In this episode of Call to Freedom, Kimberly fills in for her mother, Barbara Carmack, to explore the spiritual journey towards rest and peace. Through insightful scripture readings and personal reflections, she highlights the life-transforming power of taking on the yoke of Jesus, promoting a life that transcends stress and routine bondage. Emphasizing the significance of the Holy Week, Kimberly shares how crucial it is to embrace the freedom from sin and stress offered by faith.
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.
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Thank you for tuning in to Call to Freedom today. This is Kimberly, Barbara’s daughter, sitting in for Barbara. She is taking the day off to do some things that she doesn’t usually get to do. So you’re stuck with me today. And she was telling me that maybe tomorrow I could have the day off. So she’ll be back on the air tomorrow. And let me let me just start this whole program with a prayer. Lord, will you transform the words that you’ve given me to speak today and make them usable for your purposes? Let your people hear something today that will unburden their hearts and give rest to their souls. There is no benefit or blessing to the words that I speak, but your words are life and peace. So have your way in those who are listening and in our families and communities. Let us all become what you’re dreaming of in your name and for your glory. Amen. We have a memory verse this week from Matthew 11, 29. Matthew 11, verse 29 says, And you will find rest for your souls. Well, take my yoke upon you, a yoke. We don’t talk about yokes very much in our communities and society. A yoke is something that joins two animals together and it helps them work together and pull, pull a load together. The point of this verse, take my yoke upon you and learn of me. It’s, it’s Jesus talking. And the point of this verse is to be joined with Christ. Learn to do life his way. Why? Why? Because our problems and just everyday life can cause stress and exhaustion. And our Lord does not want us to live stressed and exhausted. He wants us to have a more abundant and fulfilling life than that. In John 10, 10, Jesus tells us that the thief is the one who comes to steal and kill and destroy. He says, I came that they may have life and may have it abundantly. Well, our memory verse from Matthew 11, 29, again, it says, take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. This is an invitation to enter into the abundance that Jesus offers, the abundant life that he’s talking about. It’s not just abundant materials, but it’s a rich and fulfilling spiritual and emotional life that is anchored by love and joy and peace. He says in this area of scripture in Matthew 11, let’s back up to verse 28. He says, “‘Come to me, all who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.'” How am I going to give you rest? “‘Take my yoke upon you and learn of me. Learn how I do life, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.'” For my yoke is easy. It goes on in verse 30 to say, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Well, what kind of easy is that? His yoke is easy. I looked up the word, the Greek word there, and the word means kind and forbearing. Jesus is saying that his way in life and his way in relationships is is kind. It’s kindness and endurance and patience. That’s a forbearing kind of spirit where you’re enduring. When we read this passage, we usually think of coming to Jesus with all of our problems and our pains because we’re exasperated, right? We’re burdened, we’re exhausted, and we definitely want to come to him with those burdens. We also want to come to him with the basic burden of our human condition, because I believe that’s what causes stress, stress on our bodies, stress on our finances, stress on our relationships. After all, in our human nature, we have something to do with all of those stresses in the first place. Most of the time, those stresses do not just come upon us without our involvement. We are stressed sometimes because of our decisions, sometimes because of our attitudes or our perspectives. And that stress is our human bondage. Jesus is telling us that we can come to him and he will give us rest. Jesus will rescue you from your stress and give you rest when you learn of him. Well, I was just being mindful of the week that we are in. We’re in Passover week or Holy Week, and the redemption of God’s people from Egypt is what is being remembered during Passover week. It’s a redemption from bondage and from slavery. It’s setting them free. We need that freedom. And it’s a type and a picture of the coming one who would redeem us from our slavery to sin, our human condition and bondage that keeps us in sin, which is anything that separates us from God. That’s what we can say sin is. So John the Baptist, when he saw Jesus approaching him, he prophesied this. He said, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Today, just for the purpose of this subject, let’s just acknowledge that our bondage to sin causes stress. I believe that anytime we are separated from the one who is peace, the one who is joy, the one who calms our hearts, when we’re separated from him, then we’re stressed. So the freedom that we are offered is a reconnection of us with him. The freedom we’re offered is rest. So bondage to sin is causing stress. The freedom is rest. Sometimes I need to see how my sin leaves open doors for that thief to come and steal. If my joy or my peace is being taken and I’m experiencing stress, this is a good exercise for me to remember that I was made for abundance of peace and joy and rest. And what this has to do with Passover week and Holy Week, and it’s not a coincidence that our Jewish friends are celebrating Passover and our Christian friends are celebrating Holy Week all in this one week. That’s not a coincidence. The passion of our Christ, his death and his resurrection and the celebration of freedom from slavery and bondage to Egypt and the way that the Lord passed over the Israelite people who had put the blood of the lamb on their doorposts. These celebrations are one in the same thing because the blood of that lamb way back then spoke of the coming one, the lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world. So we can see that these two celebrations are really one celebration. It’s an acknowledgement of God’s power to free us from the bondage of this realm while we are still living in this realm. He is not only able to release us from stress, but he deeply longs to do so. He longs for that so much that he sent Yeshua Hamashiach, his son. And his only son, right? So that is a longing to give his people who are so weary and burdened and stressed out to give them the hope of rest, not just in a coming age, but rest here today in this realm, in this life. This is a journey. The journey of walking into a place of rest with the Lord, it’s a path that we all are following and freedom comes on this journey. It takes some of us longer than others. I could say it’s taking me quite a while. I am still learning how to enter his rest when I’m feeling stressed out about a problem. And so we could look at the promised land as being rest, this kind of rest, a calm, an assurance, a satisfaction and a fulfillment, knowing that God is in control and he is providing everything that we need for life and for godliness. That is what he has said. And we believe it. This is the promised land, believing that and having the freedom and the rest that comes with that attitude. Mostly this journey takes a long time because we in our humanity think that we know a better route. And we’re found complaining about the path that we have been given. At least that’s been my experience. The Israelites also did not like the path that led them into the wilderness and complaining set in pretty quickly. But despite their complaints and their unfaithfulness, God remained faithful to provide for them and bring them through. Jesus shows us how to walk that journey without complaining. His life was a yielded life that accepted everything that was coming his way. He knew everything. what his life was going to look like, and he never tried to manipulate it to look differently. So he was teaching us how to be yielded to a life that’s not comfortable or popular or even lucrative. Doing life his way means that you might get a taste of comfort. But you are prepared to leave the comfort of your own surroundings, maybe even your own bed, to follow where he leads you. That’s what Jesus did. He did not even have a pillow to where he could lay his head on. And he mentions that when people asked about following him and being his disciples, he mentioned that he does not even have a pillow to rest his head on. So he was very prepared to leave the comfort of this world in order to experience a greater comfort. We can do the same thing. And you might get a glimpse of a popular life at some point in your life. But living Jesus way will cause you to be willing to forego that popularity, even if it’s in your own family, to obediently speak what the Lord gives you when it’s unpopular. You might experience a moment of lucrative living. You might have a windfall or a blessing that comes your way. But those financial blessings hold nothing of real value to you in the light of surrendering to the freedom and fullness of God’s peace. Most of us know by now that money does not bring us a lasting peace. It is something that can even cause more stress as we’re trying to figure out what to do with it. How do we invest it? How do we not waste it? We want to be faithful stewards and that can stress us out when we’re trying to do it in our own power and without walking with Jesus. He is inviting us to join him in his yoke. Let him show us how to walk through this life so that we can experience the the true and lasting peace that he has for us. Well, can we humans actually walk out this journey in a yielded and surrendered way that the way that Jesus showed us? No. You were probably thinking that I might say yes to that, but I didn’t say yes because I don’t believe that we can do anything in our own strength. Jesus came to do more than just show us the way. He didn’t just show us the way and say, okay, now you have to walk in it. Let me see you do it. He did more than that. He made the way. He forged it. He dug the tunnel right through the mountain of humanity. And it’s a tunnel that will never collapse. When we realize this, we are more apt to trust and have faith that will help us yield and surrender to his ways. Our trust and our faith is exactly what makes us yielding, what makes us surrendered to whatever path that he has. That faith says to us, I can believe that he’s got something even better for me when we see that our job is in some kind of a mess or when we see that our finances from our savings. Oh, I was just at Panera last week and I overheard someone say that somebody hacked her account and took $25,000. That’s a big chunk. And that would be very alarming. She also mentioned that the bank was not going to make up the difference for that. So those are the kinds of things that we can find ourselves in stress about. We can be very stressed about those things. But Jesus, when we have faith… like Jesus had in his father, when we trust that the father is going to do for us anything that we might need to provide for us, then we have a settled peace, a calm, an assurance. I was reading in Ephesians 2, and I just want to take a moment here to read verses 1 through 9. Ephesians 2, 1 through 9. and you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world according to the prince of the power of the air of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience and among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind our thoughts and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest of the world. But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, he made us alive together with Christ. It is by grace that you’ve been saved and raised us up with him.” seated us with him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come, he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and love in kindness. toward us in Christ Jesus. This is an amazing passage. This is telling us that we couldn’t do this by ourselves. He knew that. And so being so full of love and mercy, he sent Jesus to show us, not just to show us, but to give us opportunity to know him in a way as a rescuer, a reviver, and a restorer.
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For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not as the result of works that no one should boast. So there is not any human being that can boast in the way that they’re walking out life. and bringing themselves peace. There’s no one who can bring themselves peace, not the lasting peace, not that real joy, the lasting joy, not the calm that Jesus can bring to our lives and that our Lord has provided for us. This comes through grace, a gift. from God. And when we believe that that gift is available for us, when we believe and have faith and trust that the work is done, that Jesus did it, then we have more access to that real peace. We can look at our situation and say, okay, God knew this was going to happen. He’s got a plan for it. I don’t have to figure this out on my own. He’s the God of the impossible. It was an impossible thing for him to deliver the Israelites from Egypt. That was an impossibility, but our God does impossible things all the time. He’s still doing them today on a daily basis. He’s doing them and we just need our eyes open to that. And Lord, we do ask you for that. that you would open the eyes of our heart, open the eyes of our understanding to see you, that you would be glorified, that you would have your dream come true in us and through us as we walk out our lives every day. Well, this scripture in Ephesians 2 is telling us that we cannot walk out the way. So Jesus did it all for us so that no one could boast or anyone could have any kind of security in their own decisions on their own. This hopefully will bring an enlightenment for so that we will know God, so that we will know him in a deeper way. The enlightenment to even come to Jesus is a gift from God. We have to know that we need to come to him. And sometimes that happens because we’re exhausted. That happens because we have a heavy burden that we just can’t carry anymore. That happens because we’re discouraged. When we have the discouragement, the heavy burdens, And when we are feeling really weary, we can come to Jesus and the gift of God, that free gift that he has given us through Christ, making us alive together with him, giving us an abundant life instead of just a flat life of routine, a flat life that causes us to feel stressed because we’re not seeing our dreams come true. This is the way that we get on board with his dream, his dream of having a people that trusts him so completely that wants to do life with him. That should be our dream as well. When we make it our dream, then we start experiencing this peace that I’m talking about. The peace that the word of God tells us is a gift for us to have. Jesus gave us a commission. He told us to go and make disciples. And this commission is simply a directive to spread this good news. What I’m talking about today is great news. It is finished. The redemption process. It’s done. If we choose not to receive this gift, then we’re the ones that have ourselves stuck in the cycle of stress and in the cycle of sin that separates us from the one who wants us to have this more abundant life. So we really need to know that it is finished and then spread that good news that the redemption process is done. If we choose, we can be that light in this world. And if we don’t choose that, we can continue to be stress. I think stress is another form of darkness. And this experience happens of finding the peace and finding the rest. This experience, it happens in the wilderness. our wilderness life. The problem with our human condition is that we feel like we need something to do. So we stay in the stress of a routine. That’s what was happening in Egypt with God’s people, with the Israelites. They were in the stress of a routine and it was bondage. It was slavery and they needed to be released from that. Well, sometimes we need to be released from our routines. And we need to start doing the work of the Lord in a different way. The problem is us needing to do something in our humanity, but then learning to release that and say, huh, if I don’t do it this same way, if it doesn’t work out, then I can trust that God’s got something different and maybe it’s much better for It’s always much better. It’s always much better. I can tell you that. I know that for sure. Go and make disciples. That doesn’t mean that it’s all on your shoulders now to make sure that your life works out, that it’s all on your shoulders to make sure the world is saved. No, the world is saved. Your world is saved. And there’s no way that we can influence others to make a decision to follow Jesus when we are living in stress. And darkness and saying, hey, this can be the life for you, too. That’s not how we’re going to influence others to make a decision for Jesus. It’s going to be through a place of peace, a place of calm, a place of joy, true joy. And really, it’s not even us that influences people anyway. It’s the Holy Spirit’s job. Holy Spirit speaks through us and shows other people through us. All we do is plant seeds. So we’re just planting seeds. Seeds of joy, seeds of peace, seeds of rest and calm. We’re planting those seeds and it’s his amazing story. Where the church has let us down is in the obvious manipulative tactics of messages like decide to follow Jesus or else. You can fill in the blank for yourself. If you don’t clean up your act, you will be left out. Those are messages that are not what God is telling us in these scriptures. He’s saying you can come, come to him in any condition and he will bring you rest. So we don’t want to be leaving people out. That is not who our God is. He’s not exclusive. He is inclusive. He is including the communities, the families that you are in. And he wants you to be an inclusive person with him. Join his peace. Join with his joy. Join with his rest and his calm. And let other people see that. Be seeds that are spread for his kingdom today. to come and for his dream to come true. Jesus’ work was either complete or it was incomplete. Let’s choose to believe that it was complete, that he did it. It is finished. And now we can just enjoy that good news and spread that good news to others. Would you join with me today and spread that good news to all those that you come in contact with? We want that for everyone around us. The promised land, that rest is yours. God bless you and keep you and take joy and peace with you today.
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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. Our 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.
