Be An Eagle Christian

Isaiah 40:31, "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." (KJV)

We had so much interest last month about eagles as they relate to Christians that we decided to share a little more with you.

If we want to be an Eagle Christian for God then some of us are probably going to have to choose other friends. Some of you may be spending way too much time with people that totally suck the life out of you without depositing anything good in return. You have to find balance and it's time to come up higher.

What you think about yourself is extremely important. You have so much potential. Every single one of you are special but so many never reach their potential because they never get the revelation of what they can be in Christ Jesus. We don't need to look at what we can't do, we need to look at what God can do. God is not looking for ability he is looking for availability.

God uses ordinary people. Don't count yourself out. Know that you're an eagle. God has a place for you and with God nothing is impossible. Eagles have to be free. Listen to what happens to them in captivity. It changes their entire personality and totally ruins them because they were never meant to be caged. Eagles are supposed to be free as Christ sets us free. They are not supposed to be manipulated or controlled by fear.

Eagles in captivity stop cleaning themselves, lose their aggression and take on a lazy, passive, depressed attitude. They begin to eat dead, rotten meat when ordinarily it's fresh. It's a down hill decent when they're placed in captivity. Some of us are in captivity. Captives to what other people think. Men pleasers rather than God pleasers. God wants to open your cage and invite you to soar. Eagles have to be eagles.

Eagles love to eat fish, particularly salmon, but they always chose the ones that are still somewhat alive. Our mental and emotional health is affected by what we eat both physically and spiritually. It's amazing what you can find out about someone's character by listening to them. You can figure out real quick if someone is feeding you live stuff or dead stuff, and we need to get sharp enough to know the difference.

When an eagle gets older his talons are not as sharp as they once were and calcifications have formed on his beak. He actually looks ready for the old folk's home and feels that way too. What does he do? He flies to the 'high place'. He gets as close to the sun as he can possibly get up in the rocks, and begins to pluck out all of his feathers, one by one. A sizeable eagle can have as many as 7,000 feathers, so he has to stick with the program for a long while and I'm sure it's quite painful. He is not as concerned with the pain as he is the progress. Some of us get overly concerned with pain and never make progress.

After the eagle gets all the feathers out, try to imagine what he would look like now, then he seeks a cool refreshing stream to wash in. He has caked on mud and dirt. He gets in a cool spring and washes off all the parasites and lice. This is now an eagle renews and refreshes himself. Fresh and clean he stands in the sun and just starts to wait. It takes 40 days for the feathers to grow back. During this process they start rubbing their talons and beaks on the 'rock' to sharpen them. We have to go to our rock to get freshened again and again.

Every person has an eagle in them if they're born again. Deep inside we have the markings of an eagle. The eagle is fiercely devoted and is extremely committed. In order for us to have a deeper walk with God we have to be rooted in our commitments. We have to know what God wants us to do and be fiercely committed.

When an eagle takes hold of his prey he would die rather than give it up, that's how committed he is. We've got to understand commitment. Commitment means you do it when you feel like it, you do it when you don't feel like it, you do it when it's convenient, you do it when it's inconvenient, you do it in season and you do it out of season. You just do it because you're an eagle Christian. Eagle Christians are people of integrity and excellence. They say what they mean and mean what they say, just as the Bible likens us to eagles.

At the age of four the eagle instinctively begins to go through a change. He realizes he needs a mate. When he finds her they begin a game of tag and that starts the courtship. She soars high in the sky flying in a figure eight pattern and he chases her no longer flying his own course. She does a series of diving down for twigs, soaring to 10,000 feet and dropping them for him to catch and bring back to her. The twigs get larger and larger dropped from lower and lower altitudes and he continues to return them to her or she flies off and leaves him forever. The eagle understands commitment. Don't think God is going to make everything easy for you.

Moving to the next stage she flies high into the sky with him chasing her and suddenly in mid air she flops over on her back, falling with her talons straight up in the air. He catches her by locking his talons with hers and they begin to fall to the earth together. While they're falling they sing a love song to one another making a commitment to one another unto death. Eagles mate for life and he'd rather die than to drop her.

He continues to court her throughout their relationship. He even brings home little green twigs, the equivalent of bringing home flowers. God is calling us for a new level of commitment both to him and to each other. We want to know that we have people in our lives that are committed to us and who show us respect.

The eagle has a solution in their eyes when they're born. The solution begins to harden and becomes the setting that enables them to find their way home even when they're thousands of miles away. Once the solution hardens, marking the spot where they live, they get a low level of pain in their eyes if they go too far from home. A lot of believers live with that low level of pain and get accustom to it or just ignore it. How many of us don't even pay attention to it anymore? If we learn to pay attention to the Holy Spirit to avoid that low level of pain we know, then we'll stay on course.

I don't know about you, but I want to be an eagle Christian and mount up as eagles soaring toward the heavens. Shalom......Marvin and Diana

Thanks again to ministryclipart.com for use of the fabulous graphic!
Joyce Meyer Ministries has a good tape series called 'Mount Up With Wings as Eagles'