In a world filled with chaos and challenges, Barbara Carmack offers insights into finding peace and joy through spiritual perseverance. Discover the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate suffering and how waiting on the Lord’s guidance impacts our lives positively. Tune in for a heartfelt discussion that brings hope and encouragement.
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. May God give you fresh dreams. Yes, fresh dreams every night. No nightmares. No, no nightmares when you are in Jesus. New victories and endless joys in surprising ways, unexpected blessings, an overflowing measure. I’m praying, well, Kimberly and I are both praying that you are going to receive the Wonderful dreams, new victories, endless joys, surprises in the mail and surprises in every direction that you go. Praise the Lord. Oh, you are blessed to dispense for in him you live and move and have your being. And Kimberly, the website is really coming together. Yes. Coming along. And if you that are listening would like to hear radio shows, Rachel did such a great job in getting them up into the website. It’s a whole new procedure. But you go to Resources, and Radio Shows is right there. You click on it, and you can download.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Well, or you can just listen right from where what your mobile phone or your your tablet or your laptop. You can just listen right there. So, yeah, we have all of last week’s up there now. They weren’t there for a while. So we got caught up. And the other thing that is caught up is the donation page. We are up and running for domain donations. Finally, that took a little while, but thank you all for your patience. And, uh, yeah, if you visit freedom street.org and just scroll all the way to the bottom to find donate, or there’s, it depends on what you’re looking at, but you will find the donate button. And we’ll be back. Yeah. Taking those donations. And thank you for your donations. Thank you so much for the way that you show God’s love and God’s generosity in keeping hope alive and joy and truth being sent out through the word of God. Thank you for your donations that make that possible. We would not be able to do this without you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. If you are there at 1 o’clock and you can go to freedomstreet.org and click on radio show, it’s going to light up that we are on air at 1 o’clock from Monday through Thursday. And you can listen right there to a live show. Or if you don’t have time at 1 o’clock in the afternoon, you can go at 1015 at night, 230 in the morning, 530 in the morning. And then at 1220 a.m., that’s the radio station, 1220.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, that’s not the time. That’s not the time.
SPEAKER 02 :
The radio station is. 1220 KLDC. You can go there at 11 in the morning. And a lot of people are learning the show is there at 11 o’clock in the morning on KLDC, 1220. Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, lots of options.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, there are. Yes. Oh, our memory verse for this week is just a beautiful, beautiful chapter. And I learned as I was talking yesterday, boy, where is that deep calls to deep? We were on our way to the studio and Kimberly says it’s in the psalm. And I said, I know it’s a familiar psalm. And here it is in one of my favorites. And I didn’t see it. And that’s why I’m learning the spiritual context and the spiritual content of these chapters in my heart. And it begins with, as a deer pandeth for the water brook, so my soul longeth after you. You alone are my heart’s desire, and I want to worship you. And we have that on your dad’s gravestone. Yes, because that was his favorite, favorite verse. Yeah, he used to worship with that song. That’s right. So we know that the Lord will command, and this is our verse for this week, Psalm 42, verse 8. And I hope that you go to it. and go over it every day. The Lord will command his loving kindness in the daytime, and his song will be with me in the night, a prayer to the God of my life. In the Passion, it says, yes, all day long, God’s promises of love pour over me. Just look at yourself as something, a fresh anointing of water, or if you’re under the sprinkler in the summertime when it’s hot, and you’re just feeling that wonderful cool water, His promises of love pour over me through the night. I sing his songs for my prayer to God has become my life. His prayer for me has become my life. I don’t listen to any other voices, only his voice, the voice of Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, that’s right. When we have that constant communion with him, that causes everything else to fade. Yes. And then we’re not, we’re not in anxiety. We’re not stressed out. We’re not feeling pressured to make something happen in our life. And sometimes we put pressure on ourselves to learn a new website or…
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s what I’ve been doing.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. And we feel the pressure of that and we might get under anxiety. But when we hear him speaking his delight over us, we hear him saying how much he loves us. This is really the content that we’re talking about out of Romans 5 when we started yesterday. That now he declares us flawless in his eyes. Now we can enjoy his true and lasting peace. We can enjoy that now, right now in the middle of what we think are pressures, because the pressures that we put on ourselves usually come from our own ideas of our own timing, our own agendas, our own motives, our own opinions and judgments. And when we’ve got our, our mind full of our own ideas of how this needs to work, how it needs to go, that’s pressure and it produces a suffering in us. And that’s what I was calling at the top of the hour. I was calling that an illegitimate suffering. We’re putting ourselves in a place that we’re, we’re feeling pressure, stress, but it’s not the real deal. goal it’s there’s a different goal yes right it’s not from god it’s from our own flesh trying to figure things out and reason will never do it kimberly it just doesn’t work now for those who are coming from backgrounds of of a lot of chaos and a lot of trauma i hope that the reason of a counselor or a financial advisor would help you. We hope that there’s some good reasoning out there that can bring some hope, some help, some, um, some, something to look forward to in life, some healing, healing to your life. but it’s never going to compare to the kind of peace and the kind of healing that you can find in the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s right. The God and father who created us and created this whole universe has a bigger plan and a bigger goal for us. And that’s what we want to keep our focus on knowing that our, the, our pressures are in this life will produce a patient endurance if we will look to him.
SPEAKER 02 :
And what does patient endurance produce, Kimberly?
SPEAKER 03 :
Character.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s what God wants. He’s wanting us to change from that fleshly mindset and put all new software in there by the reading of God’s word into his new spirit that he gives to each and every one of us.
SPEAKER 03 :
He wants his character formed in us. That takes a miracle.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s right. It’s a miracle.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, because we want what we want. And so having the miracle of God’s agenda coming first in our lives, that’s a miracle that takes a miracle. And having his character formed in us is not even the end of that sentence. We’re looking at Romans five and verse three, four. And proven character leads us back to hope. We all need that hope. We all need hope. This hope is not a disappointing fantasy kind of hope. We were talking about that yesterday and we’ll just move on because this brings us into an endless love, a love that is, it’s eternal and it just is poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who lives in us. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, I know that yesterday I’ve gotten rid of a whole lot of cassettes and that kind of thing. And Kimberly was looking at the masters yesterday in the office, and we’ve just got scores and scores of master cassettes in a little reel, a tower is what it’s called. Three towers. Three. Yes. And Kimberly said, Mom, we can get rid of those today. And I was sitting in the office and she was looking at me and I said, could we wait? Could we just wait till tomorrow? And tomorrow’s come now, Kimberly, and I’m ready. But yesterday I wasn’t ready. And Holy Spirit is so gentle. Always. So patient. Always. Okay. If you need another 24 hours before you get rid of all these old cassettes, we can do that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. Yes. Yes. I think that’s the character he is wanting to produce in us. You know, I walked into the office and said, Mom, can we talk about the cassettes? That’s what I said. I didn’t say it’s time to get rid of these. You know, can we talk about it? I just wanted to hear where you were at. And I was fine with where you’re at. I know. And if you tell me today, I’ve changed my mind. I need another week. I would go along with that. I hear you saying that you’re ready today, but I would, if you changed your mind, I would go along with that. And I think that is the character that the Lord wants to produce in each one of us, that we would be willing to be with somebody and be patient. Have that patient endurance that is, that is working in us as we’re sitting with other people and we’re sitting in jobs and we’re sitting in financial situations and we’re sitting when, when we have health issues, even, you know, when we have the idea of what God wants to produce in us, his character in us, we keep that our main focus and our main goal. And that is what comes to pass in us. Then that, uh, Like I said before, that is nothing short of a miracle. We can’t produce that in ourselves.
SPEAKER 02 :
No, we can’t.
SPEAKER 03 :
But when we stay in conversation with the Lord, that’s what I think of when I hear the songs, wait on the Lord. I’m reading in the Psalms, wait on the Lord. Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. That’s in Isaiah. When we read these sections that talk about waiting on the Lord, To me, it’s not just what we think in our English language of waiting. It’s listening. It’s talking. It’s having a conversation. When you’re really enjoying somebody’s presence, don’t you want to just stay with them a little bit longer? If you’ve had a lunch date or you’ve met up with somebody in the evening and you’re just chatting, if you’re meeting over coffee and you just realize, wow, I’m really enjoying this conversation. Mm-hmm. Don’t you want to wait a little longer? You don’t want it to end. You don’t want to cut it off. You want to have fun. Even if it takes you into later hours and you’re not getting as much sleep that night, you still want to enjoy that conversation. That’s waiting on the Lord. You wait with him.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, there are times, and I know some of you are in that mode right now because I’ve been there, of feeling unworthy of God’s presence in your life. And I think of that scripture in Isaiah that compels all of us, even those of you who think that you’re in sin. You’ve accepted Jesus Christ. Take on his righteousness. It’s his righteousness, not yours. And God is saying. Come, come, let us reason together. Come just as you are, just as you are. Come, though your sins, and he’s looking at your sins, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red as crimson, they shall be as wool. God is seeing you and he’s seeing you righteous in his son, Jesus Christ, because you have asked Jesus into your heart. And that’s all it takes friends. It takes the believing that Jesus is Lord and receiving that in Jesus name.
SPEAKER 03 :
When you were talking about red, you know, in crimson, I, I’m also a numbers person. And when we’ve got numbers in the red, we’re in debt, right? And we don’t want our numbers to be in the red. And that’s also, I believe another metaphor, another way that you can look at those scriptures and say, Jesus has wiped out this debt. You are no longer in the red. You’re not covered in red. You are now white as snow. You are now new and clean and you have a fresh start. And now you can start adding to this fresh start by having patient endurance, by having a character, the character of God proven in you by, by coming back to hope and not being in the red in debt.
SPEAKER 02 :
And we know that this hope leads us to God. And what does God think of you? What does the Father God think of you? Well, he loves you no matter what. And we grow closer and closer to him because he’s given us Holy Spirit. And we begin to now listen to that inner voice. Sometimes it’s a whisper. So we have to, like you said before, Kimberly, quiet ourselves. We have to quiet ourselves to listen to him. He’s continually emphasizing his love in our lives. He is. Yes. All the time. Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
This love, if you’re not used to just quieting yourself, this love will lead you to peace and it will lead you to making decisions when you’ve got decisions in front of you to make. Or even if you’re, if you tend toward reacting, if you’re a reactor, maybe not a responder, but a reactor and your reactions really blow up or cause you to put your foot in your mouth. You know, those kinds of reactions can be prevented if you wait on the Lord and wait on his love and weigh it out. Just take some time. Just take a breath. Take a little bit of time to weigh out the situation. Don’t be so quick to react, but respond with the goal of having the character of God in you. How would Jesus respond to this? And sometimes that response means that we need to bring comfort to somebody who has actually hurt us. We want to be the ones comforted, but when we give comfort. We end up realizing, oh, this is how this miracle is happening. This is how the character of God is being worked in me is by me offering comfort when I want to be comforted.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
The legitimate suffering is how do I explain this? I didn’t write notes on this. It just came to me right before the program. And I thought, you know, I think I need to talk about this. Our suffering in this life is illegitimate when we keep reacting and then we are reaping the consequences of those reactions because then people are boiled up with us and, and then we’re experiencing conflict that is harsh and hard. And that’s a suffering that is illegitimate because we might have, we might be in it. We might be. reacting along with others instead of just sitting quietly being still knowing that God’s got this taking a deep breath and then responding in his love now when we respond in his love then And that might require us to comfort somebody who just hurt us when we want to be comforted. Right? So, so responding to his love means I’m offering comfort now to someone and my heart still might ache a little bit inside. I’m like, Ooh, that’s, This, this was a hurtful situation and I really do need comfort. What I’ve noticed is as I obey and give comfort, because that is what God’s character will do in that situation. When I choose that, I’m not going to make this worse. I’m going to give comfort right now. Then I see the miracle happening and then my hope is built. on this rock, I see that there is, there is something new, a new creature in me that is being developed and it is God’s way happening in me. So the, the little bit of grief that still pricks at my heart is more of a legitimate suffering. It’s, oh, I see that I am in the heat of a moment. And I am being refined in that heat. That refinement might not be really comfortable to me, but I thank you for it. See what’s happening is I’m keep, I’m getting a goal in mind that is putting God first and his ways first. And when I have his goal as my first response, my, my priority in life, when I have his goal in mind, then the suffering changes and it becomes something greater than I could have imagined. That’s right.
SPEAKER 02 :
When I came up against things that happened suddenly, unexpectedly, even an issue with finances or relationships, I used to confront that realization with an outburst, an exclamation. And then I settled into the fact that Jesus often asked questions. Who among you has sinned in John 8 when the adulterous woman was found? And so I asked God, what do you want me to see in this situation? What are you planning for me right now in this learning curve that you have for me? Am I responding in a way that you want me to respond? Holy Spirit, just begin asking him questions. Remember when Darren said when he was a little boy, his father, he would ask so many questions. His father would say, what are you, a question box? And that’s exactly what Darren says. You ask questions and Holy Spirit will bring that answer to you in your spirit. Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Romans five, as we continue in verse six, it says when the time was right, Jesus came and died to demonstrate his love at the right time. Perfect timing. He died to demonstrate his love for sinners who were entirely helpless. They’re the ones that were hurting his heart because they were breaking, breaking covenant, breaking the law. They were stealing, murdering. They, they were not, uh, wanting to help others. They were wanting to stay in their selfish ways. Right. And at that time, at the perfect time, when the time was right, he came and died for those who were helpless and powerless to save themselves. And it even mentions in verse seven, who would dare to die? for the sake of a wicked person. We might consider dying for somebody who’s truly noble, but who would really die for somebody who is so harsh and harmful and wicked and evil? Jesus. Jesus will do that. Christ proved God’s passionate love for us by dying in our place while we were still lost and ungodly. If we could take this to every situation in life and realize that when somebody is confronting us, when there’s conflict going on, whether it’s in our finances or in our health or in our relationships or at our job or in our school, in education, wherever that conflict, it comes from all over the place. Wherever it’s coming from, if we could adopt this and say, you know what? I want God’s character in me. I want others to see his love. And so I want to respond in a way that’s going to show love. I will die to myself and what I think I need right now. And that’s what’s hard. We have an idea of what we think we need to be happy in life, to be successful, to reach our goals. to, to get us out from under our own pressures and stresses. Most of the time, we don’t even realize how badly we want that specific need to be met. And so we’re looking for that better job or that new home or a healed relationship or better financial stability or a healthier body. These are not bad desires to have, but when we pressure ourselves to have these desires fulfilled above God’s character being, being fulfilled in us, then we’re not going to find God’s peace. We’re not even going to find a lasting peace. We might reach our goal and then it fades right in front of us. And we realize, uh, I’m not happy now. I need another goal.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 03 :
So God’s peace surpasses our own ideas, our own agendas. It’s that peace that passes our own motives. It’s the peace that passes our own understanding that Philippians talks about. So when we have this suffering in our lives that it just, it just keeps going on and on. It’s a cycle of suffering. We might want to look at it and find out, is this an illegitimate suffering here that I’m causing because I’ve got my own opinions and my own ideas. Because legitimate suffering is different. It produces something greater than stress and anxiety. It, it still feels like a pressure, but the source is different. He is our source and he has an idea of what he’s doing. And this comes from a desire to be like Jesus. When we’re confronted with people who have attitudes and agendas that hurt and harm, then we can look to Jesus and we can ask him, what would you do in this situation? We can look to our creator and say, what did you intend for us? You want goodness. You want kindness. You want generosity.
SPEAKER 02 :
feel like it. That’s right. You could have come to me in the office yesterday and said, you really need to get rid of these cassettes. They’re no good to anybody anymore. And just the inflection in a voice can really motivate a person to, okay, do I get defensive here? Or do I release this person in forgiveness? Or do I tell them how I really… My senses, how I feel at that moment. And if you’re talking to a person like Kimberly who is willing to negotiate or to compromise a little bit, then that’s good. But there are some people that are so strong-willed. That, no, you’ve got to do this right now. And you just give yourself a moment. Say, excuse me for a moment. Go take a walk or go get a drink. And just let it settle in. Because you can’t give in to a person that is so wanting to have his way or her way in your life.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, that’s true. And at the same time, maybe that is the test. Do I give into this? And Lord, if I give into this, will you be producing your character in me? Can I look to you as being my goal instead of me hanging on to my idea? OK. Yeah. Wow. So we were learning something new more tomorrow.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. Oh, that’s why the word is so up to date. You want the news, the news on social media or on television. But friend, the news from the good news of the word of God is so up to date and contemporary and right on with all of us. It’s for all of us. So I invite you to go to freedomstreet.org and look at the new website and click on resources for radio shows or newsletters. We’re getting the newsletters even back on.
SPEAKER 03 :
And for those of you who have smartphones, if it’s an Android or an iPhone, you can get it on the phone too. It’s a great website. So visit us at freedomstreet.org.
SPEAKER 02 :
God bless you and be with you and take joy.
SPEAKER 01 :
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. Our partners 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 and heart cries by mailing them to Call to Freedom, Box 370-367, Denver, Colorado, 80237. Or you may email us at barbracarmack at freedomstreet.org. Until next time, remember, Jesus loves you, Barbara loves you, and take joy.
In a world filled with chaos and challenges, Barbara Carmack offers insights into finding peace and joy through spiritual perseverance. Discover the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate suffering and how waiting on the Lord’s guidance impacts our lives positively. Tune in for a heartfelt discussion that brings hope and encouragement.
