Stop Flapping and Soar Like an Eagle

Stop Flapping and Soar Like an Eagle

I love to watch eagles, and am fascinated by God’s word using the analogy of eagles in Isa 40:31. Those who wait on the Lord will soar on wings like eagles. To soar on wings like an eagle…… What exactly does it mean? What would that feel like? What does God want us to learn from the powerful eagle? Jill Briscoe, Christian author and international speaker and teacher, spoke at Crossroads Bible Church on Apr 31. She was amazing, speaking on Isa 40:31 and how we can ride the thermals of life through the power of Christ in us, as the eagle seeks out and rides the wind thermals, using them to its advantage. Her message: Use what’s against you to work for you”.

The eagle is known as a bird of freedom. Above all other birds, it is the soaring eagle, with its size and weight, that gives the impression of power and purpose in the air. It advances solidly into a wind thermal, which is a rising current of warm air, like a great ship, cleaving the swells and thrusting aside the smaller waves. It sails directly into the thermal, where lesser birds and airplanes are rocked and tilted by the air currents.

When an eagle first leaves its perch, its broad, powerful wings allow it to climb. Circling over the middle of a rising thermal, an eagle will spread its wings, and soar, allowing the warm air to lift it to heights up to 3 miles above the surface of the earth. By using the power of the thermal, soaring is accomplished with very little wing-flapping, enabling the eagle 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.

Eagles can literally die if they expend too much energy flapping their wings during flight. Flapping requires 20 times more energy than soaring. Eagles learn to wait for the thermals to come up on them. Sometimes they will remain perched for days before they can catch a good, strong thermal, where they can then launch onto and combine a mixture of flying and soaring to get them to where they want to go without using much energy, and thus cover long distances relatively effortlessly. When they are riding the thermal, the eagle appears to fly effortlessly and gracefully. Without the thermal, the eagle’s flight appears awkward and clumsy.

Just as the wings of the eagle allow them to fly and soar on those wind thermals, without being destroyed, in the same way the only thing that will allow us to ride above the thermals of life, with all its trauma, difficulty, challenges and sorrow, is to stop flapping on our own strength, and soar on the strength and power of the Holy Spirit. If we do not have the faith, belief and confidence in the Lord and His Holy Spirit to guide and empower us to fly into and rise above the adversities we face in this life, we will flap and flap on our own power and fail to overcome and rise to new heights.

As the eagle waits for the thermal, we often have to wait for God to direct our walk, before we act. “Not by your might, nor by your power, but by My Spirit,” says the Lord. (Zechariah 4:6). True freedom is soaring into the thermals of life, on the wings of the power of the Holy Spirit, through whom we can do anything! And so we learn to wait on the Lord, and stop flap, flap, flapping on our own strength. Believe and trust that He will give you the strength to soar into and through life’s thermals on the wings of the Holy Spirit. Happy Soaring!!