(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) 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. Welcome to Call to Freedom. I say ready or not, we’re on the air, and there are so many times when Darren just barely got in and sat at the desk when he was on. It’s like in life, we can be, you know, we can be late 10 or 15 minutes, even to an appointment, an important appointment, although it doesn’t make good for the reputation that you’re building. But on radio, you got to be there, you got to be there. Yes, time is an important element in a person’s life when you’re on the radio. So I want you to know I’m so happy to be with you today. And Kimberly’s on the other line. When the Lord adds his blessings to your life, my friends who are listening, there’s no limit to your success. You have success all the time in Jesus. And you are blessed to dispense, I mean, to throw out that seed in good soil, for in him you live and move and have your blessing, and have your blessing, and have your being. That also is good, too. Welcome, Kimberly, to Call to Freedom. Oh, so good to have you. Yes, thank you. So good to be with you again. We were having such a good time talking about Psalm 37. And the way that we can give, just like you said, being able to just throw our seed and cast it out and do it freely. We’re blessed to be able to give things away, to give it all away. That’s right. Because we have someone who we can’t out give. He continually fills our cup to overflowing. Yes. Isn’t there a… It used to be an old Imperial song. I don’t know if they did, but keep on casting your bread upon the water and soon it’s going to return to you. It’ll come back home. Yeah. Yep. On every wave. On every wave. Good measure. Press down. Shaken together. Running over. That’s right. Oh, I remember when you and Dana used to do your puppet shows. And he used to do that. With those songs. With those wonderful old songs. Yes. Oh, God bless you. Good memories. Good memories. Yes. But, you know, speaking about giving things away, sometimes that’s just hard to be really generous. And yesterday, I think you told me yesterday you read a scripture and it was about jewels and it reminded you of how most of your jewelry had been taken, stolen, if not all of it. Yes. All of it. It was all… All of it. And that was a really sad time. Yes. It was Proverbs 8-11 that I was reading. Wisdom is so much better than even jewels. And we put such high value on things that we put on our fingers, wear around our necks, wear in our ears, our jewelry. Well, for the most part, Kimberly, because it’s been given to us by people that we love. And so it has special meaning. And so, yeah, it’s really traumatic when you lose that. So that day when I had lost all, everything, the wedding rings and everything, I thank God for the salvation for those people who had robbed me. And I’m… You did. You even wrote it out on cards and on big… You got big poster board even where they had taken your television and you put a huge poster board where the television was and you had written a blessing on it for them. Yes. Oh, and now I have a beautiful 55 -inch television God has always provided, but I still don’t have that. I know God knows where they are, and I also know that he’s going to bring salvation to those people that took. And we have a lot of robbery today, Kimberly, people that just think it’s theirs and it’s for the taking. But one of these days, God is going to get hold of them in his love and mercy, and they’re going to find their way to the cross. Praise the Lord. Yes. And really, when we, when we figure out that we have done just as much to rob God from, you know, that it’s his dream to have us as his best friends and his bride. And most of the time we are not in agreement with him. So we’re not walking side by side with him. We’re not fulfilling his dream. So we have robbed him of his dream, even though we’re his creation. We were made for him to have his dream come true. And yet he gave us free will so that we could choose. That’s the big dream. That’s his desire, that we would choose him. He wants us to choose him above. We have the power. That’s right. Above every earthly desire we have, we must choose him. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s the hardest thing in the world for people to do for. Yes. Yeah. Right. So I was reading in Psalm 37, you and I were sharing how, how much we both love Psalm 37. And I’m just going to start in verse 20, because you talked about how there’s so many robberies. There’s so many wicked things, horrible, evil things, dark things that happen in this life. And in verse 20 of Psalm 37, it says, all the enemies of God will perish. See, I believe God is love and light and generosity and kindness and goodness. God is everything positive. And everything negative that happens to us in this world is not God. It’s part of the enemy. It’s part of the darkness. So all the enemies of God will perish for the wicked have only a momentary value, a fading glory. Then one day they vanish here today, gone tomorrow. And what a comfort that is to us, because God is saying that has a momentary value to me for that to happen has a momentary value because God himself wants to work all things together for good. He wants to exploit the things that happen in the dark, exploit the robberies, exploit the illnesses, the losses. He wants to exploit that and give you something even better. Oh, that’s right. And when we choose to believe that and choose him over hanging on to the things that we think we have to have to make us happy, see, it’s interesting. Matthew went fishing with a friend and they just spent most of the day just out enjoying nature and fishing. But this friend is very much caught up in making sure everyone who comes to his pond catches a fish. That’s what’s important to him. It makes it a successful day if you’ve caught a fish. If you haven’t caught a fish, it’s not successful. And when Matthew came back and said, I didn’t catch a fish and he was just beside himself and I laughed, I said, well, that’s funny. Does he eat them? Did he need another fish to eat? And he goes, no, he throws them all back. So you have to catch a fish that makes it successful and then you throw it back. What is the real satisfaction in that? What is the real success, the real fulfillment in that? And for most men, Matthew was trying to explain it to me and I actually get it. I understand it’s the challenge. You have some challenge in front of you or some goal and when you’ve reached your goal, you can check it off your list. That is satisfactory. That’s satisfaction to most people, you know? Well, and then there are the people that they believe that marriage is the success in life. Well it can be the worst. Or having children. Yeah. Or a career. It could be a career or it could be a certain level of education where you’ve got the letters behind your name. There are so many different ways to look at success and God views it differently. God’s way of viewing success is choosing him because he is higher than all of that. His rewards are better than all of it. Just like we were talking about the jewels that you lost, even though that was just heartbreaking. I mean, both of us were sick. You and I were just both sick at the loss at the time. But are we sick about it now? No. Except I do miss your aquamarine ring that you gave to me. It’s okay. I know. I know. I know. But we have blessed. We have blessed those who now own it. Haven’t we? Yes, we have. Yes, we have. By, you know, as an act of my will. Sometimes we have to do that as an act of my will, Lord, and we just put it in his hands. Right. And I was reading just a phrase, bless them and change me. Being able to pray that as a prayer over every situation, bless them and change me. See, that’s another value, a character value that God sees something dark comes along. He exploits that dark thing, that robbery, and he forms us in it. He shapes us and molds us into someone like him that says, bless them and change me. Yes. That’s a miracle to get to a place where you can pray something like that. That is miraculous. And only God can do that with a heart. And we we want to come into agreement with that. I remember a number of years ago, somebody told me that I can’t have everything that I want in this life, that I can’t be anything I want to be, that I cannot do anything that I want to do in this life. How did that make you feel? And I remember that. Wow. It made me mad. I was upset to hear that. Because for most of my life, I believed I could do anything and be anything. And I tried a lot of things and you know what? Everything went pretty well for me. But it didn’t always bring me peace or joy. And I really believe that God gave us a free will so that we could try, try all these different things. You know, try this education and that career and this home and that car and that husband and this, these children. And you know, I’ll try them for a while. Let me try them on. I’m sorry, that’s making it sound like I’m not really all in, but I have stayed with my husband for 31 years. So I’m all in. You’re all in. Yes, you are. I’m not just trying him on like a parachute. But, oh my goodness. But those things, we all find out that those things do not bring us our greatest joy. No, no. Nor do they bring us perfect peace. That’s right. Because we can lose those things. We can lose that husband or that wife. And if we put too much hope in them, then we’re totally devastated and we’re a wreck. And God can’t use us until we yield ourselves back to Him. Not to the loss of our husband or wife, but yield ourselves back to Him. Yes. Yes. And so it’s really good to remember that He gave us this free will to try all these things so that we will come, so that we will. See, we have a free will so that we will come to the conclusion that He is all we want. That we will declutter our life from all the other things and put our focus right on Him and say, you’re all I want. You’re all I ever needed. Peace and joy come in totally new skins, completely new values. They’re exponential. Peace and joy come in ways you’ve never even imagined when you make your living God the one delightful thing of your life. Yes. It says in Romans 14 verse 17 that the kingdom of God is not meat, not eating or drinking, but righteousness, peace and joy. Peace and joy. That’s just exactly what you’re talking about, Kimberly. Peace and joy. That’s the kingdom of God. And I like to think of righteousness as lining up with God’s right way of doing life. Yes. Amen. He has a way. He has a plan. And when we line ourselves up with it and say, oh, yes, I’m all in. I want what you want. Your plan is working and I want what you want. Peace and joy are fruits of the spirit of our living God, the spirit of the Creator who created us. He is the one who authored our lives and he knows exactly what we were made for and who we were made for. So he chose to limit himself to be with us. We find perfect peace and our greatest joy when we emulate him and choose to limit our own ideas and be fully satisfied with him. Now I say limit. You know, I’m putting limit in quotes when we limit ourselves to him and him alone. That actually becomes unlimited because our God is unlimited. So when we put our lives, our hopes, our dreams wholly and fully in him, that might feel like a limitation. It might feel like we’re giving up a dream, kind of like when Abraham took Isaac, he was feeling like he is giving up his one, only son, beloved. Every dream he had was in this son, this loved, most beloved son. And so putting that on the altar feels like a limit. It feels like a loss. Yet, when we give that up for the one God who has asked for us to keep all of our delight, all of our value in him and him alone, then it really becomes unlimited. That loss is not actually a loss at all. I heard a rabbi describe Judaism. He specifically said it’s not a religion. It is a relationship with our creator. It’s a decision to follow his directions for our life instead of our own. When we choose to follow the instructions of the Bible, we are choosing to limit our free will. Our free will might tell us that it’s okay to lie, but our designer didn’t create us to lie and he asks us not to. So we limit ourselves, and again, I’m putting limit in quotes. It’s not really a limit, but we limit ourselves, our will and our ideas in order to foster our relationship with the one who gave his all to have us as his own. And we choose to say, okay, you say not to lie. I’m not going to lie. Yes. That’s how we have a relationship instead of a religion. That’s how we connect ourselves with him. And it does, it starts out maybe looking like rules and we’re just following rules, but eventually, hopefully, we’re falling in love, not just following rules. Yes. And Psalm 37 is an invitation to limit ourselves. It’s kind of a cycle of blessing and look at what’s happening over here to these who look like they’re gaining a lot and they’re prospering, but they have evil intentions. They’re from the world. Over here, you might have very few things. It’s okay. Choose to lay your things down. Choose to lay down all your fabulous plans and ideas, those ideas to gain, to grow, to achieve. Set it all aside to adopt God as your utmost delight. Psalm 37 verses three through five say, keep trusting in the Lord and do what is right in his eyes. Fix your heart on the promises of God and you will be secure feasting on his faithfulness. Make God the utmost delight and pleasure of your life and he will provide for you what you desire the most. It’s true. It’s true. Give God the right to direct your life and as you trust him along the way, you will find he pulled it off perfectly. That’s great. Is that from the Passion Translation? Yes. Oh, he pulled it off perfectly. That’s so good. Yeah. The instruction that we have to take up our cross and follow Jesus, it might look like a type of loss or a limiting that we would experience, right? When we choose not to do things our way, that kind of feels like there’s some limits there and it feels like a suffering to let it go. Yes. Jesus is the way and when we choose him and we choose his way, we’re saying goodbye to some things that might have brought us comfort in this world and there’s a suffering that happens in that decision to follow him. Jesus frames it in the idea of losing your life in order to find it. Yes. You experienced that in a really real way. You lost your favorite jewelry. Yes. Verse 16 in the message of Psalm 37 says, less is more and more is less. So when you decide that you’re going to go for less in Christ Jesus, less of this earthly stuff in Christ Jesus, then you really gain more and you gain eternal life besides. It’s wonderful. It’s just a wonderful outcome. It truly is. And the jewels we will get in heaven, Kimberly, are going to be so much better than those that we had on earth. So less is more and more is less. When you hold things to yourself and you covet and you keep things to yourself and you aren’t generous in your giving, then you get less. It’s less. Yeah. You said that’s verse 16. Let me read that. In the message. Okay. Yeah. In Psalm 37, 16 in the Passion Translation, it is much better to have little combined with much of God than to have the fabulous wealth of the world and nothing else. Yeah. Look at George Soros, Kimberly. What a sad man. He’s one of the richest men in the world, as so many billionaires are. And are they happy? Do you see joy, real joy and peace? No. It’s just a getting somebody else. It’s just so sad. They think they’re winning and they are not. Yeah. And to ask someone like that to give it up, right? I think that’s why Jesus said it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to give up his wealth and enter the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is not the things of this world. It’s not meat or drink or jewels or a career. That’s not the kingdom of heaven. But the kingdom of heaven is so full of joy and peace. And being able to let go of the things of this life, that feels like loss and losing. And that’s not what our flesh likes to consider, even for a moment. We don’t really want to think of losing and loss. So that’s why it feels like a suffering. When we choose to share in the sufferings of Christ, we are rewarded with the greatest peace that passes all human experience and the most extravagant joy that bursts like a fountain from inside of us in our inward being. I mean, it is a joy that’s so tangible and it is there for us every day in every circumstance. That is being founded on the rock. And that’s what we all long for. That’s what we desire, not to be tossed on every wave of emotion that comes our way or on every wave of the political things that are happening or the reports and pandemics. Those are just waves that go crashing over this earth. And we don’t want to be affected by them. We want to be founded on the rock, who is perfect peace and absolute joy. Yes. Oh, so good. So Psalm 37, verse 11, we’re kind of jumping around a little bit in the Psalm, but I want to point out verse 11 says the humble of heart will inherit every promise and enjoy abundant peace. I really like that little phrase, enjoy abundant peace, because there’s joy, there’s peace in three words there, enjoy abundant peace. And that’s the humble of heart, the humble ones who say, you know what? I don’t know what makes me happy in this life. So I am willing to let it go, to lay it down. I’m willing to walk this path that I am on that might not feel like my dream come true. But Lord, I trust you. I trust you and your ways. And I’m on this path because you are with me right here on this path. And you know, that’s what happened to you when the jewelry was taken. That did not feel like peace, not in the beginning. It didn’t feel like you were enjoying abundant peace. Well, and then it was so funny because when the television went, it was like, OK, Lord, if you don’t want me watching television, I will not watch television. So I sat there for about a month until a friend said, you need to get a television, you need to get a TV in your home. And so I took her advice, God bless her, and got another television because I do love, and I know you know your mom, I do love to stay up with what’s going on. And you can see that in some of the news outlets, what’s going on in this world, because I can’t be there. And so it’s good to stay abreast and also to have Christian television at times. It’s wonderful and refreshing. It is wonderful. Yes, it is. Yes, and what I noticed was how you were just willing to say that, well, Lord, maybe I don’t need to be watching television. And you found peace with it. It wasn’t like you needed to go out and buy a television in order to fill the space, you know, to fill the silence. You found peace. You really contented yourself with your devotions, with the Lord, and reading. And I remember we spent time on the phone together. I praise God for you. It’s just wonderful when, you know, we try to raise our children in the best way we can, but we don’t know how they’re going to come out. And Kimberly, you have just been an absolute blessing to me because you love that word so much, and I have come to know the word as you have. And it’s a joy to talk. When we call each other, we’re talking the word. We’re not talking weather primarily or what’s happening with the family. In fact, I have to ask you, well, how is Sarah and how is Levi and how is Jonathan? Have you heard from Hannah? It’s not the first thing that comes up, no. And when we choose to lay those things aside, I’m just going to end with verse 29 because I know our time is up, but Psalm 37, verse 29 says the faithful lovers of God will inherit the earth and enjoy every promise of God’s dwelling in peace forever. Wow. That’s a big promise. That is a wonderful verse to cling to. And remember that you inherit the earth. You enjoy every promise of God’s and you dwell in peace forever. It’s okay to lay other things aside. Let God take care of you and take joy. That’s right. Take joy. Thank you, Kimberly. You’re a blessing. Thank you for listening to Call to Freedom with Barbara Karmack. 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 barbarakarmack at freedomstreet.org. Until next time, remember, Jesus loves you, Barbara loves you, and take joy.
