think that they’re doing us more good. And they’re not. It’s interesting to me what the thorns and thistles might be. They can be idols in our lives. And those are the things that do need to be pulled up. And I was just thinking about God’s justice and what that looks like because when we cry out for justice or even when we read about able, can an able. There are two brothers that were very different personalities and Cain became jealous of his brother, Abel, and murdered him. So in the New Testament, there’s a scripture that talks about Abel’s blood crying out for justice. And now that word for justice is not always the same justice that God talks about for himself. And God’s justice is always accompanied by his mercy. Do you remember that scripture in Malachi? Malachi 6.8 that he tells us what is required of us. You’re seeing that that is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You’re right. I said Malachi. Thanks for it. Yeah. Yeah. And he says that he requires a man to do justice. By showing mercy and walking humbly with our God. Yes. I know that I’ve been talking to the listeners earlier this week about King Hezekiah and how he was threatened by King Sinacarib who at that time he had conquered every nation around Israel. And Hezekiah was so scared that he gave him all the gold, all the silver, even the gold from the temple doors. And finally, he realized he had done wrong. And what did Hezekiah do in asking for justice? He called on Isaiah the prophet. And Isaiah came to the people and said, don’t be afraid. God’s got this all figured out. He’s got a plan. And he’s going to bring you through victoriously. So when we look to counseling in a godly way, Kimberly, that’s justice from God. When we look to godly counselors that we can talk to and pray with to help us make these decisions, these life decisions, then that justice is going to prevail because God is a God of justice. You’re absolutely right. Oh, that’s good. And he has mercy that accompanies that justice. He’s not even angry that Hezekiah was trying a different route, selling off all the gold. And he doesn’t get angry. That’s what Isaiah 274 says. There is no anger in me. I’m just letting you know what these thorns and thistles look like. There’s no anger in it. In fact, I think our God is delighted when we’re trying these other paths because they do fail. He’s the only one who never fails. That’s right. And once we get to the end of everything else that we want to try and we realize, look, all of that fails in comparison to who you are and the way you do this life. God’s right. So we return to him. That’s what he wants. He wants us to return to him. It’s a wonderful plan. It’s a wonderful design. And the way that God measures His justice is as the great architect, the capital G, capital A, architect. He has original blueprints for us and for this world. And his original design for you and for me and for this whole planet is to be a sanctuary, a place of peace and rest. And he has invited us into this rest, whatever it might be that’s keeping us from that rest. That’s what he will dull out his justice on. That’s what he will burn up and make sure that it doesn’t stand in the way of his rest. Oh, yes. So those thorns and thistles of your life that prevent you from experiencing his peace will be burned up in the glory of his love for you. Oh, that’s so good, Kimberly. And some of us think when we’re pressured, when we’re in pain, God, what did I do to deserve this? And He says, it’s not me. It’s those thorns and thistles that have built up in your life and we’re just going to burn them off with my love. Oh, it’s good. I experienced that last week, Kimberly, when I decided, okay, I am going to do what Kimberly asked me to do. I am going to for 30 days be gluten free. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what I was saying. And coming off of that sugar over years and years, I had brain fog. I had all kinds of things going on in my body, but my body was sloughing off all this junk that I had stored inside of it. And so I went through pain. I went through shaking. I went through fever. And coming out on the other side, Kimberly, I realized so many people are in pain. And what do they do? They go to the doctor and get medication that only covers up the symptoms. And they don’t follow through. Oh, yes. Now you took the whole gluten free step further. You also decided to go sugar free. So you had some pretty big detoxing going on. And I don’t think you or I realized what that was going to look like. I haven’t had sugar now for 12 days, not one piece of sugar. And I’m the kind of mom you know that I have just a little piece of dark chocolate every day. Because dark chocolate is good for you. I mean, we can just– Oh, sure. And you know what? No judgment. No judgment on that. No. But we can justify our lifestyle so well now in this world. And it’s been quite a challenge for my body. And also for me, just get my thought life right again. So I’m so grateful for you coming on during this interim that I’m getting back on a restorative and renewal of what God wants me. Me, Barbara Carmack to be in. Is that restored place? Yes, that’s right. So. So sometimes God’s justice, the way that He brings justice to us, looks unfair and feels painful like you’re talking, you know, detoxing or whatever the burning of the thorns and fizzles is. It can look like pain to us. It can look like suffering to us. And we just don’t have the same wisdom that God has. In 1 Corinthians 1, 25, it says the foolish things of God have proven to be wiser than any human wisdom. Oh, it’s so good. And the feeble things of God have proven to be far more powerful than any human ability. And in that same chapter, 1 Corinthians 1 verse 21, it says, “For in His wisdom, God designed that all the world’s wisdom would be insufficient to lead people to the discovery of Himself.” Himself, yes. He took great delight in baffling the wisdom of the world by using the simplicity of preaching the story of the cross. That’s the message of forgiveness for all in order to save those who believe it. So sometimes forgiveness looks foolish to us and it looks unfair. We can get justice and fairness confused, I think. In our cry for justice in a situation, we don’t think that that person deserves any kind of forgiveness. And here is God presenting forgiveness to all. When Christ stretched his arms out on that cross, allowed Himself to be flagged and crucified. And then He spoke from the cross, from that place of suffering and pain. He spoke these words, “Father, forgive them.” Or they know not what they’re doing. And when He asked our Father, our Heavenly Father to forgive, He wasn’t just asking for the disciples that ran off and left Him or asking for the religious leaders that were standing around mocking Him and looking at them realizing, “You know, these are religious leaders. They have good hearts. They want to follow God. They just don’t have any idea what they’re doing.” He was also speaking forgiveness over the Romans, the Gentiles, those who were causing the crucifixion to actually happen and nailing Him to the cross, those who were drunk, those who go home and beat their wives, those who are rapists and murderers. He was speaking forgiveness over everyone. We need to remember that. And that sometimes looks unfair and feels unfair. But what we want to remember is that God’s justice is perfect and it includes mercy and walking humbly. We can’t always figure it out on our own. I heard somebody asking Rabbi about how a God who is so kind and loving, how could He allow pain and suffering. And the Rabbi simply explained that the wisest person on this planet is still an infant compared to God and His wisdom. And he said, “You know as infants, we can sometimes end up with a skin rash. When we have a rash, our mother, our loving mother, if we have a loving mother, will put an ointment on that rash. But it doesn’t feel good at first. It hurts. It’s irritating to have that skin touched when you’ve got a rash. And as an infant, you can’t know that that touch is actually healing. All you know is it’s irritating. It really hurts. So you might be crying out, screaming out and crying out in pain. But that pain is actually healing. We just don’t know it yet. And that’s how we want to see God’s justice. We want to see that He is bringing healing. He’s justifying a situation that has actually been a bunch of thorns and thistles in our lives. And He wants to burn those out of our lives and bring a reconciliation that does usher in a peace and a joy and a happiness and a contentment that we never would know otherwise. It is so good. I really needed that. There I was reminded of my husband’s generosity. I just want to give this as an example because for many, many years, he’s just been so generous to other people but also to our kids just spending in ways that I thought was irresponsible. And his gift of generosity is a trait that our Heavenly Father possesses. And He has passed that trait down to many of His beloved. So I need to keep that in mind. The gift of generosity does not look like wisdom to the world. That’s one of the gifts in Romans 12 with the teachers and the administrators, a gift of generosity. Yes. That’s right. So, it often doesn’t fall into my category of what responsible looks like. And I was at odds with Matthew’s generosity for years because it appeared wasteful to me. I would argue with him that we weren’t making enough for him to be so freehanded with our resources. And my sense of responsibility was an obstacle. It was a thorn. It was thorns and fizzles to how the Lord wanted to bless others. It looked like wisdom to me but foolishness to God. That’s just a really good example of how Matthew and I were not reconciled with one another. And we weren’t reconciled with God. Our small human ideas cannot compare to the brilliant wisdom that belongs to our Lord. And we need to humble ourselves and be willing to see things a little bit differently because he is God. We are not. Yes. Yes. First Corinthians 3, 19. I love this. I love the world. I love the scripture. Yes. You probably have it in other translations. Let me read it from this one. And then if you’ve got more, please, please add to this. For what the world says is wisdom is actually foolishness in God’s eyes. Yes. And he says here in the 19th verse of what you just read, “Did you read in the living?” I believe that was the Passion Transm… Oh, okay, the Passion is the New American Standard and it says, “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness.” And that’s God’s business. That’s not our business. That’s God’s business. And then verse 20 says, “The Lord knows the reasonings, reasonings of the wise, that they are useless, Kimberly. The reasonings that we live by, that we do every day by, they are useless to God.” Yes, that’s right. As we’re talking about forgiveness, it may seem foolish to forgive. There might be situations that it just seems absolutely impossible to forgive, but forgiveness is the wisdom and justice of our God. It truly is. He uses forgiveness to bring us back to our original blueprint, back to our original design, so that we can walk with Him. And we want to be able to offer that kind of forgiveness to others as well. We want them to find their way back to peace, back to God, the designer, the creator. You know, I was thinking about this justice, and Pinocchio came to my mind because it was a woodworker, right, that created Pinocchio. And I don’t even remember his name. But I was just thinking about how Pinocchio went rogue. He just decided he became alive. He became sentient. And in his own ideas, he decided to start lying. And he chose to lie. That lying actually damaged him. It caused his nose to grow and grow and grow. That was producing damage to this little wooden puppet. So to be a truly just inventor, that inventor would not just leave him that way. He would find a way to reverse what is damaging Pinocchio. And our very just creator has found a way to reconcile the wrong that has damaged us and bring us back to a restored place with him. His justice is beautiful and it is found in forgiveness. Praise God. Kimberly, so many of us say, well, I don’t have any odd against anybody. Well, I sense and I feel like more Christians than not have unforgiveness towards God. They think that God has done something to them to prevent them from living a successful life. So their unforgiveness, their grudges are against God, not maybe against human beings, but against God himself. Well, God, you just didn’t work it out the way I wanted you to work it out. Well, Kimberly, we’ve got to get on our knees and say, Father God, I want you to take the wheel. I want you to be in charge of my life here. Yes, yes. And really unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment, they are sneaky because you might feel like you don’t have anything like that against God or others, but what about yourself? How do you feel about yourself and who you are and your journey in this life? Being able to really look at that with fairness, be fair with yourself and be fair with God. Try to do it. That’s a hard thing to do. And I just am picturing God. We are His creation. And He is the Creator. He is uncreated. We are created. And the only truly just way of handling a piece of creation that has gone rogue or is being rebellious is to reconcile its programming, you know, to actually tweak it and get to the conscience, get to that level where your conscience is pricking you, bring it back into a peaceful place. And God’s justice always includes mercy. Yes. His timing is so perfect. It’s full of mercy. And the place where He does it is full of mercy. We all need that mercy. Yes, we do. We need to be able to show mercy and walk humbly with our God. He never asks us to do something that He doesn’t Himself do. We are made in His image. So He is instructing us how to be like Him. And you know what? We don’t really ponder that enough. That’s the whole big plan is to be like Him. That’s why He made us so that we would become like Him, be His perfect partner, be His body. He is the head where His body, to be His bride. Wow. How do you create a bride for the Creator of the universe? There’s nothing impossible for Him. That’s right. I think we need to spend some time realizing what our original blueprint really is. If we can come back to our original design, then we can really trust the designer that everything that He’s allowing in this life is making us like Him. It’s doing its job. That’s right. It’s fulfilling the plan. I gave Him permission to burn up all the thorns and thistles in my life. That’s where I am right now in my life. I just want to be closer to Jesus. I want to also tell all of you listeners that Travis at Crawford has a web designer and he just let me know that my name is on the podcast list at Crawford. If you’d like to listen to it besides going to FreedomStreet.org, and Kimberly, you looked up another way of getting to that. You can go to kltt.com and slash podcast. And then did you go into the podcast? Just go to their homepage. Just look up the radio homepage. The kltt. The kltt. KLTT. KLTT. And then you can go to the homepage and look for podcasts when you get there. Just search for podcasts and you can then revisit some of these programs that we have had and any other programs that they had at kltt. Oh, that’s so good. So I hope you can now you’ve got choices into which to call not only listen to call to freedom, but all the other programs on kltt. Which gives you a larger area of listening. So I think that’s a great idea. Thank you, Travis, TJ. We call him TJ here at the stations, but he’s a intelligent gifted young man. I can say young man because of my age. Thank you, Kimberly. Oh, this has been so good. I’m glad you could come today and explain the thorns and the fizzles to us. And– Oh, I pray that all of you will have great labor day. It’s going to be a long one this weekend. Have a wonderful, restful time in God. Thank you for listening to Call to Freedom with Barbara Carmack. You may get in touch with Barbara at Call to Freedom. Box 370-367. Denver, Colorado, 80237. Or you may leave your message at 1-877-917-7256. Call to Freedom is a listener supported radio ministry. Barbara and her power partners invite you to come on board with us and become a network of hands holding up Call to Freedom Ministry. Power partner support, Call to Freedom with Prayer and Monthly Financial Support. You will be blessed, supernaturally. We invite you to visit Call to Freedom’s website, www.freedomstreet.org, where you can hear Barbara’s daily radio broadcast 24 hours a day or order materials. You may share your praise reports in heart prize by mailing them to Call to Freedom. Box 370-367. Denver, Colorado, 80237. Or you may email us at Barbara Carmack at FreedomStreet.org. Until next time, remember Jesus loves you, Barbara loves you, and take joy. Thank you. [Music]
