Commitment to Faith Through Life’s Highs and Lows

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

Thank you, Jimmy Lakey, and welcome to Call to Freedom. I’m so glad that you joined us. I believe we’re going to have a message that you can receive with your heart and grow by. We all are students of the Word of God, and growing is just so important. Don’t get stale. I know Kimberly laid out some bread today on the counter, and she’s going to make butter balls.

SPEAKER 03 : 1:27

I’m hoping.

SPEAKER 02 : 1:27

Hoping it’ll get stale.

SPEAKER 03 : 1:30

That’s the key. That’s the key ingredient of the butter balls is to have stale bread crumbs.

SPEAKER 02 : 1:36

Bread needs to get stale, but not us. We do not need to get stale. Oh, friend, may you be blessed by the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. That’s from Psalm 115. And the third verse says, Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. Our God is a God who created the world. He created us. And if we allow him to, if we’re seeking him and then trusting him with all that we have, he is going to make us into the new creations that we can’t even believe or imagine. I know our message translation of Hebrews 11, 5 and 6. That’s our memory verse for this week. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. For he who comes to the Father must believe that he is. And he’s a rewarder of those who diligently worship. what seek him and in the message translation Hebrews 11 says and as an act of faith Enoch skipped death completely I mean if you say everybody dies on the earth well not everybody died on this earth and they looked all over and couldn’t find him because God had taken him we know on the basis of reliable testimony that before he was taken, he pleased God. And so this verse in Psalm 115, verse 3, Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. It’s good to be on the right side of God. It really is, because without that, you’re not going to get that reward that God has promised for those who diligently seek him.

SPEAKER 03 : 3:12

Right. Yeah. Okay. When you’re saying that and you’re saying it’s good to be on the right side of God, um, you know, he does whatever he pleases. We, we’re, we’re a people, especially in the Western world here who like our freedom and we like to be able to do what we please. And, um, so it’s really, that’s a difficult notion. to try to figure out how to let your own ideas and your own pleasures go in order to let someone else have their pleasure and to do what they please. And that’s the part where we have this negative dialogue that goes on in our mind that, wait, if I let somebody else do what they please, then I’m not going to get what I please. Yes, yes. But what we don’t realize is how good God really is, that he is so much more than we think he is. And his dreams for us, his ideas, his plan for us is so much greater than our plans. And, you know, the way I talk about our mud puddle, our plans are our mud puddles that we try to roll around in and get pleasure out of. But he has got oceans for us. And he wants us to dive into the ocean when we hear that the Lord does whatever he pleases. He is opening up. That’s an invitation. He’s opening up oceans for us. And we want to accept the invitation.

SPEAKER 02 : 4:44

Yes, we do. There was a wonderful phrase that Darren said often. And it says, I will as an act of my will to do the will of God. And Philippians 2, verse 13 says, God is at work in each and every one of us, you know, to will his will, to do his will and to accomplish and work according to his good pleasure. God’s pleasure. I want God’s pleasure, Kimberly. I do, too. I’m tired of the rat race and I’m tired of the old habits that kind of poke their heads up every once in a while and want to either exaggerate or want to. not tell the truth or want to do something that is contrary to what God is teaching me. So I am really on task with God in me and working in me according to his pleasure.

SPEAKER 03 : 5:38

I like the phrase that you were bringing up that I will to do his will.

SPEAKER 02 : 5:43

I will to will the will of God. Yes.

SPEAKER 03 : 5:46

And that is a battle that takes place inside of us because of those dialogues going on in our mind and in our emotions. We jump to conclusions and we have assumptions and those lead us to wanting more for ourselves, wanting to get our desires met, wanting our pleasures met. And if you’ve lived enough life to figure out by now that none of them satisfy, none of those paths truly satisfy or fulfill us. So getting to the place where you realize, okay, God has a better plan. And now as an act of my will, I choose to fight these dialogues and these, these narratives in my mind and in my emotions and, that say he’s not fair, that say that he’s doing something that is not good for me. He’s good. He is good. He is good. If you’re listening, convince yourself now he is good. He’s a good God. And the fight is really us getting out of that emotion, out of that narrative or that dialogue in our mind, out of that situation or circumstance that happened that we believe was unjust or unfair. Or even just the life that we’re living and we’re unsatisfied with it. If God were good, I’d be more satisfied. No, we need to realize we’ve had our focus on the wrong thing. And yesterday when we started talking about seeking the Lord, seek him. You seek first the kingdom of God. Then all the other things are added. They come along with him. He’s a great. He is the best package. He is a great package to seek. And so when we make him our first priority and we seek him, that’s when we realize the other things that we might be wanting, whether it’s comfort or freedom or joy, or if it’s peace, if it’s truth, if you’re seeking truth, you know, Jesus said, I am the way I am the truth. I am the life. Yes. And so when we are seeking Jesus, those things come automatically. But you can’t flip it around and say, OK, I’m going to seek life and I’ll find Jesus. I’m going to seek truth and then I’ll find Jesus. And I think that’s been the hardest part of I think it’s the hardest in my life to break away from what people believe is the truth in the Bible. Even if we go to the different the different translations. There are many who believe that King James is the only truth or maybe the new American standard or the American standard before it was new. You know, there are people who have opinions on what is speaking the truth. And I know I’m pretty careful about not making the passion translation or the message a study Bible. But I do know that the Hebrew words that were used in order to translate, those are translations. They’re not paraphrases. That’s right. They’re actual translations.

SPEAKER 02 : 9:03

Well, and the passion uses the Aramaic translation.

SPEAKER 03 : 9:07

Yes, as well.

SPEAKER 02 : 9:08

More in the New Testament than a lot of these trans quote translations. Yes.

SPEAKER 03 : 9:13

Yeah. And and those those old languages, the Hebrew, the Aramaic and the Greek, those old languages are deep, deep languages. We can’t just we can’t use one of the words in English to describe the one word in Hebrew. That’s right. It’s going to take paragraphs.

SPEAKER 02 : 9:37

Well, like love. Greek has five different kinds of love. We have one, love. You love spaghetti. You love your dog. You love your husband. You love God.

SPEAKER 03 : 9:48

Right along with loving spaghetti.

SPEAKER 02 : 9:49

Spaghetti. Exactly.

SPEAKER 03 : 9:52

Yes. And, and so that’s where we need more words. And I’m so thankful for the people who have studied to find more words in order years, years, years, their lives, really giving their lives and their reputations, you know, because they, they are not thought of as scholars. They’re not thought of in really good terms with their peers, but wow. They have given us, me, just little old me, the common people, the common person that I am, given me so much to meditate on and to really fight those old dialogues and old narratives in my mind, giving me beauty and something to cling to that is so beautiful and so amazing. It almost feels like it’s too good to be true when you’re reading some of those scriptures. That’s right.

SPEAKER 02 : 10:47

I think we really need to be careful. I wasn’t going to get into this thing today, but we need to be careful about criticizing translations because people who are new, who are streetwalkers, who have never been inside a church, And so you give them a living translation or you give them a passion and the word begins to jump up at them. And if they receive Jesus Christ through some of these other translations, you know, confess their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in their heart that God raised him from the dead. Wow. Who are we to criticize? Right.

SPEAKER 03 : 11:24

Yeah. We jump to conclusions and we generalize and we have our opinions. But those are the very things that we need to lay down for God to have his dream come true.

SPEAKER 02 : 11:35

That’s right. You have a contractor in your house that’s laying the floor right now. And he had a mother who was just drug addict and prostitute. That’s where he came from. So, Kimberly, when you had your kitchen remodeled, and he was part of the remodeling of the kitchen, his language and his actions were not particularly Christian, as we say.

SPEAKER 03 : 12:00

Well, you know, when you’re not raised in a community and you don’t have an upbringing with a classroom of other kids and a teacher in front of you that you learn to respect and you don’t interrupt… And trying to learn to get along, you know, and honestly, if I’m going to be really transparent about it, that’s one of the challenges of homeschooling. The homeschooled kids are not in a classroom every day, every day. So they don’t necessarily learn how to defer to others, how not to interrupt. Um, so there, there are the same kind of challenges in homeschooling as there are for somebody who may have been raised on the street and, and was not in a classroom either. Um, but what I have loved is his faith and his love for God because the Lord did completely transform his life and showed him light when his whole life was so dark. And the love that pours from him. I can’t wait to see my floor. I’ve been here for so long. I know. There’s this beautiful new floor going into my home and I don’t get to see it live and in person. That’s okay. It’s really worth it. Just so you know, you are really worth it.

SPEAKER 02 : 13:15

I know. And you went and got new sheets and blankets. And I’m thinking, how long is this girl going to stay here? Yeah.

SPEAKER 03 : 13:25

I’m wearing out your sheets. They don’t have any more elastic in them, and I’ve got to go get new ones.

SPEAKER 02 : 13:31

No, God has us for purposes here. He does. And we need to really remember that it’s for his pleasure that he’s doing things in our lives. And I know that there was a time in your grandpa, Wells’ life, when your dad was so sick. I mean, he was in a hospital. He was so sick, and they brought him home sick. And your grandpa gave this verse in Psalm 34, 1 through 4. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. He was quoting scriptures to his sick son who was in bed. He did not complain about what had happened to him. He was praising God. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul will make its boast in the Lord. the humble will hear it and be glad oh magnify the lord with me and let us exalt his name together see this is praise to god when things are looking bad it’s dark and i sought the lord and he heard me and delivered me out of all of my fear and then grandpa wells prayed for your dad And I’ll tell you, Kimberly, we had your father then for 24 more years. And I’m so grateful because what a life we had with him and what we learned from him. So speaking from your mouth is just vital for growth. I know that you had heard a story about an echo. It’s really good. It tells us what our words are saying to us when we let them out of our mouth. In the tongue is the power of death and life. We need to be very slow and careful about what we’re going to verbalize.

SPEAKER 03 : 15:16

That’s right. And it was just a little story that’s been around for many, probably hundreds of years, about a little boy that went to the edge of the woods. And he called out, hello, hello. He heard an echo in the woods. Yes. Who are you? Who are you? Well, don’t copy me. Don’t copy me. So he’s hearing the echo. You are a bad boy. You are a bad boy. Just come over here and I will beat you up. Come over here and I’ll beat you up. So he runs into his house and he says, Mom, Mom, there is a bad boy in the woods and he wants to harm me. Oh, wow. And she says to him, son. I think maybe there’s a misunderstanding, whatever, whatever was said, maybe you should try saying good things and believe good things. And, and maybe you’ll find out a different story. And so he runs back to the edge of the woods and he says, hello, hello. You are a good boy. You are a good boy. I love you. I love you. And he runs back in the house. Mom, mom, you’re right. He is a good boy after all. And really the words that we allow to come out of our mouth when we start believing the negative narratives, the negative dialogues in our minds and in our emotions are toward God, who is so, so good. When we choose to believe that and let that come out of our mouths, that is going against Psalm 34. We are not blessing the Lord at all times. We’re not letting his praise continually be in our mouths. And it makes a huge difference. It echoes back on us. So that’s why as an act of our will, we’ve got to fight those dialogues. We’ve got to fight those narratives that make us feel really bad about who God is and what his pleasure is that he wants to work in our lives. We’ve got to fight that and say, no, I’m going to bless the Lord at all times. I’m going to let his praise continually be in my mouth. I’m going to continue to praise him and say he is good even if I’m not feeling that way because my feelings in that case are definitely liars. Now he can handle that. You know, if you come to him and you are feeling pretty lousy about him and you tell him, I hate you. He’s a big enough God. He can handle that. He’s heard that before. Yes. Yes. But we don’t want to stay stuck there. We’ve got to be able to speak things that will echo back in a good way.

SPEAKER 02 : 18:06

Amen. That’s so good, Kimberly. Yes, God spoke with his mouth and created the world. And he spoke with his mouth in so many ways. Is it too much for him to ask us to use our mouths to praise him and speak his word over ourselves and our loved ones? Yes. I believe that the devil just loves to have us closing our mouths and not speaking forth.

SPEAKER 03 : 18:37

And I think our disappointment comes when we have been seeking something other than Christ. We started this out talking about seeking Him, and without faith it’s impossible to please Him. For those who love God, they are the ones who believe that He is and that He’s a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. When we’re seeking him, we are fighting those awful narratives, those narratives that are not truth, that are lies. And we’re maybe seeking something that he offers as part of the package. We might be seeking his peace and seeking freedom and seeking victory and seeking love, seeking comfort. All of that comes, but seek him first, seek him first, and then all these things will be added to you. And when we’re seeking him first, that that’s where we kind of have a rough journey, I think, because. We get our eyes onto that one thing, that comfort, that freedom, that victory. And we see, wow, that didn’t feel like victory because that felt more like loss, especially if you’ve experienced death or your house burning down or it. There are some big losses, you know, tornadoes that hit in Oklahoma. There are some big losses that can happen. It doesn’t feel like victory. Does that mean victory? That God is not good. See, and we have to not jump to a conclusion. We’ve got to be able to speak goodness. And this reminds me of marriage vows, because when we are taking vows in marriage, we vow that we will be with that one for better or for worse. In sickness and in health, for rich or for poor. And do we really mean it? I think those vows are very revealing. How many people take those vows and they love their significant other enough to really walk them out, to walk out those promises. I’m going to stay with you even if it’s bad, even if we’re sick together, even if we are poor together.

SPEAKER 02 : 20:53

Now, some of you have been single all your life or you’re listening to this program and you have lost a mate. And you’re saying those vows don’t mean anything anymore.

SPEAKER 03 : 21:03

Divorce. Yeah. Divorce is a big thing.

SPEAKER 02 : 21:06

Absolutely.

SPEAKER 03 : 21:06

I’ve walked through divorce.

SPEAKER 02 : 21:08

That’s a hard one. You need to experience these words, the wedding vow for your bridegroom. Your bridegroom with Jesus. Yes.

SPEAKER 03 : 21:19

That’s how I look at that. When we want to speak and bless the Lord and praise him, and we’ve experienced something that is really heartbreaking, that produces a bad dialogue in our mind or in our emotions. That’s the very time when we can say, I told you that I would be in this with you for better, for worse. And I meant it. Yes. For richer, for poorer.

SPEAKER 01 : 21:42

Yes.

SPEAKER 03 : 21:43

I meant it, Jesus. Yes. And in sickness and in health. And I meant it, Jesus. I meant it. And those are the vows that we want to give to our Lord. He definitely gave them to us. You know, not only did he speak the world into existence when Jesus came and then he arose and ascended to sit at the right hand of the father. He’s sitting there interceding all the time. He is sitting there as an advocate. He’s a better defender of us than anyone else because he put on flesh. He knows our temptations. He knows what can get us down. We just have to be careful not to get stuck in discouragement. You know, we can have distresses in this life. We’re pressed, but we’re not crushed. We are persecuted, but we are not abandoned.

SPEAKER 1 : 22:32

Amen.

SPEAKER 03 : 22:33

We are struck down, but we’re not destroyed because we’ve got an advocate that is sitting and continually speaking good things over you today, even in your bad attitude, wherever you are driving or sitting at home, wherever you are, you have an advocate speaking over you and saying, do you see him? Do you see him, Father? I love him. Do you see her? I just love her. Her heart is so precious to me.

SPEAKER 02 : 23:03

Yep. In Ephesians 2, it tells us that we who are in Christ Jesus are with him at the right hand of God, the Father. We are with him, with him.

SPEAKER 03 : 23:14

So that means we’re special. Speaking the good things. We are speaking the good about the ones who hurt us, the ones who do harm. We’re saying, do you see them? They’re precious. Will you bless them? Lord, will you give them eyes that are open? Will you open their ears? Help them see you in your goodness. That’s right. We need a lot more of that kind of speaking right now because there is a lot of dark and there’s a lot of evil. The kinds of attacks that are going on in the news that we hear about all the time, whether it’s with knives or guns or just rogue people coming in. Do you see them? Lord, do you see them? They need their eyes opened. They need their ears opened. They’re precious to you because you created them. Yes. They’re not nothing to you. They’re precious. So will you produce a change in their hearts? Lord, will you turn their hearts? Now I’m joining Jesus. And that’s a hard thing to do when you have lost loved ones and you have been harmed by others who have done harm to actually forgive and to join Jesus and say, you know what? More than anything else, I want your dream to come true. And I’m with you. I’m with you for better, for worse, for worse.

SPEAKER 02 : 24:25

Yes. We are so familiar with Proverbs 3, 5 that says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. But as I read it in the Amplified today, I realized I really need to read this because it starts in the fifth verse, goes through the seventh. And as an example, this is complete trust in God. And the translator said, “…let not mercy and kindness,” and that’s shutting out all hatred and selfishness, “…and let not truth,” that’s shutting out all deliberate hypocrisy or falsehood, “…forsake you, bind them about your neck, write them upon the tablet of your heart, so shall you find favor, good understanding, and high esteem in the sight of God and man. Lean on, trust in, and be confident in God with all your heart.” and mind, and do not rely on your own insight or understanding. In all your ways know and recognize and acknowledge him, and he will direct and make straight and plain your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes. Don’t let your word be the authority, but scope out and look into the wisdom of God. Reverently fear and worship the Lord. Entirely turn away from evil.” and it shall be health to your bones and your muscles. Oh, we’re getting at the close of our program today, but we’re going to continue in this. This is so rich, Kimberly.

SPEAKER 03 : 25:49

Yeah, we just want to remember that whatever happens when we’re saying to Jesus, for better, for worse, I’m with you. Whatever the worse is, whatever the evil plans are, Where evil abounds, grace much more abounds, much more. He’s greater than you think he is. He is more beautiful and he is more good than you think he is. And his pleasure in your life brings you up and out of your mud puddle, up and out and delivers you into wide places, green pastures, still waters in the middle of the situation that you find yourself in. We are being offered a grand invitation. Let’s accept it and continue to bless the Lord with our mouth at all times. Let his praise continually be in our mouth.

SPEAKER 02 : 26:42

That’s right. And that’s why we use this beautiful little phrase, take joy, because we don’t want you to take any more care upon yourself. We want you to take joy, friends.

SPEAKER 1 : 27:01

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SPEAKER 01 : 27:21

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SPEAKER 1 : 28:25

Thank you.