LEARNING TO SOAR 

EXODUS 19:3-6

          Having brought the Children of Israel out of Egypt with a mighty deliverance, God instructs Moses here to tell them he has carried them like an eagle would her chicks, to bring them to himself.  For in verse four he says “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself.” Recently we did a series of messages where we talked about the great deliverance that we have experienced in having Jesus, our kinsman redeemer, deliver us from the power of darkness and place us in his kingdom that we may become fit to receive the inheritance that God has in store for us.  God wrought this great deliverance on our behalf so that again he could bring his people to himself.  And as he carried Israel from Egypt to Sinai, from bondage to an encounter with him, so he wants us to know that he is carrying us from our captivity in sin to our freedom in him.  He bore Israel, his chosen people, like an eagle with her young and now he bares us, his children on eagle’s wings.  

          Eagles are huge birds.  The female bald eagle is 35 to 37 inches tall and is slightly larger than the male who is 30-34 inches tall.  The female eagle can have a wingspan of up to 90 inches, where the male wingspan ranges from 72 to 85 inches. Bald eagles weigh from ten to fourteen pounds. 

The eagle skeleton weighs about half a pound. Their bones are light, because they are hollow.  The feathers weigh about twice as much as the bones.

An eagle's wings are long and broad, making them effective for soaring. To help reduce turbulence as air passes over the end of the wing, the tips of the feathers at the end of the wings are tapered so that when the eagle fully extends its wings, the tips are widely separated.  To help them soar, eagles use thermals, which are rising currents of warm air and updrafts generated by terrain, such as valley edges or mountain slopes.  Soaring is accomplished with very little wing-flapping, enabling them to conserve energy. Long-distance migration flights are accomplished by climbing high in a thermal, then gliding downward to catch the next thermal, where the process is repeated.     Bald eagles can fly to an altitude of 10,000 feet. During level flight, a bald eagle can achieve speeds of about 30 to 35 mph.
DEUT 32:11-12

          Often when we see scriptures relating to the eagles wings or God hiding us under the shadow of his wings we think in terms of God’s protection, his care and his provision.  From the scripture we just read one might still be focused on God protection, care and provision and though young chicks find all three of these in the wings of their parents, that is not what is being described here.  What is being described here is something that many of us do not understand or know about as it relates to eagles.  What is being described here is the mother eagle teaching the young eagle to fly.

Baby eagles are born with the instinct to fly and to hunt, but before they can do either of these things they must be taught.

          The young birds grow rapidly, they add one pound to their body weight every four or five days.  At six weeks, the eaglets are very nearly as large as their parents.  However, the parents still have all of the hunting responsibility and the babies have yet to leave the nest.  You see the young eagle must grow the proper feathers for flight.  They must shed most of the down feathers used to keep them warm and grow the lightweight, hollow fibers that assist them in flight.  This sometimes takes 10 – 13 weeks after hatching.  By this time the baby eagle weighs too much to fly with ease so the parents begin to withhold food from them.  This does two things, gets him trim enough to fly and stirs his instincts to hunt.  One scientist studying eagle patterns observed that “each time a parent came flying in to toward the nest the young eagle called for food eagerly; but over and over again, the parent came with empty feet, and the eaglet grew thinner. He pulled meat scraps from the old dry-up carcasses lying around the nest. He watched a sluggish beetle in the nest, picked it up gingerly, and ate it. His first kill.
   Days passed, and as he lost body fat be became quicker in his movements and paddled ever more lightly when the wind blew, scarcely touching the nest edge; from time to time he was airborne for a moment or two. His parents often flew past and sometimes fed him. Beating his wings and teetering on the edge of the nest, he screamed for food whenever one flew by.

When it is finally time to teach the young eagle to fly, one of the parents, using its beak and nose, prods or pushes the young eagle from the nest which is high upon a cliff, hundreds of feet up in the air.  The young eaglet starts to fall, and the great eagle flies underneath, puts its wing out, catches the little one on its back and flies a mile into the air.

When you can hardly see the eagle as a point in the sky, it turns sideways, and down falls the little eaglet, which goes fluttering maybe a thousand feet.

Meanwhile, the eagle circles around the eaglet and underneath it, the eagle catches the eaglet on its wings and carries the eaglet up in the air again. After dishing the eaglet out again and letting it go, the eaglet comes down farther and farther—sometimes within a hundred feet of the ground.

Again the great eagle catches the little one on its back and up they go another mile. Little by little the eaglet will learn how to fly. The eagle knows when the eaglet is tired; it spoons the eaglet into the nest, noses out the next one and starts off again.  In this way the young eagle becomes accustomed to the feeling of falling through the air.  In time with his keen eye sight he will learn to spot the parent in the air and will begin to mock the parent’s actions.  Noticing the wide spread wing of the parent, the young eagle stretches out its wings and soars.  The title of today’s message is “LEARNING TO SOAR”.

It is imperative that the young eagle learn to soar.  Its whole existence depends on it.  For the eagle must soar high above the water’s surface or the valley floor to spot with his keen eyes the prey that will soon be breakfast lunch or dinner.  Without soaring he cannot hunt and without hunting he will not survive.   The young eagle has the proper instincts but he must learn to use them.  However, if it were up to the baby eagle, he would never learn to soar.  Why because he was comfortable in the nest, never having to hunt and always being fed by his parents.  Many Christians are just like the young eagle.  They are comfortable coming to church, singing and hearing the word preached, going home and doing nothing with it.  They like the young eagle are comfortable nesting and do not even desire to soar. 

ROMANS 12:4-8

          Here Paul listed seven gifts all of which are needed in the body.  Are these the only gifts, of course not?  But many who have been at this longer than I have believe that all Christians have at least one of these gifts and may have multiple gifts.  Whether this list is complete or rather you find yourself in this list or not is really not of importance.  What is important is that you discover your gift in the body and that you learn to soar with it.  If you will not identify your gift and soar then you will never fulfill your purpose in God and be the great eagle that God designed you to be.  As God gave the eagle instincts so he has given us gifts and when these gifts are fully developed and we learn to us them, then we the body of Christ will climb to new heights.  What your gift is, I may not know, but this I do know.  You have gifts and you must learn to use them and to use them properly. 

v    Prophesying - communicating God’s message, to strengthen, encourage, and comfort is to be done in proportion to faith.  Encourage, comfort and strength in agreement with the word of faith. Note that it did not say according to the proportion of his faith. Prophesying is to be tied to the faith, i.e., the doctrinal principles of the Word of God in right relationship to the body of truth already revealed. Thus the person who prophesies must also study that he may rightly divide the word of truth. (2 Tim. 2:15).

v    Ministry – Greek word is diakonia (deacon).  Ministry here is an office of serving.  Those with the gift to serve should with ease recognize opportunities to serve and without outside incentive set about doing just that.

v    The teacher is to instruct others.

v    The exhorter is one who has the ability to encourage or move one to action.

v    The giver is the one who empties out himself both emotionally and with physical possessions to the benefit of others.  The giver gives with generosity, without outward show and seeks no outward acknowledgement.

v    The one who rules sets things in order.  He is a leader who takes on the responsibility of organizing, planning, and bringing an event into manifestation. His managing, leading, or administering is to be done diligently “in eagerness and, earnestness”, not lazily or halfheartedly.

v    The one with the gift of mercy is to bestow mercy, visit the sick and do charitable deeds cheerfully in gladness not with sadness.

Whatever one’s gift, he should exercise it faithfully as a good steward of the gifts received from God.  Some of you are going to say “But I don’t know what my gift is.”

JOHN 15:26 

          It is your responsibility to get with the Spirit of God so that he can teach you.  Many times people will not know their gift because they will not spend enough quiet time with the spirit so that he can talk to them.  Quiet time means quiet time.  We have to be willing to sit and let God talk to us, to tell us who we are and who he is causing us to become.  We must listen to him and not run from what he is saying to us.  Many times we don’t know our gifts because we don’t want to know.  We don’t want the responsibility of having to use them.  We are even fearful of misusing them.  Do you not know that to not use is also to misuse?  We are afraid of failure or making a mistake.  But if you are ever going to soar you must take a risk.  But the good thing is that God has promised to spread his wings and bring us to himself.  If you step out to use the gifts God has given you, you may tumble for a while but you will not hit the ground.  He will swoop in and rescue you and give you more practice until you learn to soar.  All he asks is that we be willing to learn to soar.