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[Music] Welcome to Call to Freedom with Barbar Carmac. 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 370-367 Denver, Colorado, 802-37 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 want to remind you that it's 9/11 and we will never forget 9/11, 2001. Because it was for Freedom that Jesus set you free. Jesus died almost 2,000 years ago for you and these men and women who gave their lives almost 3,000 people. It was for Freedom, my friend. So remember that. Never forget that people have died, that you might have freedom. By day the Lord directs His love at night. His song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. Last night I went out to bed and maybe you felt like this at the end of the day. I was just a little saddened of heart. And it's like immediately Holy Spirit was there and He said, "I want to surround you with the joy of God." And in your presence is fullness of joy and at your right hand are pleasures forever. More Barbara and that's how we can edify ourselves and build up our spirits even if there is sadness in our day, sadness in the hours that we have seen go by and haven't accomplished what we wanted to accomplish. Oh, the joy of knowing God and the hope there is in knowing Him, my friend. I hope you do. I hope you know Jesus. All you need to say right now is, "Lord Jesus, I admit I'm a sinner. I've never given you the time of day. I have not given my attention to you, but I want to make you my Savior and my Lord. I want to give you myself, my heart, my soul, my strength." So I say, "Lord, God, give me a new heart and a fresh start." And in that little prayer, He will make you a new creation according to 2 Corinthians 5, 17. So remember that. Oh, you are blessed to dispense. For in Him you live and move and have your meeting and have your move and live and move and have your being. I'm sorry. Oh, I still thinking of that freedom thing. Praise the Lord. I just want to announce the meeting before Kimberly comes on this Saturday, September the 14th. I'm looking forward to seeing you and having fellowship with you as we join in on the singing the praise songs and discuss the Bible at 10 o'clock. I love discussing the Bible and we'll have lunch on the patio. It's going to be a beautiful day. We're going to have a summer salad Saturday. Yes, summer salad Saturday to celebrate the end of summer, 2024. And feel free to bring your favorite dessert if you'd like that instead. There will be not only great fellowship, but delicious food around the tables on the patio. Call me at 1-877-917-7256. I look forward to seeing you on Saturday, September the 14th. God bless you and welcome to call the freedom Kimberly. I know you're 750 miles away, but you're always you're always close to us. Yes. Oh, I'm so thankful for that. Yes. Yes. I'm so thankful for technology. And I really loved how you were introducing in him. We live and move and have our meeting because you're having a meeting at this Saturday. I thought that was very appropriate. Thank you. Thank you. For overcoming a stumble there. Oh, yeah. Sometimes it's really not a stumble. I love to look at things like that in life where we think we've made these horrendous mistakes. And God works them all for good, even the smallest thing. The smallest thing that we get twisted in our sentences. He works them for good. He did. And I love that. Amen. Yesterday, I just want to stay in the same spirit of yesterday. I love the name of the program that you put on the website. It's called First Things First, right? Is that what you called it? It was the song that consumed by fire sing at the end of the program. Yes. Yes. Love that. And I loved it so much when John called in from "Loveland." If you're listening today, John, we just love you. Yes. You have an amazingly transparent heart that is a great help to the body of Christ. Yes. So I just want to say thank you for calling in with willingness to talk about the hard things in this life. Yes. And right before this program, just now, I heard someone say how important it is to tell our stories. And to hear other stories so we won't forget. And that's what I love. Yesterday, John, you called in and you're telling your story. And I love to tell my stories too. And mom, when you asked them, "How are you?" That first thing that he said is, "I stick to 2 Timothy 1,7." God has not given you a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of self-control. And it's a spirit of self-control. And that's how he started the whole conversation. Yes. I just love that. I know. And he starts it with the Word of God. Yes. He's memorized more scripture than any other power partner I've known in the last 25 years. And he just really does memorize. He writes down on the little insert card that he returns with his donation. He's always, "I memorized." And he goes on with the scriptures and writes them out. That's just beautiful. Yes. Oh, I love it. Yeah. There were a couple of things that really stood out to me about that conversation. And one, it was just a real small thing. Maybe he doesn't even remember saying it. But he said, "It seems like the listeners all know what they're doing." And isn't that the truth? We think that everyone else has it all figured out. We just have a tendency as human beings. We look at other people's lives and their careers and their families and their homes and their cart. And we just think, "Wow, they've got it all figured out, don't they?" Yeah. Yeah. And then we're even harder on ourselves thinking that we don't have it figured out when really all of us are just confused. It's just the truth. We don't have it figured out. And the other thing he said was, "I lean on the verse that says," and he was quoting Isaiah 35-4. "I've been spending a lot of time in Isaiah just falling in love with it all over again." So I love this. He said, "I lean on the verse that says, 'Say unto those who have a fearful heart, be strong, fear not.' My God comes with vengeance, even with recompense to save us." Oh, yes. I love that. And it's so true. Our God does come with vengeance and recompense to save us. He does not hold our sins against us. He's so full of compassion, full of forgiveness, full of mercy. And he watches us go through consequences of our own and their consequences because we're not really following him closely. We get ourselves into situations in life that are painful, that are heart, that are confusing, that feel compromising. And we get ourselves into that because we haven't followed really closely, but that's not really talking about following all the rules. It's talking about relationship and constantly leaning on the Lord. And I just, John's transparency and vulnerability yesterday were just so inspiring and healing. How wonderful to see someone walking out exactly what God has planned for us humans, recognizing our weaknesses, and then wishing we didn't have them, but we don't want those weaknesses. And then finally, asking God to do the work to change us. That's the key though. It's asking him because we can't change ourselves. John even said that. I heard him bring that up because we can't have self control. We can't do it on our own. Even Paul says in Romans 7, "The good that I wish I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not wish." And he says, "Oh, wretched man that I am, who will set me free from this body of death?" And then he in the 25th verse of chapter 7 of Romans, he says, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, so then on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law, but on the other with my flesh the law of sin." Then he goes right into chapter 8 of Romans. There is therefore now no condemnation. That's exactly what you're talking about, Kimberly. Yes. Over, over, coming all those feelings. Oh. Yes. Yes. For the law of this, I don't even have it in front of me, but I think I can say, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. Yes. My hands are just up in the air right now. Yes. Amen. Hallelujah. It's so good to remember that it's relationship with him. It's not how well we can walk it out or even end up with our own self control. It's asking and keep on asking, like Luke 11, 9 tells us. And Matthew 7, 2, the Sikh, 1st, the kingdom of God, that section right there is Sikh and keep on seeking. It's asking, keep on asking. It's a continual relationship, not just a one time thing, so that we've achieved and now we feel really good about ourselves. You know? Yes. So it's continuous, which is revealing that we need relationship and we need communication with our Lord all day, every day. Yes. And that is what is most important. It's not just achieving what we think is necessary for change. That's not actually important. What's important is cultivating the intimate relationship with him, where he's always on your mind and you're always talking to him. Yes. We all have our pits that we fall into and thank you John for sharing yours yesterday. We all need help getting out of them and it's not other human beings that help us out. It's God Himself who helps us and eventually helps us avoid them all together. Yes. So, you know, remaining in the spirit of transparency, because I truly believe that's where we find our help. Last week, I was letting you all know about my struggles with the choir members that wanted our band to just change the key with the snap, you know? Not realizing what they were asking for and it made me so upset. I was really angry and I chose to worship. It became an act of worship. It became a sacrifice of praise because I was choosing the worship over my feelings. Yes. I was really, really upset. You know, and thank you God, I'm not upset this week. I can go to choir and hug my friends and not be mad. And I'm so grateful for the opportunity to get past the feelings. We have to even get past our feelings, the feelings so dark and feeling so sinful. Because God doesn't look at us and see us as sinful and dark. He sees us as precious. He is the one who actually created darkness in the first place. If we go, you know, Genesis 1 in the Tanakh, it starts out when God began to create heaven and earth, the earth being unformed and void with darkness over the surface of the deep. And a wind from God sweeping over the water. God said, let there be light. I love that. Knowing that there was no darkness until God created that darkness and that void. When he began creating, it included the darkness, the confusion, the chaos, the void. And he spoke over that. His words are precious. And when we hear those words and respond to those words, then we are coming into relationship with him. Yes. Psalm 107, you brought this up earlier and I just, I love this song so much. It describes a lot of different pits that we all fall into. In Psalm 107 verse 4, it says, some of us once wandered, wandered wandering around, confused in the wilderness, like desert nomads, with no true direction or dwelling place. Starving, thirsting, staggering, we became desperate and filled with despair. And then we cried out, Lord help us. Rescue us. And he did. And he did. Yes. He led us right into a place of safety and abundance, a suitable city to dwell in. I love that. When we cry out to him, he answers. When we stay in communication with him and realize it's not in our own efforts that we can avoid these pits that we fall into, that we can avoid the wilderness, that we can avoid the desert. That's not what that's all about. That's not what it's teaching us. It's not about avoiding. It's about communicating, calling out to him. He hears when we call out to him. And he satisfies our souls in verse 9 of Psalm 107, how he satisfies the souls of thirsty ones and fills the hungry with all that is good. Yes. Here's another group of people in verse 10. Some of us once sat in darkness, living in the dark shadows of death. We were prisoners to our pain, change to our regrets. We rebelled against God's word, rejected his wise counsel. So he humbled us through our circumstances. Those are our consequences. That's right. There are just natural laws that God put in place here. And it's our own consequences. And he allows those consequences to humble us. And he watches us as we stumble. Oh, you have to know that he doesn't watch us stumble thinking, yep, good for them. They really needed that. That's right. Oh, that's not our God. We all have stumbled. We've all fallen short of God's glory. We've all stumbled. How dare we? So how dare we? Yes. Blame him or even our brothers and sisters for things that have happened that we have allowed to happen. Yes, you're so right, Kimberly. Then he heard us. He saved us. Yes. And when he's watching us, he's so full of compassion. You know, it's just like when you watch one of your friends or one of your family members, making decisions that you really don't want them to make because you know it's going to cause them harm. And it's going to make them struggle even harder. You really don't want that for them. And it's so hard for you to watch them. You might try and try and try to tell them. Don't do this, you know. And you want to be that voice crying out saying, avoid that pit. And especially parents with children, I don't want them growing up to how I grew up. So I'm going to give them everything, give them the better things in life. And boom, they still make those decisions that require God's presence, Kimberly. Right. But as much as it hurts us to watch it, that's how it hurts our Heavenly Father to watch us stumbling in the dark. And he can see that there's nothing that's going to help us until we call out to him and revive our relationship with him and our communication with him. And then we cried out in verse 13, Lord help us rescue us and he did. And he did. He made all of Louis XIV his light broke through the darkness and led us out in freedom from death's dark shadow and snapped every one of our chains. I love it. He's so willing to just meet us there and and set us free from the bondage and pull us up and out of the pit and bind up our broken hearts. In the verse 17, it's talking about another group, another group of people, another, this group, he's calling fools. Some of us were such fools bringing on ourselves sorrow and suffering all because of our sins. Sick and feeble, unable to stand to the side of food, we drew nearer to the gates of death itself. And then we cried out, Lord help us revive us and rescue us and he did. He spoke the words, be healed and we were healed and delivered us from death's door. It's hard to speak out and ask him to rescue you when you're mad at him. Oh, that's so good. So you might need to forgive him and then call out to him. He does come to our rescue. He does revive us and restore us. He does heal us. And then we start recognizing, oh, wow, I got myself there in that own set of consequences, in that own pit. It wasn't him that put me there. I ended up there because of my choices. Yes. There's another group of people in verse 23. It says, some of us set sail upon the sea to far away ports, transporting our goods from ship to shore. We were witnesses of God's power out in the ocean deep. You know, I just think of these people as being so arrogant because wow, look what I'm doing. I am moving things around. I have stuff. Yeah, or I'm going on a cruise, you know, forget the life here. I'm just going to take some time off. Go on a cruise and forget my life back home. Yeah, they take off on the sea. Then a storm comes. Tell you what, my pride and arrogance has has stirred up a storm before. Yep, a storm comes, doesn't it? Lifting high the waves with hurricane winds, ships were tossed by swelling sea, then dropping down to depths, really like drunkards, spinning like tops everyone at their wits end until even experienced sailors despaired of life, cringing in terror. And here it is again, verse 28, then we cried out, Lord help us rescue us. And he did. And he did. God stills the storms. He calms the waves. He hushes the hurricane winds to only a whisper. And we are so relieved, so glad as he guides us safely to harbor in a quiet haven. Psalm 107, it's so good. It takes some time to read it. It is wonderful. It reminds me of the time that Jesus was asleep in the boat on the sea of Galilee. And you've seen the sea of Galilee. So and the disciples, the storm is raging. It's the, I mean, the waves are lapping up at the side of the boat. They come to Jesus, wake him up. Lord, it's storm. We're going to drown. Here's the Son of God whom they have seen miracles performed by his hand. And they still say we're going to drown. He's right there in their presence. And all it takes is relationship. Lord help. Lord help. And you know, just reading through all these different pits that we humans can fall into reminds us of how gentle, how kind, how loving and merciful and generous our God is to always rescue us when we call on him. And I believe Manasseh King Manasseh is just one of the best examples of that. A wicked king. And he was wicked for 50 years wicked. And then taken into captivity into Babylon and God rescued him from there because he cried out to the Lord and repented. And the Lord rescued him and put him back on his throne back in Jerusalem. That's amazing. I know. A lot of people say if Hezekiah wouldn't pray, have prayed for more years when he was sick and the Lord gave him more years to live, he wouldn't have had Manasseh. So here we have a wicked king, but you're looking at it in a different light, Kimberly. I am. Yes, that we all find ourselves falling short. We all find ourselves in the pit. And we've got to we cry out to the counselors, to the lawyers, to everybody in this world. And we've got to cry out to God. Yes. And that's what he's looking for. That's the point of this whole life. He created us to be a perfect partner to him, to be his best friend. Best friends stay in touch with each other. And he is looking for us to call on him, not fix it all ourselves. Yes. We can't fix it ourselves. And yesterday you said something, Mom, and you spoke truth. When you said that self-control is the last in the list of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, because it's the last one that we achieve as believers. That's right. And I think it's the last one we achieve because it's absolutely impossible. It really is. Self-control is impossible. Only God can control these selfish beings, us human beings. Only God can control this self with His love. Maybe we should translate that instead of self-control as the last fruit of Holy Spirit, God control. Just list that as God control because it's no longer self. That's right. No longer self. Yes. I believe Jesus is the one who showed us that the beauty of that, teaching us how to pray, thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. Not my kingdom. I don't want my kingdom anymore. I want yours. I don't want my will. I want my will anymore. I want yours. And even the struggle in the Garden of Gesemony, Jesus was showing us that He really wanted a different path. He wanted a different cup to drink. Let this one pass from me. I really don't want this one, please. Yes. Nevertheless, not my will. But yours be done, O Lord. Yes, that's right. And when we let that happen, that's truly God control over us instead of our self-controlling us. It's Him controlling us. Yes. That's beautiful. It is. It's beautiful. As I was praying, I was telling you a while ago that the Lord told me, so many times we have a new year. And it's the year of breakthrough. It's the year of victory. It's the year of overcoming. It's the year everything is just ongoing. I'm going to crush the enemy. And I said, Lord, what has this year been? And He says, it's the year of yielding. Why? I-E-L-D-L-Y. Yealding yourself. And we don't want to hear those words, surrender, yielding. We don't want to hear those words. We want to hear the overcoming words. Well, I can't believe it. Yeah, we need to lay down our lives just as Jesus did. Take up our crosses. Lay down our lives, surrender it all to Him. Yes. That's so true. Because self-control, it's not possible on our own. And only our God can do the impossible with His love. Yes. Oh, this has been so good. I'm inviting you back tomorrow because you've got a little addition that you're working on. And I know the listeners are going to need what you are going to be expounding on. And it's something that we need to realize in this life in order to be followers of Jesus. And the very last word in Isaiah 42 is that this is the key Kimberly. God wants to hold you by the hand and watch over you. And that's what I want to give to the listeners today. God wants to take you by the hand and watch over you. That's how much He loves you. Well, thank you. That's so good. We all be able to just walk in that for the rest of the day. Yes. Amen. Remember the meeting on Saturday, September the 14th. Call me at 1-877-917-7256. And thank you again, Kimberly. And Lord willing, we will talk tomorrow. 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 barbracarmac@freedomstreet.org. Until next time, remember Jesus loves you, Barbara loves you, and take joy. [Music] [Music]