ON EAGLE’S WINGS: THE GOD-DIRECTED LIFE
SCRIPTURE TEXT: Isaiah 40:29-31.
This is one of those passages of Scripture that has become for many of us one of our "life" verses — a passage that stays with us throughout all of life’s experiences. It is one that we have often fallen back on in the difficult times of life. Its visual images stick with us. We see them occasionally in our daily life. At certain times of the year along the Arkansas river we may see the eagle soaring high in the sky and be reminded of God’s promise. When I visit at the nursing homes as I often do, I see some of our older friends slowly shuffling along the hallways, barely able to "walk and not faint", and I am reminded of this passage. I saw its images anew some years ago during the Atlanta Olympic games. I saw athletes performing in the blistering heat of a southern summer, the world’s finest young men and women. They had given themselves totally to developing the strength and skill of their young bodies, and yet some of them fell and fainted under the heat of an Atlanta summer, while others managed to keep going.
When God called young Isaiah to be a prophet, the young man had a question: "How long, Lord, must I deliver your message?" God replied: "Until the cities be devastated and without inhabitant, until the houses be without people, and the land utterly desolate" (6:11). In other words, God said, "I want you to be faithful to the bitter end. I don’t want you to ever give up. The youth may faint and fall by the wayside, but I want you to keep on going."
How do we keep on going? This is one of God’s great promises that can keep us going throughout all the circumstances of life. I want us to look at three great truths in this passage that can serve to keep us going till the very end.
1. First, a truth about life’s waiting: "...they that WAIT on the Lord..." Isaiah didn’t learn about waiting in the prophet’s classroom. He learned it as God became his teacher in the laboratory of life.
The command is for us to wait for God to lead the way. It’s like when Moses stood at the crossing of the Red Sea and said to his people, "Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord." Can you imagine how difficult it was to just "stand still and wait" when the great Egyptian army with 600 chariots was closing in upon them? Can you see the great cloud of dust rising up on the horizon, the ground shaking underneath your feet as the thundering hoofs of a thousand horses were closing in? Stand still? Wait, just wait? "Yes," Moses said, "Just wait for God to do his work." And He did, of course.
Waiting is hard isn’t it? Someone has called it "the discipline of delay". When it is planned and ordered by God, waiting is never a waste of time. When God is shaping and preparing us for something, it is not time lost, it is time gained.
Pastor Joel Gregory tells the story of a seminary professor who taught the Christian graces of love and forbearance for forty years until he retired. Occupying himself in his retirement years, he poured a new concrete driveway to his house. Finished, he went in to rest and get a glass of ice tea. Returning later to view his proud achievement, he discovered that the neighborhood kids were putting their footprints all in the wet concrete. The angry professor chased the kids down in a rage and beat the tar out of the ones he could catch. Hearing the commotion, the professor’s wife rushed into the yard, saw the angry professor thrashing the kids, and began to reprimand him: "What a shame," she said. "For forty years you have taught love, forgiveness and forbearance. Now look at you! You’ve lost your testimony." To which he replied: "That was all in the abstract. This is in the concrete."
Yes, it’s different when it is in the concrete isn’t it? We never seem to be able to recognize the waiting in our lives as being something of any positive value. We see it as an intrusion, an inconvenience, an interruption into our activity: the traffic light that holds us up when no one else is coming in the other direction; the long line at the bank or the grocery store; the busy signal — or, worse even, the canned music — waiting for someone to come to the phone.
A lady called American Airlines and asked the reservation clerk, "How long does it take to get from Dallas-Fort Worth to Frankfort, Germany?" The clerk had to wait a moment for the information to come up on her computer screen, so she said, "Just a minute." The caller responded, "Thanks very much," and hung up! Most of the things that really matter in life do not happen in "just a minute". They come for those who learn to wait upon the Lord.
To "wait upon the Lord" means, really to simply let God be God. It means acknowledging God’s lordship over the time in our lives. "Wait upon the Lord" therefore and learn the lesson of patience.
2. The second truth is a great truth about life’s renewing. "They that wait upon the Lord, shall renew their strength ...." To those who have learned to rest themselves in the Lord and wait upon him, God offers the promise of renewal. The discipline of life’s delay produces the reward of God’s renewal.
Dr. Page Kelly, former missionary colleague of mine in Brazil, then professor of Old Testament at Southern Baptist Seminary until his death several years ago, had something very interesting to say about this word "renew" in Isaiah 40. He says the word is more accurately translated "exchange", a translation used in the New American Standard version. There is a difference in renewing something and exchanging it for something else, isn’t there?
Several years ago when I was on a bicycling trip to Ireland with our son, I made regular calls back to see how Dorothy was doing. I called one night and she informed me that the small pickup that we drove would not start. An explanation of the symptoms pointed immediately to a dead battery. The pickup was several years old and had its original battery. I knew that when a 4 year old battery suddenly won’t start your car, a battery charger is not going to do much good. So, I suggested that she just drive the other vehicle and I would take care of it when I returned. It was a battery that needed, not to be renewed or recharged, it needed to be exchanged for a new battery.
Life is often like that isn’t it? Sometimes, life’s battery just seems to run down. Now, there are times when a simple recharge will do. But there are other times when life demands more than just a "recharge". Just being charged back up to our former strength won’t do. There will come times when the cold, winter winds of adversity and trial blow heavy upon us and our spiritual battery, even at full strength, won’t do it -- times when our own spiritual battery cannot crank the engine of life. It is then when God is ready to step in and exchange our failing strength for His unfailing energy. That is what Isaiah is talking about in verse 29: "He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might, he increases strength." That is the promise that God gives to those who wait upon him in all the circumstances of life.
3. The third great truth is about what I have chosen to call life’s rhythm. When we learn God’s patience and we know God’s strength, there is yet another lesson to be learned. We must learn from God what I call the divinely directed rhythm of life. Isaiah says that those who wait upon the Lord "shall soar with the wings of an eagle; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint."
There was a time in my life when I sought to claim more from this promise than perhaps God was offering. I once thought that God was saying something like, "Child of mine, when you want to soar in life the eagle, just wait upon me, trust me and I will make you soar. when you want to run, trust me and I’ll make you run. And when you want to walk, I will enable you to walk and not faint." But through the difficult experience of a fellow minister and his deep understanding of how God was working in his life in a very difficult time, I came to see this promise of God in a new way.
John Claypool was pastor of the Crescent Hill Baptist Church in the late sixties, and we were in Louisville, Kentucky for our first furlough from missionary service in Brazil. It was the time when the Claypools were going through the agony of watching their seven year old daughter, Laura, die of leukemia. Towards the last days of young Laura’s life, John Claypool preached a sermon on this text entitled, "Strength Not to Faint". That day he stood to confess to his congregation: "I want you to know," he said, "that I am not soaring like the eagle today. I’m not running like the footman. I am barely walking through this experience, just asking God to give me "strength not to faint."
Out of that message I learned something that enabled me to better understand just what it means to live the God-directed life. I learned that God doesn’t promise to make me "soar" anytime I may want to or "run" any time I want to run or walk when I want to walk. I guess I learned that God exercises His lordship over, not just the time of my life and the strength of my life, but He also wants to be Lord over the rhythm or the pace of my life.
Some want to soar all the time in the heights of spiritual ecstasy. Peter wanted that on the Mount of Transfiguration. "Lord," he said, "It is good to be here. Let’s just build three tents and stay." Jesus didn’t let it happen. He led them from the mountain top to the valley below where there were hurting people. The God-directed life will not allow us to always be on some spiritual mountaintop.
We are often like Lucy in an old "Peanuts" comic strip. Lucy was complaining about her lousy life. Charley Brown is trying to cheer her up. "Into each life some rain must fall," he said. That didn’t seem to help at all. Then he thought of another saying: "Just remember, life has its mountains and its valleys, its ups and its downs." To which Lucy replied, "All I want is ups and ups and ups!"
Some of us are like that. We are wired as Type A personalities. We want to be running all the time. Maybe what God is wanting to say to us here is something like this: "Let me set the rhythm of your life. When I want you to soar, I’ll give you strength to soar. And when I want you to run for me, I’ll give you strength to run. And when it’s OK just to walk, then I will give you strength to walk and not faint. If you see others soaring when you are just walking, don’t let it bother you. If others run swiftly by you in the race of life, don’t pay them any mind. You don’t have to feel guilty, you don’t have to feel second rate, because it is I who sets the pace of your life." To me that is a great source of strength and comfort as I retire, slow down to a calmer pace and turn the reins over to a younger generation.
The God-directed life, life on eagle’s wings, is the life that waits upon the Lord, letting Him set the time table of our lives; it is letting Him determine the rhythm of life. It is, in a word, simply letting God be God in every area of your life.
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1 Page Kelley, "Isaiah," The Broadman Bible Commentary, Vol. 5, p.302 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1971)
