Join Barbara Carmack on this week’s episode of Call to Freedom, where an inspiring discussion unfolds about leaving behind human traditions and embracing the transformative power of God’s Word. Barbara and Kimberly share touching stories of personal faith, including a powerful testimony of a young man’s resilience amidst challenging circumstances. As they delve into scriptures from Ezekiel and Romans, they unravel the profound truth of receiving a new heart and being a living testament to God’s mighty works.
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 Call to Freedom. Oh, it’s time to thank the Lord for listening closely to our prayers, for seeing what our heart needs most, and blessing our life with His goodness, His wonderful goodness and mercy, His truth, His love. Oh, I could go on and on and on. I guess it’s why in Revelation they’re going, let you receive the glory and the power and the might and the blessings. Dominion.
SPEAKER 01 :
Dominion. Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. Kimberly’s here in the studio with me. And we are live Monday through Thursday at one o’clock. So if you want to call in and just ask a question or make a comment, you are sure free to do that. Also, you can go to the website at FreedomStreet.org or you can go to the website. Oh, you can go to Barbara at Carmack.
SPEAKER 03 :
Email us, Barbara at FreedomStreet.org or Kimberly at FreedomStreet.org. We love to receive your prayer requests and we hold those prayer requests in our heart. We are praying for those loved ones who are ill right now, for those who have lost some loved ones during the holiday season. We are praying for comfort, the comfort of the Lord. He sent Jesus as our great comforter and we are praying over you. We’re praying over relationships. We’re praying over health. We’re praying over finances. Thank you for the way that you reach out and trust us with those prayer requests.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, praise God. Oh, you are blessed to dispense for in him you live and move and have your being. And we’re so grateful to the Lord for being able just to be in this studio every day. And the sun is coming in through the window, south window. And so we’re receiving some warmth in this cold air. During the month of December, if you would like to give some donations to Call to Freedom, you can go to freedomstreet.org and donate there. Or you can donate by mail. And you will receive… From December 1st to December 31st, if you give to Call to Freedom, you will receive a 2026 calendar. And that will be in January. I will have it with your receipt in January. So thank you for giving to Call to Freedom. It’s just been such a blessing. These 30 years, almost 30 years that I’ve been on the air has been, oh, my life would not be like this without this. Sorry about this little frog in my throat. I don’t have any water today, so… Do I have water? Let’s see. No, that’s okay. I have honey. Did you want it? No, no, no. I travel with honey. I could just go gooping around. And then another reminder of December 13th meeting. That’s right.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s in two Saturdays. Not this coming Saturday, but the Saturday after. We’re having a meeting and we’ll have… time of singing and a gift exchange. If you’re able to purchase a gift, don’t spend more. Did we have like an amount? $10, $15 at the most. Don’t spend more than that on a gift. Just keep it small and keep it simple. It’s just fun to exchange gifts and to see what other people bring and to have games and laughter. We did that last year. It was so much fun.
SPEAKER 02 :
It was. Or you can take a gift you received and you can’t use and just wrap it again. Oh, I just had to say that. No. And if you’ve not ever been to a Christmas meeting and you don’t want to go, no. What are you saying? I’m just kidding. Okay. We’re going to give you the phone number so that you can get directions and instructions. It’s 1-877-917-7256. I don’t know. I must have the joy of the Lord, Kimberly. Our memory verse for this week is Romans 1, verse 16. I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. And then in the message translation, Romans 1, verse 16 says, it’s news. I’m most proud to proclaim this extraordinary message of God’s powerful plan to rescue everyone who trusts him. Rescue them, Kimberly, starting with Jews and then right on to everyone else. And that’s us. God’s way of putting people right up shows right up. Excuse me. God’s way of putting people right shows up in the acts of faith, confirming what scripture has said all along. The person in right standing before God by trusting him really lives. That’s where life is. It’s so important to realize that that’s where life is. The living.
SPEAKER 03 :
We are not ashamed of that gospel. And you know, this holiday season, we might have a lot of traditions, getting together with family. There might be certain foods that you’re used to having, sending out cards, the way that we decorate. There are traditions that we have in our families, and most of those traditions are really fun. They’re really lovely. Sometimes those traditions can actually cause more stress and anxiety sometimes. And when we say that we’re not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we’re not ashamed to let some of those traditions go. Yeah, that can be a challenge for some people to let some of those traditions go. And we were listening to the encore on November 28th on Call to Freedom. And how Papa had mentioned, it is the traditions of man that make void the word of God. It nullifies, it cancels, it invalidates the word of God. These are other words from other translations. It sets aside the word of God and ignores the word of God in order for tradition to happen. And That is not the place where we want to find ourselves. We want to we want to find ourselves really joyfully standing for the word of God in our lives. Yes, because the word became flesh. And that’s what we’re celebrating during this season. The word becoming flesh and dwelling among us. And, you know, the beauty of that is he was the firstborn. That’s what Romans 8 tells us. He’s the firstborn. And we are the brothers and the sisters. We are also the word became flesh. We are still in a miracle process happening. And he wants us to participate by letting go of the tradition of man so that we do not make void the word of God in us. That’s powerful.
SPEAKER 02 :
And Romans 8 tells us that we’re joint heirs with the son of God. Everything that he has and is going to get in the future forever and ever, we get. Amen. And if that’s trips to other planets, I’m going.
SPEAKER 03 :
I think we’re going to have solar systems we will get to visit that are so beautiful. We were talking yesterday about a friend of mine that I have spent so much time in prayer with. She and I, I just think of her as a powerhouse prayer warrior. She truly is a warrior in prayer. And I’ve spent so much time with her, and she was really ill last month. Actually, it’s been months, months that she’s been ill. Her son, 21 years old, had pretty much just taken over the kitchen, shopping, paying the bills. He was the one working full time. His mother was not working at all, just very weak. And I kept looking at this 21-year-old young man thinking, when is he going to break? And I don’t mean that in a negative way. He just had taken so much on his shoulders. And when would it take its toll? But I watched him grow stronger and stronger and stronger through this past summer, the spring and summer. And… What I heard, this is what I wanted to share about my friend who was so ill. What’s interesting is she was having a hard time speaking a few weeks ago. I had to hold her head up. But the few words that she said to me very much sounded like her son was not taking very good care of her. And that was her perspective. She might ask for a glass of water and he would come an hour later with that glass of water. This was her perspective, but she didn’t see everything else he was taking on his shoulders. And this is what happens to us. We have our own perspectives of what’s going on in our lives and in people around us. And we might give in to sadness, to self-pity, to anger. We might give in to irritation or frustration. But it’s because we have a certain idea in our mind of how we want to be taken care of and how the people around us should take care of us, whether that’s our boss, our mate, our children, our brothers and sisters, our parents. We have these ideas of how we want to be taken care of. These are traditions. These are traditions. It’s a traditional way of thinking that you have a family and this family is supposed to look out for you. You have a job. Your boss is supposed to look out for you. You have these ideas. These are traditions. But we don’t want those traditions to cancel out the word of God in us. We are his people. And we are the word becoming flesh. We’re becoming miracle people. And we want to participate in that process, not reject it and not void it with our own ideas and our own perspectives. I think we could also call traditions dry bones. They are dry bones. We are in need of someone, something to resuscitate and revive and restore, bring revival to us and to our families. And we can prophesy to the dry bones and tell those dry bones live. And when those dry bones come together, like in Ezekiel 37, in the valley of dry bones, when they come together, they might not even have life in them at first. They might not have the breath of God. And God is the one who tells us, prophesy to the breath. Say to the breath, breathe. Well, do that in yourself, in your family, in your traditions. Prophesy the breath of God. Breathe, oh God, into our traditions. And don’t let our traditions make your word and your breath void in us. We need you. We need your joy. We need your peace. We need your mercy and grace. And we look to you for that kind of grace and mercy. I think I’m jumping ahead, though. You wanted to talk about Ezekiel 36. No problem. No problem.
SPEAKER 02 :
The new heart. Because Ezekiel knew, praise God, that he was going to be brought out of the situation he was in because God had prophesied to him. And he had told him, yes, Kimberly, in Ezekiel 36, that the people of God would get new hearts and new spirits to go into those new hearts. You can’t put a fresh oil into something that’s old and just about to break. So you’ve got to get something new. So God promised in Ezekiel 36, it’s just fifth verse. He said, you’re going to get a new heart. And it also says here in, oh, I can’t see it exactly. But he also said, I’m going to take that stony heart out of you and put you in, put in that place a tender, sensitive, gentle heart, a new heart and a new spirit. And we know that from the New Testament. That’s all that Paul talked about. Putting on, taking off, putting on, putting on more and more and more. So Ezekiel had a review of what was going to happen before the dry bones. So then he knew that when God had prophesied that the people are going to have a new heart, new spirit. put within them in fact it says here in the 25th verse i will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean i will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols and boy were they idolaters moreover i will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you i will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a tender heart of flesh Then in verse 27 of Ezekiel 36, here it is, folks, the one living in you. And I will put my spirit within you and bring it about that you will walk in my statutes and be careful to follow my ordinances.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s good. Yes, it’s beautiful. So as we are learning to prophesy to the dry bones in ourselves, and those are the expectations and the traditions that we have in our mind. We might need to prophesy to the bones in us that believe our pastor should be leading our church differently. or that believes our mate should be loving us better, or our child should be honoring us. Those can be dry bones that we need to prophesy to and say, take out the stony, take out the old ideas, the old perspectives, the old traditions, take them out and refresh us, replace in us a new heart, a heart of flesh, a heart that loves you and you alone. Your ordinance is God. May you have your way in us.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. I believe, I’m going to get back to your friend who was really sick. She couldn’t even hold up her head. She couldn’t get out of bed. And you were prophesying over her when you saw her. When you saw her in the condition that she was in, really in dire need of something more than what she was getting at home, you prophesied over her.
SPEAKER 04 :
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 02 :
This is something that we started talking about yesterday, if we did not clarify that. And you may not have realized that. We don’t realize that. But when we’re talking positive, edifying substance into people’s hearts that’s going to lift them up, that’s prophesying.
SPEAKER 03 :
Whatever her expectations were, I was picking up on the fact that that was causing a discouragement, a disheartening, a hopelessness. And I realized, no, we are not hopeless in the Lord. This is not how we’re going down. This is not how we’re leaving this world. We’re not going out this way. And I was looking at my sister and saying, we have prayed so much together. Don’t give up. Have you given up? This is not how we want to leave the world that God has given us to speak over, to pray over, to prophesy over. We’re going to leave dancing, not in hopelessness and discouragement. So yes, we need to be able to say that to ourselves and to those we love around us. Now, some that we love around us might not want to hear that from us. So we pray quietly. We say it in our closet. That’s right. Our prayer, our war room, right? Our prayer closet. And we trust that God hears us and he knows that we are hearing him, that we are actually more attuned to what he wants in our lives. We are more concerned for what he desires to have in this world than what we desire. Right. Yes. And when we align ourselves that way, that’s when we know that the word has priority in us, not tradition. That’s right. So we live for the Lord. He is the one that we are made for and we don’t live for all the others. Those others are traditions, the traditions of man, traditions of religion, traditions of life. When we cling to these traditions, that’s when we risk canceling the word of God, nullifying it. We don’t want to do that. The word of God is what brought all things into existence. That’s right. The breath of God is what breathed all life into everything. We don’t want to make that void.
SPEAKER 02 :
We don’t want to cancel that. That’s right. Last night we were watching a precious movie, and it was about the Herdmans. And directed by Dallas Jenkins. The best Christmas pageant ever. Okay, the best Christmas pageant ever. Yes, it’s a classic book. And talk about tradition. This church, and boy, did it look like the traditional church. It was just the church on the corner, you know, stone, mortar.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, and with a traditional Christmas pageant that they have every year.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
And they were all going to have these wonderful outfits on. And, in fact, the sewing department was going to make new outfits for some of them. And here comes the, quote, worst family in that town. And it’s because, oh, they just couldn’t stand other people. They would throw rocks at them. Even the snowmen, they were demolished by these kids. And how did the older one here… Oh, at a movie theater. I’m trying to go back…
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, the story really is just talking about how we have this tradition that we want to stick to, and sometimes it leaves other people out. When the other people seem messy to us, that doesn’t fit with our tradition. But God doesn’t look at anyone and call them a mess and say, too messy, too messy for me, ever. He invites people in to what he’s doing. Mm-hmm. He invites people in. And and so that’s the kind of heart that I desire to have is to have a heart that invites. And I know I know that when some would look at a family like the Herdman family in the best Christmas pageant ever. Cute. It would be a little bit scary because they would set sheds on fire. They would hit people. They caused fights. They stole.
SPEAKER 02 :
Lots of damage. Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Damage to the community. But here was one heart saying, okay, they want to participate. They were the only ones who raised their hands to volunteer for these parts.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 03 :
They did. And so we’re going to include them. Mm-hmm. And it was the best Christmas pageant ever. If you haven’t seen the movie, if you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it. It’s so much fun to see what the power of the love of God does in us to squash tradition and to bring a fresh breath of hope and life. Any negative feelings that we might have, sadness, fear, frustration, pity, self-pity, or being offended. Being offended is a big one, too. When we have these negative feelings, these are feelings that are usually tied in with some kind of tradition. We did not get our expectation met. And that expectation is tied to the tradition of man. Yes, that’s right. We need to realize that because if we are holding on to these negative feelings, we are voiding the word of God. But if we choose not to react to these negative feelings, but instead be a responder. Respond to God’s love within you. Respond to his breath of life in you. Then we we can see his word becoming flesh in our home, in our church, in our relationships, even in our our health. we can see the power of God rising up in us. We might try to trace some of the negative feelings, you know, back to childhood difficulties. We can have people take tests, these Myers-Briggs diagnosis tests or Freudian impulse. We might look at those things and give them some credit and some clout, but what it really comes down to is a deficit of the spirit of that Jesus is the one that you were made for. And it’s the love of Jesus that we are longing for, not these tests, not trying to trace it back to childhood. We’re wanting to know the love of God. You know, God is love. Oh, praise God.
SPEAKER 02 :
The Bible is love because we aren’t born with love. Not the kind of love that he wants us to have. No, we’re born into sin. Absolutely. The word tells us that we’re born.
SPEAKER 03 :
All have come short of the glory of God. But God is love. And he has to be provoked to anger and frustration. That means you have to poke him and poke him and poke him. Provoking means it’s repeated, repeated, repeated. That’s what provoking is. You’re not provoked to anger when something happens one time and you just you’re triggered. That’s not provoking. That’s something that’s not provoked. It’s just it’s easily there. Well, anger does not come easily for our God. Yes. Did you know that? Yes. Love is what comes easily for our God. Loving us, each one of us, that comes easy for him. He doesn’t need any provoking to love. He only needs provoking to anger. But we, on the other hand, because we’re born into sin, we do not need to be provoked to anger. It’s there easy for us. Yes, thank you, Lord. We only need to be provoked to love. And so we do that. We continue to provoke by being on the air every day. We encourage and we keep reminding that we were made to love. We’re made in the image of God.
SPEAKER 02 :
It says in 1 John 4, Verse 18, that as he is, so are we in this world. That’s right. So we’ve got to copy him. We’ve got to make him our absolute example. It’s like at the cabinet meeting this morning, Kimberly. I just love to watch the cabinet meetings because they go all around the table, very open, very honest about everything to all the reporters. They’ve got all these mics hanging over the chairs. And I was thinking, what a great and glorious group of like-minded people. They all had the same focus that they’re there to make America better. And in the Lord Jesus, we need to have that kind of focus in the Spirit. Like-minded with Him. Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
And so that’s the new heart that Ezekiel 36 is talking about. That’s the new creation, the new heart that He’s put within us. That’s right. Yes. It’s what we were originally made for. We were made in His image, but because of the fall, because we’ve decided that we can make up our own mind of what we like, what our opinions are, what our agendas will be and our motives, we think our opinions should come first now instead of His. Because of that fall, we’re born into this opposite, contrasting image of God. And we don’t really know his love and his mercy and his grace until he does that work in us and puts that new heart in us. So it’s his peace, his mercy, his grace and compassion that we are seeking for with all of our heart. And, you know, he told us that we will seek it. With all of our hearts. So as you see those cabinet members around the table, they are seeking goodness. Oh, they are. And it’s not perfect because we are people and human beings are imperfect. But we continue to seek. That’s right. To seek the goodness, the peace, the mercy, the compassion, the kindness. To seek a peace that is lasting, everlasting, and a mercy that is eternal.
SPEAKER 02 :
Because he’s the Prince of Peace. He’s the one that truly gives us the peace that we long for and that we lack in this world. That peace that we think we have, it evaporates in just a moment of time. And so we’ve got to cling to him. Oh, friend, just cling to the Lord Jesus. He is the Prince of Peace. He said in John 14, verse 27, My peace I give to you. My peace I leave with you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. That’s what we’re saying to you today. Do not be afraid. Jesus is the stronger. He’s the champion. He’s the victor. That’s right. Praise the Lord.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, this season, let’s all decide that we’re going to keep the word of God, the word made flesh, that peace, the center of our hearts. And we will continue to seek for that peace. If we feel any stress, any anxiety, consider letting go of whatever it is that’s causing that, that’s causing the anxiety or the stress. Consider just letting that go and letting God be the peace in your heart this season.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you for listening to Call to Freedom with Barbara Carmack. You may get in touch with Barbara at Call to Freedom, Box 370367, 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 barbracarmack at freedomstreet.org. Until next time, remember, Jesus loves you, Barbara loves you, and take joy.
