Return of the Eagles

It has taken every ounce of strength you thought you had but you finally reached the top of the mountain. Your elbows and knees are bloody from having to crawl these last days, but you made it. Exhausted from the effort, you lunge the last few feet and plant your flag there at the top of the snow-covered mountaintop!

Now you stand up, ready to look down upon all that you have conquered. But lo and behold! You aren’t at the top. You are just at an overlook. The top is so far above you that you can hardly see it.

That is how I feel after 46 years of walking with the LORD. I can’t say I was right on His heels the entire time, but He has never let me lose sight of Him.

But every time I think I have reached the top of the mountain with, say, love or patience, it is as if a blizzard comes blowing in at 200 mph and a gust wallops me right off the mountain! I mean really!

I am braced for the wind to come from one direction and before I know it, it comes at me from a direction I never expected!

I know you can’t possibly relate, can you??? HA

We are born with a certain DISPOSITION. A percentage of our disposition is a tendency toward moral actions and a certain percentage is toward immoral actions.

But as we grow up, our CHARACTER is shaped by our role models, our life, our choices, and hopefully, most importantly, our relationship with the LORD Jesus Christ.

Hang on, I am headed somewhere...Now, each CRISIS that occurs in life causes us respond with our disposition, and reveals our character. I may have THOUGHT that I was a better person than I really was until a certain crisis revealed that I had absolutely zero patience, or love for the homeless, or compassion for the needy, unless their skin is the color of mine.

When a crisis reveals these shortcomings in us, here is possibly the most important thing I may tell you: If you have been a Believer a while, there is a certain well-worn trap that you may have ALREADY fallen into. It is the trap of trying to climb out by yourself.

(But here is the sneaky part: most of those real mature kinds just breezed through that sentence, not even realizing it was for THEM. That's because they are so accustomed to working it out on their own that they don't even realize they are doing it. They have forgotten how to let go and just "be saved." Oh, they still fall overboard, but they also still keep refusing any and all life preservers...until they can build their own. It is time for you to just get alone somewhere and let God tear down all your walls and have a good cry. Then let HIM take over...)

Somehow, after we have known the LORD a while, we begin to think that we are capable of doing stuff in our own strength. Yet we are no more capable of that than we were the day we got saved! We start listening to this little voice telling us that we should be strong enough now so that we “not have to bother the LORD with such as this” and climb out of the mess we have gotten ourselves into.

Hogwash.

We are no more capable on day 10,000 than we were on day one. We still have to do all things by HIS strength operating through us. It never becomes ME; it is always HIM IN me.

And with this revelation that I am not the patient, loving, compassionate person I thought I was, I now have a decision to make: either continue along the path of the disposition I was born with, or choose to be reborn with new character.  Even though we are accustomed to using the term “born again” only for being “saved,” we can also ask God to make us new in whatever area the present crisis caused us to fail!

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:20)

We simply need another area TRANSFORMED. Once we believe that God has remade us, changed us, really made us DIFFERENT in that area of our mind, we will be able to test this by our own actions! We will see small changes at first, then large differences, bold statements, and steps in our walk with Christ, in that very area where we had failed to have patience or love or self-control.