Soaring and Nesting

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.

When things don’t work like they used to work.  When things which seemed easy now seems hard.  When a marriage seemed to work so well and now is a struggle does not always indicate you’re under spiritual attack.  It could be that God you’re nesting in where you used to be and not where God wants you.  Living in the past doesn’t give God a chance to take you to where he created you to be and go.

Nesting is not usually God’s plan for a Christian, but rather soaring.

Sometimes God has to make your life uncomfortable so that you will realize this part of my life is completed.  I need to move on.  It has fulfilled it’s purpose and now I need to seek his present purpose for my life.

There is nothing more frustrating a life than to live a life that Jesus is trying to crucify.   Paul said in Galatians chapter 2, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me”.

The eagle is only in the place of it’s intended purpose soaring.  Not back in the nest comfortable with you current life or your past.  The mother eagle knows this and as long as the food is easy and the life is perfect the eagle will just sit there.  She has to stir the nest and stop the food and push the eaglet out of the nest.

Sometimes we have to move from our comfortable place to a new place because God moves us to grow.  Sometimes it is because now is a new chapter in our life; example a baby is born, we graduate from college, our spouse dies, our job downsizes.  But there is another reason we have to leave our comfortable place.  We make a mistake, we fail.  Moses killed an Egyptian guard and word began to spread and Moses had to flee into the desert.    He had to leave his leadership role, the ivory palace, his comfortable life for the desert.  While running from His past He ran slam into His purpose.

Suddenly, Moses had his identity totally stripped from him.  The identity he felt was the true Him, was taken away.  Moses had an identity problem.  He was a lighter skinned Egyptian in the court of the Pharaoh.  Somehow he knew he was different than the others.  Then he found out the secret when he was a grown man.  He was a Hebrew of the Hebrew slaves that he was in charge of.

Now Moses was neither a Hebrew slave, nor a royal son of the Pharaoh’s court.  He was a misfit in the desert.   He knew nothing about the desert.  He wasn’t a desert person and  probably cried out to God. “I can’t survive here.”

He was entering a wilderness he had never been in before.  One he was not equipped for.  His survival training was for the courts of the Pharaoh not the desert.

Now he’s saying, “Which plant can you eat?  Where’s the water come from? Do you work in the heat of the day or the cool of the dark evening?  How do you defend yourself against the desert thieves?”

Now he’s free from Pharaoh but has been swallowed up by the desert.  And God left him in the desert for 40 years.  At an Oasis he met Jethro and his daughters. Jethro took him in and began to teach him.

You see when God takes you out of the comfortable nest you have lived in for years and put you in a new place he calls you to be a student all over again.  It’s amazing to me to hear Christians say they haven’t studied the Word of God for years.  What?  Whenever I am taken from one life to the next, God takes me back to school and I dive into the Word of God, for He teaches me greater in these moments than in the comfortable place I know.

Anytime you step from one life to another, from one comfortable place to another, you must humble yourself.  Going back to school is humbling.  Recently I had to go back to school to update my teaching certificate, and I have this 25 year old teaching me.  That takes humility.  And God is in the business of humbling his servants. If we get too comfortable with our walk, God will humble us with a new way, a new life.

The question comes are you willing to humble yourself before God to do what you have to do, to get to where God wants you to be.  Moses had to listen and humble himself under the hand of Jethro, a sheepherder, to be taught what he had to know for God to use him.  But it might take awhile.  It took Moses 40 years.

If you don’t pass the exam you will not pass the course.  If you don’t pass the course you have to take it over again.  You keep taking the exam till you pass the course, then you can move on.  Some of us take awhile.  For Moses it took 40 years.

You might think, what a waste.  No nothing is wasted when God is involved.  This course was necessary and apparently it had many tests before he was ready to go where God wanted Him.

You might be in a dry place.  You might be in a place where you are really struggling.  You might feel out of place where you are right now.  You might feel that the desert will swallow you up.  But God has a plan.

I know that Moses during those 40 years, must have had Satan come to him and say, “And where is your God?  So this is what God is doing in your life, and you trust Him?  This is where you will remain the rest of your life.  This punishment for your sin will be you undoing.  The Pharaoh will in some way catch up with you and destroy you, you can’t hide forever. You’re a might man of the court of Pharaoh?  No you are a nobody Sheepherder in the middle of this barren land.

Have you ever been at a barren place in the desert of life and you felt your life now had lost it’s meaning.  There can be no point in this.  I am a wasted person.

But then, Moses walked up on  a fire, and he stopped and turned and looked closer.  Moses recognized this fire was special, a God thing.  It was meant specifically for him. He couldn’t walk away- because he knew “God’s in this thing.” And from the fire came the voice of God.  You see God didn’t speak till Moses saw God in the midst of the fire.

Have you ever been somewhere in the desert and you thought why me Lord, and you thought that was low, but then a fire came in your life; a time of burning, a time of strong challenge, maybe even pain.  You begin to seek God out in the midst of the fire and God spoke.

If you run from the fire you are running from your call.  If you run from the fight you are running from your destiny.

Then God said, “Moses take off your shoes- this is Holy Ground.” Now Moses had been on this mountain with his sheep many times.  Why was this place holy ground now?  Because God was in it.  Wherever God is – is holy ground.  If you have a fire event in your life and God is in it – it is holy.

We look at times in our lives as wasted or trashed moments.  But God uses all moments for His work in our lives.  Now Moses was in the very face of his destiny in the most bleak moment of his life.  40 years in the desert and now this crazy fire, and God was saying, This is Holy Ground- take off your shoes.  In essence respect the moment, respect the event as the Hand of God.

God says, “The reason I had you in the desert for 40 years is because you had to be ready to do this thing. Forty years ago you were brash and the Egyptians would not have listened and the Hebrews would have been afraid of you and not followed you. But now you are ready.  Now the time is accomplished.

I let you struggle, cry, starve, thirst, fight to stay alive- so that you could look at some one and say, “I have been where you’re going and God carried me and he will carry you.”  The same God that delivered me will deliver you.

They would not have followed you before, but now they will follow you.  Now your destiny awaits.

Illustration-  Pastor came and spoke-  His father a 30 year pastor diagnosed with cancer.  His son found with brain tumor.  He fell to his knees and cried out to God.

God said, “I just want you to pray.”  For 6 months he did nothing but pray.  His father passed to be with Jesus, and his sons cancer was found to be benign.  During that time this pastor realized his call, “to be a man of prayer and to teach prayer in this day of struggle’.  He began his prayer list of a 1,000 and has become a great leader of prayer speaking all over the world about prayer.  He spoke to me-

Now Moses was ready and God said, “Go to Pharaoh and tell him, “let my people go’.”

It took 80 years of Moses life to finally come to the place where he truly understood who He was.  He was not a slave, or he could not go and stand in the court of Pharaoh and demand anything.  He was not an Egyptian, or he could not have stood against his brothers. But Moses was the deliverer.  Moses was the one who bridged the gap from the Egyptians to the Hebrews, trained by jethro in the desert school so that He would be prepared to take the children of God through the desert into the Promised Land.

You cry out why Lord was so much of my life wasted.  It wasn’t waisted.  It was a part of the plan.  Why am I in the desert so long?  When will you deliver me?

His answer: “ When you pass the test.  When you take the next steps .  When you are ready to leave your nesting place and soar with me.”