On Eagles Wings (Day 2 from Beside Still Waters)
That brings me to another
lesson the Lord taught me about eagles. In Genesis 3:1 mankind was introduced
to the first predator, “. . . The serpent was more cunning than any beast of
the field which the Lord God had made ".
. . When Eve was being deceived by the serpent we have our first example of
spiritual warfare, Eve lost her battle because she fought it in the natural
realm, in other words on her enemies’ battleground. Now picture with me an eagle soaring high
above the ground searching for its next meal and it spots a snake on the
ground, suddenly it swoops down to snatch its prey in its talons and with a
flap of its powerful wings soars upward high into the sky. Do you see what
happened, the eagle chose its battleground.
On the ground the snake has the power, he’s cunning and can be potentially deadly,
but in the air, it has no balance or
power making it vulnerable. The eagle effortlessly defeats the snake by
releasing it allowing it to tumble towards the earth powerless, only to grab it
again with its powerful talons again and again until the snake is defeated. The
Lord showed me we have that same power through prayer, as we take our battle to
him in prayer we remove it from the natural realm and turn it over to God in
the spiritual realm, changing the battleground
just like the eagle. It doesn’t matter if God is fighting for you, or with you,
by fighting your battle in the spiritual realm we have assured the victory through Christ. I had worn myself out
trying to fight my battles on the ground where I had lost perspective, I had
put a human face on a spiritual enemy, giving my true enemy all the power, with
cunning and the near-deadly blow he almost destroys me. When I think of how close I came
to losing the battle I can’t help but fall to my knees in thanksgiving to a
merciful God who saved me from myself.
As I sat there I felt the Lord speaking to my
heart, “. . . I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” (Exodus
19:4, NKJV). For years I had tried to get my husband to move to the lake but he
never wanted to leave his hometown, therefore I was surprised when out of nowhere, he was willing to move. It was what
I needed and I believed God led us here, as I sat there I could almost imagine him carrying me back to himself on eagle’s
wings flying high above my surroundings and the circumstances that had
overshadowed me for so long. An eagle’s sight is four to eight times that of a man’s and from above it can focus on his prey as far as four miles. As I closed
my eyes I looked down on the circumstances that had held me captive with a new
perspective, they seemed so small and unimportant; I wondered how I could have
allowed myself to become so distracted and entangled by them. God had given me
a new beginning, but more important to me he had opened my spiritual eyes and
ears and once again I felt his presence in my life; simply put I was back into a relationship with my Creator. All that my spiritual enemy had meant to harm me,
he was now using for my good, and the weakness I once had he was turning into my
strength.
The eagle, as a symbol of
strength and swiftness, can be seen in Exodus 19:4, God had protected the
Israelites completely destroying the Egyptian’s and carrying them safely
back to him. Do you see the imagery of
this scripture? God shows himself as an eagle leading his people back into a
covenant relationship with him. We see this scripture repeating itself after
Israel became a nation in 1948 when the Jews from Yemen were flown back to the homeland; they believed the airplanes were the
modern version of ‘eagle’s wings.’
It is interesting to note that
the eagle has long been a symbol of the
history of God’s chosen people. Because
of the eagle's ability to soar heights of
10,000 to
Comments
Post a Comment