Mount Up

Beloved, our message this week focuses on the right position God wants His children to be. God does not expect His children to be in the valley or at the tail region. Rather, He wants them to be at the top. Deuteronomy chapter 32 verses 11-12 say, “As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings, so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him.”

In this passage, we see God comparing something to an eagle. And in Isaiah chapter 40 verses 28-31, it is written, “Hast thou not known? Has thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding, He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary, and they shall walk, and not faint.”

There are two key points in verse 31, ‘waiting upon the Lord’ and the word, ‘eagle’. What does it mean to wait upon a person? It is like someone attending to you when you go to an eating place, to supply all that you need. So when you say, they that wait upon the Lord, it means those who sit and quietly expect something from Him. It is of those people that the Bible says, "They shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faith."

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF EAGLES

For us to properly understand this, let us look at the characteristics of the eagle. If you know a little bit about the eagle, you will know that the bird lives long. The average life span of an eagle is about 120 years. One of the longest among birds. A prayer warrior who is praying cannot die young. The bird itself is about 4 kilogram in weight but it can carry on its wings the weight of 20 kilograms. What I am saying is that your size has nothing to do with what God wants to do with your life. Your faith does not have to be the size of your problems. When an eagle is hungry, it does not cry like other birds. It is easy to know when a cock or hen is hungry, but it is not so with the eagle. So, a believer who is mounting up with wings as eagles will not be the one who will come to church and cannot participate in the praise worship, or who will not be happy with what is going on. The eagle is probably the only bird that can go 30,000 feet above sea level, meaning that it can travel as far as the aircraft can go. So, when you mount up with wings as eagles, God expects your prayer life and everything you do to be like that. When an eagle is being pursued by a stubborn enemy, it heads towards the sun, not many birds can look directly at the sun. And as it does that, whatever is pursuing it, runs back. So when you mount up as the eagle, and your prayer flies high, whatever is pursuing you will just have to scatter. When the Bible says that they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, it is saying that they have to be high flyers like the eagle. The eagle has very sharp eyes too, eight times sharper than the eyes of man. Your spiritual eyes will be sharp as you mount up as the eagle. The eagle lives on the highest branches of the tallest trees and on the highest mountains. Over there nobody can harass it. Ask the hunters and they will tell you how difficult it is to kill an eagle. The adult eagle takes time to give the eaglets a thorough training on how to fly. The eagle builds a very nice nest and puts its eaglets there and feeds them with the best food. The eagle does not feed on rubbish. At the end of the training period, it destroys the nest and throws the eaglets out, which by then would have learnt how to take care of themselves. We must first of all become eagle Christians, before we can mount up. Every true child of God should be an eagle Christian. That is why we always bind every spirit of the tail in our prayers. God does not expect His children to be in the tail region, He expects them to mount up. God is saying we should have wings to fly over mountains. For an eagle, a mountain is not a problem. It will always fly over it. For an eagle, rivers, storms, clouds, rains, etc, are no problems. So, this is why the Lord is using the eagle as an example of what we ought to be. The question is how many people will like God to use them? If you are ready to be used by God, He will first of all destroy that nest that you have built for yourself, just like the eagle destroys the nest of its eaglets. God is more interested in our spiritual revival than in our comfort. God will have to destroy the comfort of many first before He can get them. A lot of people are complaining about their unfavourable situations, when God is interested in getting across to them. This is why sometimes God withdraws the nest, i.e. your comfort, so that you can become serious. I know a young man who used to be very serious with God. He came early to church, swept the floor, cleaned the benches and worked as an usher. Then God began to bless him. Within a year he bought five cars. It was at this stage that this brother started coming late to service. One day, somebody called him and asked him what was responsible for his lateness to service and nonchalance to the things of God. He explained it away by blaming his driver for not resuming on time to take him to the service. Then the person said, when you were taking buses to church, you used to be punctual, with the cars you were supposed to be better. He refused to repent and the Almighty began to deal with him. He knew that for that brother to make heaven and for him to be serious, He had to remove the nest. And one by one, the cars started going, till all the five cars were gone. Then the brother became serious again. Though God does not like treating people like that, but sometimes He has no option but to do it. And if that is why God is working on you and you are going through deliverance, you are wasting time. What He wants you to do is to simply comply with His divine programme for your life. Have you not read the immortal words of Paul in the book of Hebrews chapter 11 verses 36-39. The Bible here is telling us about some fellow human beings who were heaven-bound, as some of us claim to be. “And others had trial of cruel mocking and scourging, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented. Of whom the world was not worthy, they wandered in deserts, and in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise.”