Eagles' Wings
Eagles' Wings
By John Woodward
October 11, 1999
In the spring and fall we have a natural treat here in southern Ontario. The hawks that migrate north for the summer and south for the winter pass right over our area. We live on the Niagara peninsula, between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. These majestic birds travel over our town because there is a ridge which causes an upward wave of air; this serves as an elevator for the hawks. They circle round and round, carried skyward on the thermal current, then they continue on their route to points beyond.
I can't help but think of the famous promise given through the prophet Isaiah: "He [God] gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, And the young men shall utterly fall, 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." (Isaiah 40:29-31).
I can still hear the voice of Eric Liddell in a scene from the inspiring documentary / drama "Chariots of Fire." Liddell was well known in Scotland an a rugby player and became famous internationally as an Olympic champion runner and world record-breaker. He eventually went to China as a missionary until he was promoted to glory in 1945. In the film, Eric read these words of Isaiah to a congregation in a British cathedral. He knew in a literal sense that God equips His people to "run and not be weary".
The view of sanctification which emphasizes the believer's spiritual union with Christ and its many implications goes by various terms, including the higher life, the deeper life, the abiding life, the Spirt-filled life, the exchanged life. These articles often use the phrase "the exchanged Life" with was coined by missionary Hudson Taylor. This word "exchanged" comes from Isaiah 40:31: "But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew [exchange] their strength . . . " Here "renew" is the Hebrew word "chalaph" meaning "to change, exchange, pass on" (cf. Isaiah 41:1).
Missionary and author Roy Hession recorded in his diary his struggle with the self-life and the way of "exchange". 28 August, 1934- "Have had much temptation from 'self'--envy, jealousy, self-glory, vain imagining. This morning I claimed Galatians 2:20. The Lord has delivered me from self--praise His name! I am standing on the promises of God!"
This "exchange" involves appropriating by faith one's identification with Christ. Rather than seeing this spiritual growth step as a "second work of grace", it seems more scriptural to understand it as a further unwrapping of the grace God bestowed upon us at salvation.
Hession goes on to describe the way that The Holy Spirit illumined him. "One morning He [God] led me to the words, " ' I have been crucified with Christ . . . it is no longer I that live but Christ that liveth in me.' (Gal 2:20). I saw that my trouble was 'I' trouble; I was an 'I' specialist. I now saw that God had done something about this . . . Paul was not professing an experience of crucifixion as much as pointing back to an historical fact in which he was involved and on which he was counting. Then I understood: Roy Hession, the man whose centre was self, had been judged and crucified with Christ nineteen hundred years before. I was therefore to see myself ended, not mended, and instead of struggling with self, I was to accept the sentence of death pronounced so many years ago and trust God to progressively carry out the execution. This meant for me the end of trying to live by my own efforts, which till then had been the basis of my Christian life. More important, that the Lord Jesus was the source of the new life that had to be lived, for the verse went on to say, 'it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me.' " ( My Calvary Road, p.45,46.)
If you have trusted Christ as your Savior, trust Him moment by moment as the One who can lift you up on eagle's wings--to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint."
JBW
October 11, 1999. Vol.2, # 41
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