In this powerful episode of Call to Freedom, hosts delve into the themes of faith, restoration, and God’s incredible power to bring life where there seems to be none. Drawing inspiration from Ezekiel 37, they discuss the profound message of breathing life into the dry bones, emphasizing the importance of surrendering personal plans to God’s greater vision. Through references to biblical stories and contemporary faith journeys, the episode illuminates the unyielding hope that comes from knowing ‘our Redeemer lives’.
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 370-367 denver colorado 80237 or by going to the website at www.freedomstreet.org If you want to leave a message or order a Word Power Daily Reading Bible Guide or a Freedom Street Express newsletter, you can call us toll-free at 1-877-917-7256 and leave your name and address, including your zip code. If you want to talk to Barbara right now, she is expecting your call. You may call that same toll-free number, 1-877-917-7256 to speak to her. And now, let’s join Barbara in the studio.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, on this snowy day in Denver, Colorado, welcome to Call to Freedom. Grab your mug of hot cocoa or coffee or, as Kimberly loves, tea. She loves milk in her tea. She’s so English. She’s English like her father was English. Milk and honey. Milk and honey. Promised land. Oh, she leaves her honey in my cabinet. And I use a little bit, but when she comes, man. I use the whole jar. Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
You do.
SPEAKER 03 :
When I’m here, I bring more with me because I know I’m going to use it up. I know. I’ve got my cup of warm, warm caramel brulee. Thank you, Archie, for that wonderful little donation that you gave. And you said I could use it for a drink, and I am using it for a drink. Oh, and I want you to know, friends, as you’re listening today, Christ Jesus became sin. Oh, he became that sin, that curse for all of us. And he died. But more than that, he was raised to life. Read Romans 8, verse 11. Oh, it’s just so beautiful. And he is at the right hand of God, the father. He’s sitting right there at the right hand. And of course, we are seated there with him. But he’s also interceding for us, for you and for me. At all times, he knows what’s going on. I don’t want you to ever feel you’re alone, especially in this holiday season. Oh, enjoy the very presence of God and Holy Spirit. We’re going to be. Talking about that today, I’m so excited about talking about Ezekiel 37. You are blessed to dispense, for in him you live and move and have your being. And if you would like to listen to more programs, encore shows, you can go to freedomstreet.org and click on the resources. And down there is radio shows. Also today, I am recommending… that you go to Darren Sessions under the teaching, and it’s right with Kimberly’s blog, which is Voice of Freedom. You can look at Kimberly’s blogs, but also you can go and look at what used to be CD series. And number 22, I believe you told me, Kimberly, is Ezekiel 37. It’s Breathing Life. One of our favorite, favorite series that we did and one of Darren’s favorite chapters in the whole Bible is Ezekiel 37. I believe it’s we’re going to talk about the coming out of a death stream out of something that was impossible and hopeless, absolutely hopeless and getting turned around by Holy Spirit and realizing there’s life. There’s real life. Praise the Lord. So we’re going to do that. We’re going to go into that today. Also, you can donate on the website and you can look up other things. The Bible Guide, it will give you a guide. Start with us in reading the Bible through in a year. You can do it. You can do it. We’ve done it and it’s beautiful. And I believe, Kimberly, we can go into Revelation maybe this next week because the last book of the Bible is by far the… the explosive end of, it’s not even end, beginning of forever. Of the new beginnings. Yes, so remember that. And if you donate during the month of December, we will send you a 2026 calendar. Oh, it’s a beautiful calendar. And we will send that to you with the receipt in January. We’ll try as soon as we can to get all that together in January. So God bless you. And the memory verse for this week is Romans 1, verse 16. Oh, 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. I’m so glad God included us because Kimberly in Ezekiel, he’s talking about the Gentiles are not included at all. Yeah. Well, the whole plan was to get all of us on board.
SPEAKER 02 :
That was the whole plan from the beginning. Grace entered. Amen. That’s right. And this gospel, when we say we’re not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, sometimes we categorize, put that little gospel in a box in our minds and we think of it a certain way. But this is also talking about the goodness of God, the mercy of God, the compassion of God, his mercy. his everlasting pardon and forgiveness and that we are made in his image. And he’s got good news for us. If we go ahead and align ourselves to the way he thinks and the way that, that he runs the world, when we align ourselves with his ways, which Isaiah 55 tells us are so much higher than our ways. When we align ourselves to that, that’s the gospel. That’s the great news is there’s nothing impossible when, When a loss occurs in our lives, he is the God of restoration. He is the God of resurrection. He is the God of redemption. Job himself cried out from his pile of ashes. Impossible situation.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
And great loss and said, I know my redeemer lives. This is the spirit that we all get to be filled with. And we saw a small glimpse of that when we saw Erica Kirk standing on the platform just days after her husband had been murdered. saying that young man, she’s talking about the young man who had taken her husband’s life. And she said, I forgive him. She is releasing herself and surrendering to God’s plan, believing that some type of of restoration and redemption and even resurrection will come from that horrible situation. She’s believing. She’s believing for impossible things because we serve a God who does the impossible with man. It is impossible with God. All things are possible. So we’re talking about Ezekiel 37 today, that valley of dry bones. And before you start talking, I’m just going to give that little disclaimer. Spoiler alert.
SPEAKER 03 :
Spoiler alert.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. If you have not seen season five, the last episode of season five, The Chosen, and you don’t want any information about it, you may need to turn your radio off or just mute for just a little bit because we were giving just a little bit of information, not the whole episode or anything, but we just wanted to give you a chance to that this is a bit of a spoiler. Season five has been out since this spring, so hopefully most of you have seen it. And episode eight, you wanted to talk about one of the scenes.
SPEAKER 03 :
We had been talking around the table about Ezekiel 37 and breathing life because that was one of Darren’s breakthrough chapters when he was Darren’s coffee shop. And a lot of people were free from their bondage because of that Breathing Life series. And as I was watching this for the first time, I hadn’t seen it before, how Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane and just weeping, broken before the Lord, before his Father. The scenes that the visions that his father gave him while he was in tears and so emotional about what was going to happen. Oh, Lord, if you if it’s your desire, please take this cup from me. Well, one of the visions after.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. And the Bible actually tells us that the Lord did send angels to minister to him and strengthen. Yes. So we know there was some type of ministry going on. We just really appreciated how the chosen decided to give some vision to what some of that ministry was to Jesus in that very difficult moment as he was crying out, please, if there can be any other way, please bring another way.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. He brought one vision. All you could hear was this sawing going on. What is happening? They’re not coming like this. And it was Abraham and Isaac. God gave him a vision. of Abraham being willing to give his firstborn, only begotten son. And then the second vision, here he was standing in the middle of an unbelievable scene, destructive scene of bones everywhere. And he was going down this narrow path, Jesus was, in this vision. And crunch, crunch, crunch over these dead bones. I’m going, oh, this is so emotional. And it was the valley of dry bones that God was showing him that he was a God who could bring back to life those dead visions, those dead dreams. And so many of us, our dreams have died. Our physical dreams that we had are even gone. Maybe we thought were spiritual dreams, but they weren’t exactly what God wanted for us. Right.
SPEAKER 02 :
So we might even be fighting. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but we might even be fighting what’s happening in that moment of loss in losing. And some of the ways that we fight end up being bitter or resentful or full of self-pity or angry. And those are those negative feelings that will swirl around us. What are we going to do with those? What are we, how are we going to react or will we respond to our great redeemer? We know he lives. He’s given us his word and we can stand on those promises. Will we respond to the promise that he will work it all for good? Here is Jesus in these scenes in episode eight of season five of the chosen. He is walking out his own life. his own, I don’t even want to call it discouragement, but there was a true sadness, a grief carrying such a heavy load in the Garden of Gethsemane and being encouraged by walking in this valley of dry bones, walking up to Ezekiel.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. Oh, I love that scene. And he just took Ezekiel by his head and just loved him, loved him. Yeah, he asked Ezekiel.
SPEAKER 02 :
Ezekiel, can these bones live? They show Jesus asking Ezekiel because it was the Lord that met Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones. And the Lord said, son of man, can these bones live? That was such a beautiful scene. Yes, it was. And Ezekiel says, oh, Lord, only you know. Only you know, Lord.
SPEAKER 03 :
And there was Jesus. Jesus was his Lord who he finally saw in this vision. And again, I introduce you to the website at freedomstreet.org. And if you’ll go to teaching and under that, Darren Sessions, go to number 22, and that’s Breathing Life, Ezekiel 37. you will receive so much help. It’s wonderful to realize that God can take those things that are dead and bring them to life in such a different way, Kimberly, than we envisioned. So get rid of those senses that you grew up with and look into the heavenlies. Get your mindset on those heavenlies because that’s where the real vision and the real fulfillment of those visions is. That’s right.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s right. And we don’t need to be putting responsibility on our own shoulders to fix a situation. We can surrender to what is happening and trust God to be the one. We can respond. In thanksgiving and gratitude, we can respond in trust and in faith that we know our Redeemer lives. And so he will take care of it. I think it’s maybe something that we’d want to mention that the Hebrew tradition about this Valley of Dry Bones is that these were all the young men that had been deported to Babylon from Jerusalem when they had taken all those captives and taken them to Babylon and These young men, it is said of them that they were so beautiful, such handsome young men that the Babylonian women were falling head over heels for these men. And King Nebuchadnezzar thought, oh, no, I can’t have this influence influencing Babylon. Yes. And so he slaughtered them all. That’s that is the tradition of what happened. And so here’s all these young men. I can I can imagine they were in this valley where they’re there. The slaughter is beginning. Right. And Nebuchadnezzar sent his soldiers out to, hey, just get rid of them. How some of these young men might be saying, OK, we need to run or we need to fight back. You know, we have these swirling expectations in our human realm that cause us to wonder, what should I do? And you put responsibility on your own shoulders to try and figure it out. But that is not Jesus way. Jesus came to show us we don’t have to figure it out. He never tried to figure out how to get himself off the cross. He did not try to figure out how there could be another way.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 02 :
He asked his father, and then he said, nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. Yes. So this is how we want to be viewing each situation in our lives that looks like dead bones.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, that’s right. You were talking about your friend who’d been so ill, and when you saw her, there was another story there. Another storyline, totally and completely different. But it also involves maybe you who are listening because you think that what you’re doing or your actions have made up the story, your story. And it includes other people that have been involved in your story. And it’s like your friend who had a son, a young son, 21.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. Yes. And I mentioned that on Monday, if you want to go back and listen to the radio program from Monday, the December 1st, then you can be filled in on this story. But she was literally on her deathbed and I had to hold her head up for her. And I remember asking her if she was giving up and she was just crying. But I felt this swirling of expectations in the room because her son was standing right there. She was there. And those expectations, as I realized I was letting some conversation happen between them, I realized there were expectations in each other. He knew he had some good insight on where his mom was at. He has known his mother for his whole life. His whole life, that’s right. And he knows she’s a nurse and that she wouldn’t want to go to the hospital, but he could tell she was in a bad place and she needed to go to the hospital. Well, so he had expectations that she might listen to him, but she had expectations that he would listen to her and honor her as his mother. So we have these expectations swirling in the room. I could feel them. And even looking back in hindsight, I’m like, oh, yeah, that was that was pretty strong.
SPEAKER 03 :
You remember that. Excuse me. But you remember the story of Jesus going into the dead girl’s room and. Asking everybody to leave except Peter and John or John and James. But anyway, everybody to leave because of the unbelief, the spirits that were there because of the people. Yeah. So continue.
SPEAKER 02 :
So, yeah, we can have our own swirling expectations that are preventing the word of God. This goes back to what we’ve been talking about the past couple of days, that the traditions of man make void the word of God. Mm hmm. We don’t want to cancel out the word of God, so we’ve got to tell those expectations, get out. This is not a story about you. This is a story about our God and we want to honor him. So I pulled this young man aside and into a different room and was talking with him because honoring others takes a lot of humility.
SPEAKER 03 :
It does.
SPEAKER 02 :
You have got to be willing to let go of your own ideas in order to honor someone else. And that is what we want to do with the Lord. Let go of our ideas and opinions in order to honor him often. The older we are, we’re not able to honor the younger ones. That happens a lot. There’s an expectation that when we’re older and wiser, we have better ideas. So it’s hard for us to honor our children. So it was hard for my friend to honor her son. As I was talking with him alone about this, Holy Spirit just directed the conversation to the most powerful one who ever lived on this earth. His name is Jesus, and he described himself when he was here as humble and lowly of heart. He described himself that way. Jesus is humble and lowly of heart. He is constantly allowing us to take the reins and try to do it our own way, to have our own opinions and our own agendas, to take responsibility even.
SPEAKER 03 :
on our shoulders when it’s not that’s right it’s just like your father when he was being attacked by cancer and i thought wow we’ve got to have people around the clock saying verses over brothers in the lord came at night all night long and all during the day quoting scriptures from the bible i just knew god was going to raise up your father he was going to come alive in the physical right
SPEAKER 02 :
It was my plan. We got to go through it again with Papa, you know, when we were just believing that God would raise him. And our God is capable of doing that. That’s right. But he’s got better ideas, Kimberly. He can resurrect dead bones. He can go into a valley of dry bones and he is capable of doing a miracle so great. There are actually those in the Hebrew community, and I want to join them, by the way, in this belief that this literally happened. that it was not just a vision that Ezekiel saw, but that it literally happened, that God can put all kinds of tissue and skin back onto bones and bring them to life.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, if what you said at the footnote of Ezekiel 37, that the Babylonian Empire killed all these young men, then that was a literal happening. That was a physical happening, and their bones were lying in that valley. And we know that only 42,000 came back after the Babylonian imprisonment, captivity, back to where they were going to rebuild Jerusalem. So there were very few left of the millions that were deported to Babylon from Israel and from Judah. So here, Kimberly, in the very beginning of Ezekiel 37, we see Ezekiel saying the hand of the Lord was upon me and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley and it was full of bones. He had me pass among them all around and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley and behold, they were very, very dry. That means they’d been there for a while. And then he said to me, son of man, can these bones live? Now he asked Ezekiel. God knew, but he asked Ezekiel. Sometimes God goes to you, friend, and he says, do you really believe that this is going to happen? By faith, you say, yes, Lord, I believe this will happen because he wants to see your faith rise.
SPEAKER 02 :
And it’s a choice we make. We choose against our expectations that are just swirling around and what we think needs to happen. That’s right. We turn from that and we say, Lord, there’s nothing impossible for you. That’s right.
SPEAKER 03 :
So Ezekiel, and it’s exactly what I would say if the Lord came to me. Can these bones live? Oh, Lord, only you know. You know, Lord. Yeah. And again, he said to me, prophesy over these bones and say to them, you dry bones. He was speaking to dead. He’s speaking to the dead. And that’s what we can do. We can speak to those things that are not as though they are in the heavenlies, in the spiritual world. You dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord God says to these bones. Behold, I’m going to make breath enter you so that you may come to life and I will attach tendons to you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you so that you may come to life and you will know that I am the Lord. So Ezekiel did that. He was obedient. So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a loud noise. I can’t even imagine. And behold, a rattling and the bones came together bone to its bone. And I looked and behold, tendons were on them and flesh grew and skin covered them. But there was no breath. No breath. And he said to me, prophesy to the breath. God knew. He knows. He knows all the stages that we have to go through. He prophesied to the breath, prophesied son of man and say to the breath. The Lord God says this come from the four winds. Oh, breath. Oh, Holy Spirit. And breathe on these slain so that they may come to life. This is an introduction to Holy Spirit in us, Kimberly, today.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. I just want to – this is on my heart right now. I just want to mention that the generation we are living in right now, the young people in this generation – They’re they’re a little bit. They’re different. They don’t have the same vision for their future. So many of them don’t have a plan for their future. It’s kind of a whole generational. Some would say it’s a dilemma. I say it’s a gift. I want to say that that is a gift because they are willing to sit in the unknown and trust that there is a plan. And I believe God has been raising up this very generation for humility, to hear how to be humble and wait.
SPEAKER 03 :
And it’s a surrender, a surrendering mechanism, Kimberly. that many of us haven’t had. No, I’ve got to see God’s plan. I’ve got to see my plan come into fruition. I have a call on my life. I’ve got a call and I’m going to see it today. No, we’ve got to surrender and yield to him.
SPEAKER 02 :
And then we’ve got to rest. Oh, I’ve been watching this younger generation and inspired by them, truly inspired. So this young man, my friend’s son that I was talking to, Um, I mentioned that we were talking about Jesus and how he was the most powerful to ever live on this planet. Also the most humble and how much power it takes to be humble. It takes so much power to be humble. And when that sentence came out, this young man, let it just settle into him deeply. He just, he rested. You could just see his shoulders, the anxiety come off. And he looked up, it looked me directly in the eyes and said, he confirmed it. He said, yes, yes, it does. And he’s so willing to stay humble and let the power of God handle that situation. Our very best intentions. Without the Lord’s counsel and without his power end up leading us to voiding the word of God, canceling out his power. And we flip things into disastrous ruins when we hang on to our own ideas of how we want it to go. That’s right. But when we let God have his plans and his way, he can resurrect the entire situation if we’ll just let it go. Surrender to his ways that are so much higher than our ways and let him be the one who redeems. Let him be the one who restores. Let him prove how great he is. The plan that he has for the valley of dead bones.
SPEAKER 03 :
So shall my word go forth. And it will come back to me. And that’s the word we speak out of our mouths, not empty or void, accomplishing what I desire. This is God speaking what I desire and succeeding in the purpose for which I said it. And friend, when you yield to God, when you surrender to God, all your plans and say, God, not my will, but yours be done. Exactly what Jesus said in the garden. It’s going to happen in God’s plan, in his ways, in his thoughts. Oh, Kimberly, we’re going to continue with this. This is so good. I’m just enriched by it. I’ll go forth today, excited, living for God. God bless all of you. God bless you and keep you and take joy.
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 370-367, 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. Our 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.
