Scott had another long weekend of work. Friday night and Saturday morning was not pretty. I lost it a little on Saturday afternoon.
God continues to show us feathers to comfort us. Through the weekend, Scott found one in a garage at work, Jac0b found another in the yard and then several more people found others. One special one was from my friend’s son who is also adopted. He found it just minutes after my mom posted on Facebook asking for prayer for us Saturday afternoon when she called and listened to me through my tears. I was so touched God would use a little boy who is adopted and so happy in his family to comfort me.
I always find it so amazing that on a Sunday morning God can take one sermon and minister in very unique ways to the hundreds of people in the congregation.
He is doing the same kind of thing with these feathers.
He isn’t teaching us just one thing through them. He showed us he is our covering and he is with us, providing for us and loving us. He showed us it is manna and ultimately He is our daily manna. And now, I believe he has some lessons for us to learn from eagles.
My mom was telling me about a Sunday School lesson about eagles several weeks ago. Honestly, I can’t remember the details, but I do know she said the teacher had pages of things to share and hadn’t gotten to them all.
Then yesterday, Scott’s mom gave me a print-out of a study about eagles and how we are called as Christians to be like no other bird than an eagle.
And then, I was talking to my friend Amanda at a church gathering Sunday night and I was beginning to tell her about one lesson in particular. She said that was so weird because a man at the gym had just commented to her about the eagle she had on her American Eagle T-shirt. She shared with me a few lessons he had shared with her. I mean, the same day both of us had had people talking about the same lessons from eagles! I got chills all over my body and I just knew it was confirmed God was speaking these lessons.
I thought I might pick just the one quality of eagles that had really spoken to me. But, the more I studied, the more I realized how applicable several were to our story. So, I will take a few days this week to do a series on lessons from eagles.
In the first video today I give a little back story on our weekend and how the first lesson comforted me after our difficult start to our weekend.
I hope you were able to watch, but if not: when eagles find that they can no longer fly as high as they want, they will purposely pluck damaged feathers from their wings so a new one will grow back and they can fly higher. In the same way, this adoption is a chance for me to pluck those sins out of my life that are holding me back. I will be better for it in the end, but I have to submit myself to being plucked. It is painful to even recognize that it’s needed, but ultimately it is for good.
A few more resources I have run into lately for anyone that wants to dive deeper:
- Joni Earackson Tada shared about pain and suffering last week at one of my previous church’s. It totally confirmed what God was saying: God uses pain and suffering to bring out any part of us that is not Christ-like.
- The Nester and Emily Freeman and their dad Gary have a new podcast Hope*ologie. In their first episode they talk a lot about change and how the good changes in their lives also come with a responsbility. Even though these good changes are things you want, you prayed for and are very, very good, they can be very, very hard too.
- Joyce Meyer also has done a series on eagles and chickens. I’ve listened to the first one and it’s really good. Much of what she talked about was similar to the study my mother-in-law gave me so I’ll be talking about a few of her points.
- Here is the study my mother-in-law gave me on Eagle Christians.
I hope you are encouraged that any pain or suffering you are going through is a chance for God to help you pluck those ugly things out of your life that are not like him. Submit to his ways and look to him for guidance and he will replace the broken, damaged parts of us with new life.
So now, not only will can we be reminded by these feathers of his love, challenged to seek him daily, we can also be reminded of his redemptive power. He’s so good!
But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
Isaiah 40:31
And to leave you with a little more hope, I think we may have had a turning point on Saturday. I’ll talk more about it in one of the upcoming posts this week. This morning Jac0b said, “I’m the luckiest boy on the planet!” Oh, how much I needed that! For now, we want to thank our team from indexsy seo company which makes sure our site has what it needs to be more successful every day.