Soaring on Wings like Eagles

When Israel couldn’t save themselves, God saved them.

God had a plan for His people that they didn’t know, when He brought them out of Egypt. He took them out of slavery Himself. All He asked of them was to lay down their idolatry, entrust themselves to His care and follow Him to a safe place. He knew they weren’t strong enough to meet any affront, so He took them to a safe place in the wilderness. There, He could show Himself to them in the way they needed to learn to see Him, not in the way they had learned in their slavery. They were like little chicks stuck in a nest, unable to fly.

There was a new framework for living that God required of them if they were to become the people He called them to be. He wasn’t only bringing them out of physical slavery, He was bringing them out of their subjugated thinking to oppressors and foreign gods. He required that they straighten their backs against the things not of God, and bow before the one true God who saved them and had chosen to love them as His own.

Exodus 8:20 (NIV)

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Get up early in the morning and confront Pharaoh as he goes to the river and say to him, ‘This is what the LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me.

They had learned to worship foreign gods besides their God. God needed to take them away, into the wilderness, where there were no other distractions, where they had to learn to rely on God alone, reset their hearts before Him and align themselves with Him in purity. From that posture, they had to learn to confront, in order to keep their reawakened identity.

Once God had carried them out of their slavery and into the wilderness, once they had seen all the mighty things He had done on their behalf, once they had seen His faithfulness to them, He instructed them to follow Him to the land He had promised them, to obey Him fully, and keep His covenant.

Exodus 19:4 (NIV)

‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.

Just as He did for the Israelites, God gives us a new life, free from a life of bricks and mortar slavery, to soaring above the heights. God wants more for us than minimal survival. He brings us into a reciprocal relationship of devotion that allows us to rise. In this place we know we are safe, even when life looks uncertain. God doesn’t let His family go and He never asks His children to go alone. He asks His children to let Him direct them and take charge over them.

Our greatest gift back to our Father is to take the opportunities to trust Him fully in times of uncertainty. We can praise Him for what He has been doing that we cannot see, knowing He is good and He will do what He says He will do in our lives. God gives us our faith and we are to use it in a way that glorifies Him. We cannot diminish God, but our lack of faith diminishes our view of Him and then diminishes the way we live our lives and the outcomes we see in our lives.

Hebrews 11:6 (TLB)

You can never please God without faith, without depending on him. Anyone who wants to come to God must believe that there is a God and that he rewards those who sincerely look for him.

God’s plan for us is to grow into mature flight. His justice will see our life mended and rebuilt. The journey may at times be frightful when He stirs us up to move onward. Like a parent eagle, He rustles us out of our nest, displaces us out of what’s familiar, to learn to fly and then to soar.

Deuteronomy 32:3-4 (GWT)

I will proclaim the name of the Lord. Give our God the greatness he deserves! He is a rock. What he does is perfect. All his ways are fair. He is a faithful God, who does no wrong. He is honourable and reliable.

As a good parent, He makes us spread our wings and learn to dream again. That can be hard, but He wants us to do something new after being hampered, shut down or injured. If we’ve been recovering from a life event that caused us to be grounded for a long time, or we’ve never learnt yet to stretch out our wings, we’ve been gaining strength to fly. He won’t let us stay in an untrained or survival state forever. He gives us our strength. We are to understand we were born to fly.

Deuteronomy 32:11 (NLT)

Like an eagle that rouses her chicks and hovers over her young, so he spread his wings to take them up and carried them safely on his pinions.

Pinions are the outer feathers of the eagle’s wings that an eagle mother catches her young on. Once she’s roused her chick out of the nest, this is how the little bird learns to fly. It might be a terrifying leap for the chick but the mother eagle makes herself a safety net to catch her baby.

God is likened to that great eagle. He rouses us, He disturbs us, He teaches us, and He catches us when we need to be caught. This is how we gain strength, understanding and experience in Him.

There’s a reason why the human soul has a deep-seated hope for a deliverer in times of great trouble. We have an intrinsic need to look for the salvation of God so that He will be able to come and help us in our need.

Isaiah 40:31 (NKJV)

But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

When we’ve become strong again, when we’ve seen the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, He will take us on to new heights.

Psalm 27:13 (KJV)

I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

God expects us to learn to fly. Again and again.

When an eagle flies, it doesn’t continually flap its wings. It jumps off its cliff, flaps until it catches a wind current, and then begins to soar on that updraft, knowing it will rise higher, using the drift to reach its destination.

When we rise above, we have greater clarity, greater vision, and greater vitality.

Soaring on wings like eagles is the obedience and trust God wants us to live by to reach the good places He has waiting for us.