In this episode, we delve into the profound gifts of grace and mercy that lie at the heart of the Christian faith. Join Barbara and her guests as they share insights and prayers, exploring the love and compassion that God offers to every believer. From reflections on scripture to discussions on community dynamics, this episode provides a rich tapestry of spiritual exploration, highlighting the importance of staying connected to God’s everlasting promise.
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 :
Welcome to called a freedom. Oh, praise God. It was for freedom that Jesus set you free. Oh, thank the Lord for the gifts of his grace. All the things he gives out of pure love. We can’t know that love. It’s like pure gold. We don’t see pure gold. Pure gold is just absolutely translucent. All the things he gives out of pure love, abundant mercy and sweet forgiveness. Mercy is is the bad I deserve Jesus took in his body. That’s right. The bad that we deserve, friend, he took on his body on the cross. And so I’m so grateful. I am just so grateful. As I saw the outcome of the elections across the country, and I saw, you know, a huge Democratic win and As I was praying, I said, Father God, you know we love this country. I love the United States of America. And keep us safe from communism and socialism that’s trying to creep in and do its awful thing that it does to people. It degrades people. It taxes people up the kazoo, and we do not understand that. And the people that voted for Mamdani, I pray for them because they do not understand what they voted for. So thank you for praying for this country. We need your prayers. We truly do. You are blessed to dispense for in him you live and move and have your being. This Saturday, November 8th, is our meeting, our regular meeting on the second Saturday of every month. And we’re going to switch the brunch around to 930. If you’ll come to the restaurant at 930. And if you’d like to come to my home first, you sure can at 930. And then we’ll meet at my home again at 11 o’clock for Bible study and singing and wonderful fellowship. So if you would like to attend, especially for the brunch, call me at 1-877-917-7256. And you can email me at barbara at freedomstreet.org. And I will get back to you. God bless you. And I hope to see you Saturday, November the 8th. If you are coming on Saturday, maybe you could bring some cookies because I’ll have some coffee and apple cider after the fellowship. So I really enjoy these times together. So thank you for thinking about it and joining us on Saturday. And for our verse of scripture for this week, it’s John 1, verse 16 and 17, especially verse 17. From his abundance, we have all received one gracious blessing after another. Hallelujah. And verse 17 says, for the law was given through Moses, but God’s unfailing love, his grace and truth and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ. Well, Kimberly, it’s so good to have you on the air today.
SPEAKER 04 :
Wow. Thank you so much. And thank you for starting out with that. beautiful memory verse. I, from John one, I was just reading that before, before you introduced me and I kept reading and kept going. I love John. I love the book of John. I do too. I love the John chapter one is just a favorite of mine. Yes. Amen. I looked up that verse in the amplified version and it says for out of his fullness or out of his abundance, We have all received and we all had a share and we were all supplied with one grace after another and spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing and even favor upon favor and gift heaped upon gift.
SPEAKER 02 :
I love it. Don’t you love that translator? I mean, she did a wonderful work on the Bible. Oh, she really did.
SPEAKER 04 :
I don’t know her name. It goes on to say, for while the law was given through Moses, grace, that unearned, undeserved favor and spiritual blessing and truth. came through Jesus Christ. And I, oh, I just love reading this and realizing that what God has said about Himself all along, all through the Old Testament, He has been showing us His grace, His abundance, His goodness, and His mercy. Yes. And favor upon favor. And so often our eyes are drawn to the little sections of scripture that say that God was provoked to anger. What’s interesting to me about those scriptures when it says that he was provoked to anger, which is not very often, by the way. No. You can look that up. And it’s not that often that he was provoked to anger. But when he was provoked to anger, we need to remember that when you provoke someone, it is like time after time after time that you are poking and prodding and that you are. That’s how you provoke. You provoke by doing something over and over and over.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s right. Yes. Amen. And you remember when your children were so small, Kimberly, and especially maybe a couple of them out of the four that you had, they were always taunting each other and poking each other and running after each other. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Provoking each other.
SPEAKER 02 :
Provoking each other. Yes.
SPEAKER 04 :
Right. So when God is provoked, it’s because the sin has happened over and over and over.
SPEAKER 03 :
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s not just a real quick, like he just turned all of a sudden. That’s right. Somebody caused it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Somebody caused it.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. Right. And so I’ve continued to meditate on that verse that I shared last week from Exodus 34, verses six and seven, where the Lord himself is describing his glory and Moses asked him to show him his glory. Moses wanted to see the glory of God, which still, I still just can’t comprehend that because Moses was talking with God face to face every day, but he still asked the Lord to show him his glory. And the way that the Lord responded was to say, I will make all my goodness pass before you. This is in Exodus 33. But then when we get to Exodus 34, verses 6 and 7, is where the Lord actually let his goodness pass before Moses. And when he did it, the Lord himself was declaring and saying this. “…the Lord, the Lord God, merciful, compassionate, and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands.” Another translation says, “…a thousand generations.” Actually, more than one translation says, “…a thousand generations.” That’s how long his love lasts. He forgives iniquity and transgression and sin. But who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation? So I’ve just been soaking myself in that verse, in that passage, because this is the Lord’s definition of his glory. And when Moses asked to see God’s glory, he said, I will let my goodness pass before you. He didn’t say, I will cause my greatness to pass before you. He did not say, I will cause all my power to pass before you. Who could, which one of us could stand? Who could even stand before God’s greatness and his power? But no, he chooses to define his own glory as goodness. The Bible says, I believe is one long testimony to who God really is. And it is up to us to fight our tendency to interpret the stories through our small perspectives and think that God is like us. We have got to fight that, fight our own perspectives. And we are the ones who run out of patience. and compassion. We’re the ones who are easily provoked. God is not easily provoked. I just want to bring that up again because He’s describing himself as so full of mercy and compassion and love, this steadfast love. He’s so full of it that that’s what oozes out of him. When we are in need of comfort, that just oozes right out of him. All we have to do is just turn his direction and it is poured out on us.
SPEAKER 02 :
Amen.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s all we have to do. Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end.
SPEAKER 04 :
Amen. Amen. And we want to remember that. We want to fight our perspective that God has a short fuse. He doesn’t. That’s us we’re talking about. God is telling us that he will have steadfast love for a thousand generations. That doesn’t mean that when he gets to generation 1001, that he’ll be out of love by that time. That’s right. That’s not what that means. When God tells us that he will keep loving thousands, It’s his way of saying that his commitment to us has no expiration date. His covenant with us will never be terminated. That is such a comfort. His heart is for you forever. We might not realize this, how great His love is until many years into our lives. And that’s why we need to continue to battle or to fight to come into agreement with how good God is. We are consistently holding Him in our own perspectives, which are limited and weak. And we must fight the good fight of faith and take hold of the eternal life, the eternal perspective. And that’s according to 1 Timothy 6, 12. In the Passion Translation, it says, lay your hands upon eternal life. Oh, it says, fight the good fight of faith. Lay your hands upon eternal life to which you were called and about which you have made the good confession before a multitude of witnesses. So when we’re telling people that we have found God, that we have found Jesus and that Jesus is now Lord of our lives, that is a good confession that we are making and we want others to come alongside. We want others to find him too.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 04 :
And we want it to be according to his ways and his perspective, not our own. So it is a lifelong work to resist the pull of the world and attach ourselves to the higher realm the better way. Heaven is truly more real than this earth, and we must labor to enter the rest that comes to us when we detach ourselves from this world and attach ourselves to the other realm, to God’s way of thinking. Isaiah 55 says it. Isaiah 55, verses 8 and 9 says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” We need to remember that. That’s right. And not get so caught up in our own way of thinking, in our own way of judging a situation. And just this week, I have experienced some things in our church that kind of surprised me. They’ve been doing a little bit of house cleaning, I guess is what we could call it. They have removed some people from the church. And I wasn’t expecting that. And I had to take a few days to just go on my face and say, Lord, I want to see this through your eyes. And help me stay honoring and respectful of the leadership that you have given authority over this church. You’ve put them in place here. So help me honor you first. You, God. I want to honor you, Lord, and your word that I will respect the authorities that you’ve put in place. And then help me. help me see that you are still in control when these people have been asked to leave our community. And they’re people who are precious to me. I have some long bonds with some of these people and, um, and I understand their, the need to do the housekeeping. So one situation was an immoral relationship. And, I, you know, I just, I don’t know all of the background, but I do understand that our leadership most likely went and talked with these people about the adultery going on and needed to confront it. You know, we talk about God being full of compassion and grace and mercy, but we have to remember the last part of this Exodus 34, verse 7. The last part says, And let me just tell you how that is a comfort to me to actually read that. It’s a comfort because He is not this lenient God that just tolerates sin by turning away in a weak attempt to avoid confrontation or to keep peace. That’s what humans do. And his ways are higher. He is righteous. He is holy. And this passage in Exodus is reminding us of his righteousness and his holiness. So even though The guilty will experience consequences from the fathers to their children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation. That’s what we’re reading here. What we need to see is first, our God is keeping steadfast love to a thousand generations, not just three or four. A thousand generations. Really, he’s saying it’s unending, that he is forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. If the leadership in your church would not check that, I think of a verse of scripture in 1 Corinthians 15 that says, bad morals corrupt. Let’s see. What is it? A bad company corrupts good morals. That’s it. That’s the extent of that verse. So they know that it’s like one bad apple or one bad potato in a bag. It pretty soon the whole bag is rotten. So the leadership has to pay attention to this. If they know that there is a sin in the church, they do something about it. And it sounds like they went by the scripture of going to him two or three, going to the person that was especially having an adulterous affair and letting them know that they could no longer be part of that. That’s hard. It’s very sad, but it’s yeah, it is.
SPEAKER 04 :
It is hard.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 04 :
What we want to see is that that our God is a God of righteousness and holiness.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER 04 :
And and that what he says about himself is that he’s so full of goodness, so full of love that he will forgive iniquity, transgression and sin to a thousand generations. Wow. We need to say wow to that because. we don’t want to forget how holy he is we don’t want to look at him as some kind of a lenient god like i said you know just that that is weak has weak standards he has the highest standards of all and He is full of steadfast love. His love is enduring. Even through transgression, it endures. He will forgive iniquity and sin. We are the ones who must choose to turn from our perspectives and look to Him and focus in on Him. That’s what our job is. That’s what we need to do. Yes. And when we do that and we see how good he really is, then hopefully we are attaching ourselves to his ways, attaching ourselves to his holiness. I don’t know that we in our human form could ever be holy. We can’t. We can’t be holy without him. We’ve got to have him. We must be in fellowship with in conversation and have true friendship with him that is constant all day long. That’s the only thing that covers us and makes us holy and makes us worthy is himself in us. And so we want to be looking at, at attaching ourselves properly. We were born into this life attached to an umbilical cord.
SPEAKER 03 :
And, and,
SPEAKER 04 :
Then we’re attached to the one that’s caring for us. We’re attached to our food source and we’re attached to our family and then our community. And the attachments grow in number and in strength as we grow in this world. We even become attached to substances, to foods like coffee and chocolate. There are so many people who think they cannot do without their coffee or their chocolate or medications. We even have this need for sleep. We might grow attached to the idea of our need for a certain amount of sleep. And as long as we’re attached to the things of this world, our judgment is gonna be off balance. We don’t see the goodness of God. When we experience the loss or detachment in this life, we might start complaining and think that we are not getting what is good in our eyes. And so then we start fighting. What we want to fight is our earthly perspective. We want to fight our opinions and our judgments and attach ourselves to the heavenly opinions and the heavenly judgments because those alone are righteous. Those alone are holy. And again, we want to remember that the Lord says about himself, the Lord God, merciful, compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, forgiving, forgiving transgression, forgiving sin. This is our God. And everything we need in life is in that verse right there. It’s in that passage. Everything we need is right there in that. If we could learn to forgive, it’s hard. As a human being, it is hard for us to let go of our ideas of how justice should come. But we need to learn to forgive like our God forgives. This is heavenly perspective. Our Lord is merciful and compassionate, abounding in steadfast love, keeping that love for a thousand generations. So when we compare that to the last part of verse seven, that he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, We want to see that as a really good balance. We want to be comforted by the idea that this compassion is not coming from somebody weak. It’s coming from the strongest, most powerful, most holy and righteous being in the universe. And he is willing to let go of his standards and condescend to us. and forgive. Wow. Sin cannot stand in his presence. And so he has that beautiful, perfect standard. Oh, second Peter, I found myself in second Peter three earlier today.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s so good.
SPEAKER 04 :
Mm hmm. And verses 13 and 14 say, according to his promise, we are looking for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
We can’t wait till the time when we see no more sin, no more evil. Oh, I can’t even imagine that right now. So, yeah, we’re looking forward to it.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. You know, even when you talk about the election and, you know, your disappointment, we we actually don’t know how many in Colorado may have voted Democratic. We don’t know because I’m not sure that we can really trust every machine that counts the vote.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yep. Nobody’s really sure about that. So there are a lot of people that are suspicious.
SPEAKER 04 :
And I’m not trying to spread suspicion, but I am wanting to declare that God is still on the throne with his righteousness and his holiness. And we’ve got to fight our tendency to say, oh, no, we’re doomed. This is terrible. And look to him and say, no, the goodness of God is still everlasting. Yes. It is still solid. And his commitment to us, to see us through, it has not expired.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. I love what you brought up in 2 Peter 3 in verse 14. Be diligent to be found by him in peace. spotless and blameless and kimberly that’s what we have to understand is that we when we are riled up and emotional just settle down and believe those words that jesus gave us peace i leave with you my peace i give to you not as the world gives do i give to you let not your heart be troubled neither let it be afraid we’ve got to go to there yeah we’ve got to go there yes yes amen
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, I have more here and I don’t know how much to get into because I do want to remind the listeners that you’ve got a meeting this coming Saturday. And I know you said it at the top of the hour, but I wish I could be there. It was my plan to be there again for this meeting. And here again, I’m just trusting the Lord and His way, His path. He has opened some other doors for me here in Oklahoma. So I won’t be joining you, but… I do bless your meeting this Saturday and encourage you who are listening, even if you’ve never called in or been to a meeting before, call that number 877-917-7256 or leave an email for barbara at freedomstreet.org. And let her call you back or email you back and give you directions and time for that meeting this Saturday. It is so blessed to gather together and to be together in the Lord’s presence.
SPEAKER 02 :
It is. It’s a wonderful time. I look forward to a meeting every month. We used to have twice a week when Darren was here. I don’t know how we did it twice a week with the radio program, but we have it once a month. So I look forward to seeing those of you who are going to call in at 1-877-917-7256. Thank you so much, Kimberly. And we look forward to hearing more from you tomorrow. God bless you and keep you and take joy.
SPEAKER 1 :
877-917-7256
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
