3.5.25 – Watch Stress And Anxiety Melt Away

SPEAKER 01 : 0:10

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 : 1:04

Welcome to Call to Freedom. May the Lord your God be with you. May he never leave you nor forsake you. Oh, that’s such a great one. He will never leave you or forsake you. May he turn your hearts to him to walk in all his ways. And that precious verse is from 1 Kings 8, 57 and 58. Oh, the Bible is such a wonderful resource of God’s love. and kindness and goodness and patience towards us. I’m so grateful for his word. Oh, that’s why I run to his word every day. You are blessed to dispense, for in him you live and move and have your being. And before we hear Kimberly on the air today, I want to announce the meeting this Saturday. That’s March the 8th. Whoa, we’re into March. Oh, if you would like to bring a side dish for the luncheon, we always have that wonderful meeting and Bible study, praise and worship music. But then we have lunch where we can gather around the table. It is just such a fun time to be together. And if you would like to bring a side dish to complement the chicken and rice divan I’ll be serving, if your last name begins with A through M, bring a salad. If your last name begins through N through Z, bring dessert. And that’s something that we kind of stand by month after month. If you’ve never been to a Call to Freedom meeting and you’d like to attend this Saturday, call me after this program at 1-877-917-7256. I just hope to see you Saturday. It’s going to be a wonderful time. And, oh, I know it’s going to snow in between, but we’re Coloradoans, okay? We’re strong. Yes, we’re strong. We’re strong in the Lord. Praise God. Welcome to the program, Kimberly. Thank you.

SPEAKER 03 : 2:49

Oh, I wish I could be there with you this Saturday. And, yes, Coloradoans are not afraid of snow, right?

SPEAKER 01 : 2:55

No.

SPEAKER 03 : 2:55

I came back from Colorado being with you last month and came right into a bunch of snow and ice here in Oklahoma. And, yeah, I’m not afraid of snow. Ice, that’s different.

SPEAKER 02 : 3:06

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER 03 : 3:07

I can’t remember if I told you that I was driving Matthew and Levi to an appointment because my van has really good snow tires on it, and it’s the heaviest vehicle. I pulled out of the garage onto the driveway, and our driveway has a slope to it. And the men came out to get into it so that they could get into the vehicle. It was too close to the wall inside the garage. So I pull out, and they were literally standing still and sliding down. Sliding?

SPEAKER 02 : 3:39

Because the ice was so slippery. And your driveway isn’t that much of a slope, Kimberly. Not that much, but enough for them to slide all the way to the door and hang on to the door. Slip and slide, yes. I know. I just heard from Dana, too, and they had snow in South Carolina. And I was asking about the fires. And she said, I believe that’s in the western part of South Carolina. So I’m grateful that the grandchildren are there. safe but yep they had snow in south carolina which is really unusual very unusual the weather patterns this year but we’re getting closer to jesus coming back kimberly and he warned us about some of these conditions oh it’s gonna be soon soon and very soon yes and

SPEAKER 03 : 4:23

Our desire is that everyone is excited about that. And sometimes, for one reason or another, we’re not. As human beings, we might not be excited about that. We might be too focused on the tribulations, or on all of these natural disasters that are happening, or all of the upheaval that’s in this world. And when we get our eyes on that, then we don’t get excited. Oh, how much we want that excitement to hit each and every soul, everyone listening. And I’m talking today about doubts. John 20, verse 27 says, stop doubting and believe. And it’s a really tiny little sentence. You know, it’s small in there. And it looks simple because it’s a small sentence. Stop doubting and believe. But it’s really difficult to do that today. unless we figure out what’s in the way. What’s in the way of our faith? Why are we doubting? James 1.6 is another verse. It says, When you ask, you must believe and not doubt. Hmm. And have you noticed that doubts can really stress you out? When you are doubting, you can feel a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety. Yes. Because those doubts have you wondering, wait, what’s next? What if I need to do more? What if I haven’t done enough? What if I’m not good enough? Doubts can really stress you out. Yes. And we heard from one of our dear listeners who wants to know, how do I keep from doubting? That is such a good question for all of us to sit with for a little while. And doubt is a funny thing. When we start asking ourselves if we believe that God can do anything, the creator of the universe, can he do anything? Yes, we have no doubt he can do anything. We believe that he is all powerful. and that he really can do it all. We truly believe that. So where and when does the doubt sneak in? Where does that come from? Why do we believe that God can do everything, but we don’t believe that he will do everything and take care of it?

SPEAKER 02 : 6:47

I remember the story of Zechariah. And when the angel came to him and said, you’re going to have a son, he gave all the details. Your wife, Elizabeth, will bear your son and give him a name, John. Down to the greatest detail. He will drink no wine. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn back many. And then Zechariah says, how shall I know this for certain? Oh, oh, after all that detail, the angel gave him and he can ask that question. And then, of course, he was not able to speak for nine months because of that. Yes. The doubt. The doubt.

SPEAKER 03 : 7:32

And really what we’re saying is, I know how old I am. You know, that’s what Zachariah is saying. I know how old I am. I know how many decades I longed for children and it was not in the cards for me. I know the sins. I know why maybe I have not gotten what I want out of life. When you’re focused on what you know about yourself, That’s when you have so many self-thoughts that you’re no longer thinking about God and how good He is. Doubts arise when we think that we’re not doing enough for God or we think we’re not good enough. See, that’s us. We’re the focus. We aren’t prepared. We don’t have the tools for that. Whatever it is, the focus switches away from God’s power and His ability. it switches to our own power and abilities, which are nothing. We are not supposed to be focused on us. We’re supposed to be focused on him. And there’s nothing in this world that will make you doubt more than keeping your focus on yourself and how you want your life to look or how you expect your life is supposed to look. And I just wanted to be able to talk about how God sees our lives very much differently than the way we see them. He does not see us as we are in the midst of our mess. He knows that all of those messes he’s in control of and he is working them all for good. And so he doesn’t see us like we are. He sees that it’s a process and we are going to be his best friend and his bride. Or let’s say it this way for those who maybe who have never been married or maybe those who even haven’t found a best friend in life. It’s like the relationship between your head and your body. God is the head, and he has created a body, the church body. His people are his body. And this body for him is that real close relationship to the head. You know, the head, our brain, is what causes every movement of our body. Our body responds to everything the head gives. And if the body is injured somewhere, the head is trying to figure out, the brain, our brain, is trying to figure out, how do I heal or bring comfort to this area of the body? And that is what our Father God is doing all the time. He wants to heal and He does it for us. He works all things for good and brings comfort. We’ve got to be looking to him. We have to look to him to do it, not ourselves. And as we’re looking to him and putting our focus there, the doubts start melting away. We can’t earn this place of being his body. That’s the whole plan. The plan is his plan. He is creating us in his image and making us in his likeness. That’s his work. He will do it. Because he can. We can’t do it.

SPEAKER 02 : 10:56

That’s right.

SPEAKER 03 : 10:57

Yes. And so we choose to believe that his ability to make it come true is perfect. His ability is perfect. And so he is doing it. He’s making us like him in spite of what we know about our past or our weaknesses, our hidden thoughts. In spite of all that, he is making his dream come true. Wow. So regardless of the brokenness and the damage in our lives, and it doesn’t even matter where that came from, if it came from outside influences that broke our life into pieces or if it came from us and we are the influence that is that is causing the brokenness and the damage. He is at work, both to will and to work for his good pleasure and ours. He’s doing it. So we won’t be able to really help him out. Our response is to just stay in conversation with him and talk to him about it. Because we can never pay enough or do enough to make us like him. It’s his dream. And it is his job to accomplish it. And there’s nothing about our own human effort that can do that job for him. That’s right. When we make that connection, we start believing all of this. This is what we believe. Now, where do the doubts come in? We doubt our part in it. That’s usually what happens. And even though there is no our part, right? Our part is simply responding. It’s staying in communication. It is talking with him and having conversation with him. God’s whole plan is, actually involves damaged people. We need to sit with that and call it a fact. Every one of us are damaged. We’ve all made poor choices. We’ve all had pasts that we’re not really proud of. We might be in a present situation that we’re not really proud of. But The thing is, we are not perfect people with perfect lives. That’s not what he is looking for. On purpose, on purpose. In Luke 22, 32, Jesus is talking and Jesus says, when you have repented and turned to me again, strengthen your brothers. He already knows that there’s going to be a fall. He’s talking to Simon Peter, and he knows there’s going to be a poor decision made. And he’s not even trying to tell him, don’t do it, don’t do it. That’s right. That’s not the point. That’s not even the point. The point is, he’s going to bring Simon Peter back around to being on solid ground. He will bring you listening today back on solid ground. And when you repent and you’ve turned, strengthen your brothers. I love how the Passion Translation says this. It says, remember this after you have turned back to me, back to God, back to Jesus. After you’ve turned back to me and have been restored, make it your life mission to strengthen your brothers. Yes. God is not expecting you to be better on your own, to never fail, to do more in your strength. That’s not what he’s expecting. That’s right. He’s expecting that when you see how frail and imperfect you are, that you will turn your attention to God, who is not frail and imperfect, and he is your head. You will turn your attention to God first and then to others, and you will strengthen your brothers.

SPEAKER 02 : 14:50

Yes. It’s really great here in the 22nd chapter that you’re talking about of Luke, Kimberly, because Peter comes back and wants to further strengthen. Further, tell Jesus how loyal he is to Jesus. Oh, Lord, with you, I’m ready to go to prison and to death. Well, we know. We know the rest of the story. And Jesus says to him, I say to you, Peter, the cock will not crow today until you have denied, denied me three times. So our excuses are just, there is not anything when we compare it with the wonderful wisdom and love of our Lord Jesus. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah.

SPEAKER 03 : 15:34

And I said it before, but I want to say this again. Nothing will make you doubt more than keeping your focus on yourself and how you want your life to look. And there are some really obvious signs that will reveal to us how our own expectations are dominating our thought life. And here’s what we need to look out for. We need to look for regrets. And regrets, let me just give the list. The regrets, the what ifs, the if onlys, the should haves, the could haves, the would haves. These are all self-focused illusions that the enemy uses to beat us up and keep our focus on ourselves. So it’s a double whammy. We’re staying focused on ourself. It’s maybe a triple or quadruple whammy. We’re staying focused on ourself instead of God. And then we’re beating ourselves up with that because that does, it brings condemnation on us for all the mistakes that we’ve made in the past that we didn’t do better. And then it’s, it’s it’s keeping us from our true faith it’s causing us to doubt even more and i know that when i look back and i see oh man i regret that i did not make a better decision putting my daughter in a private school instead of public school or you know fill in the blank for yourself We all have regrets. So what is your regret that you’re thinking about today? Or that you didn’t do something that you wish you had done. Whatever your regret is, these thoughts are so focused on our choices that we forgot. It goes out of our head that God has a plan to work it all for good. And instead of staying focused on God’s ability to redeem and restore, we’re focused on a mistake that we made. Well, the enemy uses this regret to heap condemnation on us and make us feel like we’re never going to be good enough and we’re never going to get our life worked out now. But God intended regret to be a split-second feeling, just a tiny little moment, a little spark. And that regret will lead us to repentance. Oh, that’s so good. Yes. And when we repent, when we turn and say, you know what? I didn’t like how that felt. That’s repenting. Or I’m thinking about doing this again, but I don’t like how it feels to think about doing that again. You just start talking about it, having a conversation. And Romans 2, 4 says that God’s kindness leads us to repentance. You know, repentance means that we turn from our ways and do it differently. But sometimes we get stuck in patterns and it’s really hard to do things differently. And sometimes that’s because of the environment that we’re in. I know that when my son Jonathan was working at a car dealership, everyone else there was doing drugs. And he got caught up in trying a few things and it was really hard for him to break out of that while he was still in that environment. He finally just quit. He had no other place to go. He had no other idea what he was going to do. He just didn’t want to be stuck there anymore. That’s one way to handle it. But what if you’re in a situation where you can’t just quit and walk away? You know, regrets can make us feel like the mistakes that we’re making are enough to ruin God’s plan. Is that true? Is that truth? Because God is bigger than our mistakes. That’s right. We are not capable of ruining our creator’s plan. So in the regret, we tend to think that we’ve broken our life so badly that God cannot restore it or redeem it. Our focus needs to turn back to how big he is and how good he is. Our focus is on our bad. instead of being on His good. We need to get our focus back on His good and off of our bad. Yes. Oh, praise the Lord. That’s so good, Kimberly. When our hearts condemn us because we’re stuck in these situations where we’re in these loops and we can’t break out, when our heart condemns us, 1 John 3.20 says, God is greater than our heart. that even when our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our heart. We need to remember that. If you have a desire, just a simple desire to repent, if you’re even talking about it, you have a good heart. The desire alone is a sure sign that you are on the right track. The people who don’t really want to repent, who are truly having a hard time repenting, never even give repentance a thought. They don’t even care. So when when you’re struggling and your heart is breaking because you see how damaged you are, put your hope in God. God is greater than your heart and he will see you through to the beautiful end result. You don’t have to make it happen. He’s doing it. He will make it happen. And you are too small to break his plan. He will complete the good work that He has begun in you. It’s just, it has to happen. It’s inevitable. It’s inevitable.

SPEAKER 02 : 21:35

I love what John says right before the 20th verse in the 18th of 1 John 3. Little children. I love the way he calls us. Little children. Yes. No matter what our age, little children, let us not love with word or with tongue. Well, I will be praying for you or while I’m going to do this. But indeed, and truth, we shall know by this that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before him. So when you look to the truth, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. You look to the Lord Jesus, you’re absolutely right, Kimberly. Keep our focus on him. And God is going to surround our hearts with his truth. And that’s so important. And we really can’t do it on our own. We can ask God, Father God, I have doubt in my heart. Would you please help me with this? And He’ll come around. He’ll say, yes, I will be happy to help you with this.

SPEAKER 03 : 22:35

Oh, he’s already there. He’s actually just waiting for us to have a conversation with him about it.

SPEAKER 02 : 22:41

Yes, absolutely. We’re talking to people about God, but why don’t we try to just talk to him? He’s the one that’s going to do it for us. I know just this the other day, I got this big box from Xerox store. It’s just a little incident that I went through. And here’s this drum cartridge. They want me to replace the drum cartridge in my Xerox printer. I’ve never done it. And Kimberly, I just sat it on the counter and I said, no, I’ve got to call somebody at Xerox and they can come out and put it in. Well, I finally opened the box and and I’m trying to read the instructions, and I’m going, uh-uh, this isn’t going to work. I can’t do this. All of a sudden, the Lord says, why don’t you ask me? Don’t try to figure it out yourself. Ask me. So I said, okay, Lord, I’m asking you. He says, take those instructions. We’re going to do it step by step. You’re going to get through this with me. So this afternoon, I’m going to go to the office and I’m going to go step by step as Holy Spirit directs me. These are just small things, Kimberly, but they can be huge. You know, well, I’m not going to open this. I need more help than this. And we forget that Holy Spirit is there to teach us and to guide us through.

SPEAKER 03 : 23:59

That’s so good. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, because it is a constant learning process. And so repentance, it’s kind of the same thing. In a way, you were sort of repenting of trying to figure it out on your own. And you were turning toward your father, your father, God, who really wants to help you with it. That’s right.

SPEAKER 02 : 24:23

He does. And he knows. He knows how it works. He knows where to put it. There are so many little compartments in that printer. He knows where everything fits in so I can go on printing. He knows.

SPEAKER 01 : 24:37

Yes.

SPEAKER 02 : 24:37

God, you know. You know about all of our listeners, all their little issues that they have at hand. Oh, that they may ask you, just ask you for help, Lord God. And you’re going to… Well, you are already, as Kimberly said, you are already there. So we thank you for helping in every time of need that you’re going to be there. Yes.

SPEAKER 03 : 25:01

Well, I know I’ve got more notes and I’ll hit on a couple more here, but I’m not going to be able to get through the list of regrets. And what ifs and if onlys and should have and could have and how all of those things bring us doubt in our life. So I want that silence.

SPEAKER 02 : 25:20

That’s right. So invite yourself for tomorrow. I just invite myself back. And Rachel is putting thumbs up. In the production room, yes. So I think this is such a great subject, Kimberly, because we all go through it, just like I did the other day with that drum cartridge from Xerox. Yeah, we do. So we all go through those times, yep. We do, yes. So we have one more minute, so thank you.

SPEAKER 03 : 25:48

Yes. Well, you know, getting to that place where we’re actually recognizing that what our thoughts are doing, our thoughts of regret, or we’ll touch more on what ifs, if only should have and could have tomorrow. When we’re thinking that way, it never leads us to a peaceful place. It never brings us to that yoke that is easy and the burden that is light. And that is what our Heavenly Father wants for us. is the green pastures and the still waters and the place of shalom peace that provides everything that we need and satisfies our soul. And so getting to that place where doubts are melting away and our faith is rising up, It takes recognizing these thoughts of regret, what ifs, if onlys, and I know that Holy Spirit is going to help us recognize those and kick them out of our lives. We’ll talk more about that tomorrow.

SPEAKER 02 : 26:48

Oh, okay. Thank you so much. And shalom, shalom to all of you listening. Take joy. Thank you.

SPEAKER 1 : 27:02

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SPEAKER 01 : 27:22

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SPEAKER 1 : 28:25

Thank you.