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.”
God will destroy our nest if that is what will prevent us from mounting up. But the day God leaves you alone to do as you like, know that you are finished.
So, think about it beloved, if you want God to use you, He will destroy that nest that you have built for yourself. I remember the testimony of a friend of mine. God called him to preach the gospel, but he refused because he had a comfortable job in a bank. He felt that preaching the gospel was a vocation for beggars. The Lord then decided to force him to do His will. This friend of mine had a train accident in a mysterious way that made him to lose one of his hands. While he was in the hospital, the Spirit of God again asked him, “Do you want to preach or should I cut off the second one?” And he said, “I will preach.” Now he is preaching with one hand. God will go to that length if He finds that you are not serious. Many vibrant Christians today may never have become prayer warriors if not for one or two witches in their family or one or two people who poisoned their food. Then they became serious and God is able to use them. When you are serious God can do whatever He wants to do in your life. God allows some people to fail their examination because they are not serious and God is asking for seriousness. You can only have spiritual power when you are totally broken and submissive to God. It is only then that the anointing will come upon you and you will become the kind of person God wants you to be. At this point, I want you to close your eyes and pray like this: “O Lord, shake away all the shakeable in my life, in the name of Jesus.”
Some believers are like the eaglets who will not like to get out of the nest because of its comfort. They want to be babies all their lives. But it is not God’s plan for us to remain as babies. Some believers are spiritually lazy. They fret and grumble anytime there is a little problem. They prefer to visit prophets and visioners. Those who are supposed to be helping the ministers are the ones wasting his time with irrelevant things. It is not good when old Christians waste ministers’ time. If God can find a group of people who will fast and pray, live holy lives, suffer inconvenience and do the work of God, regardless of criticism, He will send them hundreds of converts. There are many believers around from whose hands God will require the blood of perished souls because they allow these souls to perish by remaining baby Christians all their lives. When you are a baby Christian, you cannot mount up with wings like eagle. It is not possible because you are a baby. My question again to you is, do you really have a burden for souls and the Lord’s work? If you don’t , when the trumpet sounds, you will not be raptured. It is better for you to try to be doing something for the Lord, and in doing it you make a few mistakes here and there, than for you to sit around and do nothing. On the day of Pentecost, the house was filled with God’s power and it was not so hard for those people in the upper room to be filled. God is looking for a church with that kind of atmosphere. And He will send people to them from far and near. Some say I have the Holy Ghost and I am okay. No, that is not enough. The fact that the Holy Ghost is in you will ginger you to do more for the Lord. So find out what God wants you to be doing, and start doing it now. Although God can use an educated man, He will not depend on his education. The truth is that all Christians need to be educated on how to move in the Holy Spirit. The Bible says that the eagle renews its youth. When the wings of the eagle are old, it goes into hiding. There, it begins to grow new wings and then starts to fly again. It is not God’s will for you to start serving Him after you have suffered or He has pushed you here and there. Begin to do so now. The time to obey God is when everything is going on well. You should not wait until you get into trouble before you start praying. Too many people get into trouble before deciding to be serious with God. My prayer is that the Lord should help His people to obey Him while everything is going on well, in the name of Jesus. Close your eyes and pray like this, “O Lord, anything hindering your purpose in my life, drain it out now, in the name of Jesus.”
HOW TO MOUNT UP WITH WINGS AS THE EAGLE
The most important thing to do is to stop playing games with God. It is very sad to see a lot of Christians just playing games with God. Many of them, though adults, still behave like children spiritually. It is a serious problem in the house of God. Some people cannot quote ten memory verses even though they have been Christians for over ten years. They do not understand anything about salvation or the Bible. All they want to do is to pray fire prayers and receive miracles and go. Such people are playing games with the Almighty and He will not take it lightly with them. You really have to know your God in order for you to do exploit. And if you don’t know Him, you shall be exploited. When your outlook towards life is still the same as when you just got born again, it means that you are not growing. You should put away childish things for your spiritual life to grow. Paul got to a stage where he noticed that he was becoming childish, he stopped acting childishly, and grew up. If you are still a baby, then you need to grow up, if not you are playing games.
I want to point out to you that one of the greatest headaches today in Christendom is that there are too many babies who have refused to grow up. Adam played games with God, He shifted the blame on Eve. He said to God, "You gave me this woman. If you did not give her to me, my life would not have been like this." A lot of people complain like that. For example, a sister could be saying, "if God had given me a different husband, I would have done better." It is too late now, you are already inside the marriage, so why don’t you grow up and stop complaining. Cain knew the kind of offering God wanted, but he brought the wrong one. Jonah was a grown man, but he hid from God. So you see that there are Bible characters who played games with the Almighty and God didn’t take it kindly with them at all. We have to pray that the spirit of the baby must depart from our lives. If you still have some people that you do not say hello to, you are not interested in seeing, or people you don’t even want to associate with, then something is wrong somewhere, you need to grow up. You should get to the stage where you become unprovokable so that you can be more useful to God. To mount up with wings as eagle, every childish spirit must go.
Many people have some adjustments to make with Almighty if the don’t want Him to rock the boat of their lives. Do some thinking and ask yourself some questions. For example, Am I where God wants me to be spiritually? Or am I the cause of trouble in my family? Am I an uncompromising person when it comes to peace? Am I ready to forgive all who have offended me? Am I ready to forgive my husband or wife? The Bible says, “Touch not my anointed and do my prophets no harm." Have you asked yourself why the reverse is the case in your life? When you begin to ask questions like that, you get answers. But if you are going to be pointing accusing fingers, then mounting up with wings as eagles will be impossible. A lot of people want an explosion of miracles, but they want to serve God gradually. I advise you to sort yourself before God. Examine yourself now. Will you be comfortable if Jesus decides to live in your house for one week and monitor your activities? Will you be comfortable in His presence? Are there things you will stop saying because Jesus is around? What if He opens your fridge or goes into your bedroom and begin to look under the bed or goes into your wardrobe, what will He find in your house? When will you stop deceiving yourself? God is calling you to come up to the mountain, why do you want to remain in the valley? He is calling you to a higher ground. Get away from the valley and move to the mountain top.
PRAYER POINTS
1. Every spiritual vulture waiting to drink my blood, fall down and die, in the name of Jesus.
2. Every period of darkness, clear away from my side, in the name of Jesus.
3. Every dead area of my spiritual life, receive life, in the name of Jesus.
4. Every anti-overcomer spirit, my life is not your candidate, in the name of Jesus.
5. O Lord, anoint me for service, in the name of Jesus.
