Join Barbara Carmack and her engaging guests in a heartfelt episode centered around Thanksgiving and its intersection with faith. Through nostalgic Thanksgiving traditions and uplifting stories of spiritual resilience, discover the powerful messages hidden in scriptures and how they have been portrayed and amplified to renew faith and enrich lives every day.
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 04 :
On this day before Thanksgiving Day, welcome to Call to Freedom. It’s so important on this day that God has created that you thank the Lord for the rewards of His love and grace, for letting you discover His will. for your life with patience and understanding, for being a compassionate father and a constant friend. Oh, I hope that you recognize he’s been patient with you. He’s been understanding of your situation. He’s been that constant friend. I hope you haven’t taken him for granted. I hope that you haven’t ignored him or even rejected him, my friend. He is your best friend. You may want to have a friendship with someone important or with a member of your family. Oh, I wish they would talk to me. I wish they would call me. You have the best friend in the whole, whole universe, and that’s Holy Spirit. And it’s Jesus Christ who was resurrected from the dead that gave that power of Holy Spirit to work in you. In you, he works and lives. And it’s just wonderful how he’s working on you right now. Oh, God bless you. It’s wonderful to be with you the day before Thanksgiving. The memory verse for today is 2 Corinthians 8, verse 9. For you know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, that you, through his poverty, might become rich. Whoa, that’s so good. That is rich. That is really rich. Thank you, Kimberly, for joining me today.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, yes. It’s a perfect day to be thankful and to be gathering with others that we love and and showing gratitude for each one. And I love how you started this today’s program. And the memory verse, yeah, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. We know this grace. We know it. We have experienced this grace that Jesus has shown us and the riches of his mercy toward us and his forgiveness toward us. And you were telling me earlier this morning that you kind of got stuck in that. Psalm 34. Yeah. Yeah. I did. So I just wanted to follow along with what your heart, where your heart was today and, and just be, be meditating and marinating. in Psalm 34. I think there are some people that are marinating meats and turkeys, everything is soaking and being ready for Thanksgiving and I really want to be marinating in God’s Word.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, that’s right. You remember how Grandma used to take every part of the turkey And then they had the giblets inside the turkey, the cavity. And she would boil those down, cut them into tiny pieces, boil it down. And then it was put into the gravy. That gravy, I miss that gravy. You know, the instant gravies that they make nowadays. I mean, we all use them. But, oh, I miss that. All those giblets in that gravy and the mashed potatoes. And now we have mashed potatoes that are instant. Hello. Hello. Right. So a lot of the things that we had in the earlier days of Thanksgiving. Oh, remember all the ambrosia, the whipped cream and the jello salads. Oh, nobody eats Jell-O anymore, do they? I don’t know.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, my goodness. Yes, they do.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, do they?
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Oh, yes. Jell-O is still a very big part of people’s lives.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, maybe. Maybe in the hospital, they’re still serving Jell-O to patients at noon. Definitely. Definitely. Well, Kimberly… Psalm 34 has such meaning for me because I know originally written by David, he was on the run. He was running from King Saul, and then he got involved with the king of, oh, I forget the country, the Amorites, Ammonites. The Amalekites. And he was pretending to be insane, scratching on the gate of the city there and dribbling into his beard. He had a beard, you know, running from Saul. So he wrote this psalm. And I’m just… I’m almost flabbergasted to the point I don’t know how to describe the glorious praise and worship that he has toward the Father. No one has ever had that, I don’t think, as David did. And then you and I have experienced the… The absolute miracle of your dad being raised off of a bed of affliction from a mental hospital, from being so drained in his body, they didn’t expect him to come out of it. And Grandpa Wells went to his room one day. I mean, he told me so specifically. And he said, John, I’m reading from Psalm 34. I’m reading a psalm for healing for your body. And he said then in that psalm, I sought the Lord. Okay, I’ll start from the beginning. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord. The downtrodden and humble will hear it and rejoice. Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us lift up and exalt his name together. Here it is. Here’s the verse that John’s father, Grandpa Wells, stood on for his horribly ill son. I sought the Lord on the authority of his word, says the Amplified, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Fear had been a root problem there. And Kimberly, when he prayed that prayer, your father was just fine, basically, in his body when I started going out with him and dating him. And then, you know, even though his mind was still going back and forth, it was fine. It was good. And we had him for 23 years, Kimberly. Well, you had him for 22. 22, right? Yeah, but oh, it’s just beautiful to see how God heals without anybody being in that room, just the reading of scripture, standing on the authority of the word that your dad was raised from that bed. Praise God.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. The verse two that says that the downtrodden and humble will hear it and rejoice. I think often we think that we have to learn how to humble ourselves. And we are asked to humble ourselves as much as we possibly can. But in our human condition, we are not very humble creatures. and we don’t know how to humble ourselves we don’t know how to do it our god is the one who is truly humble and we struggle with that quality we we’ve been talking over the past couple of weeks of the goodness of god and who he is who his true character is and how in the fall we we ended up with a flipped character, an opposite, an exact opposite, a contrast to him. And when we finally recognize that all of our thoughts and the way that we do life and even trying to humble ourselves, we just can’t do it because we’re not his character any longer. And we have got to lean on him and his ways, not our own understanding. His ways are humble. And His ways are right and just. And we can’t even imagine His ways because as high as the heavens are above the earth, Isaiah 55 says, that is how high His ways are compared to ours and His thoughts compared to our thoughts. There’s no way to measure the difference between the way that He works in mercy and kindness and compassion and forgiveness and pardon, forgiving iniquity and sin, and how much we struggle with that. We even struggle to receive His forgiveness because we think of ourselves as being so bad.
SPEAKER 04 :
We don’t put enough value on our own lives through shame, through humiliation, through rejection. We don’t see ourselves in Jesus Christ. And we don’t see the power. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. do anything for God. I’m just a, you know, average Joe here. I’m just an average person. Then I think of the translator of the Amplified that you were just reading, Kimberly. She interjected the word downtrodden to the humble. We’ll hear it and rejoice. And I think of this precious, humble woman. She was a widow. She had been active in Christian education, and she died in 1940. Her name was Frances Seward. She did not have a team, no computers, nothing. And she expanded on the Bible, the Revised Standard Version, believing that it was not explaining God’s Word as much. it’s so profound that an average woman, you know, we quote average, a minister’s wife who usually isn’t, is in the background and not up front with her husband all those years. And then she decides she wants to translate the Bible to a fuller meaning of what the original meant. Although the, uh, the theologians realized that this, she really did provide some, um, some answers to some of the things that had happened before in the other translations. And they said the strength of this version, the Amplified, is that it acknowledges that no single English word or phrase can capture precisely the meaning of the Hebrew or Greek. She came to that conclusion after working all that hard from 1945 till 1964 when it was released. That’s almost 20 years. She devoted her life to that. Wow.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s so beautiful to have that kind of a vision and to want people to see that who our God is, is so much greater than just the English words that we read. And even though she gave us many other words in her translation, even all the words she added are still not enough to describe the original Hebrew, the original Greek and the Even those languages, the Hebrew and the Greek, cannot describe our God and how magnificent He is. And that’s why in Psalm 34, verse 3, we want to magnify the Lord. And it says, “…O magnify the Lord with me.” Come along with me and look at him and make him greater, make him bigger. Isn’t that what you do when you magnify something? You look at it in a telescope and you magnify it or in binoculars and it’s magnified or through a magnifying glass, right? And it becomes bigger and greater and you can see more details. Well, that’s what’s happening when this woman decides to go ahead and translate more words and give more words to the original Hebrew, the original Greek, and help us in our English translations with more definitions, more. It’s so wonderful that she took that time, 20 years of her life to do that. And I want to say along with her to all of you listening, oh, magnify the Lord with us. Yes. With us. Start reading and meditating and marinating in his word and let us lift up and exalt his name together. Because when we look at how great he is, how big he is, and I’m not just talking about big in size, I’m talking about awesome. how much higher his ways are than ours and how as high as the heavens are above the earth, that’s how much higher we can’t measure that height. When we see that kind of awesome goodness in our God, then our problems and our sins, our failures, our wounds, they all become so much smaller because we realize, oh, there is a, huge, divine plan that is so much greater than my small one here. And we can lean on that, lean on our Lord’s plan and not our own understanding.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. Here it says that Francis She released, I mean, the Bible, the Amplified that she helped to translate. I shouldn’t say helped to translate or translate even. She just added important basic root words to the already revised American Standard. But Kimberly, three years after the Amplified Bible was released to the public, she died. She had completed her assignment. Wow. That’s such a way of God saying, all right, you did well, faithful servant. I’m bringing you home. And for him to have his family gathering around him, to God, all his children around him, that’s the best thing in the whole, whole world. And Kimberly, he’s just getting ready to have a grand reunion. I can’t imagine. I just can’t imagine. So, yeah, getting back. to Psalm 34 before I fly out of this room. I’ll fly away. Yes.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. I didn’t know if you were going to start reading from verse five.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, yes. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER 05 :
Did you want to read? I can do that. Yes, we ended with, I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Starting in verse five, they looked to him and were radiant. Their faces will never blush in shame or confusion. They know who their God and protector is. This poor man cried and the Lord heard him and saved him from all his troubles. I think you have more testimony on that verse right there.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. Well, that was part of what Grandpa Wells read over your dad. And so I praise God that we had him for 23 years. I think at the end of this program today, you’re going to hear him sing. And I’m prejudiced. I just believe he’s the best. And it’s not that we’re competing. We’re not competing. But I love the inflections. I love the worship of the Lord that happens. We knew daily he did, Kimberly, even at the store. When the store was quiet, he was going back and forth from the north to the south to the east to the west, praying in the spirit and thanking God for the sales. But not only that, for every day that we had on this earth. And I thank God for those years. I really do. Oh, so continue with this, my child.
SPEAKER 05 :
The Lord keeps safe all who love him. In verse 8, Oh, taste and see that the Lord our God is good. How blessed, fortunate, prosperous and favored by God is the one who takes refuge in him.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, it’s beautiful. Wow. God is a good God. When you recognize him as a good God, God, you’re a good God. All this just kind of flows right into your life. Spirit first, of course, but into your life, soul and body. and you are prosperous and favored by the Lord. It reminds me of 1 Peter 2, Kimberly, that says, so abandon every form of evil, deceit, hypocrisy, feelings of jealousy and slander. In other words, being competitive, comparing all the time with someone else. And tomorrow for Thanksgiving, you need to remember that. I’m not going to have any negative word out of my mouth or being jealous or slanderous or competitive or comparing. Oh, And in the same way that nursing infants cry for milk, you must intensely crave the pure spiritual milk of God’s word. For this milk will cause you to grow into maturity, fully nourished and strong for life. Oh, and verse three, especially now that you have had a taste of the goodness of God and have experienced his kindness. Oh, I like that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, well, especially right before Thanksgiving, right? Tasting and seeing that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, amen. I wonder if David was hungry. When he wrote this. And he wanted God to fill him. When he didn’t have physical food, he didn’t go hunting around for a rabbit or something to eat. He wanted God to fill him. Fill that emptiness.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. Well, he wrote in Psalm 23 that the Lord is the one who prepares a table before him in the presence of his enemies. And I can imagine that as he was running from Saul in the wilderness, There are times that we go hungry, right? And I can imagine that in that time of hunger, he could say, along with Jesus, you know, when Jesus actually testified that he has food that we know not of. Yes. His disciples went to go get him food and bring him food. And Jesus said, I have food you don’t know about. And that’s what we want to be focused on. And in this time of feasting with our families or on our own, However it might be, as we are getting ready to partake in food, just remembering that life is not about the food and the drink. It’s about righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. And we want to remember that this season, that his food is so much better than ours.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, amen. He has food. Oh, I know. We think that physical food tastes so good. Oh, but David was right. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. In 1 Peter 2, verse 4, it says, So keep coming to him who is the living stone, though he was rejected and discarded by men but chosen by God and is priceless in God’s sight. Come and be his living stones who are continually being assembled into a sanctuary for God. That reminds me, we’re from Team Courageous. And we are living stones, Kimberly. We are not disappointed in what is coming over us every day. Nope, we’re not. We’re going to praise him. We’re going to thank him and being a real vital part of Team Courageous. Hallelujah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Team Courageous is something you mentioned, I think, has it been two weeks ago? I think so.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
For those who want to catch up, you can go back and listen to one of those radio programs from a couple of weeks ago and see the definition or hear the definition to Team Courageous, being generous. and giving to others, you know, really watching out for others. And this is what the memory verse of this week is focused on. Second Corinthians eight, nine is about Jesus becoming poor so that we might become rich. He’s truly looking out for us and his scales. The way that he works in life is not the way that we work. We want to remember that, that because we have a contrasting way of doing things, we’ve got to work a little harder at looking to him for his ways and being able to say, thy will be done. We’re running out of time if we’re going to include a song today, which you and I wanted to do. And so I’m just, I’m wanting to just go to verse 18 of Psalm 34, that the Lord is near to the heartbroken. And he saves those who are crushed in spirit, contrite in heart. And I was looking that up in the Strong’s Concordance because some of us think we need to learn how to humble ourselves and how to become contrite. But this is saying that if you are crushed by the circumstances of this life, if the brokenness of this life has caused you to be pulverized into dust, that is what it means to be heartbroken and to be contrite. It literally means a crumbled substance. It’s an object that has been crushed into powder or bruised. And this is saying that God is the one who saves the heartbroken. Isaiah 57 tells us that he dwells with and resides with those who are crushed in spirit. And let’s just remember that maybe it’s when our own ideas and plans have been crushed by the brokenness of this life and this world. Maybe that’s when we can truly say, thy will be done and let him redeem our lives and lift us up out of that heartbroken place.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s right. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. And listen to John Wells.
SPEAKER 02 :
hallowed be it is in heaven. Give us this day And forgive us our debts As we forgive our debtors And lead us not into temptation And deliver us from And the power and all glory
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you for listening to Call to Freedom with Barbara Carmack. You may get in touch with Barbara at Call to Freedom, Box 370-367, Denver, Colorado, 80237. Or you may leave your message at 1-877-917-7256. Call to Freedom is a listener-supported radio ministry. Barbara and her power partners invite you to come on board with us and become a network of hands holding up Call to Freedom ministry. 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.
Join Barbara Carmack and her engaging guests in a heartfelt episode centered around Thanksgiving and its intersection with faith. Through nostalgic Thanksgiving traditions and uplifting stories of spiritual resilience, discover the powerful messages hidden in scriptures and how they have been portrayed and amplified to renew faith and enrich lives every day.
