Join us in this enlightening episode of ‘Call to Freedom’ where Barbara Carmack and her guests explore the profound theme of faith amidst life’s complexities. Delve into the metaphor of a ladder connecting our earthly existence to the divine realm, as Barbara and her guests discuss how hope, joy, and peace abound through trusting in God’s design. From engaging discussions about personal journeys to reflecting on scripture, this episode encourages listeners to remember the eternal promise that stands beyond the brokenness of the world.
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-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.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to Call to Freedom, and that number is for you 24-7. It’s as close as your phone. Just text in 1-877-917-7256, and you can also go to freedomstreet.org and see what’s on there, radio shows and the Bible guide, and it’s right there, right next to you. So remember that if you have a prayer request or anything that you would like us to pray for. And Kimberly and I do pray. We really do. We want you to know that 1-877-917-7256 is for you, my friend. So remember that God is your father. God is our father. We are the clay. He is the potter. We are all the work of his hands. And it’s so comforting to know that God will never turn away from you or from me. In every moment, his hand is at work designing what is best for our lives. And your life is different from my life, but he knows exactly what you need. He knows exactly what it’s going to take for you to be a producer of good fruit. So remember, Holy Spirit is gently abiding in you. He is kind with you. He is comforting with you. He’s not going to slam dunk you when you do something wrong. No, no, he isn’t. He’s going to be with you no matter what. Remember, Jesus paid for our sins on the cross. So we don’t have to have that sin consciousness any longer, my friend. And boy, I carried that around for years. And when you know Jesus as your Savior and Lord, he’s there for you. That’s why the memory verse for this week is just so important. Romans 15, verse 13. Now may the God of hope, the God of hope. I pray today, Lord Jesus, that the God of hope comes into every listener, every heart that’s listening today, every heart that’s reading the blogs on the website. Father God, I thank you. All hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing. You’ve got to believe that you may abound in hope by the power of Holy Spirit. Oh, what a wonderful verse of scripture. You can go to freedomstreet.org and click on those radio shows. You can listen to Listen, you can read Kimberly’s blogs, and she just put up a blog by Darren that has had response already about prayer being effective. And boy, was it effective in his life. So you can go to that Voice of Freedom under Teachings, I believe, and you can read. Read that and be so invigorated and energized by the things that are said. And you can go to the Bible Guide and download that. Now, if you get a hard copy newsletter every month from me, then you’ll also get a monthly reading plan in that little insert card. You can just stick it in your Bible and read. Right now we’re in Isaiah. I love it. I love it. and you can begin to read the Word of God. It’s never too late. Even though it’s the end of September, we’re going to go into the holidays pretty soon. Every morning you can read Old Testament and New Testament so that you are ready and prepared for what’s going to happen in your day. Oh, God bless you. And thank you, Kimberly, for coming on board today. One more day this week. And then next week when you come on, it’s going to be October. Wow. Oh, I know. And a little bit closer to me visiting you again so that I can be live in the studio. Yeah, you’re going to be joining us for the meeting on October 9th. I’m really excited about that. I am too.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, I am too. Well, I’m also excited about today because yesterday we started talking about the vision of a ladder that starts on this earth and rises to heaven. And to be human is to live in a broken world. So this earth is broken. This is where the ladder starts on this earth in the broken world. And to have hopes and dreams of the unbroken life, that’s where the ladder is climbing upward in our hopes and our dreams. And I love that the memory verse for today is from Romans 15, 13, because When we are quoting this, when we’re memorizing this, we’re understanding that our God is a God of hope. No matter what breaks in this life, no matter what losses we experience, He is the God of hope. And this verse is telling you that He wants to fill you with all joy and peace. in believing you have to believe that he’s the god of hope that he can fill you with joy and peace in the middle of such a broken broken world i think we saw that um sunday Sunday, when I watched the five hours of the memorial service, I know you did too for Charlie Kirk and his widow, Erica, that took the platform and spoke with such a steady voice. And she just seemed like an angel to me, definitely a creature from another realm. Because how in the world can somebody with two little ones in such a shattered circumstance, be able to get up on a platform in front of millions. And I know there was 100,000 approximately in that stadium alone. So she gets up to speak and speaks words of encouragement, hope. Life, joy, and peace. She is definitely a believer. She is believing that we serve a God of hope, that her husband did not die in vain. He believed all along that he was giving his life. and putting his life out there on the line, risking everything to let people see this light, this hope, this love that is God, found through Jesus Christ. And he was such a strong presence, a strong energy toward that belief. And she is too. They were unified in that believing. So I just wanted to talk about that more this week because one of the speakers had talked about that ladder. And in this broken world, down at the bottom of the ladder, we’ve got all these great things that we start out in, and they’re beautiful. We just have to remember that they are all beautiful. figments, images, facets of who our God really is. We were created to live only temporarily in this realm of time and matter. And we end up with these dreams and hopes. We do. We’ve got all kinds of ideas and goals. And it gets real complicated real fast. We find out at a there are things in this world that break, they, our dreams don’t come true, or they are, we are betrayed, we’re left alone, we have loss, we lose things in life. And we still have longings for those places the hope, the peace, the joy, those places that would bring us that joy and peace. We still have those longings. And I say that we long for the eternal. We’re longing for the eternal realm that’s not limited by time and matter. It’s not distorted by chaos and disorder. It’s a realm that’s not broken. And we have longings for that unbroken realm while we still live here in this broken world. So it’s complicated to be human because being human means that we are two creatures. We are eternal beings and we are a being of time and matter. While we’re in this realm with time and matter, we cannot see the eternal realm. And so we start talking ourselves out of it being there at all. That’s the easiest way out for most people. And that’s why we’ve got so many who are atheists, who just don’t even want to believe that there’s a God. They really want to put all of their eggs in the basket of this world. That’s risky because there’s nothing that is for sure in this world.
SPEAKER 02 :
So what I really what I really appreciated you’re talking about this Sunday service is when and I was shocked when Donald Trump Jr. stood up and I didn’t know him to be spiritual at all. And he was talking about the heavens that were open for Stephen, who was the first martyr in Acts, and how he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, most of the scripture is Jesus sitting at the right hand of God. But Jesus was standing at the right hand of God to welcome Stephen. And I see him standing at the right hand of God to welcome Charlie home. And it was such a profound moment. I was just, yes, yes. Amen. Through the tears. Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, me too. It was very powerful. And that is the kind of vision we want to hold on to, that there is another realm. If we lose sight of what we were really made for. And we try to control and manipulate this world that is broken. It’s a broken world. We’re going to find out that our control and our manipulation somewhere along the way is not going to work.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 03 :
And so if we spend our life trying to make everything here. all that we are craving and longing for, which our longings are not for this world. Our longings are for the eternal world. Yes. So if we’re trying to make this world be everything that we want it to be, then we’re misunderstanding our purpose. We are misunderstanding what it is to be human. So the vision and the idea of the ladder that climbs to heaven, like Jacob’s ladder, is to start out on this earth with earthly thinking, raised and educated in time and matter and disorder and And that makes me think about the second law of thermodynamics. Okay. Well, I really like it. My kids really grabbed on to that second law of thermodynamics in science because it was really proof that there’s no way we just popped into being, that there was just a big bang and all of a sudden we’re just all here without some some intelligent design. There has to be intelligent design behind all of us. Because this law says, it confirms that when energy changes from one form to another or When matter moves around freely, okay, and that’s what people are saying, you know, that the world started with all this matter moving around freely and then all of a sudden, bam, it comes together and there’s order. But this law says that there’s no way for that to happen. It says that when matter is moving around freely, disorder increases. They use the word entropy and entropy. I’m not sure I’m saying that right. I should have looked that up before I even got on the air. But entropy increases. It’s it’s the definition is disorder. So if disorder is increasing when we’re just moving around without a guide, without intelligent design, then we’re just falling apart all the time. And Humans are always looking toward order, toward unity, toward harmony, toward a realm of peace and joy that is not constantly confronted with chaos and disorder. Yet this law in science is saying that when things just keep going and as time moves on, things break down. It’s true about everything. It’s true about our bodies. As time goes on, our bodies break down. It’s true about our cars. You buy a car, it’s brand new, you use it, and as time moves on, it breaks down. Even if you don’t use it, it’s exposed to elements, it starts rusting, it will break down with time. The plastic starts breaking down. The rubber starts breaking down. Over time, things break down and become disorder. And that is the law of this realm. We have to remember that. But the longings inside our heart are drawing us to another realm, drawing us to hope, drawing us to order, drawing us to peace and to joy. And there are ways that we can bring some order to this realm. The best ways are God’s ways. His ways are always the best. However, as human beings, we try often in our human strength to bring order to this realm. And that might be it might look like dictatorship. It might look like something tyrannical in our relationships, just bossy and demanding as we want others to meet our standards and opinions, agree with our opinions. And then we think that’s going to bring order. And that’s what order will look like. I think that is the biggest conflict in politics right now. There are two different sides, and each side is vying for their opinions and their ideas, and they believe if they can get the other side to agree with them, then there will be order.
SPEAKER 04 :
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 03 :
And every time someone comes into office who wants to bring some order to the chaos of this world, people may view it like it’s a tyrannical dictatorship where the masses lose their freedom. and they just have to follow this big new rule, right? This big new bill, this happy big… And what we really need to see is that freedom is only truly free when we are following the ways that we were created for. So if we have broken down in our society and we are experiencing a lot of crime, murders, rapes, that is not what we were created for. Somebody does need to come along and clean that up and say, no, this is not how we treat human beings. We are better than this. And so we’re all going to have some growing pains when somebody with boldness stands up and says, no, we’re making this a safe place. We’re making America a safe place and closing borders. Let’s do this the right way. Let’s not just let a bunch of people come flooding in and we don’t know if they’re going to be safe for our families to live with.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. That’s right.
SPEAKER 03 :
So we want to remember that we’re created for love. And when somebody wants to love us well enough to keep us safe and to clean up cities and make sure there’s not as much crime, they might not be doing everything right. But At some level, we want to agree with them and just come along and say, okay, let’s work together on this. Yes, there’s growing pains, but let’s work together because humans are beautiful. It doesn’t matter where you come from, what you’ve been through, what your past looks like. You are beautiful and you are worth fighting for. You are worth cleaning up this world and bringing God’s way of love and order to the brokenness that’s all around us. You are worth fighting. searching for a better way. And I believe that the best way to bring order to the chaos in this world is to say to the mountains, be removed. Now, the tricky part is figuring out what that really means, because we’ve heard that in sermons from Mark 11, 23. I didn’t even write it down. Am I saying that right? You can correct me, Mom. Yeah. Just jump in if you hear me say something that’s way off. But Mark 11, 23, when we say to the mountain, be removed, be lifted up, be cast into the sea, and it will be done. That’s right. Right? We have the faith to say that. So often we’ll see somebody or something as a mountain because we’re angry. We can get angry or we can be upset about something and then we point and we blame and we think, oh, that’s the mountain. That’s the problem.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, that’s right. Sometimes the mountain is within us when we’re angry. Yeah. When we’re angry against our brothers and sisters and we do horrible things to them, that mountain needs to be removed out of our souls and ourselves. That’s what I’m getting to.
SPEAKER 03 :
Good, good, good. Because any time that we are looking at things in this broken world as the mountains, we’re missing the point. Again, we’re misunderstanding who we are as human beings. We are two creatures. We are living as matter in a time, a place of time in this world that But it’s not the things of this world that are standing in our way. That’s right. It’s what is in us. It’s self-pity. It’s envy. It’s pride. Let me give a really practical example because I visited my oldest daughter, Hannah, a couple weeks ago in Fargo, North Dakota. And there has been, some of you know, some of you have been listening to the program over the past five years. Some of you know that there’s been quite a bit of tension between my oldest daughter and I, and so much so that five years ago when she got married, She left me out of most of the photos, most of the family photos. And even at her bridal shower, even the videographer was told not to get me into many of the clips. So this last visit that I had with her, I’m telling you this, I’m being transparent because I had a real tendency to go to self-pity and pride. You know, self-pity wanted to just get in there and go, oh, poor thing. That was such an awful thing for her to do to you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I’m the mother of the bride. Yeah, I can see where self-pity wants to get in there.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. And pride also, because pride thinks… It knows exactly what they intended. Pride will get in there and go, oh, I know what their intentions were. And that was really awful. Pride just thinks they can read other people’s minds. And that is so not the case. So this last visit that I had with her, we were talking about taking pictures and taking headshots because you and I have done that, right, mom? And it’s not one of our favorite things to do. No, it is. But every picture of myself that I really love is one that Hannah took of me because Hannah is she’s she has a gift of being able to see through that lens and really snap a great moment. And so I mentioned that to her and she looked at me and she goes, Oh mom, as I’ve been getting older, I, I do not like pictures of myself at all. And she said, I’ve just always remembered that about you, that you have not liked pictures of yourself. And the moment she said that Holy spirit, just, he was whispering to me and saying, okay, what do you want to do with that information? Do you want to go back now five years and reframe what you thought was going on at the wedding? Would you like to see that she was actually being kind to you because she knows you? She knows you don’t like a lot of pictures taken of you. And, you know, I have the choice. I get to choose what I’m going to think about it. Am I going to cling to… What I thought was really going on and the pride of thinking that I could read her mind and I knew what she was doing to me. Do I want to hold on to self-pity and wallow in it a little bit longer and say, yeah, but even so, that was a cruddy thing to do to the mother of the bride. Or do I want to take a deep breath and go, wow, she was thinking of me. And what if it really wasn’t even her? What if it was Holy Spirit through her? I’m thinking of you. I’ve got your back. This is probably not something that you want to do, be in front of a camera for the next couple of hours at a wedding.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, and you want to do the mature thing for your daughter. You have been in the Word of God for so many more years than Hannah. So you want to do the mature thing. Well, we all do.
SPEAKER 03 :
We all want to do the mature thing. And really what that takes is saying to the self-pity, mountain, be removed.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s right. Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Get out of my way. I am not going to receive you anymore. You’re very familiar to me because I’ve been playing with you for a number of years. Most of my life, really, if I’m going to be honest. I’m familiar with self-pity and I am familiar with pride, you know, and that’s that’s the real obstacle. That’s the real mountain pride. Get out of my way. Be removed because I am climbing this ladder in hope. I am climbing with trust and faith. I am believing that there is more joy and more peace to be had as I climb this ladder and just believe. look to Jesus as my prize, forgetting the things that are behind me and looking forward, looking toward him as my prize. So we can do a better job of climbing this ladder from earth to heaven when we get the mountains out of the way. And the mountains can be envy and jealousy, too. I’m familiar with those also. The mountain can be gluttony, where you’re just trying to fill the hole that only God can fill. And when you’re trying to fill it with anything else, work, it can be ministry. If you are trying to fill a hole that God wants in relationship with you, That’s gluttony. And you just keep trying to fill and trying to fill. That can be a mountain that you can talk to and say, okay, gluttony, you’ve been here too long. Get out of my way. Be removed. Be cast into the sea. I am moving upward and onward. My prize is Jesus, and I’m going to forget the things that are behind. Yes. I’m telling you, that will make the biggest difference in your life. It is more powerful than trying to say to your finances, to say to some job or to some other obstacle in this life, you know, pointing fingers, blaming. It really comes back to us and how we choose to view who our God is and whether or not he is big enough to work it all for good.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. We don’t think he’s big enough, do we? No.
SPEAKER 1 :
No.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 03 :
And yeah, we need to change our minds. Yes, we do. That’s a good note to end on.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, thank you. Thank you, Kimberly. Really appreciate all of that that you’ve given to us today. And we hope that you have received so much from Call to Freedom today. We want you to take joy in everything you do.
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 370367, 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 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.
