Do You Live Life Like a Turkey, or Soar Like an Eagle?
May 2022 |
“But they that wait upon the LORD, shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”
—Isaiah 40:31
“Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ.
—II Corinthians 2:14
Years ago, A dear pastor friend of mine shared this parable in a sermon here at Jimmy Swaggart Bible College, and I have never forgotten it. That pastor’s name was Rev. J. Don George, and he is now in heaven. The title of his parable was, “The Tyranny of Turkey Theology,” and it goes like this:
Once upon a time, there lived, in a faraway country, in a forest of woods, a large flock of wild turkeys. Well, at that special time and season, one of the brooding hens laid a clutch of eggs and began to facilitate the incubating process by daily sitting on her nest of eggs.
This turkey nest was located under some trees near a very steep hill and rugged mountain stretching toward the trees. The brooding turkey hen did not know that high above her, on the side of that mountain, was another nest. It was an eagle’s nest.
There were two eggs in the eagle’s nest.
On a given day, a great storm hit this mountain and forest with strong winds and much rain. With such force, the wind and rain caused one of the eggs to fall out of the eagle’s nest, and it rolled down the side of the mountain, ending up under the tree close to the turkey’s nest. After the storm subsided, the brooding hen saw an egg outside of her nest and with her beak, she pushed it until it was safely in her nest. She continued to do her motherly duty of sitting on the nest.
When the twenty-eight days were completed, all of the eggs had hatched except one. The brooding hen continued to sit on the nest several more days. Finally, the tiny egg hatched. Out came a strange-looking baby turkey. The mother hen loved her offspring, but she did notice that one was smaller than the others and looked sickly. Days turned into weeks; the brand-new little turkey chicks (poults) began to grow and learn how to scratch among the leaves and sticks for food.
But the smallest one, the runt, struggled every day. She didn’t have the height nor the strength that the others had. The “ugly” turkey looked at her siblings and thought, “All of the others look so much better than me. Their legs are longer, their feathers are prettier than mine, and they are much taller than me.” Her siblings made fun of her, ridiculing her because of her small size and the color of her feathers.
The little runt of a turkey lived life depressed, downcast, and defeated. It seemed that life was not worth living. On a certain day, after many months of living a depressed life, while out scratching for food with the other turkeys, the tiny turkey looked up to the sky and saw an unusual creature flying among the clouds. She paused to analyze the creature. “Wow, that creature is awesome,” she thought. Its head is pure white. Its tail is beautifully white. Its feathers are dark brown.” And it flew away.
She went back to scratching away, looking for worms and bugs to eat. The next day, the tiny turkey left the flock, went out beyond the trees, and looked to the heavens to see if she could see that strange creature flying up there again. “Ah, there it is,” she thought. But, on this day, she looked at the bird in the sky and then looked at herself and noticed the similarity. She thought, “Her head is white; my head is white. She has a pure white tail; I have a white tail. Her feathers are dark brown; mine too.”
She observed the creature spreading her majestic wings and and soaring among the clouds. The little turkey thought, “I wonder, I wonder, I wonder?” So, with much effort, she spread her wings; she noticed the size of her wings. She climbed to the top of a large rock, stood up tall, spread out her wings and with great effort she flapped her wings down, then up and down again. In just a few moments, she found herself high above the trees, flying in the heavens among the clouds.
And boom, it dawns on her, she was never meant to be a lowly runt of a turkey that scratches for worms and bugs, but she was destined to be an eagle soaring in the heavens to live with other eagles among the clouds. She was not a turkey. She was an eagle.
The American bald eagle is incredibly beautiful—dark brown with a pure white head and tail. It stands at about two and a half feet tall and weighs from twenty-five to forty pounds with a wingspan between six and seven feet. These eagles normally fly between thirty-five to fifty miles per hour and can dive to catch a fish from the water or a rabbit in the field at between seventy-five to ninety miles per hour. They live to be about thirty to thirty-five years of age.
In his thirteen epistles, the apostle Paul highlights the phrase, “in Christ” sixty-five times. In II Corinthians 5:17, Paul writes “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
When we are in Christ, Paul writes, we are justified, sanctified, not under condemnation, free from the law of sin and death, though weak, wise in Christ.
When we are in Christ, nothing can “separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39).
In II Corinthians 2:14, Paul writes “Now, thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ.”
In Ephesians 2:6, Paul adds “And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
The almighty God wants us to know who we are in Christ and to live a life of joy and victory by the power of the cross and the Holy Spirit.
Friend, if you are in Christ, then your life is to be victorious, and your destiny is heaven. When God redeemed you, He planned for you to live your life soaring like an eagle, not scratching the dirt with a flock of turkeys.
Isaiah 40:31 says, “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.”
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