Join Barbara Carmack as she reflects on the changes happening in Call to Freedom, reminding listeners that despite the shifting sands of broadcast timings, the message and outreach remain steadfast. This episode encourages a return to faith fundamentals, with discussions on trusting God’s plan, exploring the depth of divine wisdom, and the need for patience and understanding. Learn how wisdom is not just an esoteric ideal but a practical necessity for navigating life’s challenges with grace and confidence.
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 Called Up Freedom. When you’re filled with joy, you can look at a rain cloud and say to yourself, there’s a rainbow coming in just a little while. So no matter what that rain cloud brings, the rainbow is going to be afterwards. That’s right.
SPEAKER 06 :
It’s a good, great picture of God’s promises always coming through to us, no matter what the storms bring.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s right. And I remember times when Darren and I would just Get off the side of the road to watch the wonderful rainbows. It was, oh, they were beautiful. Sometimes we’d see a double rainbow and sometimes we’d see all of the colors together. It was just beautiful. Oh, you are blessed to dispense for in him you live and move and have your being. And you can go to freedomstreet.org anytime, day or night. Click on resource. Hit listen to the radio programs anytime, day or night. Yes.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s a good, that’s a good plug there because we’ve got a few fun changes coming to call to freedom. We’ll be airing the program at different times. So if you are a one o’clock listener, we just want to encourage you to go to that freedom street.org to find our radio programs. Because we are not leaving. We’re not going anywhere. You’re just going to find us in different places. So you can either go to freedomstreet.org and find the radio shows there or find us on Spotify. And we’ve got the radio programs up on Spotify as well. There will be some other times that you could tune in to listen to us. So if you’re that one o’clock listener, you can also, if you have any questions, go ahead and call that 877-917-7256. Leave your phone number and we will get back with you and give you more information on how you can find us.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. Just a couple of weeks ago, Kimberly, we were talking about changes and how there are new things coming and God is doing a new thing and he’s doing a new thing with call to freedom. And I’m so grateful. I want to say a special thing. Thank you to you who are listening every day. Faithful. And I want to tell you that we love you and we cherish your relationship with us. It’s going to be a glorious day when I really, truly get to meet you because some of you I will never meet on this earth, but we’re going to have a great time in heaven. Praise the Lord. I look forward to that, too. Yes. Our memory verse for this week has been James 4, verse 7. Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee. And the passion is so beautiful and descriptive. I am reading it, or Kimberly and I are going to join in and read it to the end of the chapter. the end of chapter four of James. James is just so loaded, full of wonderful advice for Christians. This is a book for Christians. And in verse seven or verse six, it starts, God resists you when you are proud, but continually pours out grace when you are humble. So then surrender to God, stand up to the devil and resist him, and he will flee in agony. He doesn’t want to leave you. And when you speak the word, friend, Oh, he hates that. He really hates that. So verse eight says, move your heart closer and closer to God and he will come even closer to you. But make sure you cleanse your life, you sinners, and keep your heart pure and stop doubting. Those are the trio, Kimberly, that are so dangerous to especially believers is fear, doubt and unbelief. I should say our fear, doubt and unbelief. They are wreckers of a Christian life.
SPEAKER 06 :
They really are. It’s true. As soon as we start becoming fearful or doubting, we are actually giving. And the enemy has no power at all. We need to just remind ourselves of that. that the enemy has no power when this verse encourages us to resist him and he will turn and run away. We’re the ones with the power to get him to turn. That’s right.
SPEAKER 02 :
We resist him.
SPEAKER 06 :
He has no power except if we give it to him. So the fear and the doubt and the unbelief are ways that he plugs into some power. And I might have mentioned this before. I like to give the analogy of our phone needing power. It needs our phones need to be plugged in. And the enemy, he was created in the first place, Lucifer, to be plugged into the greatest source of power. And when he gets no power, he goes looking for others who will give him the power. He does not stand before God anymore, so he gets no power from God. Now he gets it from God’s people, from us, those who were created in the image of God. So we want to be careful not to give the enemy any power.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s right. Verse 10 of James 4 says, Be willing to be made low before the Lord. That means humble yourself. Now, some of you may really feel like you need to be exalted early in life. Sometimes we have to wait for a long time. Habakkuk 2, 4 says that so very clearly. When we write down the vision on a tablet, then we wait for God. We wait and we wait and we wait for God’s perfect timing in our lives. And friend, it’s perfect in every way. Verse 11 of James 4 says, And that family member, that’s just not your biological family member, although that’s important. It’s your church family member. That you do not need to ever slander or gossip about them.
SPEAKER 06 :
I would say that about our neighbors as well, Mom. We’re so quick to judge our neighbors and we’ve been told to love your neighbor as yourself. So anyone in your community, being careful not to slander them because that is another way to give the enemy power.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, it is. Your duty is not to make yourself a judge of the law of love by saying that it doesn’t apply to you, but your duty is to obey it. Oh, trust and obey. There is only one true lawgiver and judge, the one who has the power to save and destroy. So who do you think you are to judge your neighbor? So listen, those of you who are boasting today or tomorrow, we’ll go to another city and spend some time and go into business and make heaps of profit. But you don’t have a clue what tomorrow may bring for your fleeting life is but a warm breath of air that is visible in the cold only for a moment and then vanishes. Instead, you should say our tomorrows are in the Lord’s hands. And if he is willing, we will live life to its fullest and do this or that. But here you are boasting in your ignorance for to be presumptuous about what you’ll do tomorrow is evil. So if you know of an opportunity to do the right thing today, yet you refrain from doing it, ooh, you’re guilty of sin. Wow.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, those words are very clear that we need to have listening ears that will hear the Lord’s wisdom, that will hear the Lord’s guidance and direction in our life and not just hear it, but obey it. Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
So good. If you don’t know the word, how do you know to obey it? So that’s why we encourage you every day to get into that word of God. And we have a Bible guide going from Genesis to Revelation in a year. It’s wonderful. And then in the latter part of the year, you’re going into the New Testament again, into the epistles. So if you’d like to have a Bible guide, you can call us at 1-877-917-7256. Or you can go to Freedom Street and download right there the newsletter with the newsletter. The Bible guide is there. It is. Yeah. So you can download that. That’s real simple, really easy. And it gets you into a daily habit of going to God first in your day. That’s right. That’s so important.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. Establishing a routine of actually connecting with the one that you were made for is so important. We want to let him have his dream come true. We’re so busy trying to make our own dreams come true in this life. And he made us for himself. And he has the better dream.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, he sure does. He does. Yes. Yes. He has a better dream. There is a power we cannot see that controls and dominates every born again believer. And now I’m talking to those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. I believe that power operated by Holy Spirit is the spirit of wisdom. And we don’t hear a whole lot about that. but it’s the spirit of wisdom that goes from the very heart of God through Holy Spirit into your heart. And it was God in the beginning, and it’s a constant in all our lives, guiding and directing and teaching. And yesterday I mentioned the verse of Scripture that I say often, Proverbs 7, verse 4. Wisdom, you are my sister, and understanding, you’re my intimate friend. why don’t we look a little further at the magnitude of wisdom in our lives why are so many of us kimberly when we’re going through a really hard difficult time we don’t ask for wisdom to make the decisions we go to somebody else or we text or we message or we do something with a human being when the wisdom of god has all the answers for us
SPEAKER 06 :
I think we have not learned how to be still and tap into that wisdom. Be still and know that I am God. Being still takes patience. And we live in a society where we want an answer right now. So it makes it hard to be still and just pray and ask for ideas that are heavenly ideas, for revelation knowledge to come to us. Yes. And it does if you’re willing to wait on the Lord.
SPEAKER 02 :
But we’ve got to wait on him. Yes, wait and listen. Yesterday, Kimberly, you and I were talking about two sides of wisdom. God is a God of not only justice, but he’s a God of mercy. And you ask your question, how can that be? God has such a many-faceted character. that we can’t figure him out. Don’t even try. Don’t even try. All that we are told to do is believe what his word says about who he is and trust him. I have a friend who emailed me the words to an old song we sing, and thank you so much for this song. Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. That’s right.
SPEAKER 06 :
In that trusting and obeying, like the scripture that you quote so often from Proverbs 7, 4, that’s where we have the wisdom and understanding is when we develop the trust and the obedience to wait on him. And I like thinking of wisdom and understanding as two different virtues and two different characteristics that can be added to our life. We can put it in our suitcase and carry it around at all times. Yes. And they do protect us. Those virtues are a protection. They’re a shield. They go before us. They go behind us because they are part of God’s character.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. Yes. Oh, praise God. We talk about eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him. I don’t think we can fully understand or grasp that precious verse. Some of us think that it’s when we get to heaven. We’ll be able to see it. And Kimberly, I don’t believe that. No, it’s here now. That’s right.
SPEAKER 06 :
I’ve already experienced some of it in just little tiny drops. And when I experienced that, I just think, oh, wow, you’ve got more. You have so much more for us. We just have to get rid of our doubt and our anxiety and our fear. And we can’t do that on our own. You know, you might be listening and asking yourself, well, how do I get rid of my fear? You simply tell it to go and you turn to Jesus and you say to him, I don’t hear the voice of another. I only hear your voice and follow you. And you just have to start speaking those things and saying those things out loud. Your words have power because you were made in the image of God and his words have power.
SPEAKER 02 :
They do. Just this morning, you had a text from your youngest son, Levi, and he How are you folding this one in? I can’t wait to hear. Is it a trust? Yes, and it’s a trust thing. And it’s getting rid of the fear. Because when you get hiccups, sometimes you’re going, oh, how long is this going to last? And I’ve got to go to work.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, Levi and I, we have this thing. And you know, when your children become adults, they don’t necessarily want your advice any longer. And any time that Levi would get the hiccups, I would run to the kitchen and get a glass of water or a bottle of water. And I would run back to him and… he would look at me and i’d say no you don’t get to touch this i hold it when i’m holding it and you drink the hiccups will go away and he at first he’d be rolling his eyes you know this started happening a couple years ago he’d roll his eyes at me mom that doesn’t work and he’d even tell me go away i’m not even going to try that but he had been hiccuping for a long time once and when i came with the water i said it really works he was pretty desperate So he let me give him that drink of water. And because I was holding it, he had to trust and obey that I was not going to just splash it all over him. You know, there’s a trust working there. It’s funny because it worked immediately. He did not get the hiccups at all the rest of the day. And he has always remembered that.
SPEAKER 02 :
So this morning, this morning, Jonathan.
SPEAKER 06 :
Had the hiccups.
SPEAKER 02 :
My other son.
SPEAKER 06 :
It’s so fun. It’s just really fun. Yes. And so Levi texted me. He goes, hey, guess what, mom? Jonathan had the hiccups and I did your water thing. That’s so good. I made him drink while I held it. He was actually, it wasn’t water. It was a berry flavored tea or something like that. Of course. Yeah. People have to have that. Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
But he said, and it worked. Oh, so the trust and obey. Trusting. The believing.
SPEAKER 06 :
You know, we don’t give enough credit to trust, to what trusting. And so many of us, I’ll admit it. I have trust issues with people, with human beings. I’ve got some trust issues. And I don’t trust real easily. I need to know you before I’m going to trust you. And that’s just where I’ve ended up as a human being. I’ve been burned a few times. So I think as humans, all of us have trust issues in one area or another. Learning to trust in the Lord that he’s got you no matter what happens. Just like you said at the top of the hour, he’s got you in the middle of the storm. There is a rainbow that comes and he’s showing you, he promises he’s not going to forsake you or leave you ever. He’s not going to let go of you.
SPEAKER 02 :
He’s going to see it all the way through. Now, yesterday we talked about two different wisdoms and James is so good about, so concise about this because he talks about the wisdom of this world. And we know that from first Corinthians three, the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. So the difference between the earthly demonic wisdom is in James 3, 17 through 18. And it’s the real wisdom. God’s wisdom begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It’s gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two faced suffering. not selfish, not jealous. You can develop a healthy and robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other. And like you just said, Kimberly, that’s difficult at times. I guess the trust, Jesus really… about this fact that the heart is deceitful above all. So he loved, but he did not trust everybody. And I think you can love, but not trust somebody taking their confidence.
SPEAKER 06 :
He was very clear about that, that he was not entrusting himself to men because he knew the heart of man.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 06 :
And he only entrusted himself to his father. And that’s what we need to learn, to trust our father so much that we’re not concerned with what’s happening around us, what decisions other people are making, knowing that sometimes those decisions cause loss in our life. But when we lose anything, we can actually look to our father and realize he has got great gain for us.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, and because of Jesus Christ. Friend, if you are born again because of Jesus Christ, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 30. In Christ Jesus, he became to us what? Wisdom from God. Wisdom from God. At most, wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. That’s 1 Corinthians 1, verse 30. So you know that wisdom is such a vital part of God’s character. It is God. And I thought, what a better chapter to go to. And if you’re reading through Proverbs at all this year, and I hope you are, you’ll find that a lot of wisdom. Solomon talked about wisdom. He was the wisest man in the world. I don’t know what happened, but. He was the wisest man in the world. And women, it was women that got to him. And Proverbs 8 is a beautiful chapter. And in the Passion, it’s just a wonderful chapter to read about God’s wisdom and what that wisdom entails. And if you’d like to begin reading that in Proverbs 8. Sure, just tell me when I need to stop. Oh, we’ll probably stop. Okay.
SPEAKER 06 :
Proverbs 8, starting in verse 1.
SPEAKER 02 :
Now, if you take it that at the place where pathways merge, Kimberly, you have a person who is making some real critical decisions for the day, maybe new business, maybe new relationships. And there’s two different directions that this person can take. Now, we have to depend on that voice inside of us to give us the right direction. It’s such a good metaphor. At the entrance of every portal where she stands at the gate, at our gate of our mind, we’re going to decide which is best for us.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes, and we have a tendency in our human condition to want to make the right decision, but righteousness stays close to the Lord, stays close to wisdom.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s right. When I married your father, he had not worked probably too much in his life. He was singing with groups, so he hadn’t really done manual work or physical work. Was still living at home and was not very responsible. That’s right. So if I looked at him and then I saw a guy on campus who was president of the student body, he was athletic, he was a person that took great responsibility, what would I choose? A good-looking guy who was on his way to the top in success or a guy that really hadn’t worked a whole lot and he was still living at home with his mom and dad? Well, Kimberly, I chose the mom and dad thing.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, and that was because you were listening to another voice and not the voice of human common sense. Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
And that’s the point, right? That’s right. And talk about your dad. We’re going to listen to a great song that he is singing, How Great Thou Art.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, Lord, my God. When I in awesome wonder Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder Thy power throughout the universe displayed Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee how great thou art how great thou art then sings my soul my savior god to thee how great thou art And when I think that God, His Son not sparing, sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in. That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, How great thou art, how great thou art. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee. How great thou art, how great thou art. With sound of acclamation To take me home What joy shall fill my heart Then I shall bow In humble adoration And there proclaim My God, how great Thou art Then sings my soul My Savior God to Thee
SPEAKER 04 :
How great thou art.
SPEAKER 02 :
I can just hear Grandpa Wells singing with your father and just Grandpa Wells had a beautiful bass voice. Oh, how great you are, God.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes. How great you are. How great is your wisdom? How great is your understanding? But how great are you for who you are, just who you are, not anything that you can give us. How great you are, God.
SPEAKER 1 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, we’re going to talk a little bit more tomorrow about wisdom. We need wisdom, folks. We really do. Wisdom in this world that is going through such turmoil. Wisdom at the Straits of Hormuz when President Trump and Iran are just at each other’s throats. We need wisdom. And the wisdom comes from Father God. It doesn’t come from listening to all the news. It doesn’t come from… your senators or your representatives. It doesn’t come from your family, your biological family. It comes from God in the heart of God.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s right. So beautiful. At this point in time, we need assurance more than ever before. And that’s what almost every commercial is trying to give us. If you need assurance for your pet or for your health or for your home or for your, your car, um, Call this number. But we really need to call on the name of the Lord. And he brings us the assurance. That’s right.
SPEAKER 02 :
Bottom line for the world is money. They want your money. And I don’t care how they say it. They want your money. It’s money, money, money, money. And there’s one thing that money won’t buy. We’re going to talk about that tomorrow. The riches. in Christ Jesus and wisdom of God. So thank you for joining us today. Have a lot more to say about wisdom. Get your Bible and turn to Proverbs 8. God bless you and keep you and take joy.
SPEAKER 1 :
877-917-7256
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
