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. Call to Freedom will be visiting a past labor day with Darren and me talking about living securely and free from the dread of evil. It’s so important to know that with Jesus’ name and God’s protection, you don’t ever have to fear the threats of the enemy. Darren brings up the Scriptures in Proverbs 3-1 and 7-14. My son do not forget my teaching but let your heart keep my commandments. For length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you. Peace is so important to God because it’s one of his names, Jehovah Shalom. And it’s one of Jesus’ names, Prince of Peace. Have a blessed labor day. Well, praise God, Barbara. This is a labor day that our nation celebrates every year and sometimes we don’t labor on labor day. We take it easy. We do. We appreciate labor day and it gets us prepared for the fall of the year, for the great festivals, Jewish festivals. It’s an exciting time of the year and a lot of farmers are harvesting right about now and they’re looking forward to a good reward for all of their work for the year. It’s a blessing. I love the fall of the year anyway. But this is kind of the gateway to the fall. And we just hope that all of you are having a great day in the Lord and are able to just sit and rest for a while. Not work so hard. Well, you know, when farmers look forward to harvest, that means there’s going to be a payday. Yes. There’s supposed to be. That’s right. We need to believe for that. That’s right. And so when they get the sugarbeats in and they take them to the sugar factory or they take them and pile them up someplace so they can take them off later or they bring in the insolage and the corn and of course the wheat harvest is over for most of our people that are listening. Well, I’ll tell you, God is good. He is into this matter of seed time and harvest. That’s right. And harvest is so important to the Lord and He’s the one that developed seed concept. So it’s an exciting time. I was thinking today of talking about Isaiah and the prophet Isaiah is such an important figure here. He wrote the longest book in the Bible and it’s right after Psalms and ecclesiasties and proverbs and Isaiah is a man who had to come into this scene during Israel’s worst years. This was great degradation. Israel had been a nation that God had chosen for himself out of all the nations in the world. God chose Israel and they were the least in number but God loved them. And here Isaiah had to walk into this scene of idolatry and people that were coming against God that rebellious. And here in the fifth chapter of Isaiah it says, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness.” It was a horrible time of this. This was a horrible time in the history of Israel. And I see that today, Darren. I really truly see people calling good evil and evil good. You know, there’s another scripture that says, “You know your lip service is great but your heart is far from me.” paraphrase that. But you know when you compromise, you compromise, you compromise and pretty soon compromises the way of the day. And you’re in deep trouble when you do that. That’s right. You give in to sin and you cross that line too many times and one day that line is no longer there. Now this is a serious thing, Barbara, when people compromise and compromise and compromise. In fact, I’ve had them come to me and I think of one woman that came to me one time in Fort Collins. And she worked for a major company. And she said, “I have to make in the next few days a decision on my retirement plan. And once I make it, I can’t change it.” And Darren, I don’t know really what to do. And I said, “Well, why don’t you pray and ask God? Well, I do, but I pray, but I don’t get any answers.” Now I had known that there was intense defilement in this lady’s life. She had crossed the line so many times and said no to that voice inside. And she was now what you would call almost pathological or a person that didn’t know truth from fiction or truth from untruth. She couldn’t really hear the voice of God because she said no to God so many times that the inner workings of her heart were not trustworthy. Is that kind of person salvageable? Yes, under. I would say great fasting many years in the word because they took many years to get in that point. And I prayed for a lot of those and they can’t hold their focus. And today folks, I’ll tell you, when we tell you to get away from sin, don’t compromise, don’t live near the edge. Don’t cross the line all the time because it’s much like an old two-way road in the country where you have a center strap down the line. You’ve got two-way traffic. You’re not supposed to get over on the left side of the road. You’re not supposed to cross over that line. There’s great pair of consequences. Right. Yes, it could do. Well, it’s almost like one time down in the future. Well, in fact, in this lady’s case, it was in her past. That line had been erased because she’d gone, oh, she’d said no to God so many times. Now, I still believe God’s voice of correction was there, but she jammed the mechanism so many times that it wasn’t dependable. She couldn’t pray and get a secure answer from God. It kind of reminds me of the first chapter of Isaiah here. He says, “What are your multiple-eyed sacrifices to me? I’ve had enough of your bird offerings. The fat of your fed cattle, I take no pleasure in the blood of your bulls and lambs and goats. These people were still following a tradition, and God was sick and tired of what they were doing because they weren’t doing it with their heart.” It says, “When you come to appear before me, who requires of you this trampling of my courts? Bring your worthless offerings no longer. Inense is an abomination to me.” Now, it was in the beginning, God asked for incense. He asked for the wonderful aroma of the sacrifices. It was pleasing it says in one, Scripture to His nostrils, “This sacrifice of praise the people gave, but all of a sudden it’s like you said they crossed that line, and they began doing it just as lip service and not out of the intent of their heart.” Now, let me tell you that’s extremely serious. It really is. It’s extremely serious. And if you’ve been a compromiser, if you’ve watered down what you believe and you’ve taken the easy road, let me tell you. Take yourself by the nap of the neck and make it a quality decision. You can even ask God, “Help me to be more serious about this Lord. I have been flipping too long. I have been a compromise too long. I’m in sinking sand,” as they used to say. And you don’t want to be in a sinkhole that will just suck you down and take your life. That’s what sin does, O’ Barra Teyat. So deceptive, the Father of Lies will get you a little bit at a time. You don’t want that to happen. That’s right. He is a solution, Darren. And here in the first chapter, God is saying, “I hate what you’re doing. I don’t like your festivals.” He actually says, “I hate two or three times.” And he’s saying this of a country that he chose himself. But here in the 16th verse of the first chapter, and some of you who are listening, you’re saying, “You know, maybe I’ve crossed that line. I don’t hear from God anymore. Is there any chance for me to have I committed the unpardonable sin?” No. Unless you have really blasphemed Holy Spirit. And I believe those who truly blasphemed Holy Spirit who come against everything that is godly, I believe they’re dead already. But if you say, “I can’t hear from God, and I’m afraid what Darren has said this morning is partly to has to do with my behavior, and the way I’ve treated God lately will in verse 16. God is saying to you, “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean. Remove the evil of your deeds.” You can. You can know what is wrong in your life, and you can remove it. You can wash it. Seize to do evil. God is calling to you. Seize to do evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Reprove the ruthless. Defend the orphan. Plead for the widow. Then he says a wonderful thing in verse 18, Darren. One of my favorite verses in the Old Testament. “Come and let us reason together,” says the Lord. Though your sins are a scarlet, they are white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool. If you can sent an obey, you will eat the best of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword. Amen. He’s giving us a choice, Darren, and a wonderful choice. You know, we go and just do very simply do it God’s way. We need to find out, “Well, what do you want? What do you expect here?” Yes. And when we go his way, we’re going to win. Now, we’re also, you know, God tells us, you’re going to have trials, troubles, tribulations. It’s part of the earth package. But it doesn’t mean that you have to lose. And it’s such a sweet thing to know that your conscience is clear. Your heart doesn’t condemn you. You know, if your heart condemns you and you know when there’s something wrong, you need to ask first of all, “God, show me what it is. I will specifically repent.” There must be something of sin separating me and you and that sweet fellowship. I don’t want this feeling of something being wrong, something out of whack here. You bow your head and just say, “God, forgive me. Forgive me. I have sinned. Show me specifically what it is and I will repent for that thing because I don’t want anything between me and you, Lord Jesus.” That’s right. And he will very glad. First John 1.9, “He is happy and highly motivated to forgive you. He’s made those laws of forgiveness. And it’s up to you to ask. And when you ask, he has been commanded by his very holiness. And he can’t lie. He can’t sin. He can’t change his mind. He won’t change his word. He won’t break his word. That means you’re going to have forgiveness.” That’s right. There are verses here in the first few chapters of Isaiah that give us an inkling of what God really likes and what God doesn’t like. And there are a lot of this talks about the influence that his people had from people of the East, from heathen people, from nations that serve many gods instead of one God. And here in the second chapter it says, “My people, the house of Jacob, are filled with the influences from the East. They are soothsayers like the Philistines. They strike bargains with the children of foreigners. Their land has been filled with that which is not worth anything. God is saying here, Israel, you’ve got to turn around and you’ve got to seek me, seek just as seek truth. It reminds me of the time that you had things in your house that God told you. You needed to get out of your house.” Well they were in my library. That’s right. They were books and they were tapes and they were… And to you they were very important books. Well I had very honestly several years of a success magazine and I look forward to that coming every month. I devoured the magazine, reread the articles many times. Now but I at that point in my life was not spending the same amount of time and the same diligence in the work. So I had an idol in my life and not only was that an idol but the information was very new age I was later to find out. Although they quoted a few scriptures it was very very deceptive and it was getting me into books like written by Napoleon Hill. For example the great book that a lot of salespeople read and I say great book in quotes, think and grow rich. Well there’s so much new age philosophy in there. And even communicating with the dead. Hello. Not good. And I know that that’s given out in many of the sales seminars. Well to my shame I had memorized a lot of that. I knew who his contemporaries were and so on. And God said I’ve had enough. Darren I want you to clean up your act. It’s in your library. Well I went through there and book by book, volume by volume, tape by tape and he said I don’t want you to give it away. I don’t want you to throw it away. I don’t want you to sell it. I want you to burn it and destroy it. And you loved the Lord so much at this time in your life and you had made a mistake but you loved him so much. Was it difficult for you to take out that stuff? No. And I believe we got a letter from a friend, a power partner in Darren and Denver ministry. And she says I have I have purchased several things from Nepal and is a yin yang evil. Is it wicked? And yes. That is from Eastern religions. And if I were you, I would go through my house just like Darren did and ask the Lord about the things. And simply because you’ve asked, you know there’s something wrong. And I would encourage you to let that stuff go and not make it important in your life and break it. I know one friend of ours brought back a sundial from Mexico thinking he had given us a wonderful souvenir. I took it out in the backyard and God bless him. I appreciate his thoughtfulness but I broke it into pieces with a hammer. There are certain things I will not allow in our house. And I really encourage you to any of you who have things that are questionable things from the Eastern religions especially. Even these Indian, these American Indian, they’re little artifacts. Yeah, artifacts and. The Kachina dolls. Kachina dolls. Yes. I wouldn’t have those in my house. Right. I would not even begin to have God question or begin to compromise against my mother. Well, many of those represent gods. You know, in evil spirits, let me say it that way. You know, I was born on an Indian reservation. I’ve been around Indians a lot of my life. I used to drive through New Mexico where I attended high school and we’d see these little fetishes out beside the road and they were sacrificing to the evil spirits and whatever. Let me tell you folks, don’t collect those souvenirs as you’re bringing evil spirits right into your house. And some of you don’t know why you’re getting blindsided. I’ll let me tell you. Some of you are absolutely spiritually ignorant of what goes on and what’s coming down on your head. That’s right. We’ve got a tape series on when curses go blessings flow and that doesn’t even cover it all. But it will give you an idea of why you’re getting well, for example, have you ever been going through an intersection and had somebody coming at high speed now, praise God this hasn’t happened to me. I’ve had it happen to some of my friends and they were broad-sided in the middle of the intersection. They didn’t even see it coming. I saw that happen one night when it was very cold and we all had our windows up. The heaters were going. In fact, it was below zero. And these people didn’t hear this fire truck coming and this fire truck hit them at an intersection. Now, it had been probably warm weather. The windows would have been down. But this fire truck broad-sided these people right in front of me. Let me tell you, that’s a real wake-up call. Some of you are getting broad-sided in the spirit world. That’s right. And you don’t know why you keep losing why sickness keeps repeating it’s visit at your house and you seem powerless to defend yourself against it. Or you seem to keep having breakdowns with your car, with your appliances or I mean financial disaster one right after you just get one thing, one fire put out as we say. And another one seems to flare up somewhere else. You say it so well, blindsided. You’re getting blindsided. You don’t have to have that. That’s right. And well, I just got to tell you, sometimes you watch football. And if you watch any football or soccer and there’s a guy looking one way and he gets absolutely plastered from some guy coming full speed from the other way, they’re probably going to carry him off the field, maybe even unconscious. Some of you are in that because you compromised. You compromised or somebody up your family tree is compromised and you keep getting sucked back down into the hole and whacked by the devil. Let me tell you folks, good news, good news, good news, you don’t have to put up with that. That’s right. The Lord says come and let us reason together. Though your sins be a scarlet, they shall be as wide as snow. God gives an answer. Here he says though in the second chapter, he says, your land has been filled with idols. You worship the work of your hands and what your fingers have made. And we’re just saying to you, be careful about what you call important in your life. And check yourself. Let’s have a attitude check here. Let’s check our lives and see what’s important in our lives. Is it God first and everything else can go or be destroyed? I know one great measure of standard of measure was in my life when our house burned, Darren. I’ll tell you that that moved me immediately to what was important in my life and what wasn’t. Because when a house is burned, everything is thrown away. And what you thought was so important, including the piano, that is an instrument that I hold close to my heart. And when it was destroyed, you’re standing there and you’re saying there isn’t anything else left God but you. And he says, you know what, as long as you lift me up and hold me and exalt me above everything else, I will replace every one of these lost things to you as long as you honor me first. Which he did. But you know, we shouldn’t have to go through those losses to realize that they’re not that important. No, that’s right. And you know, and I’m not being critical of what happened there in your life. You had your husband and your two little girls and they were safe. That was your treasure on earth, so to speak. Well, I had Kimberly and I was pregnant with Dana. Well, okay. Well, yes, it was a long time ago. Yes, I had both. Yes, they were both safe. But you know, many times people come to us and what they’re asking us to do is pray that an idol in their life will be sustained. I had to say to a friend the other day, she’d call me and said, would you pray for my dog? And I said, sure, I’m a dog lover. I pray for your dog. But one of the things on the way out to her car to the vehicle where the dog was. And I said, I’m glad to pray for your dog. I’ve seen God heal animals. I’ve seen him heal horses and dogs and cats when I prayed. And I haven’t seen him heal any bird yet, but I’m sure that God will call me to do that one of these days. But and all of those are part of God’s creation. I have no problem praying for those things. But on the way out to the vehicle, God said, say to this, say this to this lady, is this dog an idol in your life. Now folks, all of us pet lovers love our animals. Like a couple of years ago, I had to put our little brandy down. And she was, I called her my girlfriend. She was a real special animal in my life. She went with me every place and she loved to go by McDonald’s and have french fries and probably wasn’t good for her, but she liked him. So I gave her a few french fries now and then. But you know, this little dog was a very special little friend, K9 friend. I didn’t worship that dog. She wasn’t an idol in my life. Yes, I cried when she died. I cried a long time after that. And you say, “Darren, now I thought your big strong guy, yeah, I am, but I’ve got a soft heart for dogs.” Dogs, yes you do. But you know, you have to stop and think, now is this animal an idol in my life? Sometimes people idolize, they’re made. I mean, it’s beyond, it’s almost an obsession. Or the children. Or the children. Yes. Let me tell you folks, if you get over into idolatry, the word says that says, “Which craft? It will bring curses into your household. You don’t want that.” That’s right. You sure don’t. I mean, everybody says, “Well, I don’t want that.” Well, then there’s some things you need to do. You need to make sure that you love God more than those things. That’s right here. You’ll be okay. That’s right. Here Jerusalem and Judah had fallen, had rebelled against the Lord. They had become an idolatrous nation. They had put other things before God, Darren. And in the third chapter it says, “For Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah has fallen because their speech and their actions are against the Lord. To rebel against his glorious presence, the expression of their face is bear witness against them, and they display their sin like sawdom. They don’t even conceal it. Woe to them for they have brought evil on themselves.” That is just so true. People ask, “Why is this coming on top of me? Why is this happening to me?” Sometimes, friends, what you have done has come upon you because of sin in your life. And we’re saying that with much love and hopefully understanding and saying, “Come back to the Lord. Come back to the Lord. He has His arms open wide for you.” Yes, He does. Yes, He does. And some of you are hearing this broadcast because it’s a holiday. And I’d just like to say to you, maybe the summertime was not a good time for you. Maybe this year has not been a good year for you. It’s been a disastrous year. Why don’t we get that turned around with the Lord’s help? I’ll tell you, you get on track with Him and you start going by His ways and His covenants and His Word. You get to know His Word and your life will straighten out. It has to. You start putting the Word of God in your heart and we don’t say this often enough, but you want to set a Scripture card called a Power Pack and you’ve never received one complimentary before. We’ll send you one. Now, if you received one before, send your five bucks and get that deck of cards in your pocket and start speaking the Word because if you speak the Word, and this is one of the core teachings we have, see, we know it’s a transferable concept. If we can get you to develop a love for God’s Word and you will have that, if you spend time in the Word and you say it working in your life, as you put the Word of God in your heart, your life will change. That’s right. Your life will change. Now, we recently received a home that was new to us. In fact, we bought it from the original owner. We were able to do that because the Word works. And now we have this lovely home in the office of secure and we’re secure. In fact, we go to bed at night. We don’t worry. We know we’re going to get a good night’s sleep. Somebody’s not going to come barging through the door because of God’s providence. He’s looking after us. He’s watching our backside. Let me put it in modern language. He’s watching our backside. So we don’t have to live in fear all the time. You know, having 14 locks on the doors and all this kind of stuff. God wants to take care of you. You need to know that God. That’s the God of Darren and Barbara. But it’s not just Darren and Barbara’s God. That’s the God of the Bible. You need to get to know Him and watch Him take care of your life and bring blessings and drive away the curses. Absolutely. It talks about that in Deuteronomy 28, Darren, that we can choose, well, in Deuteronomy 30, He wants us to choose life, not death, but life. And in the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy, it talks about the blessing that comes upon us. In fact, it overtakes us who really love the Lord and put Him first. Now to those who don’t put the Lord first, who call themselves Christians, and there are some of you out there that call yourselves Christians, and you will not submit to God. And we warn you that you’re in a terrible situation here. And a territory that most people don’t care to be in. It’s a really hard thing to be in when you’re between a rock and a hard place. That’s a hard place to be in. You know what I tell you, when we harden our hearts in a certain area, and we say no to God, we’re opening, we’re hardening ourselves to God, but we’re opening the door to the devil. And folks, I’ll tell you, when you do that, by an act of your will, and the great thing about human beings is that we’ve been given a free moral choice. We can choose to go one way or go another, or go with another way, or a different way, or whatever. That’s right. And we don’t all have to wear the same color clothes on the same day. And that’s a matter of choice. We’ve been given a choice. Well choose the God that’s going to bless you. There are many gods. There are God choices all over the place. You can choose the God to the modern world. You know, the God of money, the God of recreation, the God of sex, the God of lust, the God of passion, the God of pleasure, the God of travel. There are many gods. And I go back, Barbara, we’re talking about this on the way to the studio. Deuteronomy 7.9. Now, think about this. All the choices of gods that you have in this world today, gods of men’s imaginations, work of man’s hands, and so on. And I’ve just mentioned a few of those. But here this scripture says, “No this at the Lord your God.” Your God. He is God. He is God. One God. That’s right. One God. No this at the Lord’s. Your God. He is God. The faithful God. I tell you, I want to God that’s faithful. That’s right. The faithful God who keeps his covenant and his loving kindness to a thousandth generation with those who love him and keep his commandments. Yes. There’s a condition that you’ve got to love and keep his command. Do what he says and you’ll win. That’s right. Here in where Isaiah was speaking against Judah and Jerusalem that we’ve been talking about. And this is why I love the Old Testament, Darren, is because back thousands of years ago, it’s the same behavior that we have going on today. It’s basically the same kind of behavior. He says, “You walk around with proud, uplifted heads and seductive eyes and you go along with tinkling bangles on your feet, you have become like the world. And sometimes we become like the world and you can’t even delineate between a Christian and a non-Christian anymore.” And here he goes on to say, “You have dangling earrings and anclit bracelets and headbands and veils and headdresses and perfume boxes and amulets and finger rings and nose rings and festal robes and money purses and hand mirrors and veils. These things in themselves are not wrong. But when we take all the time during our day to make sure that we have all this on, then the results of this is instead of sweet perfume, there’s going to be putrefaction. And this is the 24th verse of the third chapter of Isaiah, “Instead of a belt, a rope, instead of well set hair, a plucked out scalp, instead of fine clothes, a donning of sackcloth and branding instead of beauty. This is a description of people taking captive and going into captivity and being bond slaves to another nation. He’s saying, “I don’t want you there. I want you happy. I want you blessed and I want you full of joy.” And they become bond slaves to other nations that worship to other gods, worship titles. That’s right. Let me give you this scripture and I like this one. Turning our focus now back to God Himself. Our God, the Most High God, the Holy God. The Exodus 1511 says, “Who is like the among the gods?” Small G. You got to look for that. Small G. Old Lord. Who is like the majestic and holiness? Awesome and praise is working wonders. Praise God. When you learn to praise the Lord, you really go for it. You’re going to see wonders come in your life. 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 praise reports and heart cries by mailing them to Call to Freedom. Box 370-367. Denver, Colorado, 80237. Or you may email us at Barbara Carmack at FreedomStreet.org. Until next time, remember Jesus loves you, Barbara loves you, and take joy. Thank you. [Music]
