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[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. Welcome to Call to Freedom. I'm starting at the beginning of the program having my tongue all turned around. Welcome to Call to Freedom. Maybe I've said it too many times. No, no, I haven't said it too many times. I'm so glad you joined me today and you know that I'm human, okay? I'm human, woman. And sometimes we make little mistakes and we just say pardon me. I hope you understand. Oh, I want you to know today that our strength may fail and our words, our strength may fail but our God will not. May He give you peace of heart and mind today. And I want you to know that your assignment here on this earth is to get to know Jesus. That's it. Yeah, get to know Jesus and let people know Him. Get to know Jesus and let people know Him. And as we get deeper into the Word of God, we're going to get to know Jesus more and more. If you've watched any of the chosen, you know that this relationship with the Lord Jesus is just such a personal relationship. Oh, it's just not a lonely life here on this earth, even if you are single. It's not a lonely life with Jesus. I can truthfully say that myself. I'm so grateful. And I know that God is going to watch over you today. Kimberly has a wonderful testimony and he's watching over you, taking you by the hand and watching over you. You are blessed to dispense for in Him you live and move and have your being and you can listen to Call to Freedom either at freedom street dot org. Click on the radio shows or you can go to a KLTT app which is 670kltt.com go and slash then it's podcast then slash call to freedom call dash to dash freedom. And you can listen to various teachers on those podcasts there. Thank you so much Crawford for doing that. So you can donate online by going again to freedom street dot org and clicking that donate button. I appreciate your giving so much. It's and it's easier, I believe, for you as you get onto the regular schedule of giving online. Also we have a meeting this Saturday, September the 14th. I'm looking forward to seeing you and having fellowship with you as we join in singing praise songs to our Lord Jesus and discussing the Bible at 10 o'clock. We'll have lunch on the patio. I call this last Saturday of the summer. I call it summer salad Saturday. So we're going to have salads and I will make a salad and I hope you can bring a salad. If you would like, rather bring a dessert, feel free. This is just a free Saturday. We're going to have a wonderful time. I look forward to seeing you call me at 1 877 917 7256. I'll see you on Saturday, September the 14th. God bless you. And welcome again to call to freedom, Kimberly. Thank you. I wish I were joining you for this Saturday. I love being there. Well, that sounds wonderful. A summer salad. Yeah. Summer salad Saturday. Yeah. It sounds like my kind of day. But it just means to last all day long so we could just sit there eating salads. You know salads. Yeah. We could just keep eating them, right? That's right. Just keep eating them. It's wonderful. Yeah. It's a warm day and we're under that cover on the patio. So whether it would be rainy or windy, we're still protected under there. So you have the nicest breezes that come through. So it doesn't matter how warm it gets for you. I know here very often it's so humid that a breeze just doesn't even help. But there in Colorado, your breezes are lovely. They are. And so many times, Kimberly, I'm hearing the flag in the backyard. Flapping in the breeze. It's just a wonderful sound to hear that. Yes. Wow. We're so blessed. So blessed. We are blessed. Our Lord has put us in beautiful places and remembering to thank Him on a daily basis is such a good thing to say thank you for these beautiful places. And yesterday we were talking a little bit about how God has given us, He has not given us the spirit of fear. He has given us a spirit of power, a spirit of love and a spirit of self control. There are other versions that call it a sound mind. But I love meditating on the idea of a spirit of self control. It doesn't, you know, if you're really thinking about it, it's contrary to what God is asking us to do in the rest of the Bible. He wants us to be dependent on Him, but here we see this word self control. And we think we've got to get control of ourself. And it's not really learning to control yourself, but learning to let yourself be so in love with God that He gets the control. He gets to control. And we were talking yesterday about what God remembers about us. He's so kind, so full of compassion. And He's so forgiving that Jeremiah 2, verse 2 says this is what the Lord says, "At the time you were a young nation, you were faithful to me, you followed me like a young bride, you followed me through the desert." And the New American standard says, "I remember this concerning you. I remember you being faithful to me." The message, translation, says, "I remember your youthful loyalty, our love as newlyweds. You stayed with me through the wilderness years. You stuck with me through all the hard places." This is God telling us what He remembers about us. Yes. But when I read the Bible and I read through Exodus and how His people were brought into the wilderness, what really sticks in my memory is how they were a bunch of grumblers and complainers. And they were idolaters and they made a golden calf when Moses was gone too long. And they questioned God's leadership and the leadership that God put in front of them. And when they questioned, then the earth opened up and swallowed some of them. This is what I remember. They were so unfaithful that God allowed the serpents to get to them and bite them. Those were consequences of their unfaithfulness to God. That's right. Now, I would really get probably tired of man every day, but he supplied it to them. And we should be satisfied with that, but they weren't. They wanted meat. Now, see, I'm a kind of meat and potatoes person that if I don't get meat in a little while, I just, I need meat. I don't know how long I would last out there in the desert with just mana, but we are so finnig it, Kimberly, we are. We don't get what we want. Well, and the thing is, we might grumble and complain and then we want God to forget about that, but we don't forget. We're hard on ourselves and we're hard on other people. We tend to hold grudges, but God does not. This is a, this is a passage in Jeremiah of him remembering and in his memory of that time in the wilderness, all he says is, I remember your loyalty. I remember your love toward me. I remember you stayed with me through the wilderness. You stuck with me in all the hard places. That's what he's saying he remembers. So he's not hard on us at all. Is it possible that we have confused God with our own personalities and other personalities in the Bible like the prophets? The prophets were the ones that were really hard on the people that said some really hard things. So when we go to Isaiah 42, this is so beautiful. In Isaiah 42, God is talking about his servant, the one he upholds. He says, my chosen one in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him. He's talking about Jesus here. And when he sent Jesus, he said, he will bring forth justice to the nations. And verse two, he will not cry out or raise his voice or make his voice heard in the streets. Listen to that. He's not going to cry out, raise his voice, make his voice heard in the streets. When he sends himself to the earth and Jesus, the Son of God is walking on this earth, he does not have a bone to pick with us. He's not crying out in the streets telling us how bad we are and that we need to repent. That's what the prophets did. That was the assignment that he gave to the prophets, the apostles, John the Baptist, his was a voice that was crying out. But when God himself came, he came to love and to pour out forgiveness and healing. And we saw in Isaiah 27.4, I think it was last week we were talking that there is no anger in him. That's what Isaiah 27.4 says. There is no anger in God. That when we come to him and offer him all of our thorns and thistles, he just burns them up. You know, a consequence of our falling away from him and not being with him. We can see things burn. We can see things bruised and damaged. We can see things that are lost. But that's consequences of this broken world. He tells us that he does not have a bone to pick with us. And a bruised read, he will not break. And we're bruised and we're feeling kind of down. He's not going to break us. A dimly burning wick, he will not extinguish. He will faithfully bring forth justice. He shall bring forth the true way. And what that means, his justice is bringing us back to wholeness. Because we're lost. We're broken. We're not doing really well. We're not without him. And he's bringing us back to himself. That's true justice. In his love and in his timing, he brings us back to himself. And that is where our self then is controlled by him. We fall in love with him and we trust him so much that we let him have full control. Knowing we can't fix ourselves. Even though we dilute ourselves into thinking that we can't, we cannot fix ourselves. So he tells us that he comes to this earth. He does not break a bruised read. And he says that twice in Isaiah 42, he says it in verse 3 and in verse 4, that he does not break a bruised read or snuff out a dim wick. And that he also says in verse 4, that he himself will not grow dim or be bruised until he establishes the true way on the earth. And the true way is to be made like him, for us to be made like him. That's the true way. So how does all of this play out in our relationships with other people? Because he wants us to be made in his image, he wants us formed to be like him. And by the way, that's his great plan. That is his big dream. He is just dreaming of all of us being like him. And he knows how to do it. Wow, our God is so full of faith. Because when I look around, it doesn't look like that plan could ever come to pass. It looks impossible. But he is the God of the impossible. And all we have to do is trust that he is God and that he is doing this work in each one of us and everyone around us. So in our relationships, it's real easy to try to be like one of those prophets or the apostles and have that message and be screaming out and crying out, this is wrong. Don't go that way. You need to come back. It's real easy to want to be that mouth. But in relationships with other people, God is just watching and waiting for us to trust him that he's God, everyone, everyone in his hands. And Matthew and I are such different people. We are so, so different. Our values are different. And we can really, if we are not careful, we can do harm to one another with our expectations. And while I was there in Colorado with you, he started inviting a friend over to just have some drinks and relax and just be in a peaceful place, a quiet place together. And when I came home, I was finding boxes of scotch whiskey in the house, empty boxes. And that doesn't offend me. I don't get really offended at the sight of alcohol. I know that Jesus, not only drank wine, but he provided wine for a wedding. And so I'm not offended by alcohol. Then you choose to use something though as a crutch and you're not leaning on the Lord. And that something becomes a routine. That's something that is a conviction of my heart that I don't want any other thing, any other substance, any other business, any other person to take precedence over my God in my life. Just like conviction. Just like saying in the morning, I've got to have my coffee or I've got to have my coke. That is a lust that we've talked about, having to have something and being separated from God in that extent of doing that. Right. Right. So that's just my conviction. And Matthew and I just have very different convictions. Now in relationships with other people, there are some people who don't know how to just say no to another. They don't know how to really represent themselves and say, "I just don't want that right now." And so I haven't always known exactly who Matthew is because he's one of those personalities that has a harder time telling other people no. And the blessing of this past week and the struggle that we had was him being able to come to me and say, "I just don't share the same convictions that you do." Basically telling me, "No, no, I don't think that way." And that was freedom for him to be able to get to that place. Now for me, I had to be able to get out of my pit of trying to figure things out. For me, in my home, I want people to find relationship with God and be dwelling with the Lord continually and not leaning on their own understanding, not leaning on their coffee, leaning on their chocolate, leaning on their co--leaning on alcohol, leaning on--and here's the thing, I can lean on my ability to figure things out. Yeah. So I was trying to figure out how I was going to communicate to Matthew that this conviction was important to me. And I'm such a figure outer that I have books next to my bed. I keep an algebra book there. I keep a Sudoku numbers book. I love these puzzles and these equations that I can be figuring out because I like to figure things out. And I want a solution and I want to come to a conclusion that makes me feel like I'm at rest. Now I don't do these puzzles every single night. In fact, most of the time I'm just reading my Bible to go to bed. But I love numbers and I love the way that they all work out. That's not--it doesn't look like a bad thing. But if I'm leaning on my ability to figure things out, it becomes a pit real fast. Yes, it does. And it brings me to my wit's end because all of a sudden I'm not able to figure things out in relationships with other people who are complicated and they have different convictions. And then I just feel like, "Oh, I'm failing. I can't figure this out. I'm being hard on myself when the Lord is not hard on me." He is still on the throne. He knows how he is drawing Matthew, drawing my children. He knows what he's doing. And all I need to do is look to him and say, "Make me more like you. I just want to be more like you." And you stay with us even when we're making really horrible decisions and you don't even hold a grudge about that. Your best memories are the memories that come up and you don't even remember our sins. You've thrown them away and you don't look at them. You actually need us to remind you of what those sins were. And we do. We do. We remind him. Yes. I think what you said at the beginning of this program, Kimberly, was really a great. It gave me clarity anyway that we sometimes try to figure God out by putting on him our emotional status and our characteristics of our personalities, not his, because we can't understand him. So we kind of throw what we know about ourselves on him and it's so wrong because he's higher than anything we can think of. He's greater than anything we can think of. His thoughts are so far more. They're out there in the universe, beyond the universe, and we can't even conceive. We can't even conceive of our heavenly God. Right. That's right. We can't. And so when Matthew and I are causing each other, like I can't figure him out. And so that's causing me turmoil. And he can't figure me out and feels like he's not measuring up. That's causing him turmoil. Yeah. Ouch. You know, and that's really hard. So yesterday, morning, I didn't have permission to talk about all of this from him yesterday and that's why I didn't mention any of it yesterday. We talked last night and I got permission and he was like, yes, let people know what our struggles are so that they know life is hard trying to figure it out with other people. And it's not impossible. God does the impossible thing and gets our focus back onto him. The one scripture that really stood out to both of us yesterday morning was from Matthew 5, verse 3. In the message translation, it says, you are blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you, there is more of God and his rule in you. And yesterday morning, he and I both just looked at each other and went, oh, thank you. Thank you for getting me to the end of my rope. You've done a really good job of helping me get to the end of my rope so that there will be less of me and more of God and the way that he handles things. In Isaiah 42 and in verse 5, it says, thus says God the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out. He spread out the earth and what it brings forth, who gave breath to all the people upon it and life to those who walk. I the Lord in my grace, I have summoned you and I have grasped you by the hand. I have created you and appointed you a covenant people. This one says grasped you by the hand, but there are other translations that says, I will hold your hand and protect you. You will be the sign of my agreement with the people. Or I will also hold you by the hand and watch over you. I appoint you as my covenant people, as light to all the nations. The Lord Himself just longs to be holding our hand in conversation with us, in constant communication and wanting us to make Him first. Put Him first, first things first, He comes first. Everything else falls into place and there is peace and harmony when we know that He is holding every relationship in His hands and He is working it all out. Yes. For instance, just think of what Matthew was doing with this friend coming to the house. He was not trying to hide the fact that they had drinks. No. He actually had the boxes of the drinks in the cabinets. He was not trying to hide it at all, not like someone who was sneaking around and throwing stuff into another dumpster because they were afraid that their family would see them. No. It is just a different approach that He is taking to life and God is seeing each person's differences, their emotional differences and their characteristics. Yes. We can't figure it out, Kimberly. No, we can't. No, we can't. But transparency is so important. Being really open and transparent. That is what brings hidden things into the light. Transparency is what exposes things to the light and then it releases us from feeling this huge bondage. Secrets are bondage. And so transparency is very much what we want. God's people are not going to remain focused on whether or not you are accomplishing all the rules and then hiding the things that you aren't doing well. God's people, they know who comes first. When you have a religion, you might be focused on how it should look, how the rules should be, how you should look, what rules to follow, how the when, the where. That's what you're focused on in religion. I've learned that Hindus hope in Nirvana and if they do all the house and what's and when's and where's right, they've got Nirvana to look forward to. And atheists actually look forward to being remembered well. They want to do the house and what's and where's and when's also. And they want to be remembered well. Muslims have a hope for rewards in paradise and I'm going to group Christians right in with this. They have a hope for heaven. It's the house, the what's the when's the where's that get us to these places in our minds. That's what that's what we stay focused on. But God's people, they're not really focused on how what when where they're focused on who. And that's what we all want. We want God to benefit, not us people to benefit, but him. And that's how you have relationship is you focus on what God is dreaming about. And us, we're history. He longs for us to know him to remain in conversation and communion with him and let him take us by the hand and protect us and walk us through this very broken world, walking it all out for his glory, but also for our good. That's right. Yes. So you and Matthew, even though you have differences and you were at the end of your rope, you ended the conversation by hugging each other? We did. We hugged each other and said thank you so much for being the one that comes that helps me get to the end of my rope. Oh, that's beautiful. It's wonderful for a mother to hear that. Oh, thank you so much, Kimberly, for this great teaching. God bless you and keep you. Thank you. And take joy. 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 phrase 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 Freedom Street dot org. Until next time, remember Jesus loves you, Barbara loves you, and take joy. Thank you. [Music]
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