"THE WAY OF AN EAGLE" CHRISTIAN

“The way of an eagle in the air . . .” (Proverbs 30:19).

We do not know the identity of the writer of Proverbs 30 except that his name is Agur. There is some historical information suggesting that he was from a city on the Arabian Peninsula and that he was not Jewish—but that is all we know.

Agur uses an ancient literary technique to get the reader’s attention by saying in verse 18, “There are three things which are too wonderful for me, yes, four which I do not understand.” He then lists three and adds a fourth in an attempt to catch our attention. The first thing listed in Proverbs 30:19 is: “The way of an eagle in the air.”

Over the years I have written several articles comparing the eagle to the life of the believer. The Bible uses the eagle as a symbol of how God cares for His children. It also uses the attributes of the eagle to suggest that followers of Jesus can soar in faith and in the Spirit.

So, what is fascinating about the way of the eagle . . . and is this something that is meaningful for us? I think so!

Isaiah 40:31: “But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (NKJV). A powerful promise for those who are willing to press in and tarry in the presence of the Lord!

Eagles have phenomenal eyesight that allows them to see clearly for miles. Soaring high in the sky, they can spot a tiny rodent on the ground and swoop down to catch it. Their wonderful ability to clearly see great distances enables them to detect coming storms; in fact, this ability is one of the attributes that sets the eagle apart from other birds.

I believe the sharpest understanding of the future comes to those who are students of God’s Word. The Bible has a lot to say about coming events but understanding those insights does not come to the casual Christian. The understanding comes to those who fully trust Him and are diligent to seek His face and study His Word.

Another unusual attribute of the eagle is its tremendous wingspan and the strength of the muscles that make the wings work. The great wingspan allows the eagle to catch the thermal winds and ride them high into the sky with what appears to us to be very little effort. In an instant, the high-flying eagle can adjust its wings and dive down on an unsuspecting prey at speeds of nearly 100 miles per hour. The strength of these powerful wings then allows the eagle to suddenly slow down, catch its prey and quickly fly away.

Even though an eagle can see oncoming storms, it doesn’t seem to be fazed at all. It’s as though it doesn’t view a storm as a threat but rather as an opportunity. As the storm clouds begin to roll in, the eagle catches one of the updrafts just outside the storm, which allows it to fly up and over the tempest.

God has promised that if we are willing to press in and tarry in His presence, to wait expectantly, then we, too, will mount up with wings as an eagle, run and not be weary, walk and not be fatigued (Isaiah 40:31).

Before the eagle can catch an updraft and fly above and beyond the storm, he must learn to fly. Eagles are not born with the fully-developed ability of flight so they must be taught to use their wings. Then they develop the strength and get the experience that allows them to catch the fury of the wind and the storm and use it to their advantage.

An eagle that never learns to fly is nothing more than a chicken or a turkey. Both these have wings and yet never learn to use them to fly—and so they never do! Chickens and turkeys spend their lives earthbound, pecking around for seeds on the ground.

Eagles are solitary birds that mate for life and don’t hang out in packs. It’s the same with eagle Christians who don’t hang out in big packs—they don’t often go to conventions. Indeed, they are unafraid to be alone because they know they never really are. The promise of His presence is very real to them.

I think it’s time for more eagle Christians to start flying. These will not be the big-talking, flashy types who proudly talk about all they are doing and how much faith they have. Eagle Christians will be among the unlikely champions who are too busy stepping out in faith and doing exploits for God to waste energy with their talk.

We’ve had enough talk about faith! It’s time for those with the wings of eagles to mount up and fly.

FOR THE DISPLAY OF HIS SPLENDOR

“They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor” (Isaiah 61:3, NIV).

The majestic tree dominated the front yard of my old friend’s home. Nothing ever seemed to bother that beautiful California oak. The summer heat, the winter cool, the rains, the wind, the occasional earthquake—nothing affected that great tree. California suffers through periodic “semi-droughts” but that never seemed to bother the oak, either. It stayed healthy and majestic no matter what was going on around it. Without fanfare, the oak had sunk roots deep into the earth and those roots continued to bring life to the part of the tree that is evident on the surface.

My! I wonder if there is a lesson for us here!

Throughout the Bible the oak tree is referred to as a symbol of strength and endurance. The strength of the oak does not come from what you can see of it above the surface; rather, its enduring strength comes from the roots that cannot be seen by the naked eye. The root system reaches down to ample supplies of water and nutrients in the soil that feed the tree. The average large oak tree, I am told, needs as much as fifty gallons of water per day, so the root system is large and goes deep to reach the needed supply. The root system not only brings nourishment to the tree but it provides the anchoring base that allows the tree to withstand all kinds of assaults—from the wind, from the rain and from the shaking of earthquakes.

God likens His people to oak trees and says we can be just like them: “They shall be called oaks of righteousness.” These are not the words of a long-fulfilled prophecy that have no meaning for us. This is the expression of God’s heart for His people down through the generations. God wants His people to be strong and enduring and He has given us a clear insight as to how that can happen.

Jeremiah 17:7-8 is a powerful amplification of what Isaiah is presenting:

 7 But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
       whose confidence is in him.
 8 He will be like a tree planted by the water
       that sends out its roots by the stream.
       It does not fear when heat comes;
       its leaves are always green.
       It has no worries in a year of drought
       and never fails to bear fruit.

Root systems that can hold a tree upright in all manner of weather and in all kinds of terrain do not magically appear. They cannot be bought in the Christian bookstore, and they don’t come solely from attending conferences and conventions or just watching Christian TV programs. Extensive root systems develop slowly, and for our over-caffeinated, fast-track society, that just goes against the grain of popular thinking. Too many Christians want to be strong . . . and they want to be strong now! And that is just not the way it works. Strong root systems take time and patient endurance to develop!

“A planting of the Lord.” There is nothing haphazard happening here. This is not the taking of seeds and scattering them to the wind, disregarding where they may fall. This is God picking a place for you, and personally putting the tender shoot in the ground, knowing exactly what lies ahead. God fully knows every detail of your life and the place of your planting and He is not prone to making mistakes; you were not planted in the wrong part of the garden!

“For the display of His splendor.” This is a great and powerful promise. We were destined to display the “splendor of the Lord.” It doesn’t matter how you feel, you are destined to display the splendor, the majesty of the Lord!

There are days when I don’t feel that I am properly displaying God’s involvement in my life but here is the truth to get your spiritual arms around. A person who lives in consistent personal relationship with the Lord, who lives uprightly, is displaying one of the greatest portraits of God’s splendor in all creation. That man or woman is not going to be affected by the changing political, economic, environmental or personal safety climate. They are not going to wither when the heat is on or fall down when the winds of change are blowing or earthquakes of disaster strike. They will show to the whole world what it means to truly be a “Jesus person,” because in the midst of uncertainty all around, they will draw life from an eternal source that can only be tapped into by receiving the gift of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

Right now, Christians in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Indonesia are facing the threat of death at the hands of terrorists and yet are unwithering and unafraid—“displaying the splendor of the Lord”!

Maybe it’s time to strongly remind ourselves that we are here “for the display of His splendor.”

TWENTY-FIVE CENTS AND ALL THE PROMISES OF GOD!

Recently I wrote about Hudson Taylor, the pioneer missionary who was one of the first to take the gospel to the interior of China. His commitment to prayer and faith was radical then and it would be considered radical today. Taylor was powerfully used of the Lord to plant the seeds of the gospel in the largest nation in the world. I believe that much of the harvest being reaped today is linked to the pioneering work of Taylor and the missionaries of the China Inland Mission in the late 1800’s.

For those who do not know who Hudson Taylor was, or if you wish to know more about this amazing man of God, let me recommend that you read Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, written by one of Taylor’s sons and his wife, Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor. You can get a used copy of the book through Amazon for just a couple of dollars and it is well worth it.

In the last article, I focused on the prayer and faith of this radical missionary. To be a missionary in China in the 1800’s was not an easy road to take. To be in the interior of the country was to be in a primitive part of the world and it was the inland, unevangelized portions of China that heavily burdened Taylor.

In 1874 a fall seriously injured Taylor. Some months later, back in England, it was discovered that he had suffered a concussion of the spine which eventually left him paralyzed from the waist down. Taylor’s world for the next several years became a narrow bed with posts at the corners. Across the posts at the foot of the bed was a map of China. Taylor eventually got the use of his legs back but spent several years as an invalid.

As I read about all this man went through to take the gospel to China, two things, in addition to prayer and faith, struck me with great force. The first was that Taylor never stopped praising the Lord . . . never! No matter what the circumstances were, he rejoiced in the Lord, giving thanks at all times. The second was that he had found a place of rest and peace in the Lord.

Earlier in Taylor’s life he was a very legalistic believer. By his own words he stated, “I hated myself; I hated my sin; and yet I gained no strength against it. Every day, almost every hour, the consciousness of failure and sin oppressed me.” Taylor knew that the answer to all this lay in Christ and so he intensified his prayer life. He fasted, he made resolutions, he read the Bible more—and yet he was still unsatisfied.

One of Taylor’s missionary friends, John McCarthy, wrote to Taylor the following: “I seem, as if the first glimmer of a glorious day has risen upon me . . . I seem to have sipped only of that which can fully satisfy. To let my loving Savior work His will . . . abiding, not striving or struggling . . . Not a struggling to have faith, or to increase our faith but a looking at the faithful one seems all we need. A resting in the loved one entirely, for time, for eternity. It does not appear to me as anything new, only formerly misunderstood.”

The long, inward struggle in Taylor was resolved in a split second. “As I read I saw it all. If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful (2 Timothy 2:13) and I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how the joy flowed) that He had said, ‘I will never leave you’ (Hebrews 13:5).” Later Taylor said, “I have striven in vain to abide in Him. I’ll strive no more. For has not He promised to abide in me—never to leave me, never to fail me?”

“I am one with Christ,” Taylor would say. “It was all a mistake to try and get the fullness out of Him. I am part of Him. Each of us is a limb of His body, a branch of the vine. Oh, think what a wonderful thing it is to be really one with a risen Savior.”

Hudson Taylor was a man on a quest to know His Lord. When he understood what it meant to “abide in Him,” he was filled with the joy and peace of the Lord and finished his life as a faith-filled worshiper of Jesus Christ!

The title of this post is “Twenty-five Cents and All the Promises of God.” In a way the title explains where Taylor was spiritually in the latter part of his life. Having had the personal revelation of “abiding in Him,” Taylor shared what he had learned with the staff of CIM. When he told them that the ministry bank balance was just twenty-five cents, one of the staff responded, “Twenty-five cents . . . and all the promises of God!”

Under Taylor’s faith-filled leadership, CIM continued to flourish and eventually sent over 800 missionaries to virtually every part of China. The seeds they planted over one hundred years ago are still bearing fruit. Even though the bank balance was at times disastrously low, the staff at CIM laid hold of the promises of God and refused to let go!

Twenty-five cents and all the promises of God!

FROM THE INSIDE OUT

As I was finishing the last blog, Renewing the Mind, I knew there were a couple of very important points about renewal that I had not included in the blog.

The first is that both the Holy Spirit and the Word do their renewal work from the same place. In contrast to our human attempts to renew, both the Word and the Holy Spirit work from within us.

The Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us at salvation and does His work as a guest in our temple. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19, ESV).

The inside-out working of the Word is the reason the Psalmist said, “Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You” (Psalm 119:11, NKJV). When Joshua was preparing to take over for Moses, God’s instructions to him were, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night” (Joshua 1:8, NKJV). God was instructing Joshua to get the Word in him, to literally ingest the Word, and fill his mind with the Word (meditation). Joshua filled his life with God’s Word and then he became successful . . . from the inside out.

Also, in the last post, I didn’t talk at all about the place of worship in the renewal process.

A man who has deeply impacted my life is Dr. Jack Hayford. Our family began attending The Church on The Way in Van Nuys, California, in 1977 and we were members and very active there for nearly fourteen years. We still refer to Dr. Hayford as Pastor Jack because of the deep and lasting impact his ministry had on us. One of the great areas of teaching that Pastor Jack opened up to us was the place, the power, and the purpose of worship. Much of what I will refer to in this brief article I learned sitting under the teaching of this great man of God.

Ephesians 5:18-20 is a key passage in understanding the importance and power of worship. ^“Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making  melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (ESV).

Verse 18 instructs us to be filled with God’s Spirit. Being filled with the Spirit is not a one-time happening but is a continual filling, a continual activation of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. The original language here is “be being filled,” indicating an ongoing receiving and activation of the Holy Spirit.

Verses 19 and 20 tell us how to fulfill the directive of the previous verse by worshipful singing and giving thanks to God in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. An important question is, “What part does worship play in your prayer life? Do you take time to worship?”

I fully understand that there are many ways we worship. When we give of our finances, that is an act of worship. When we live our lives as good witnesses of God’s grace, that too is a form of worship. But my question is, “Do you directly express your worship to Him? Do you give thanks to Him for all He has done and is doing for you? Do you really worship Him?” Or perhaps you are one of those who just talks about it—but never does it!

“I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness” (Psalm 89:1, ESV).

It is through our worship that God’s power is released and the Holy Spirit is freed to work in our lives.

It was out of a worship service that the church was birthed. Carefully read Acts 2:1-13 and especially note verse 11. The crowd that gathered because of the commotion of the Pentecostal outpouring (the birthing of the church) was amazed and awed as they heard the Christians worshiping God in the languages of their native countries. Birthing is the bringing forth of new life and is accompanied by worship of the Creator. If you are looking to God to birth some new life and new breakthroughs in you, then it’s time for worship!

Throughout Scripture whenever the church was at prayer or in worship, there was a tremendous release of divine power. In Acts 16, Paul and Silas were imprisoned in Philippi. After being beaten, they were thrown into a dungeon and their feet were locked into restraints.

“At midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were loosed” (Acts 16:25-26, NKJV).

From the inside flowed the worship that affected the circumstances they were caught in and it was all to the glory of God.

“Where God’s presence is, there will be power. Where worship is released, God’s presence will abide. Our hearts are the ground on which the battle is decided. If we will worship, God’s power and rule will be established in and through us to flow to others.”  Dr. Jack Hayford