The Power of Partnership and Yoke of Freedom

SPEAKER 01 : 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 02 : 1:04

Welcome to Call to Freedom on this wonderful day on the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. Today we honor the 500,000 who gave their lives. Isn’t that an unbelievable amount? 500,000 who gave their lives for our freedom and the many wounded who came home after World War II. And we have those wounded vets today in our nation. And praise God for wounded warriors and tunnel to towers, those people that are helping the wounded vets in our country today and caring for them. It’s just wonderful to know that God has supplied the needs for so many people. I know I support tunnels to towers, excuse me. And they supply mortgage-free homes for those widows of soldiers that have died and also for those who are wounded, gravely wounded. And they’re supplying mortgage-free homes. So praise the Lord for that. We have a President today. who is wise in counsel and mighty in delivering his messages to the people. He loves America. I’m so grateful. I heard an interview by Lara Trump with Elon Musk, and he was talking about not only doing what we’re seeing him do with Doge, which he’s going to depart from being such a major part of Doge, and he’s going to be centered more on the Tesla, the automobile, but he was also saying he has men, scientists, working in the NeuroLink, N-E-U-R-O Link, part of his organization, that are going to be studying implants into people who are blind and people who are deaf so they can hear and see again. Oh, Kimberly, this is amazing. It’s amazing to see what’s going on in our country. And just this morning, I heard where President Trump is going to reestablish Alcatraz. Oh, yeah. He’s always got an idea here, going a mile a minute with his ideas. And he’s got a group of people that can actually do it. Right. They were talking to one senator today, and they said, well, who could we get to rebuild or remodel the Alcatraz? And he says, well, we’ve got the greatest architect there. ever has built buildings, and that’s Donald Trump. So it’s just exciting to see what’s going on in America. It is.

SPEAKER 03 : 3:44

And he has so many contacts. It’s wonderful to see how he’s reaching out to others and getting other people involved.

SPEAKER 02 : 3:50

Yes. Well, you are hearing the voice of my daughter, Kimberly, who lives in Broken Arrow. Arizona. Oklahoma.

SPEAKER 01 : 3:58

Yes.

SPEAKER 02 : 3:59

And it’s interesting to note that she loves to come to the meetings. And we’re going to have a meeting this Saturday. It starts at 10 o’clock. And so you’re planning on being at the meeting. I am. Yeah. So that’s going to be really fun, having the meeting. And we’re going to have wonderful music. And we’re not going to have a Bible study this Saturday. Kimberly is going to give her testimony. So if you’d like to listen to… more of God’s wonderful provision over her life. You can come on Saturday at 10 o’clock. Call me if you’d like to make reservations for that meeting at 1-877-917-7256. And we’re going to have lunch on the patio. Hopefully, I’m praying that the roofers will be done with a roof. Although it’s going to be rainy tomorrow and Wednesday, I am praying that the roof will be done so we won’t be hearing hammers going on on Saturday. So pray for that if you’re going to come to the meeting. It’s been exciting. It’s going to be good, however it turns out. That’s right.

SPEAKER 03 : 5:03

And I’m not going to promise that I won’t be putting some Bible study into my testimony. Absolutely. You are a Bible-walking person. Absolutely. Well, and it’s only because of the Word of God that I can say that I didn’t just survive. I overcame the things that happened in my life. And this isn’t just in the last… you know, six, seven years where maybe you listeners have heard some of that testimony, but starting all the way back 30, 35 years ago, um, there, there was great loss, great loss and a lot of trauma and being able to talk about that and see what God has done to use that for his benefit and glory, but not just his mine. Um, I like who I am because of what I went through. Yes. Amen. And I think that’s what we want to let people know about is that we don’t have to resist or try to prevent what’s happening in our life. That’s uncomfortable. Yes, it’s uncomfortable. I understand some of it is tragic. Some of it does produce some trauma. Life is hard. But we don’t have to try to prevent it. We don’t have to try to avoid it. We can trust that God will work something great. And that’s what we want to talk about.

SPEAKER 02 : 6:24

Yes. In last week, we had Galatians 6, 9, which was our verse, our memory verse. And I love that because it says, do not grow weary. in well doing and some of you have grown weary and we need that word of God to sustain us and also our friends to build us up and come alongside and say we love you and you can do this be not weary in well doing for in due season if you don’t faint you will reap a great harvest and I want to see you all of you listening today having great harvests in your life and it’s going to come it’s coming yes amen yes

SPEAKER 03 : 7:00

And so then we were reading this morning in Matthew 11 verses 28 through 30. And we’ve visited this scripture so many times. We were reading it in the message translation. And Jesus says, are you tired, burned out? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace, unforced rhythms of grace. We don’t have to force our path in this life. We don’t have to force it to go a certain direction. We just don’t have to do that when we follow him in the unforced rhythms of grace and it’s grace upon grace upon grace. Overflowing grace that we receive. It’s wave upon wave upon wave. Yes.

SPEAKER 02 : 7:58

And we’ve grown up having yokes around our necks for the most part by religion, by a humanism that’s taught in this country. It binds us. It really does. Yeah. And I think wonderful anointing.

SPEAKER 03 : 8:13

Right. You brought up yoke, I think, because in these verses in the New American Standard, in the King James, it says, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. So we’re reading from the message translation. Learn how I do this with the unforced rhythms of grace, because my yoke is easy. My burden is light. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely freely. Yes.

SPEAKER 02 : 8:43

Now, in the Old Testament, they had yokes, especially Israel was yoked by all these heathen countries that had come and defeated them at certain times. But in Isaiah 10, verse 27, it says that anointing will remove the burden, burden that has around most people’s necks. And it will destroy the yoke, remove the burden and destroy the yoke, the anointing from Jesus Christ. And that’s what we’re talking about today, Kimberly.

SPEAKER 03 : 9:12

Yes, it is.

SPEAKER 02 : 9:13

That anointing.

SPEAKER 03 : 9:14

Yes. And so we wanted to actually define yoke so that we can all see what that is, because you might be thinking of it as a subservient, you know, a nation coming in and making slaves of people. And that’s the yoke that’s on them. Or you might be thinking of a yoke as something where two animals are yoked together with a, it used to be a wooden piece, a device that was placed on their necks so that they would be bound together. And it was also the name of a cross piece on the head of a boat’s rudder. That’s interesting. Yeah, a yoke, it has everything to do with being able to control the direction of something that’s bigger. Yes.

SPEAKER 02 : 10:01

You remember when Jeremiah was put into these yokes that he could not move. I mean, when you’re put into a yoke by a nation that is fierce and overwhelming, they did this. And it’s very hard to move when you’ve got a yoke. But when you’ve got a yoke of a boat or a yoke of an airplane, that is really something that will direct that airplane or that boat to move smoothly through the water or through the air. Or if it’s broken. Oh, yeah. If it’s broken, yes.

SPEAKER 03 : 10:42

and just stiff and frozen, then that yoke is preventing the movement of the boat. It’s preventing the movement of the airplane. So that’s what we want to get in our minds is what a yoke is.

SPEAKER 02 : 10:56

Now, if you’re yoked together in a marriage with an unbeliever, hello, it’s going to be difficult. One’s going to go in one direction and you’re going to go in another. And You actually said, Kimberly, this morning that the definition of yoke is like a marriage. It’s a joining two.

SPEAKER 03 : 11:14

Part of that definition refers to marriage. Yes. Right. And so when there’s a joining together of two, the yoke… will either try to freeze up one of them or both from being able to move, to live and move and be free in life. That yoke will either prevent or it will give freedom. So if you think of a yoke as being the neck on your body, the neck on your body is joining your head with your body. So the neck is that joining piece. And when your neck has any kind of difficulty in movement, when you’ve got a stiff neck, you know, if you’ve ever had a stiff neck, you know that that impairs your movements. Yes. you’re no longer really free to move. So imagine if the neck has a choice of whether or not to let your head move or to freeze it up. And if your neck just chose on you randomly, yeah, I don’t want to allow that. I don’t want to allow you to look to the right today. And now, yeah, tomorrow, I don’t want you looking down. So don’t look down. Well, that would make it kind of hard to see obstacles in your path when you’re walking. Great difficulty, yes. So we’re using our imagination here to… To see that a neck is very important in its movements and know that we want it to have freedom. We want our neck to be free so that it will move our head where it needs to go. Mm-hmm. This is how Jesus was thinking. This is how Jesus did life. When he said, I’ll show you how to take a real rest, walk with me and work with me, watch how I do it. He’s really saying, I am a yoke. I make decisions that are free. I’m humble. I’m meek. I’m lowly. I’m not puffed up with pride. I’m not trying to make my decisions be your decisions and control you. I am letting things happen in this life. And I’m trusting Father God will be the one to work it all out.

SPEAKER 02 : 13:45

That’s right. In the Old Testament, the yoke was made to limit and to actually end movement in the captors. In the New Testament, Jesus is bringing, you’re talking about imagination. Kimberly, we need our imaginations to tell us that he’s wanting us to yoke up with him. Yes. And not follow him anymore. This scripture right here says, I want you to come with me or be with me.

SPEAKER 04 : 14:13

Yes.

SPEAKER 02 : 14:13

So that yoke is the two of you together. Yes. Together. Right. In cooperation, in unity.

SPEAKER 03 : 14:19

Right. Yeah. And that’s such a good point. The Old Testament at Mount Sinai, they were given the people of God were given the law. And that was a yoke that was quite burdensome because there was no way they were going to be able to fulfill all of that law. It was impossible. Jesus came to show us that his yoke is easy. His burden is light. That is to have faith. Yes. Have faith that it’s going to work out. You don’t have to be in control. Jesus did not come here to show us how to be in control. He showed us how to not be in control.

SPEAKER 02 : 14:59

Yes. I was telling you today as we were listening to them scraping all of the shingles off and everything I was saying. A few years ago, Kimberly, I would have been a nervous Nellie. I would have just been at the table. I hope nothing happens. And we even saw one of the recessed lightings drop from the ceiling. And we saw paint coming off of the skylight. I’m going, oh, okay. All right, Lord. I know you’re going to take care of this. We also recognized that years before, we would have said, oh, I hope they don’t damage the roof. Oh, I hope they don’t. Oh, I hope they don’t do this. Don’t do that. Today, we were praying for their welfare. Father God, bless those workers on the roof. Bless them with strength. Bless them with a knowledge of your love, Holy Spirit, so they could know God is there for them.

SPEAKER 03 : 15:51

Yes. Even praying that they would feel the light and the love of God while they are on our roof.

SPEAKER 02 : 15:57

Yes, absolutely. Yes. So we can change our attitude from one of being nervous about what’s going on and one of being peaceful with Jesus and the yoke that we have attached to him. He wants us to be with him. Right.

SPEAKER 03 : 16:13

When we’re nervous, we have a tendency to want to take control and control the situation so that we won’t feel uncomfortable. as nervous. It’s really just fallacy thinking, though. We can’t do anything about it to make it better. But God can. That’s right. And when Jesus shows us how to wear the yoke the way he wears it, he shows us how he is connecting heaven to earth, and he wants us to copy him. I find that an interesting way to think about it because in the Hebrew language, the letter Vav is the sixth letter of the Alephbet. Vav is a, it’s a nail. It’s representative of something that attaches something. It’ll attach a paper to a wall. It’ll attach, that nail will attach one piece of wood to another piece of wood. And being the sixth letter, it’s also the one that represents man. Man was created on the sixth day. And so a vav represents man. And man was originally created to connect heaven to earth.

SPEAKER 02 : 17:25

Oh, thank you, Lord.

SPEAKER 03 : 17:26

Jesus came and showed us how to do that to connect heaven to earth. We let go of our control, our ideas, opinions, agendas. I talk about those a lot. We let go of those in order to let God have his way. And sometimes the circumstances are really difficult. And like you said, they’ll either make us nervous, worried, stressed out. They can make us angry.

SPEAKER 02 : 17:55

And they can affect our physical bodies. Definitely. All of this stress, all of this nervousness is not something that God has ordained for us. That’s right. He wants us so blessed and at peace with joy and righteousness forever and ever. That’s the kingdom of God, Kimberly. That’s right. Romans 14, 17 says… It’s not in the eating and the drinking, but the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER 03 : 18:20

Yes.

SPEAKER 02 : 18:21

And I am bound to learn that. I am asking God to give me such a peace and a joy that at the end of my life, I will be more enthused about life and living than I was when I was 20 and 30 years old. Yes. Isn’t that? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER 03 : 18:38

Right. I don’t want to go back to the 20s and 30s because I don’t see the kind of peace and rest that I’m entering into now. And if we’re really paying attention, we’ll see that Jesus is never trying to make a life for himself based on his own opinions and ideas, based on his own dreams. He is always listening to the Father and listening. Instead of making a nice home and comfortable transportation and marriage and family his goals, and we don’t know, maybe he did have a human desire for those things.

SPEAKER 02 : 19:13

Yes. Oh, I know he did. Yesterday we were meeting with a dear friend. She had driven a car for, it was 299,000 miles. Mm-hmm. on her car and she had been so faithful and a wonderful she’s a wonderful power partner to call to freedom and her son her wonderful son and darren had prayed for him years ago that he would be loosed from the panic attacks that he was having he was just in his early teens And Darren gave him scriptures to read. And in two weeks, that boy was free from that yoke, that yoke of panic attacks. And he gave his mother a Tesla. So we walked out to the Tesla to see. And she said, girls, he even gave me a charger for the Tesla. So our children can grow up to be wonderful fruit of the vine as they grow up. They can.

SPEAKER 03 : 20:09

And when we make that our goal… Then that’s when we get in trouble because if we keep that as our goal and our dream and we hold on to it, trying to control that and make that happen. I think you brought her up because she’s a wonderful example of how she wasn’t even looking for another car and here she got blessed with what she needed. Our Heavenly Father knows what we need when we need it. And we don’t have to be worried and concerned. And she wasn’t going from one dealership to the next and trying to figure out how am I going to afford this. And she didn’t even have to. That’s right.

SPEAKER 02 : 20:46

You know what blessed me is that whenever we had a problem or an issue, My sons and I would get on the floor and we pray. We pray this thing through. Yeah, that’s what she was. So we don’t have any disruptions in our spirits. Yeah. It’s beautiful. That was her testimony.

SPEAKER 03 : 21:02

Yes, it was great. Yeah. And so today, when you hear, this is what we were talking about last week in Hebrews 4-7. Today, when you hear his voice, don’t harden your heart and say, no, I have a better way of doing this. I have a better way of finding myself a car. I have a better way of getting into a home.

SPEAKER 02 : 21:23

I know people who go from dealership to dealership, Kimberly.

SPEAKER 03 : 21:26

Oh, well, sure. There are people who just love their toys. My son had a friend who I think every six months he was in a Porsche, and then six months later in a Mercedes, and six months later he was in a BMW, and six months later he was just having a ball.

SPEAKER 02 : 21:42

Yes, absolutely. And what did it do to Jonathan? Was it hard for him to see that? Well, sure. Oh, yeah. He’s young.

SPEAKER 03 : 21:52

He’s young, yeah. And he wanted to see that. But he knows. He knows that he needs to remain, just remain open to what God wants to him, remain surrendered to what the Lord has in store for him. And that’s the yoke that we want to see, is the kind of yoke that brings rest to us. Mm-hmm. What we don’t realize is as human beings, when we come up with our own plans and we are so determined to make that plan happen, that is the yoke that keeps our neck stiff. It keeps us from being able to let the head turn and just observe. There’s different ways to do this. I have different paths that I might be able to take. It doesn’t have to be this one way. Yes. And That one-way idea that gets in our head, that’s what can actually cause the grief and the sorrow and depression and discouragement and hopelessness. But Jesus came to set us free from that. Hallelujah. And that’s what we want, is we want the freedom from our own ideas.

SPEAKER 02 : 23:06

It’s like if I were nervous about all this thing going on at my home, I would be out there saying, whoa, don’t put it on the rose bushes. Don’t get it on this plant. Don’t get it on that plant. Oh, be sure you do this. And that’s the worst thing that workers, especially experienced workers, have with a homeowner coming out and telling them what to do. They know how to do it. They do.

SPEAKER 03 : 23:33

They know what they’re doing. They’ve done many, many of these projects, and they know what they’re doing. They’re not there trying to make a mess. They’re not there trying to do damage to the property.

SPEAKER 02 : 23:46

They are there. There’s the difference between that carnal, fleshly desire to have it your way and that heavenly yoking up with Jesus. Right. That wonderful yoke with Jesus. I choose the yoke. I choose his peaceful, wonderful yoke.

SPEAKER 03 : 24:03

Yes, wanting to do life his way instead of our way. And I think we’ll be able to talk about this more tomorrow. We did get the idea of following what the word of God gave us, following the law. We got the idea of following it so that we would be blessed. From the word. It says that in the word. If you follow this, if you walk in my commandments, you will be blessed. It does say that. We’ll see that in Deuteronomy 29 tomorrow. But what we don’t realize is that we got our eyes on the blessing. ah yes instead of following him that’s right and that’s the big key right there anything that we see that we’re getting our eyes on to be blessed and now i’m not saying that i don’t want you to be blessed that’s not what i’m saying i want that for you god wants that for you he just doesn’t want that to be your number one reason for following him yes Following him is to become the love of your life. That’s right. That’s why the first commandment is thou shalt have no other gods before me. Right. And so when we are thinking about having a better life, yeah, that’s a good goal. Sure. We all want a better life. God wants that for us. But I want to challenge each one of us, instead of looking to having a better life, look to have a better love.

SPEAKER 02 : 25:36

Oh, that’s beautiful.

SPEAKER 03 : 25:37

A better love for the one who created us and be willing to be that connector between heaven and earth. He wants to connect us and let us see heaven now and enter rest with him today. Today, when you hear him invite you to rest, do not harden your heart and do not stiffen your neck. Don’t take the old yoke upon you, but have his yoke so that you can walk in freedom. We’ll talk more about that tomorrow. But do remember that we have a meeting coming up this Saturday. Call us for reservations. 1-877-917-7256. We would love to see you there. And I would love to share my testimony with you in a way that’s meaningful, that brings you hope for your future.

SPEAKER 02 : 26:30

God bless you and keep you and take joy.

SPEAKER 1 : 26:54

877-917-7256

SPEAKER 01 : 27:14

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.

SPEAKER 1 : 28:18

Thank you.