In a world filled with trials and uncertainties, Barbara and Kimberly shed light on the power of spiritual awakening and renewal. Discussing the vibrant changes in Israel’s land, they equate spiritual rebirth with nature’s awakening. They also explore how our own lives can reflect this divine transformation when we surrender to God’s infinite plans amidst personal struggles.
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 03 :
Welcome to Call to Freedom. and thanking God for a smooth show. So I hope that you are here today and going to be listening, especially to the scripture that Kimberly gives. May the Lord bless you with all the things that will assure you of His love, His presence, and His daily care for you. I know Holy Spirit woke me up at 1.30 and said, I want to talk to you. And every time He does that, I say, oh, okay. Thank you, Lord. And I went into the study and He told me that Psalm 1611 is such a precious verse for so many of us. In his presence is fullness of joy. And at his right hand are pleasures forevermore. Well, in his presence, he said, I want you to see that in my presence. Present, P-R-E-S-E-N-T, is fullness of joy. It’s not past. It’s not future. It’s now. It’s something that Kimberly has been talking about today. Today, if you will enter into his rest. So I’m just telling you there’s new revelation going on all the time. Listen with spiritual ears and you’re going to hear God do some marvelous things in your life. Remember, in his presence. is fullness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore. Oh, you are blessed to dispense, for in him you live and move and have your being. And these things in this world, the technology, it goes on tilt every once in a while. But know that God’s spirit is always there for you. Welcome to Call to Freedom, Kimberly.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, thank you. It’s so good to be back with you. And yesterday I was just rambling on and on. I felt like I was having this download happen and it was just coming right out my mouth and I didn’t even look at the time. But I was right in the middle of making an observation about Israel’s land. I like how you started out in your present is fullness of joy. It’s right now. It’s right now that the Lord is causing these waste places, these desert spaces, this wilderness of our lives. And he’s doing it on an individual basis. But also we can look at what he’s done with Israel’s land just in the last hundred years. And if you think 100 years is a long time, it really isn’t when you look back at the theme of all the years of creation and how many years man has been on this planet. The last 100 years is just this tiny little blip on the screen.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and what I love to see here in Isaiah 62, in verse 4, is that his delight is not only in the Jewish people because of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all those tender hearts, but the land, the geographical land he calls my beloved wife. So we know that our whole beings, as you talk about metaphors so many times, our whole being is his. Yes. Israel is his and he finds delight. He finds delight in all of this. Oh, praise the Lord. He does.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. And the land itself was such a withered land when it was not in place. the people it with the people of god when it was no longer the jewish people’s land it just was dead and there was nothing anyone could do to make it come alive but wow god’s people moved back in and the land came back to life yes today the land is awake it’s no longer asleep you know and i i get a lot of hope even looking at that and realizing okay this is the season to wake us up. And Israel is now, they’re the leaders in agricultural technology. That land is producing so many crops and it’s this tiny little space, but they export large amounts. They have wine that competes with anything that France and Italy can produce. They actually sell tulips to Holland. Did you know that? No, I did not know that. They sell tulips to Holland. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, and I heard a recent report that Israel produces 90% of the fruit that is sold in Europe, in all of Europe. That blows my mind, and I have been searching to see if I could actually validate that, and I can’t find all of the information. Okay. But even in recent years, a huge oil, a natural gas field was discovered right off the shore of Israel. And it belongs to Israel. And its name is Leviathan. My son Levi loves that name. I wonder why. But I guess it’s one of the largest gas fields ever discovered. So that’s really fun to see it coming alive. It’s such a massive flourishing happening with this land. When we as human beings come back to the heart of worship, and we come back to our God, the waste places of our lives begin to produce again. And yesterday I was trying to think of the scripture. It’s Psalm 81 16 that talks about honey from the rock, that the Lord feeds his people with honey from the rock. That means that the sweetest things come from the hardest places. So we don’t have to be afraid of these hard places of wilderness and desert. We will actually find sweet things from those hard places. That goes back to you saying in his present is fullness of joy. That is for today. And in his presence, being in his presence face to face with him and thinking his thoughts and being more concerned about his dream coming true instead of our own dreams. That is what causes this flourishing to happen in the waste places. So when we are so overwhelmed with our own circumstances in life, we might tune out the message that you and I are talking about. You know, as human beings, I can just picture a few people out there listening and just tuning it out because we might be thinking, well, that’s really great for those older ladies who are talking on the radio right now. They probably don’t have any debt. Their families probably all love them. And honestly, if you’re thinking that right now, you couldn’t be more wrong. We are in the middle of our own difficulties right now too. And we are finding this place of peace. It’s flourishing with peace. There’s confidence. There’s an assurance. There’s great hope. There’s fulfillment. There’s joy. And we want you as you are listening right now to have this same assurance. That’s right. I have an acquaintance, I’m just gonna call him Carl. He asked me to pray for him because his fiance’s ex came back to town. So Carl’s fiance, her ex-husband is back in the picture and she is really confused. And so Carl was asking me to pray for him. And when I said, oh, I’m so sorry, she has cold feet. He interrupted right away. No, no, no, she doesn’t have cold feet. She’s just confused. And I heard the desperation in his voice. We become desperate to make things work out the way that we’re hoping for, the way that we are planning, right? We all do it in every area. And so he has certain desires for this relationship to work out. And I ended up just reiterating how sorry I was for his difficulty right now. And over the next few days, I just began praying. I was just holding him tightly in prayer and not that he would get his way. but that God’s way would prevail for this relationship. And when we have our ideas, we have opinions of how life should go and what it should look like. But God. Oh, but God, his dreams are better than our dreams. And the next time that I saw Carl, he was more open to whatever God wanted to do because he was tired. He was tired of feeling so sad and so confused. And he was just ready to let God work in any way that he needed to. Wow.
SPEAKER 03 :
And I don’t like the wishy-washy kind of attitude she may have about having an ex, you know, having an ex divorced and accepting a ring from him and saying yes. And then, oh, I can’t imagine. Is she going to be like that in their marriage? Just back and forth, back and forth, making decisions and then not making decisions, breaking decisions, breaking promises. So, yeah, I’m glad you’re praying. I know, I’m really feeling for him, yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
But it is in the places of trials and tribulations, the places of suffering that we might really hate. We don’t like it. We don’t like it as human beings. We don’t really want the suffering. And yet… When we get tired, we might finally relinquish our own plans. and our own agendas and then say, you know what, God, I just want you to have your way. That is the key right there. That’s how you get to the place of assurance, the place of joy, this place of peace, this Sabbath rest that we’ve been talking about that is such a delight. It’s a delight for God because he knows, oh, now they can finally rest. I’ve got this. They’re going to let me have it now. And I really, I’ve got it. And it’s better than what you imagined. His ways truly are so much higher than ours. And it’s a huge wonder. He’s wonderful. It’s a huge wonder and an absolute miracle to turn our hearts to God’s heart and to lay down our ideas. That’s a miracle. It is. to lay ours down and take up his ideas and to scrap our own agenda so that his agenda takes precedence, that’s a miracle. And when we begin to participate in this miracle and we come along willingly, Our light shines in the darkness and our sorrow is turned to gladness. Just like Isaiah 61 talks about our beauty grows in the very ashes of our current surroundings. Yes. It’s it’s there’s so much hope. There’s so much hope in Isaiah 62 and verse three. You had brought up verse four. about the land and how the land will not be called deserted anymore or abandoned but the land itself will be called my delight is in you the land will be called married you know i’m glad i brought up this story because it’s about somebody who wants to get married right he has proposed to this woman And would love to call her his beloved wife. That’s right. And my delight is in you. Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
And the Lord is all for commitment. And so many people, boy, they run at commitment. They really do. And God is committed. God is committed to us and to Israel. All of us who love the Lord Jesus. It’s so good.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s a miracle in itself, how committed he is to us flesh people that are wishy-washy, going back and forth. Yes, yes. And I’m kind of bringing it all the way back around to what we were talking about, the land of Israel. It began producing, flourishing in its production as God’s people started looking to him. God’s people moved back into it. and God’s people wanted him to have his land. And it began to flourish. We can have that same experience in our own life. If we feel like our situation is a deserted and abandoned wilderness, We can just turn, turn our thoughts and realize, okay, God has something different and it’s better and it’s more beautiful. Now I’m going to back up to verse three of Isaiah 62. And it says, you will be a beautiful crown held in the hand of Yahweh, a royal crown of splendor held in the open palm of your God. I started thinking about that crown and where a crown sits. It sits on our head and it sits right around the brain. So we think we’ve got it all figured out in our brain with our reasoning and our intellect. We love to analyze and we think we’ve got these great plans, these agendas. We’re going to follow the steps and it’s all going to work out. But we live in a broken world with broken people who are wishy-washy and going back and forth and afraid of commitment. And so then our plans end up breaking one way or the other. And when that happens, we can be sitting in the ashes and all we see are ashes. But it really is a very quick decision to say, Lord, I want to see this your way. Help me see through your eyes. Will you give me your eyes? Will you give me your ears to hear your plan in this? Because I just want to let go. And that’s exactly where he wants us because he wants us flourishing. He wants to see us full of delight and full filled fulfillment, fully satisfied. He wants that for us. We were made for that. And I’ve touched on it before, but just to remind us, our dreams and our desires are infinite. They’re infinite dreams and desires. They’re really not going to be met in this finite world. The dreams and desires that we have been given, the word tells us that God has given us the desires of our hearts. That means he planted them there in the first place. So when we have these desires and these dreams, these ideas, we need to remember they are infinite. And when we remember that, it might be easier to give over our finite plans with finite people and finite jobs and finite schools for education. It’s all finite here. It’s all temporary here. So our real dreams are not going to be met now. The Lord delights in watching us walk out a life where we do have dreams. He’s not trying to wipe out all our dreams. He wants to be with us in them. He doesn’t want us just making all our own dreams without Him.
SPEAKER 03 :
And our decisions without him. That’s right.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right. Right. So it’s when we have a relationship, when we respond in relationship, that’s when we start seeing this flourishing happening. And in the idea of a crown, I’m remembering this scene that I saw. It was actually in the Princess Diaries. It’s like a little small teen movie that was done so many years ago. Was that 20 years ago already? I don’t know. It’s 40, Kimberly.
SPEAKER 03 :
In the 80s, yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
well okay so the queen is coming down the steps and as she’s coming down the stairs it’s it’s um where the princess is actually going to take her place the queen is going to say goodbye the crown is being transferred from her head to the princess’s head yes And I remember the first time that I saw that scene, it brought me so much joy that I found myself crying and I was like, what is this? What is this emotion rising up in me? And I realized, oh, I have an infinite desire to rise above this position that I find myself in, in this finite world. And I think we all long for that. We’re all longing for a position that lifts us up above our circumstances. And I know that that is available today. I was reading in James 1, 12, blessed is the man that endures temptation for when he is tried in this life, then he ends up with a crown of life. I really can see that as how our trials and our temptations are suffering here. When we sit with the Lord and we start giving over our desires and saying, you know what, God, I want your best in this situation. We receive new thinking. The crown that comes around our head changes. It might be metaphorical, but it’s very tangible when you feel the peace of God that passes our own understanding in our brain. Our brains no longer have to do all the work of reasoning and figuring it out. of trying to analyze and come up with all the right things, we can let go and we can trust that God has a better plan and that is our crown of life.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. When we get that crown, Kimberly, we understand that we are under the covering of a person that is all powerful and loving and mighty. In the Passion translation in the footnote of verse 2, we’re given a new name, which means we have a new nature, a new character, new authority, and a new identity in Jesus Christ. And then Isaiah talks about Jesus in Isaiah 63. So he’s coming. Here comes Jesus, because this can’t be done without his redemptive love and and blood that he gave for us. So when we become a person who’s covered, it’s like when you get married and you take that ring and you be, in fact, a lot of women change their last name to the name of the man who is now their husband. Well, this is really almost the same thing. When he puts that crown on your head, you belong to him. And it’s a wonderful love relationship. A lot like marriage.
SPEAKER 02 :
You belong to him. Yes. I love that you brought up the ring because the ring is a circle and so is the crown. The crown is a circle. It has no beginning and no ending. It’s infinite. It’s infinite. It’s not a finite concept to just round and round. That can be a forever way of thinking. A forever, a forever way of thinking. I like that. Yeah. When we think that we can judge a situation rightly with our own reasoning, our own senses, our own intellect, we are leaning on our own flesh and on our own understanding. Oh, but Proverbs tells us, do not lean on your own understanding.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. In all your ways, acknowledge him. Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. and he directs our paths to fulfillment he directs them to satisfaction true satisfaction we really cannot judge a situation rightly in god’s hand of mercy that’s where we find our resting place that’s where he says he holds our crown we are that’s that crown of splendor in his hand according to isaiah 62 3 and that’s a resting place for us it’s a place of delight for him and for us in isaiah 62 4 going back to that that will never again be called abandoned or deserted I believe that our whole being comes alive. It wakes up like the land of Israel woke up when God’s people moved back into it. And now it is flourishing. It’s producing in exponential ways that people thought were not possible. I know I’ve talked about it before, but when I visited there a couple years ago, I was… just shocked at how many trees had fruit on them and ripe fruit just underneath them that had fallen off of it and blossoms all over the tree because it was preparing to fruit again.
SPEAKER 03 :
Wow, that’s a miracle, Kimberly. It really is. I want to ask you, was the atmosphere, could you feel it or was there a special smell? Because when I went to Hawaii, the atmosphere was so different. It was lush. Was there something like that in Israel?
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. On many levels. It wasn’t just a fragrance. It wasn’t just the trees that were blossoming and had fruit on them that you could already pick and eat. It was also the people, the most beautiful people. The people there just, yes, the atmosphere was charged with life. I guess that’s the best way to put it. That’s good. So much life.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s a good way of saying it, yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
And I know that’s what God is offering all of us right now. When we are stuck in positions on this planet, in your job situation or in your relationships where it’s not working out the way you hoped and you feel like you’re sitting in some ashes, God is doing a wonderful job. wonderful transformation, full of wonder in our eyes that we can be sitting in the middle of our poor, ashy, broken, heavy circumstances. And what we do is we just ask, ask him to open our eyes to what he is doing. And that’s how we are transformed. When we are open to seeing it differently, we become a new creation. And even our thinking is changed in a moment’s time. That’s right, yes. I have another friend who married someone against her parents’ wishes. This was a long time ago. And her parents were concerned because they were worried that it would be an unequal yoke. That’s how we say it, right? Where the two backgrounds are just so different that it’s so unequal it might be really difficult, a difficult relationship. And a couple years into their marriage, she had to admit that her parents were right. It was really tough. But now it’s been a couple of decades. And those parents actually continued to encourage her that she married into a I think they called it a mission, a mission that will succeed in bringing light to the dark and in bringing clean to the unclean. And that’s what God’s hope is for us. As he has covenanted with us, like with that ring that we were talking about and with the crown, this covenant that he has with us is to bring light to the dark. And he loves that process. Yes, he does. It’s to bring clean to the unclean. And even in 1 Corinthians 7, 14, I know I need to wrap this up. It says, For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband. We have a believing husband. He has not given up on us, and we’re not going to give up on him either.
SPEAKER 03 :
God bless you. Thank you so much for this message from Isaiah 62. And God bless all of you who are listening with listening ears. God bless you and keep you and take joy.
SPEAKER 01 :
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