July 02

“But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles” (Isaiah 40:31).

There are two things here; waiting and mounting up with wings as eagles. One will follow the other. We are told in Daniel that he set his face to seek the Lord by prayer and supplication and, importantly, confession (Daniel 9:3-4). And we learn that “from the first day you set your heart to understand, and humbled yourself before your God” (Daniel 10:12) his prayers were heard and he received that for which he had asked; he didn’t know that it was done, but it was done in the heavenlies. In these days, that is what each believer must do; set your heart to understand, humble yourself and then wait; waiting is the most neglected of all the things that are commanded of Christians; but wait we must, if we trust God.

We are also told here that those believing and trusting in Christ Jesus are meant to be soaring like eagles in the high places, whereas the modern Church is more akin to a bunch of turkeys; stuck to the ground – i.e. this world – and gobbling and gabbling away at each other; going nowhere and just being fattened for the slaughter.

Why is this so? For a start, eagles are equipped with two wings with which to soar up into the heavenly realms of God; God has given us two wings too, the Word and the Holy Spirit; both are essential for the believer to rise up into the heavenly places. But some have abandoned both wings and are grounded like turkeys; others have abandoned one wing, either the Word or the Holy Spirit and try to fly with one wing only, but only manage to go around in circles and keep crashing.

Modern heresies have so infected the Western Church that the spiritual eagle is almost extinct; there are many crows, who flock together with other crows and always stay close to the ground; they are afraid to depart too far from this world and rarely get beyond the fence or a tree, where they make a lot of noise and feed off the dead. Eagles however, are different; they don’t keep together in numbers but make their abode in the cleft of rocks in the high places; from there they soar alone in the heavenlies, relying only on the uplift provided by the currents of the air; the believer too, in these days, must learn dwell in the cleft of the Rock and to soar in the high places alone, relying only on the uplifting power of God’s Holy Spirit.