Episode 02: Carlos Whittaker the “Wild”
Transcript
Patsy: Hi, I’m Patsy Clairmont, and I’m a Boomer.
Andrew: I’m Andrew Greer, and I’m a Millennial.
Patsy: And we’re both a mess, but we’re glad to be here because this is Bridges.
Andrew: Spiritual Connections Through Generational Conversations.
Patsy: I’m excited. Carlos Whittaker is gonna be here in person for us to interview. He is a dynamic speaker. He is an exciting influencer. He is an accomplished writer. And his lasting offering on the marketplace is Enter Wild, where we get to exchange a mild and mundane faith in the places that it’s mild and mundane for a life with an uncontainable God. He comes with tremendous energy, and he is a great guy who understands my area from a lifetime of struggle with anxiety. So I’m looking forward to this, Andrew.
Andrew: Oh, me too. He is a spunky fellow, and we know something about spunk, don’t we? I love Carlos. I love his conversations. But you know where I first heard of Carlos? You know, his first foray into any kind of larger platform was he was this internet sensation overnight because he posted this video of his girls and his boy — two girls and a boy — in the backseat of his car singing along to “all the single ladies.” Your favorite song. Beyonce. It’s a hilarious video. You’ll have to look it up because he made his son cry. His son was singing with all his heart to “all the single ladies,” and Carlos, his father, said, “You can never be a single lady.” It’s a great video. It’s so much fun. But Carlos is full of conversation that is not only funny but very thought provoking and meaningful, so we are thrilled to have him on Bridges today.
Patsy: And we cannot do these conversations unless we have a bridge, and the bridge is so helpful to get from this place to that place. But there are some bridges that I find highly intimidating.
Andrew: Such as?
Patsy: Well, the name is gonna be quite interesting — I know I’ll say it wrong — but it is in Japan, and it is the Eshima Ohashi bridge, I think, and here’s the frightening thing about it. If you were to stand below it and look up, or be at the top and look down, it looks like a roller coaster, and hello — I don’t do roller coasters. You know that, Andrew. I don’t like the high places. But it really fits our guest today because the name of his latest offering on the marketplace is Enter Wild. Now, tell me, Carlos Whittaker, is this going to be a roller coaster?
Carlos: Absolutely. I actually wrote this knowing you hated roller coasters.
Andrew: Thank you, Carlos.
Carlos: You’re welcome. I wrote this book specifically for this podcast for you to have to get into wild a little bit, Patsy.
Andrew: You’re so accommodating.
Carlos: You’re welcome, guys. You’re welcome.
Andrew: I love that. That’s a big, broad, bold statement, but what is behind it, at least the heart of Carlos, behind that title Enter Wild?
Carlos: The subtitle, it’s funny as an author, I always need my subtitle to help explain my titles. Enter Wild really takes people into the subtitle: Exchange a Mild and Mundane Faith for Life with an Uncontainable God. I’m the generation in between the two of you, right?
Andrew: An X-er.
Carlos: I’m an X-er, right. I grew up in the South in a Southern Baptist church that was like Father, Son, and Baptist hymnal. The Holy Spirit was kind of left out of the conversation. It wasn’t until I turned 40 and began to explore maybe the afternoon of my faith that I realized, Oh my gosh, I’ve missed so much. I finally got a taste of what Holy Spirit was. I finally got a taste of conversational intimacy with Holy Spirit. And I’m not kidding you when I tell you, listen, I’ve worked in mega churches. I’ve worked in churches my entire life. I’ve been a worship leader, signed recording artist, doing the Christian thing, professional thing, for a long time. And not until three years ago did I finally, I think, realize what John 10:10 really means, what life to the full really means.
I think that through no one’s intended reasoning, I was only given like 60 percent of what my faith could look like. And John 10:10 doesn’t say “A thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. I’ve come that they may have life in Heaven and have it to 60 percent.” But I feel like so many Christians are there. They just kinda stop. They’re like, Well, you know what? Things are better now. So when things get better, we just kinda coast, and I realized, Oh man, 60 percent isn’t what God promised me I could get. It’s a hundred.
So taking people from 60 to 100 is when things start getting wild. When you start hearing the voice of God, when you start lowering the volume of life, letting the volume of God come up, explode in your life, then He starts telling you things.
The book’s divided into three sections: Enter Rest, Enter War, and Entire Wild. So you move from hearing the voice of God into now doing something with the voice of God, which is the warfare piece, and then into the miracles, signs, and wonders, into those spaces where the wild happens. And so, gosh, this book has been… I never intended to write a book like this.
I’m a baby charismatic guy. You know that scene in Chronicles of Narnia, whether it’s the book or the movie, where Lucy goes to the wardrobe and she enters and she stumbles into Narnia. It’s this magical land, and then she sprints back through the wardrobe to go tell her siblings, and they think she’s crazy. And not only do they think she’s crazy, they think she’s so crazy that they go and tell the professor that she lives with that she’s crazy. Then the professor says, “Has she ever lied to you before?” And they were like, “Well, no.” And he’s like, “Well then, maybe what she’s saying is true.” And I feel right now like I’ve stumbled into Narnia, and I’ve come back through the wardrobe, and I’m trying to explain to my more conservative evangelical friends that this place is real. Come over.
That’s really what the book is. It’s been out for about 10 weeks now, and it’s just been so fun to watch the reaction of people that have read it and just to see where it’s taking them. That’s probably a little longer than you wanted, but that’s the heart of the book.
Patsy: No, that’s great. And when you talk about Narnia, you’re coming right down my lane. I love that movie. In fact, a wardrobe like she stepped into is in my living room at home. We call it Narnia.
Andrew: She steps into it every night.
Patsy: You said conversational intimacy. Would you define that for our people?
Carlos: Absolutely. Holy Spirit and our prayer is not supposed to be just us petitioning, just us asking and hoping, shooting blankly into the sky. I honestly believe now — again, I’m not a seminary graduate. I just have the beta test of my life, and what I’ve seen me beta testing the last four years is that when I ask Holy Spirit a specific question, I actually get a specific answer. And so this is where that conversational intimacy begins to develop where I realize, Oh, I don’t just have to pray for things I need. I can go through my day asking Holy Spirit questions and getting answers.
Suddenly, there’s this intimacy that begins to form that I never had before because I didn’t realize that my relationship with God was supposed to be this intimate communication, not just, again, me throwing a wide net hoping that something lands in the net and I can call that part of the answered prayer. No, I'm throwing tiny nets. I’m throwing like a 6X fishing line into the ocean of God, and He sends a trout every single time. It’s that specific where my prayer life has gotten.
“When I ask Holy Spirit a specific question, I actually get a specific answer.”
So conversational intimacy, and I got into it in the book, with Holy Spirit is something that everybody has access to. But Patsy, the reason why I feel most people — and again, I’ll talk about myself — are scared of that — we’re scared of asking God specific questions — because we’re scared what if He doesn’t give me a specific answer. And so that’s where we’re scared of that because then if that happens, then we have a crisis of faith. It’s like, Is God even real anymore? And so that fear kept me from getting specific with God for so long, but then the second I started getting specific, it’s every single day my mind is blown. It’s wild every single day how I see how specific my relationship has gotten and how intimate the conversation’s gotten with Holy Spirit.
Bridges Sponsorship Message
Patsy: “Where would I be if I did not believe I would experience the Lord’s favor in the land of the living? Rely on the Lord! Be strong and confident! Rely on the Lord!” Those are the last two verses of Psalm 27 from the Abide Bible. It is a new bible that has been in my home now for several months, so I’ve had time to work with it and it to work inside of me. It offers beautiful, old art that is associated with verses, so it helps it to become a bigger picture in our mind and our retention is improved. It has places for us to journal on the side as we read. It also has instructions on how to pray this Scripture, how to meditate on it, how to contemplate it so we can sit and soak in God’s Word and allow it to dwell richly within us.
Andrew: What I love about the Abide Bible is that it’s invitational, not just informational. It’s inviting us not to just exercise the Word of God in our head but to really invite it to dwell in our hearts, which to me reminds me of John 15:4: “Abide in me and I in you.” So you can order your copy of the Abide Bible today at bridgesshow.com/abide.
Andrew: Can you give us an example? Like you say you’re a baby charismatic maybe, but for a lot of people who are on the conservative evangelical side, that sounds very charismatic, right, to believe that you could ask something of the Holy Spirit and receive an answer. Maybe for the pragmatist in them, and in anyone who’s listening, is there a specific example where you can relate that process of this is what I asked for and this is how I received an answer, or even just talk about what is the process like for you of asking, petitioning, the Holy Spirit.
Carlos: Absolutely. If I can give two examples, one for maybe somebody that’s like the pragmatist that you’re talking about and maybe the next one for somebody that maybe is a little bit more comfortable with this kind of thing.
So I’ll speak to the first for a second. I want to say that when you begin this journey of intimacy with Holy Spirit, when you begin this journey of listening for Holy Spirit, the first thing that you shouldn’t do is sell the house or quit the job. The first question when you’re practicing hearing from Holy Spirit isn’t should I quit my job today. It isn’t should I sell the house today. I mean, that’s something that we can get to, but what I’ve learned is the easy way for me to start getting to hearing from the voice of Holy Spirit when I ask a specific question is Scripture, is the Word of God. So I begin with the Word of God.
A quick story when I was beginning this journey, I’d just been on the road for like 14 days on a tour bus. This was 2017, and I was ready to be home. I’d been preaching every single night. I was exhausted. The tour was ending, I wanted to get home, and it was the day before I got home, and I got a text from a friend of mine named Justin, who was a church planter in Indianapolis. His church was a baby church, like 6-months-old, and he text me and he’s like, “Hey Carlos, what are the chances” — so this was on Thursday — “that on Sunday you can come and preach all three services at our church? I’m exhausted. My wife is exhausted. We just adopted two kids. What are the chances?”
Well, of course, I don’t want to do that. I was exhausted. I’d just been on the road. The last thing I wanted to do was go. So I began my text back to him saying, “You know what, I need to get home. Heather needs me.” Of course, I throw my wife under the bus. “Heather needs me. She’s been with the kids. She’s exhausted.” Little does he know that I’m more exhausting than the kids are to her. All that to say, there was something in me that was like, Call Heather. So I called my wife, and I said, “Hey, Justin wants me to go. Babe, it’s the last thing I want to do. I just need to come home and rest.” And she says, “Well, have you asked Holy Spirit?” I was like, “Of course not. I haven’t asked Holy Spirit. Why would I do that? I don’t want Him to say yes.”
So I do what I learned to do when I learned this process from a spiritual giant mentor of mine, John Eldredge. I opened my journal, and I said, “Lord.” And I literally wrote it down in my journal. “Do I need to go to Hope City Indianapolis this weekend to preach? Yes or no?” And I put two little boxes, like you would "check yes or no” when you’re giving a letter. So then I just sat there, and I waited and waited. I grab my Bible, and I heard John 3:16. I kind of sensed that, and I was like, if there’s not a more basic, baby charismatic moment in someone’s life is to hear the Scripture John 3:16. Like everybody’s heard that Scripture.
I immediately edited the Holy Spirit and said, Well, that can’t be from God because it’s John 3:16. I probably watched a football game last night and saw a guy with a sign. I was like, Okay, I’ll read it. So I open it. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only son. Whoever so believes in Him shall not perish, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And then I was like, No, this has nothing to do with going to preach at Hope City this weekend.
But then I saw the number 1 when I was praying again, so I drew the number 1 underneath my little journal piece. I was like, Oh, 1 John 3:16. Maybe there’s a 1 John 3:16. So then I go to 1 John 3:16. I’ve never read that Scripture in my life. Let me read it to you. This is what it says. I’m having the recollection of what happened in this moment. I’m in a coffee shop in the middle of nowhere America, and I’m reading this Scripture. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in this person?”
And Patsy, I freaked out when I read that because, suddenly, this was so specific. If you see your brother in need and you have what they need but you don’t give it to them, how can God’s love reside in you? I immediately picked my phone up. I was like, “Okay, I’m coming. I’m coming. I’m on my way.” I actually stood up. I’m looking around.
I get chill bumps because this was so specific on an answer from Holy Spirit to give me for this. I went and had the most incredible time of ministry that weekend, but this is what I’m talking about when I say ask a specific question. You’ll get a specific answer. It doesn’t always work out this way obviously. There’s times where I’ll ask Holy Spirit all the time about Scripture, and I’ll get something that doesn’t make sense for weeks, but then it does.
Patsy: And then it does.
Carlos: And then it does. So maybe sometimes it’s not necessarily in the moment, but this is what I’m talking about. And I’ll just give that one example. I’ve got plenty of other stories, but this is what I’m talking about when I’m saying we have direct access and the Word of God is living and active. And since it’s living and active, we can use that to have this intimacy with Holy Spirit. Anyway, that’s one story. But these are now… You can ask my kids. Every single day I’m getting this specific with God and He’s getting this specific back with me, and I can’t believe it took so long to get there.
Andrew: I’m going to play a little devil’s advocate, okay. Thinking of that specific example, because I can just hear this line of questioning coming up in I’m thinking of specific people, but would say, okay, yes, that’s brilliant, what just happened, and I want that to happen in my life. But you were also exhausted at the time. You had not been home in a while. You’re talking about going back on the road that weekend and further giving of yourself. Someone might say, well, that’s how the Bible was used in a toxic way to be abuse me all my life, to extend myself further than I was able to give; say if you’re not doing this, you’re not doing enough; etcetera. Where does that balance come into play? And maybe the question there is how do you discern, how do you separate, no, this is the voice of God and this is maybe a toxic message from my childhood?
Carlos: Discerning the difference between the voice of God and, let’s be honest, lies from the enemy — that’s really where it gets to. I believe that the promises of Scripture are true despite what kind of situational circumstances that we’re sitting in. If something is going to be harmful to you or to your family, then you know that that’s not the will of God. So if something’s going to be harmful to you or to your family… If I called my wife and my wife said, “We need you home,” but then I opened to 1 John 3:16 and it said, “You gotta give something to your brothers and sisters,” well, guess what. My sister in need was actually my wife in that Scripture, as opposed to my brother in need being…
We have to have discernment. We have to be smart. You have to use the emotional intelligence that Holy Spirit has given us and God has given us to walk through these questions, these deeper questions. The will of God in our life — and I don’t want to get into a whole podcast about the will of God — it’s not that we have a nice, comfortable, happy, little Christian life. I think that far too many Christians think that that’s the goal of becoming a Christian — to become a Christian and wait for Heaven, but on this side of Heaven, we’re going to have a nice little comfortable vacation life. That’s not the theme of the Bible. I was taught in Sunday School this is a love note from God to you. Well, I get that point of view, but when I read it, I look at the theme of the Bible is actually war. When you go through the entire thing, it’s actually war, and so knowing that we’re in war, I think that’s—
Andrew: Spiritually speaking?
Carlos: Spiritual speaking, yeah. Well, spiritually, I think, and physically speaking. I mean, there’s wars happening all throughout Scripture, but then spiritually speaking as well. I just think that if we understand that we are in a battle, spiritually speaking, and that the only thing the enemy’s got is that he’s a liar. He’s got no other access to you. He just can lie to you. If he can convince you of a lie, now you’re screwed. Now, he’s got you. He’s got you cornered. And so that’s why the Word of God is so important to me because that’s what is the antithesis, that is what counteracts all the lies that I’m hearing from the enemy.
And so back to your initial question: How do we make sure that what we’re hearing is the voice of God? Again, I go through the fruits of the Spirit, like make sure that these things are giving the fruits of the Spirit into my life. And there’s going to be moments where you’re wrong too. There’s going to be times when you’re wrong. But one thing is the Word of God is not ever wrong for you. And you have to use discernment when it comes to these things. But again, for anyone that’s listening, because I’ve got a lot of readers that have read my book that are like, Well, what if? What if? And I don’t know how much longer I’ve got left, no one knows how much longer we’ve got left on planet Earth, but I’m just not going to live the what-if game. I’m going to take the Word for what it says, and I’m going to apply it to my life. Since I’ve been doing that, it’s been miracles, signs, and wonders season for me. That’s something that I’ve never experienced before.
Andrew: Patsy, I hear that you have a book club.
Patsy: I do. Books are what God used to help heal me, so it delights me to offer that service to others, that they could sign up, anybody. All y’alls, come on in. We want you to join in the book club, and we will read ourselves silly and sane. We’ll have different selections, one every month with a bonus. You can check it out: patsyclairmont.com. And also on that page, you’ll see that I do cheerleading for people. I coach them in helping them stir up their creativity to tell their story. But here’s what I know: You’re into a different kind of storytelling, and you’ve been set up to win awards for what you’ve done.
Andrew: I love music, and I have new record out called Tune My Heart, and it includes some of my really close friends, some of your friends, like Sandra McCracken and Cindy Morgan and Buddy Greene. And you can find that record anywhere you stream or download, or at andrew-greer.com. You know what else, Patsy?
Patsy: What?
Andrew: I’ve got another podcast. It’s not my favorite podcast, but if you like listening to Bridges, then you might like listening to and viewing Dinner Conversations with our pal Mark Lowry and myself. You can find it on Apple Podcasts or Amazon Prime, or simply go to dinner-conversations.com.
Bridges Sponsorship Message
Patsy: Andrew, I’m so excited that one of our sponsors is Food for the Hungry because I like people who are feeding people. I say let’s get to the basic need that a person has, and let’s build up from there. And when you feed a child, you feed their brain, you feed their disposition, you feed their ability to have strength to do the hard work that oftentimes is involved, even if it’s just their studies. If the synapses aren’t snapping, it’s gonna really be tough, so Food for the Hungry’s got the right idea, and they’re talking chickens.
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Patsy: And every chicken you purchase for our friends across the world, it becomes an entry into our first ever Bridges giveaway.
Andrew: That’s right. One winner and a guest will receive roundtrip airfare, one night’s lodging, and ground transportation for a getaway in our hometown, Patsy, of Franklin, Tennessee. Plus, we’ll take you to dinner and interview you on a special episode of Bridges.
Patsy: The winner will be drawn on March 31, 2021, so get your chicken before then.
Patsy: I see that you have struggled with anxiety.
Carlos: Absolutely.
Patsy: And how have you dealt with that in your journey?
Andrew: Cause that’s a little different than the title Enter Wild. It feels like.
Carlos: Yeah, yeah. And it’s actually the middle section of my book Enter Wild. The book is divided into three sections: Enter Rest, Enter War, and Enter Wild. The story arc for the Enter War section is my struggle with anxiety and is my fight to find full healing, is my fight to not just get 60 percent healing. And again, this is where I get a little pushback from people because they’re like, “You’re telling me that I can really be healed a hundred percent on this side of Heaven?” Yeah, I’m telling you that can happen. I’m not telling you that it will happen. There’s a big difference.
Patsy: Big.
Carlos: But if you don’t believe it can happen, then it won’t happen.
Patsy: It won’t.
Carlos: So my struggle with anxiety was that I was in the pit of despair — panic attacks, could’t leave my home, had to stop leading worship, which is what I was doing at the time because, literally, as I’m backing down my driveway, massive panic attacks. This was 2007-ish. For about two years, I was home-ridden, and then I got a little bit better. I started taking medicine, got a little bit better. Went to my psychologist, got a little bit better. Diet and exercise, got a little bit better. Then I got to about 60 percent better, and the whole 60 percent, 100 percent, John 10:10 really has to do with my anxiety in this book because I lived, for 15 years of my life, thinking, I’m healthy enough now with my anxiety. I used to say things like, “God’s given me enough strength to deal with my anxiety.” And again, that’s 60 percent true. But then when I kept reading Scripture, I kept reading these asinine ideas from Scripture saying that, no, there’s a possibility of full healing from your anxiety. And for somebody that had taken Paxil for 13 yeas of his life, this was just what I was going to take the rest of my life. But friends, I leaned into the possibility, the hope, that there could be true healing on this side of Heaven, and instead of stopping at 60 percent, I entered war.
There’s a place called Onsite here close to Nashville that Miles is a great friend of mine. I went there in 2013, and again, that was all helpful. All of these things that I talk about that got me 60 percent better were really helpful. But I tell people this: I didn’t realize that I was actually placing my hope in the helpful. And the natural things I was doing are very helpful. All these things — therapy, I love all those things. But our hope doesn’t need to be in the natural. Our hope should be in the supernatural, and our help should be in the natural. Our hope should be in the supernatural; our help should be in the natural.
“Our hope should be in the supernatural, and our help should be in the natural.”
So my hope suddenly, I was like, I’ve tried everything else in the natural. I guess I’ve got to turn to inner healing and some other things that I haven’t tried yet, and let me see if I can get there. Greatest decision of my life. I found a man named John Elam here in Nashville, Tennessee, that does a form of therapy called heart sync. I love it because it’s Holy Spirit filled prayer with psychology and brain stuff and all kinds of stuff happening. So it was, for me, the best of both worlds, and I spent four weeks — not four straight weeks in this man’s library but four weeks of sessions, and I went from physical manifestations of anxiety on a daily basis — heart palpitations, dizziness — that I just thought were going to be with me the rest of my life. And they’re gone. Completely gone. Like fully and completely healed.
And this is crazy for anyone that knows me because I’ve been mister showing on Instagram me taking my medicine, making sure people know it’s okay. And so it’s been hard for a lot of people, to be honest with you, that have journeyed through my seasons of anxiety, through my huge season of anxiety, to suddenly hear me say “I’m healed.” I think that for them I was their comfort that, Oh look, this guy is doing all these things, but he still struggles with anxiety. So there was almost a codependent relationship maybe with that part of who I was, but suddenly, when I found complete healing, it’s been difficult. I’ve had some hard conversations with a lot of friends or followers that are like, “Well, I’m happy for you that you got your healing, but what about me?” In the Enter War section, I take people on what it took.
Patsy, I’ll get a little bit more specific with that. And this doesn’t have to do with anxiety. This could be anything in our lives. The reason why they call it heart sync is because what we’ve done in our hearts is we’ve removed a piece of it. And what I did was I removed a piece of it that poor decisions in my life had caused me to lose my family in 2009, 2010, all these things. And so that piece of me, I would say things like, “I never want to see that guy again. I never want to see that part of me again. I hate that part of me.” Well, what I was doing was I was shaming this part of me that God had actually created. God actually made this part of me. And when I found healing from the poor decisions I had made, I’d removed this part of me and had shamed him, and what heart sync did for me was it actually reconciled and allowed me to — this is going to sound weird — ask myself, back in 2011, for forgiveness for shaming it for so long. And when I asked it for forgiveness, that part of me for forgiveness, and invited that part of me back into reconciliation and relationship with my heart and synced my heart back in wholeness, that’s when all these physical symptoms of anxiety went away.
There’s actually secular therapists that are doing this kind of thing now because it’s proven now that unforgiveness literally has a detrimental effect on your mental health. We talk all the time as Christians about forgiveness from God, about forgiveness of other people, but never forgiveness of self. And the forgiveness of self piece is the middle section of the book that I hope and I’ve seen it through just people that I’ve had conversations with since it’s come out. That piece has been the piece that so many people have been looking for to find freedom.
Andrew: What I hear when you talk about that kind of piece of heart that was extracted and is now put back through the forgiveness of self or the understanding of how you shamed it, bringing it back into wholeness, it sounds to me like redemption. But I think what we have done a lot with the idea of redemption, the story of redemption, the theme of redemption in our church culture or even Christian religion, is that we’ve allocated that to be an other life thing. Like I’ll be fully redeemed. And scripturally speaking, we do know we will see in full. There is an element that has not been revealed to us in full.
This is what it sounds like to me. It’s like you’re tapping into redemption here and now in a full way in that area of your life.
Carlos: Yes, I love that. Tapping into it now, knowing that it’ll happen when I get to Heaven but realizing that some of that’s available here and now. I love that. Actually, I’m going to steal that and put it in a sermon. Redemption is what’s happening. When you sync your heart back with forgiveness, it’s a big deal. And anyone listening to the podcast right now, you can look back and you can ask Holy Spirit what are areas in your life where you are holding shame against yourself. And then when He reveals those things, ask that part of your life to forgive you for the shame you’ve placed and invite it back into a holistic relationship with yourself, and just watch what happens.
Andrew: You’re talking about the here and now versus the here after, right, and that’s been part of your platform for a while, this idea of bringing Heaven to Earth and that we are active participants in that now. Patsy and I were talking about this the other day when we were prepping for our conversation with you, and you had kind of said “Yes, and hang on” because this can’t be Heaven. Is that what you were saying?
Patsy: Well, what we’re living in right now is certainly not Heaven.
Carlos: Especially right now.
Patsy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The news is constant, the bad news, that we lose sight of the gospel and the good news and certainly the fullness of it, and that redemption is often ongoing throughout our life as we’re able to move into the new understanding and the freshness of revelation. But what I said to Andrew was I wonder exactly how he would define bringing Heaven into Earth. How would that be done for a listener?
Carlos: Yeah, gosh. I think for a listener… I’ll just talk about for me. Say I’m listening to your podcast. I think bringing Heaven to Earth, bringing bits of Heaven to Earth, is realizing just how thin the veil is in-between Heaven and Earth. It really is. It’s a blink of an eye. It depends on your theology. Some people may think you hang out somewhere before you get there. I don’t know what all that means…
Andrew: I certainly did, but I don’t know about you.
Carlos: But I’m just saying it’s available here, pieces of it could be. Again, I’m not seminary graduate; this is just my life experience. Where I’ve seen Heaven come to Earth for me is through moments like worship, like music. I feel the palpable presence of Holy Spirit in a different way when I’m in a room, which I haven’t been able to do in six months, but with other like-minded believers and experience through song. It could be through a message, through sermon. There are moments where you feel closer to Heaven than you do on a day-to-day basis when you’re watching the news.
And so I would say what are desires that God’s placed inside of your heart? This is a great way to maybe catch glimpses of Heaven on Earth. I feel like so many of us have lost the ability to step into the full desires God’s placed inside of our hearts. Desire is, I feel, a pathway to God and to His fullness and even to hearing who God is. So say for instance somebody was listening to this and know that they love to run, but they just never go running. Because why? Because they’re too busy. They’re on the road all the time. They’re doing this. That running, that thing that makes you jump for joy… Like when’s the last time you actually jumped for joy?
Andrew: Not while running.
Carlos: Exactly. I always ask people, you do this on purpose? You run 20 miles on purpose? But whatever it is for you that makes you jump for joy, remember what that was and say, Okay, I’m going to do that more. And when you begin to do whatever the desires that God’s placed inside your heart more, you’re going to hear from Him, I believe, more.
The whole conversational intimacy piece that I’m talking about is probably for me the biggest glimpse of Heaven that I can get. The fact that I have full access to the God that makes the Earth spin and float is mind-boggling to me. And so a quick example for me of seeing Heaven on Earth and tapping into that: I’m a city boy. I’m from LA. I grew up in East LA, Pico Rivera. My cousins are street…some of them are gangbangers. We’re from the hood. And then I move to Atlanta. My dad moved us out of East LA to kind of get us out of there, but I’ve always kind of lived in the city. And then I moved to Nashville, and when I moved to Nashville, I’ve just got a lot of country friends, like friends that do things outside, that I’m just not like an outside guy. So one of my country friends—
Andrew: I love that you define that as country. Those who love nature, you know, country folk.
Carlos: Yeah, yeah, country folk. I’ve said rednecks before, but then people got offended. So these are my friends that just like to hunt and do all these things. So one of these friends invites me to Montana a couple years ago to go fly fishing. Now, the last thing I ever want to do probably in my entire life is to touch a fish. If I never have to touch a live fish, that’d be great. So I’m like, No, I’m not going to go on a fly fishing trip. That sounds miserable. I fell asleep during A River Runs Through It. That’s just not my thing. He’s like, “No, trust me. You need to go.” So here I go, this city boy, I go to Montana. I fly to Montana, land in Billings, Montana.
Patsy: On a cliff.
Carlos: On a cliff, yeah. I had an idea of what Montana looked like. Billings looks like Montana left Billings to fend for itself. If there’s any listeners in Billings, I apologize, but it’s just not the prettiest place. So then I get picked up and I get driven an hour and a half to the Big Horn River where there’s a fly fishing guide waiting for me. Everyone else is on the river. I had to take a late flight. This kid, he’s like 18-years-old, is my guide. He’s like, “Okay, this is how you’re going to fly fish.” And I’m like, I’m already more miserable than I thought I was going to be. He has me in these waders. I look like I’ve got diapers on, and he’s got me trying to get my cast down and I’m tangling it every time. I’m like, Just get me on the water. This is going to be miserable.
Again, remember, we’re talking about desire here. So I get on the boat. We start down the river to catch up with everyone else and all my friends, and he’s like, “Okay, you’re going to take this little feather at the end of the fly line, and you’re going to try to trick the trout that are in the water into thinking that it’s food.” And I said, “Okay, that’s kinda cool, whatever.”
So then he points out, he’s like, “Look, there’s a 20-inch brown trout.” And I kinda see it, and I was like, “Oh wow, I can see it in the river.” He’s like, “I want you to put that fly like three feet in front of it.” And so I try once and I fail, and then I try again and I kinda get it close. He’s like, “Okay, leave it. I want you to mend the line,” which means kind of lift up your rod and pull the line over, “and just watch.” So this trout watched my fly on the top of my water for, I don’t know, it was a good 10 seconds, and my heart actually started to pound a little bit.
And then I see this trout rise out of the water, suck that fly down, and he’s like, “Set the hook.” I lifted my rod tip up, and like my line comes flying out, and this huge trout jumps out of the water, like five feet out of the water. It explodes out. My heart is pounding. I’m like, Oh my gosh. I’m reeling it in. It takes me five minutes. My heart’s pounding. I get it in. He’s like, “We’ve got to take a picture.” I pick this trout up, and I’m holding it, smiling next to it. My heart’s still pounding. I put it back in the water, and I’m like, Oh my God…
Patsy: What just happened?
Carlos: I was created to be a fly fisherman. I did not even know. It took me 40 years to realize what I actually was created to do with my entire life. Can I tell you, friends? I was the last one to get off the river that night. I was the first one to get on the river the next morning. I fished for three straight days. I never wanted to get off the water. I felt more alive — the whole jump-for-joy feeling — than I’d felt, to be honest with you, in decades.
Before I got home on my flight, I’d ordered my starter fly fishing kit, the whole thing. Praise God, here in Nashville there’s a Caney Fork River about 50 miles away from here that I started to fish everyday. This was four years ago. In the last year, there’s not been one single week that I have not been waist deep in water somewhere around the world fly fishing.
And I tell you that story because this: That was a desire that was in my heart that I didn’t even know was there because I didn’t slow down my life enough to hear the voice of God and to experience that. Now where do I go to hear God? I go to the river. Where do I go to catch that glimpse of Heaven, that feeling that I know is going to be a thousand times more when I get to Heaven, that jumping-for-joy feeling? I go to the river.
My question to your listeners is: What’s the river for you? What’s that place where you actually jump for joy? And the second question is: If you don’t know what it is, maybe it’s because you haven’t even found it yet. So the beautiful thing is there’s an opportunity for you to actually find the slice of Heaven here on Earth. And that’s the good news, right? The good news is it is available. And man, I just come so alive when I’m in that river.
“What’s the river for you? What’s that place where you actually jump for joy?”
And so here I am now. Because my mom’s Mexican and my dad’s Black, I call myself the rednexican because I love all things fly fishing and hunting. I’m that guy now. Again, I’m a long answer guy, but that’s my story.
Andrew: Welcome to Tennessee.
Patsy: Some years ago, a friend asked me if I’d like to go to an art class, which I thought was ludicrous and absolutely way outside my ability. But I had just read a book by Brené Brown, and she had said you will not grow in courage or creativity if you’re not willing to take a risk. And as my friend turned to walk away to leave my home because I had flat out said I wouldn’t do it, those words rose up inside of me, and I thought, Courage and creativity, I want to grow in those. So I said, “Wait, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I’m in conversation here.” And then I said, “Okay, I’ll go.”
And I went reluctant, extremely vulnerable but yet defensive, and had my little walls up, and my teacher, my instructor, just stepped around the wall and right into my face and asked me a few very penetrating questions, guided me onto the canvas, and I left with my first piece of art. And I was lit. I was ordering all my supplies, so when you said that, I thought, oh, I so know that journey that you’ve discovered a part of yourself you didn’t even know existed, and you wonder, How could I be inside this body and on this planet all these years and not even have this information till this moment?
But it’s another form of redemption that God’s at work doing within us, expanding our view of who He is and who He wants to be and adding to the fullness of our joy.
Carlos: Oh, that’s a good word. That is so good.
Andrew: Yeah, and courage is what I hear as the takeaway from both of yours. It always requires some mounting up over fear, and I don’t know that we always even know where that fear came from, from fully expressing ourselves or fully diving into something that we don’t understand. And maybe that’s it — we don’t understand it yet, and so we have fear about it. But when I think about what I’m afraid to step into, that’s it. I’m afraid. And courage is what it requires to even access further creativity, which of course I think is a direct connector to our Creator.
And I’ve known so many people who get to a place in their life, sometimes not until their 50s or 60s, where they’ve literally never stepped up in courage, and maybe that’s messages of someone saying they need to provide for their family in a certain way or maybe it’s their own internal…maybe no one encouraged that or fostered that inside of them as children.
But for someone, as kind of a final takeaway, who is struggling to kind of face that fear and to galley up with the courage, what is a simple first step that may not even be fly fishing yet or taking an art class? What would be like a daily even routine or thought that could help foster that?
Carlos: I would say that we’re stuck in so many patterns of redundancy in our life. There’s so much redundancy that happens that we’ve become just so blind and numb to anything new. And so this is what I would say: If you go to work a certain way, go a different way. And all that’s going to do is awaken you to new things. This is going to sound so silly, but if you always go to Waffle House and order the bacon, egg, and cheese plate, scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, tossed, and diced, I would ask you to order something else.
Taste, smell, sight, sound — these things are the things that when they become awake in new ways, I think they’re going to be the gateway to a lot of discovery for a lot of people. So just start doing some things, start adding some creative chaos into your life. Try things new. Risk in order to find parts of your soul that you can rescue.
“Risk in order to find parts of your soul that you can rescue. ”
You know, it is going to take risk to walk into an art studio, knowing maybe what a stick figure looks like when you draw it. It’s going to take risk.
Patsy: Yeah, my stick figures looked like they needed surgery, so it did feel like that.
Carlos: Totally. Absolutely. It’s going to take risk. But gosh, you heard it in my voice when I was telling that story. There was something that I’d never experienced before waiting for me on the other side of risking being uncomfortable and being miserable. And so, again, simple every single day — take a different way to work, order something new.
When it comes to worship even, I tell people to do this all the time. If you’re used to worshipping in a cookie cutter box evangelical mega church, head over to the Catholic church this Sunday. Sit down and experience the way they worship. If you’re maybe in a liturgical church, head over to the Black gospel church down the street and experience God in a new way there.
When you begin to experience things and hear things and see things differently, you will realize that there are things that you never knew you were created to do.
Andrew: Once I went to the African American church, I never went back. Oh, that is not what I meant to say. I never looked back.
Carlos: There it is.
Patsy: He is such a fan of going into all cultures and all experiences, but he is particularly, deeply fond of the…
Andrew: African American experience.
Patsy: Thank you. I couldn’t get my words to…
Carlos: That is awesome.
Andrew: Well, Carlos Whittaker, it’s been wonderful to have you. Speaker, author, blogger, social media guru, musician — where does it end? Fly fisherman, country folk, rednexican. We have everything right here at the table. The latest book is Enter Wild: Exchange a Mild and Mundane Faith for Life with an Uncontainable God. Thank you for being here.
Carlos: Thank you guys for having me.
Patsy: You’ve been listening to Bridges, and I am Patsy Clairmont.
Andrew: And I’m Andrew Greer.
Patsy: And it has been our delight. This is Bridges, but it’s been our delight to bridge over to Carlos Whittaker. He is charming, may I say.
Carlos: Thank you.
Patsy: Bridges is co-produced by Andrew Greer and myself, Patsy Clairmont.
Andrew: And our podcast is recorded and mixed by Jesse Phillips at the Arcade in Franklin, Tennessee.
Patsy: Remember, don’t forget to leave us a rating, a review, or a comment. It all helps our little show get going.
Andrew: To find out more about my co-host Patsy Clairmont or myself, Andrew Greer, or to read transcripts of our show, simply go to bridgesshow.com.