Join Barbara and Kimberly as they discuss the life-altering decisions we face and the inner strength required to lay our burdens on the altar. Through scriptures and poignant personal experiences, they highlight how true fulfillment and contentment arise from union with God. As they reflect on the complex dynamics of prayer and desire, listeners are encouraged to align their will with God’s and navigate the challenging yet rewarding path of spiritual growth.
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 01 :
Welcome to Call to Freedom. I’m so glad you joined us today. It’s going to be a wonderful day. You know why? Because I had opposition all morning long. And I know when the enemy doesn’t want you to do something, then you go full barrel through. You do. You stand strong in the Lord and in the power of his might, not the enemy’s. And I’m so grateful. I am just so grateful. I’ve been listening a little bit to some of the people who are going to be heads of the departments today. that Trump has appointed. And it’s really interesting. It’s, you know, from one party to the next, they’re asking deep, deep questions. Some of them questions that have nothing to do with the position the person’s going to take, but they still ask anyway. And I’m so grateful. I listened a little bit to what Pam Bondi had to say. And she is going to make a terrific attorney general. And I’m so grateful for Trump’s appointees. I am truly excited. And I know you know that I’m excited. So I’m excited to see the wonderful things that God has in store for his people through people that he’s going to put in leadership. And that’s what he does. He puts wonderful people in leadership. And then we take orders from those people in leadership. I’m so looking forward to it. is Inauguration Day. Oh, how long have we looked forward to that day? Oh, my friends, take courage. God is on the throne. He’s not going to leave you or forsake you. Remember that. You are blessed to dispense for in him you live and move and have your being. And from Ephesians 3.20, he who is able to do immeasurably more than all All we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us, to him, to him, not to us. We don’t get any of the credit. I don’t want any of the glory. To him be glory forevermore. Amen. Praise the Lord. God never compromises on his promises. I want you to know that you can believe that promise, that he’s going to keep that promise no matter what. Even though it looks dreary, it looks hopeless, God’s going to keep that promise. So I want you to know that. As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. And at the last, he will take his stand on the earth. And I’ll be with him. I hope you’ll be with him. I hope you will be one of the wonderful crowd of people that are going to be with God. Father God and our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ and us. Amen. Well, Kimberly has a great teaching today. We’ve had a little bit of problems with the transferring of voice prints and stuff, but we’re going to do it. And Kimberly, I welcome you to the broadcast. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 03 :
I had a little glitch with my Wi-Fi this morning, so if I drop out, you just be prepared to be reading scripture until I come back. Oh, wonderful. Okay. Yep, I do. I have the Bible. But you were expressing at the top of the hour here that you had opposition in your world this morning, and me, too. You know, and you said, when we stand strong in the Lord, that’s how we confront opposition. Mm-hmm. And when there is a war, God does send out his worshipers in front. We choose to worship him. We choose to make him first, to make him our focus. And when we do that, he does take care of all the details. And he does unexpected things, very unexpected things. So I was reading in Psalm 84, and I just want to invite all of you to turn to Psalm 84 if you have the ability to do that right now. If you’re driving, please don’t do that. You can just listen. That’s right. Psalm 84 starts out, And I just want to mention that So much of what we read in the Bible might not feel very tangible to us now. When we’re talking about God’s dwelling places and how the heart and the flesh are yearning for the courts of the Lord. Well, what does that look like? The courts of the Lord. And I know that for myself. I’ve had to imagine just being in His place and having His perspective, being able to know that He is God and He has limitless solutions to our problems. We get stuck on one idea of being a solution to our problem. And when we get stuck there and we’re consumed with that one idea, then we cause stress. We cause anxiety. We start comparing to other people, comparing with our other family members or neighbors. We compare to even Bible stories. We’ll pull out Bible stories and start comparing our lives to others. And then… We might even take a scripture and decide to stand on that scripture and believe that is going to be our answer.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
And I just wanted to take a few moments today to talk about the dangers of that. Because when we have it in our mind that it has to work one single way, then we’re not really tapped into who our God is. He can do so many limitless ways of working things out and surprise us with it. That’s where I’m talking about his dwelling places. How lovely are your dwelling places, O Lord. The Passion Translation of Psalm 84 says, God of heaven’s armies, you find so much beauty in your people. They are like lovely sanctuaries of your presence. And when you stop to think about that, how many people that he has created. And so how many lovely sanctuaries does he have? There’s so much beauty in 8 billion different ways of looking at a situation. That’s who our God is. He is so vast and he has so many ways to work things out that he has given us a picture of 8 billion people on the planet. And all these different paths, all these different perspectives that we can rejoice in, that we can really be glad in. The scripture in Psalm 84 goes on to say in the Passion Translation, Deep within me are these lovesick longings and desires and daydreams of living in union with you. When I’m near you, my heart and my soul sing and worship with joyful songs of you, my true source and spring of life.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes. Oh, praise God. That’s one thing, Kimberly. that after your father died, God gave us, we still had the piano and organ store, you still had your students, and we just praised God through all that grief and loss. And we had friends who came alongside, like Roger, for instance, and Mike. And I praise God for those friends that stuck closer to us than even our relatives did. And then when Darren passed away, the only one I had was God. It really cuts into that. the things that you trust in. When he died, I thought, there’s no one else. It’s only you, God. You’re the only one I have to lean on. And yeah, you’re so right.
SPEAKER 03 :
And he became your true source, just like the scripture is saying. Your true source, your capital T, true, capital S, source, and has never let you down. No. And that’s the kind of rest, the kind of stillness that we want to come to our physical bodies and to our minds that are so full of anxiety or fear or doubt or anger because it’s not going the way we want it to go. The very next verse in this Psalm, Psalm 84, verse 3, starts talking about a bird. The bird also has found a house and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young. Even your altars, O Lord, my rock, my king. Ah! Here’s a bird that’s in the house of the Lord, the smallest little creature. And this bird knows where to find rest on the altar, on the altar. Oh, my goodness. As I saw that, I realized that’s how we have rest. We lay it down. We put it on the altar, so to speak. You know, we we give our idea and our plan on how to work this out. We give it over. Yes. And sometimes we’re forced to, right? Like you were talking about, when there’s a death, when there’s an accident, when there are health issues, when there is the kind of disaster like the fires in California, we don’t even have a choice. Here it comes. And then we’re making the choices in our mind. Am I going to trust God or am I going to become bitter and angry? Yes.
SPEAKER 01 :
I know, Kimberly, that the altar here in the Old Testament was meant for the sacrifice. And so if we see ourselves submitting to God by laying our bodies and our souls and our spirits on the altar for him to do what he needs to do, then it’s going to be much easier. But like you said, if we’re angry, well, it’s going to be hard.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s it, though. That’s it. That’s exactly it. We lay the anger down, even though we don’t feel like it. You know, we lay down our idea and our anxiety and our doubts and our fears. We lay it down, even though we don’t understand what might be happening and we can’t even see how it’s going to work out. That’s what faith is. Yes. Faith. And faith, last week we started talking about building up a tolerance for… Yeah, now I don’t remember the terms. And I didn’t write it in my notes. I’m just pulling all of this up from my memory. But building up a tolerance for something that seems insecure, like it’s not secured. We can’t really understand what’s coming next. But building up a tolerance for that. Yes. To… To not need the confidence of something we see and something we hear and something we touch. To not need the confidence of that, but to sit with it while it’s still just kind of simmering and we don’t know what’s coming next.
SPEAKER 01 :
That’s right. You were telling me, Kimberly, about Jonathan and how he was a groomsman for one of his friend’s weddings. And he did not realize he was going to have all the duties that were required of him until he got into the ceremony. He was supposed to be the driver for the groom and the bride. and take them everywhere they needed to be and well he but he didn’t you’re right they didn’t ever tell him that they just gave it to him at the last moment yeah that was hard for him i know and he he volunteered really he was willing he did not know the extent of the responsibility he had so he starts the wedding at you know one in the afternoon And by the time you got to the reception at night, he was exhausted. I mean, he was totally exhausted because he had willingly volunteered for a position that he did not know what it entailed. And sometimes we find ourselves in those same situations. Oh, for sure. Too much. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, we don’t know what we’re getting into, and it’s uncertainty was the word I was looking for. We build up a tolerance for uncertainty. You can’t be certain of the very next step that’s coming. You can’t be certain that you’ll have enough strength for what’s happening And God is our strength in the middle of it all. When we call out to him and we put our own ideas on the altar and say, Lord, this is where I’m at. This is where I find myself. And I’m exhausted. And I don’t know how to go on, but you know how to give me your strength. So I’m calling out to you.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes, right here. Yes. taking him home, taking him to his place. So we always have some. God provides. Kimberly, he’s our provider in every situation we’re in. He provides that wonderful rescue that we need sometimes in our lives.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I did not feel drawn to go to that reception at all. I didn’t want to go to the reception, but I knew the Holy Spirit had put it on my heart and I knew I was supposed to be there for Jonathan. And so when I showed up, I just told him, hey, I’m just here for moral support for you. And he didn’t even want me to walk in to the reception. He wanted me to wait outside and wait for him. And I didn’t know that they had asked him to be the chauffeur to this place. So he had no ride. He had no way to get out. He had no way out. No exit plan. He was stuck. He really was stuck. And so when I showed up, I was the wheels that could take him away from this place. Take me away, yes. But I didn’t know that that’s what the Lord wanted for Jonathan. Jonathan did not know. That’s how God wanted to answer his desperate prayer for help. And we don’t know. There are so many different ways that God can bring an answer. And we don’t know. So building that tolerance for uncertainty. It happens in the middle of our anxiety, in the middle of the stress or in the middle of the anger. If we could just stop ourselves long enough to say, am I serving a God who is limited? Has he run out of ideas? Is he going to drop the ball? You know, we have to remember that he has been on the throne the whole time the world has been in existence. And he has lovingly and patiently seen us through looking at that bird, putting her nest on the altar. That’s where she can raise her young. Yes. We can trust our young. We can trust our most precious and our most valuable people and things and dreams to the Lord. Um, I had a friend call me and, and just say that her husband went back into the hospital. And you might remember if you’re listening of three years ago, many of you were praying for Holly, my friend and her husband, Gary, and he is now with the Lord just happened just, just in the last, well, 24 hours here. And, um, That is something that she was walking into with anger. She wanted a miracle again for him to come up and out of this. And there was a huge miracle last time, three years ago. and and so that’s what she wanted again she wanted it again that’s what we do we compare what we’re going through to what we’ve seen before yes what we’ve experienced before what what might be happening to other people around us and when we start those comparisons we get these ideas in our head yes and we want it to go that way well as she’s praying for that miracle I knew because of talking with her husband, Gary, I knew that he was not completely satisfied with his recovery from three years ago. He still felt weak, and he did not want to go through the rest of this life in a weakened state like that. And so, as I was praying, I could see how our Heavenly Father, who loves us all equally, that he was listening to two very conflicting prayers rising up to him. Gary’s heart was so weak now after this heart attack this week, and Holly’s prayer to revive him again, I know that Gary’s prayer was, please just take me home now. That’s right. Yes.
SPEAKER 01 :
I think of your father. He loved God so much that there was a point in his battle with cancer, especially after the coma, that his desire took precedence over our desires, and God took him home. And we need to recognize that, Kimberly, that the person that is going through it, what do they want? And sometimes the person who’s praying for them, they don’t even ask them, what do you want? And so many times they say, I want to be with God. And that’s what your father so many times said. I’m going to be with God sooner in my life than I thought. So, yes. Yes, it’s true.
SPEAKER 03 :
And, you know, what does our Heavenly Father want? I mean, he’s working with us. We’re working with him. Are we really including him? Right. In our prayers? Yeah, right, right. When we say, not my will, but thy will be done, Lord, when we say that, do we really mean it? Because often our prayers start sounding like, well, if it’s your will, Lord, this is what I want. Don’t they? We do that a lot. You know, if it’s your will, we want you to heal this. We want you to supply that, provide this, lead us here, guide us there, if it’s your will. And we didn’t even stop long enough to actually find out what his will was. That’s just how we started praying. This is my idea, and I want you to bless it, God.
SPEAKER 02 :
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s how we started praying. Well, the lovely dwelling place in Psalm 84 that’s being talked about here, that lovely dwelling place that we’re actually yearning for, that we are heartsick for, that we desire, that place is in union with him. That’s where that place is. The place that we’re longing for is in union with him. It’s a place. Being in agreement with him and being in union with the Lord is a place. Yes. And it’s beautiful. Yes. And it’s better than anything we could ever imagine. So we don’t have to have our own way and our own dream come true in order to experience fulfillment and deep satisfaction. In order to be blessed and to be favored and sustained, to be whole and content with And full of God’s peace. For only God can bring all that to us. Yes. And there’s not any amount of money. There’s not any position. There’s not any relationship or dwelling place on this planet that can bring us this fulfillment, this satisfaction, this assurance. It’s only Him. And we find… we find this place of assurance and rest when we lay everything down on his altar. You know, I was writing out the word altar as I was just taking some notes, and I noticed if you write altar in all lowercase letters, A-L-T-A-R, T is in the middle, and that particular T in a lowercase is a cross. Yes, it’s a cross. And when we choose to look to Jesus and how he did this, he was constantly laying all of his desires on the altar, so to speak. He was laying down his ideas. He was laying down his dreams and all the way to the cross. He did it so that we could learn how to do the same thing.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, there’s a scripture in the New Testament and reminds me probably most people, Kimberly, that I would ask, are you spiritually where God wants you to be? And they’d say, oh, yes. Oh, yes. I’ve gone through all kinds of stuff. I’m right where God wants me to be. When God is saying, no, I want you to come a little farther here into the deeper world. realm of my spirit. It’s like the time when Jesus said, are you willing to take this cup? Are you ready to take this cup that you’re saying you’re going to go with me? Oh, yes, master. We’re ready. We’re willing to go with you wherever you go. And they all fled from him. So they weren’t spiritually engaged. into the deeper parts of Holy Spirit that God wanted them to be until the baptism of Holy Spirit was upon them. So, Kimberly, a lot of people are saying, oh, yeah, I’m right where God wants me to be when they’re not where God wants them to be.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, you’re bringing up something very interesting to me, because I get that, and I actually believe God really gets where we’re at, and He has seasons for all of us. Oh, yes, I agree. Yes. There are some who are in just defiant, stubborn rebellion. And I’ve I’ve even been there, too, in my own life. And that’s you know, that’s between us and God when we get to those places. And he constantly woos us even in those stubborn, defiant, rebellious places. He is. is constantly wooing, and he has a plan for us to watch those who are stubbornly rebelling, who are angry and raging and spewing out horrible things. We watch these things and he lets us have that example in this life. It’s these conflicting comparisons that we actually need so that we will keep making choices to grow closer and grow closer. Now, I personally find it, I guess it’s a lot of pressure for me to be thinking, oh, I’m not where I need to be. And I’m not. where I need to be because I’m here on this planet. This is temporary. This is where I get to grow and learn.
SPEAKER 01 :
I don’t think that most of us know that it’s a conscious thing. It’s it’s an inner thing. Well, you know, I’m right where I need to be. And God is saying, I want you. I want to move you just a little bit farther here. See, God is at work in us both to will and to work for his good pleasure. And it’s so important. Kimberly, we know that we deep down.
SPEAKER 03 :
We opened up. We opened up something really, really. It’s going to take longer because we’re out of time. I know.
SPEAKER 01 :
I wish you were here in the person, in the physical. But I think we’re going to have to talk about this tomorrow because this is an area in which a lot of people think they’re spiritually where they need to be when God is wanting to move them further and further. So it’s been wonderful. Thank you. I’m enjoying this teaching so much and I love Psalm 83. It’s just one of my favorites. So I guess I’m going to say to you, I’ll see you tomorrow unless Jesus comes back in the interim. I would enjoy that. Thank you so much. We’ll see you tomorrow. Okay. Well, God bless all of you that are listening today. We all need this spiritual information that Kimberly is giving to us. So I want to say goodbye for now. We’re going to be back on tomorrow, the Lord willing, and take joy.
SPEAKER 1 :
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SPEAKER 04 :
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Join Barbara and Kimberly as they discuss the life-altering decisions we face and the inner strength required to lay our burdens on the altar. Through scriptures and poignant personal experiences, they highlight how true fulfillment and contentment arise from union with God. As they reflect on the complex dynamics of prayer and desire, listeners are encouraged to align their will with God’s and navigate the challenging yet rewarding path of spiritual growth.
