Take A Moment…Be Still

SPEAKER 05 : 0:09

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 01 : 1:04

Welcome to Calda Freedom. What a wonderful day to be free. What a glorious day to live in a country where it’s freedom. I know there’s a lot going on right now, but you can walk out of your house, you know, lock the door, but you can walk out of your house and go anywhere you really want to go. Shopping, to eat, to the bank, to the grocery store. You can go anywhere you want to go. This country is wonderful, and that’s why so many people want to come here. The Lord who created you says, I have called you by name. You are mine. That’s what Isaiah 43 says. You have been called by God. Well, my mom and my dad. Nope. Your mom and dad got together, but it was God who created you. Put the DNA in you and the genes and everything you have. And it’s not J.E.A.N.S., and everything you have are from god your creator he loves you so much that he has more blessings for you than your faith could ever imagine and more joy than your heart could ever hold and friend i want to tell you faith is now it’s not tomorrow well i’ll do this tomorrow nope not tomorrow it’s like being born again well i don’t feel like it right now tomorrow you may not be here and you may not have made that decision to live for jesus so Boy, now is a good time. Today is the day of salvation. So God bless you. And know that even though the temperature is going to be really frigid, get as much done as you can today. For those of you who are in Denver at 1 o’clock when I’m on the program, And because Friday, the high is going to be 23. Saturday, it’s going to be 19. And I’m praying for the Broncos, too. I am to be on that field on Sunday with such frigid temperatures. I just can’t imagine. So God bless you and keep keep warm. Stay warm. Don’t go out if you don’t have to. Well, I just saw this really great outfit. Just stay home. That’s a hard thing to tell people, isn’t it, Kimberly?

SPEAKER 03 : 3:12

Well, I don’t know. You know, I’m around a lot of young people and they like being out in the cold. And I have one young person who’s traveling on the road today. She is headed into the negative temperatures up in North Dakota. So, you know, there are just some people just in their time of life that maybe need to stay home, but others that are ready to get out and adventure.

SPEAKER 01 : 3:35

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it’s like children after the snowstorm on Friday and Saturday. They’ll want to get on their sleds or do things out in the snow when the adults want to stay in and watch movies and watch sports.

SPEAKER 03 : 3:48

And so the adults really are just… Well, I did as a parent of a bunch of small kids. I wanted to stay in, but I was sacrificing my comfort level to just be out there with them and help them with their sleds and their tubes and just enjoy, find a place to go and and actually drive out in it and go down some hills with the sled. Those are great memories, so I’m glad that I didn’t choose to just stay inside and make my comfort be the plan for the day.

SPEAKER 01 : 4:24

That’s right, yes.

SPEAKER 03 : 4:26

I think the verse that you have for this week, 1 Chronicles 16, 9 says, actually folds really well into this whole idea. For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth, that he may strongly support those whose heart is completely His. And I think we forget that His heart loves to be with us. If we’re choosing to get out in that cold and frigid, He is with us. I do not have any worry or concern over my daughter who’s on the road today, heading into fargo that just got slammed with a lot of snow um you know but but i just am not concerned even though there’s high winds and the roads are not really clear yet i know that god is with her i know that he is holding her and protecting her and giving extra angels and And that’s the relationship that I have with him. He is likewise looking to and fro. He is looking for those who are turned toward him, who want more of him, who love to be in conversation with him, not just asking him for a wish list every day, which is kind of what our prayers end up looking like a lot of the time. But instead of just giving him a wish list, really sitting with him and leaning into those things that seem hard. You know, when I say I’m not worried about my daughter, I did a little bit of hard work. And I let go of my idea of how she probably needed to stay put as these storms were really moving in and moving through. And I leaned into that worry and that concern with Jesus. I leaned into it and I said, what am I really worried about? If I’m going to be honest, I’m worried that you’re not hearing my prayer. Oh, well, I don’t want that worry. I want to know that when I ask you to take care of my loved ones, you really are taking care of them. And I want to trust that and build my faith with that. And the way that he confirms his word, the way that he opens up more scriptures to us and lets us see, even Mark 4, I was looking at Mark 4, 35 through 41, and realizing that Jesus is in the boat and Jesus says, let’s go to the other side. And I picture my little, my grownup Hannah, but she’s still my little girl. I picture my little girl getting in her car and she is planning on getting to the other side. She’s coming from Tulsa, Oklahoma and going to Fargo, North Dakota, and she’s gonna make it to the other side.

SPEAKER 01 : 7:22

Yes, she is.

SPEAKER 03 : 7:24

I love when the Lord just meets me with a scripture verse and says, I’m going to get her there. There might be some wind, but she’s going to get there. Okay. All right. The disciples got to the other side. They might have been kind of upset for a little bit. Their world was rocked with the wind that was going on. And yet you were with them. And they just needed to be reminded how you are with us in the storm. Yes.

SPEAKER 01 : 7:53

Amen.

SPEAKER 03 : 7:53

That’s beautiful. So we had a really fun week as a family. Our youngest child turned 20. So he is no longer a teenager. And he turned 20 on the 20th. So it’s already been two days ago. But we turned it into a week-long celebration. Birthday week. Yes. Birthday week. A birthday week. Yeah. Since his oldest sister came into town for that. And… know this, I want to look at the verse again, the verse of the week, 1 Chronicles 16 9, that the eyes of the Lord are looking for people, 2 Chronicles, I wrote it down wrong, and it is second, yes, I didn’t put the extra slash right there, thank you. 2 Chronicles 16 9, the eyes of the Lord, that he is looking for those who are looking for the light because he is light. And I don’t know about you, but I, as a younger person, I was fascinated with spooky things and scary things, things in the dark. I was fascinated by them. I didn’t necessarily avoid them during the time of Halloween. I would visit haunted houses at a certain time in my life, back in my teen. And my kids still enjoy that kind of thing. One of the things that they did while they were celebrating Levi’s birthday was to book an escape room. And if you haven’t heard about escape rooms, those are places that you go visit. They have kind of a mystery going on in the room. They’ve got some rules, you know, but they… basically lock you, not lock lock, but they put you in a room with a group of people and you have to figure out the mystery. And the two escape rooms that my kids chose, one was blackbeards, it was a pirate theme, and it was very much in the dark. And the other one was a haunted house, very much in the dark. And they had, along the way of the mysteries, they had these jump scares, where something would happen that was really loud during a quiet, you know, part of looking, and it was really loud, and it would cause everybody to jump. Or scream.

SPEAKER 02 : 10:19

And for some reason, all four of my kiddos, they just love, they like it when their heart is racing and something gives them an excuse to scream.

SPEAKER 01 : 10:31

Yep, yep. That’s young person, young people.

SPEAKER 03 : 10:37

So there can be a fascination with things that are in the dark. And I would call, you know, some of that is just fun. But some of the things that human beings do in the dark is sin. And the Lord is looking back and forth all throughout the earth, looking for those who will turn from the sin, who will turn from the dark toward the light. You know, and… I’m not trying to connect what my kids did to sin because I know they had a really good time and there was some good bonding going on. I am just wanting to focus in on how our Lord is looking for people whose hearts are like Him. So in the darkest parts of our lives, in those moments that we feel like we’re lost, or maybe surrounded by sin. And it could be sin originating in us that we’re picking up on, or sin of other people that are sinning against us. Our Lord is looking for those who are not going to like eye for an eye, I’ll get you back for that, not that attitude. He’s looking for those who will turn to the light in the midst of the darkness.

SPEAKER 01 : 12:01

Yes. In 1 Thessalonians 4, in the third verse, It says God’s will is for you to be set apart for him in holiness and that you keep yourselves unpolluted from sexual defilement. And we know that’s one of the things that can really get us off track with God.

SPEAKER 03 : 12:21

Yeah, we could call that dark right there.

SPEAKER 01 : 12:23

Yes, God’s will is for us to be set apart in holiness and keep ourselves unpolluted. And that’s what we’re going for. Some of us, it takes us longer to get rid of the junk. But we’re going in the sight of the light that you’re talking about, Kimberly. We’re going toward that light. Right.

SPEAKER 03 : 12:45

And all it takes is desire on our part. When I say all it takes, we are the ones who turn. We turn from the dark to the light. We turn away from that human tendency to want, you know, if you’ve been slapped, you slap back. And I watched my kids as they were working together. They’re not always supportive of one another. I know. They don’t. always honor each other in the way that they’re trying to play a game together. Our family has just as much opportunity of becoming offended with one another as any other family. What I do see in my kiddos, they’re actually so used to possibly offending one another that And not working well together. They’re used to that. And so as individuals, I’ve seen them do a lot of work just choosing not to be offended. And that’s the part that I really see we need help with. You know, we… We’re human. We can’t make ourselves better. It’s God who makes us better. We simply choose that that’s what we want. And as we keep choosing that, he keeps looking our way and making that an available process. He puts steps in front of us and people in front of us that help us, those that will mentor, those that will show us a good path, and even situations that challenge us. so that we can make decisions to be patient, decisions to be gentle and kind, decisions to approach people with love and peace instead of with harm and anger.

SPEAKER 01 : 14:40

That’s right. It says in the ninth verse of 1 Thessalonians 4, There’s no need for anyone to say much to you about loving your fellow believers, for God is continually teaching you to unselfishly love one another. See, God’s our teacher. Holy Spirit is our teacher. And I am reading this from the Passion Translation. But that’s so important that as we’re maturing, as we’re growing up with that spirit of holiness, God is teaching us to love one another. So that love, most of the time, doesn’t come automatically. It’s something that we learn from God.

SPEAKER 02 : 15:19

Exactly. I mean, I’m giggling because I just saw my family and they do love each other.

SPEAKER 03 : 15:26

Even when you put people together that do love each other, something can happen where that human, the human flesh will rise up and react. And in that reaction, it’s not very loving. So that’s how we want to be turning away from reacting and turning toward the way that the Lord has asked us to be in His image, to become like Him. And it is so hard that we do need His help. That’s not something that comes automatically. Like you said, it’s not automatic for a human. We need His help.

SPEAKER 01 : 16:14

We sure do.

SPEAKER 03 : 16:16

And I’m so thankful that my adult children have learned how to lean into the fruits of the Spirit and really rely on the goodness of God to guide them and direct them instead of being reactive. But one of the things that happened in one of those escape rooms after A we call them jump scares after a jump scare happened. Each one of them were kind of shaky, you know, and they still had to look for clues and they had to go into another darker area to look for the clues. So they were expecting another scare. But there was nothing there. And Levi took the lead, my youngest one, the birthday boy. And he took the lead and he was kind of peeking around the corner and coming back and peeking and coming back. You know, he was real tentative about it because he was thinking something might be there. But one of his siblings behind him grabbed his waist and yelled really loud at the same time and kind of pushed him and yelled. Not strongly, but he was already kind of shaky. So it caused him to scream. You know, we do these things to each other. And his scream was reactionary. And where that would make some people very mad, Levi, he laughed. And even afterwards, he was telling the story about it and laughing about it. You know, sometimes we can take things. I might have been one that would have taken that too seriously and turned around and said, don’t do that to me. Yes. But, you know, if we if we can picture that. God, our Father is not one who gets offended at things like that. And I was watching Levi, and Levi was not one bit offended. He was just laughing, just laughing. And taking those moments that we might be offended and saying, you know what, I don’t want to take this so seriously that it’s going to ruin a relationship. And I really want to learn how to laugh, how to have joy in the midst of something that might be rather dark, in the midst of what we might call a storm. I want to learn how to have joy. So when I was looking at Mark 4, 35 through 41, I was kind of just, I don’t know, reading it like it was the first time, even though this is one of my favorite passages, and I’ve read it a lot, and I’ve talked about it quite a bit. But starting in verse 35 of Mark 4, it says, On that day when evening had come, Jesus said to them, Let us go over to the other side. And leaving the multitude of people, they took him along with them, just as he was in the boat, and other boats were also with them. And there arose a fierce gale of wind, and the waves were breaking over the boat so much that the boat was being filled up with water. And Jesus himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they awoke him and said to him, teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? They thought they were dying and they’re yelling at him. And being aroused, Jesus rebuked the wind and said to the sea, hush, be still. Other translations say peace, be still. Some say silence, be still. And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm. And he said to them, why are you so timid? How is it that you have no faith? No faith. I really like this question because I think when we as humans become reactionary and we’re reacting to the storms around us, we’re reacting to how other people are treating us, reacting to whatever seems difficult, hard, offensive. Dishonoring, disrespectful. We think we deserve to be treated better. Whatever that is, we react as human beings. If we could just calm that reaction. we could lean in a little bit to the fruits of the spirit and just say, you know what, Lord, I want to be made in your image, not in the human image that reacts so much, but in the fruits of the spirit. I really want to know your image here and find a way to Be at peace, to love those around you, to have joy and laugh like Levi did. Just laugh it off and not be offended. Maybe sometimes offenses come because we’ve got expectations. Maybe those disciples in the boat with Jesus expected that they wouldn’t run into a storm because Jesus is the one who told them, let’s get in the boat and let’s go to the other side. Wouldn’t Jesus know if there was a storm coming? He’s the son of God. Why would he tell us to get in a boat and go out on the water if he knew a storm was coming? Yes. So that might even cause offense in a human being. The disciples here in this passage, they’re coming to him and saying, don’t you care? This is a bad storm. We’re dying in it. Don’t you even care? That is a very reactionary human way of approaching the Son of God. And here we talked about in 2 Chronicles 16, 9, the Lord is looking. He’s looking for those who aren’t going to be reactionary. He’s looking for those whose hearts are turned toward Him, whose hearts are becoming like Him, those who have the desire to be full of the fruits of the Spirit. That’s who He’s looking for. And He sees every single one of us. He sees us when we are reacting poorly, when we are offended in a situation. He’s just looking for any desire at all. Do you desire to not be reactionary? Do you desire to be more like me? Because I’ll come alongside you and I’ll help you with that. And I believe that this storm where the disciples have Jesus in the boat with them is a perfect opportunity to point out how humans are reacting and how Jesus is saying, where is your faith? How is it that you don’t have faith right here? I’m in the boat with you. So letting Him teach us, like you were saying from 1 Thessalonians 4, letting Him teach us. We don’t need other people to teach us anymore. We need the Lord to come alongside us and teach us to love one another and to stay in that love in a way that’s peaceful and calm. that can speak. Jesus just stood right up and spoke to the wind and the waves. And he said, peace, hush, be still. And it just died down and everything became perfectly calm. That was an example of a human being, Jesus, who was fully God, full of the fruits of the spirit, rising up in the midst of a storm and saying, we can speak peace to this right now.

SPEAKER 01 : 24:19

Mm hmm.

SPEAKER 03 : 24:20

Oh, I long to be like that.

SPEAKER 01 : 24:22

And that’s the last of Chapter 4. And the very beginning of Chapter 5 is, they came to the other side. No injuries. Nothing happened. They came to the other side. And that just thrills me. It truly does. It’s wonderful.

SPEAKER 03 : 24:38

You know, I’m glad you brought that up because they do come to the other side and they’re in the country of the garrisons. And this is immediately where a man comes from the tombs with an unclean spirit. I really believe that that storm was a spiritual storm and it was trying to prevent this man who had these unclean spirits where Jesus rebuked them and he was set free. I believe that that spiritual storm was trying to keep the humans that could set that man free from getting to him. You know, there’s just always a spiritual storm Well, that’s how I see all these stories. I don’t just see the stories as happening literally, but I think there are spiritual storms and there are metaphors in it. And there’s always something preventing wanting to be in the way, obstacles being thrown up in the way of the freedom that God has for his people.

SPEAKER 01 : 25:43

Amen. Thank you, Kimberly, for letting us know a little bit about your family this week and also encouraging us to be in Jesus. That’s the only way, folks. Since Jesus lives within us, if you know Jesus as Savior and Lord, he’s within you. Since Jesus lives within us, the care we show to others. is a reflection of his love. And the blessings we bring are an extension of who he is. So as John said in 1 John 4, as he is, so are we in the world. That’s what we need to be. We need to be like Jesus in this world.

SPEAKER 03 : 26:20

Great way to wrap that up. That was well said. Thank you.

SPEAKER 01 : 26:23

Oh, thank you. Good scripture. Yes. And everybody stay warm. God bless you and take joy.

SPEAKER 1 : 26:49

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SPEAKER 05 : 27:10

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SPEAKER 1 : 28:14

So