Dear Family of Jesus,
Praise The Lord! Hallelujah! Praise, O servants of the Lord, Praise the name of the Lord!
Blessed the name of the Lord from this time forth and forever
From the rising of the sun to the going down of it and from east to west, the name of the Lord is to be praised! The Lord is high above all nations, and His glory above the heavens! Psalm 113 1-4
Thanks for stopping by the CUP today! We love you all! Karen Rowe www.hopeintoday.com and Darlene Fick Quiring share with you today! I get such great comments on Karen’s writings, Cathy from New York says she just loves Karen’s writings. Darlene is also gifted in her writings for Jesus and I pray she writes more for us!
Last night I got a text from Jeanell that Baby Eden was undergoing surgery last night to remove IV that leads to her heart and we prayed and the news this morning is that she is doing very well after surgery. Please keep Baby Eden in your prayers.
Please continue pray for Becky Franks, she continues to be in severe pain. Becky is the wife of Pastor ray Franks.
Thanks to all of you for your prayers and encouragement and those of you that are giving to this Ministry financially! We are missionaries for Jesus Christ, going each day where the Lord tells us to go. Today we tape to TV programs for God’s Glory Alone! Bringing forth the good news of Jesus Christ. Please pray for our taping’s, one with Ben Lucero owner of Indigo Mortgage talking about bringing Jesus into the work place and Pastor Bill Ruhl on the upcoming elections. Dewey and Friends is seen Saturday nights at 6pm on KAZQ CH 32, you can watch on line at www.kazq32.org ;
We are getting asked a lot about what services we offer here at FGGAM! PRAISE GOD! Yesterday we began to help a couple find housing and work. We also need a rental for a single man, 1 to 2 bedroom home no more than $750.00 a month here in Albuquerque. If you have a need for workers and a rental please contact me. As you can see we are trying to help people in all areas of their lives. Sharon is working on a brochure that we will distribute.
I also want to encourage you to visit us at www.fggam.org and listen to my news commentary. Many of you listened to me on KKIM during NM News and Views, so we have started my commentaries of, This is The World We Live In, and they are posted on our web site, just click on the globe. We are going to keep them all up as long as we can so you can listen to past recordings. In yesterday’s report I talk about my meeting with three Educators and a US Marine Sgt on my trip and tell you what they had to say about This World We Live In. Please give it a listen to, it is the news you need to know!
Jim Langley:
Just finished Henri Nouwen’s wonderful book, In the Name of Jesus. It’s Nouwen’s reflections on Christian leadership. One passage struck me: “The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows them to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success, and to bring the light of Jesus there.”
Darlene Fick Quiring:
God is much like that mother eagle, that takes away the comfort of the nest, so the baby eagle will be forced to jump “by faith” into it’s destiny… pay attention to discomfort, it is God sending you to the next level!!!!
Dear Dewey,
I printed some of the Cup today, but haven’t found time to read the part about what it means to have a revival yet. I wanted to write to you first before I read to see how my experience matches up. As I have been resting and recuperating from a lack of sleep and catching up on work from all the preparations to have the revival, I found my written goals that I had written for this Hope in Today Revival; and I am happy to report that they were met. Praise God!
And I just realized as a friend asked me how the Revival was…
The Revival to me is just what that word said, I was revived in my Spirit to feel alive on the inside in such a powerful and beautiful way! Full of peace, joy and Rejoicing with the Breath of God breathing on the inside of me is how I would describe what the Revival was to me. No words to describe really, but rather to report that it was the authentic Holy Spirit of God that Revived me; and I am still full and forever changed, because of a newness that I have found that is worthy of seeking!
The common fellowship and unity in an open mind to just simply allow the Holy Spirit to have His way with the services was a heaven sent experience!
Going through the Revival was powerful and strengthening, and now as I am resting, I feel renewed in my spirit by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Anyway, this is just a simple expression of what Revival now means to me.
And I believe that the expectations of many coming to Jesus at a Revival is because of happy people in Christ enjoying the freedom in living for Christ!
I believe that many will still come to Christ because of the Revival of the Spirit in the ones who are still a part of this Revival, even Today as it still continues on … It has begun and now we live Revived in the Holy Spirit in service.
Eternally grateful to Jesus …
Love in Christ,
Karen
Thank you so much Karen for the words! God Bless you and Robb and Melissa and Daniel. By the way you have to read Karen’s book, The Train Whistle! Find out more at www.hopeintoday.com ;
This is a great reading from Darlene Fick Quiring!
During the winter of 1940 Josephine Kuntz’ husband, a house painter and textile worker, was temporarily unemployed because of the weather and a seasonal lay-off. It was a difficult time for the family. They literally had no money. Their eighteen month old daughter, Rachel, was recovering from pneumonia and wasn’t doing well. The doctor insisted Rachel eat a boiled egg each day, but even that was beyond their means.
“Why not pray for an egg?” suggested a young friend. They were a church-going family, but the idea of actually praying for their needs was something they had never really considered. Josephine wasted no time. On her knees she prayed that God would provide an egg each morning for her daughter.
Later that morning Josephine heard some cackling coming from the hedge fence in front of their home. Among the bare branches sat a fat red hen. (This is a true story.) She had never seen this hen before and had no idea where it came from. She just watched in amazement as the hen laid an egg and then proceeded down the road. In a moment the hen was gone but an egg sat in her yard.
What do you do under such circumstances but thank God? The next day Josephine was startled once again to hear cackling in the hedge. The red hen came by every day for over a week and repeated this routine. Each day little Rachel had a fresh boiled egg. The little girl got better, the weather improved, and Josephine’s husband went back to work. “The next morning I waited by the window and watched,” Josephine says, but the red hen did not return. [“The Little Red Hen.” Josephine M. Kuntz, SNOWFLAKES IN SEPTEMBER, (Nashville: Dimensions for Living, 1992), pp 29-30.]
God takes care of His people, and though we don’t always see it in such striking and noticeable ways, the Bible promises that He will take care of those who are His.
There is a beautifully graphic description of God’s care for Israel over in the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy 32: 9-14. “For the LORD’S portion is His people; Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance. [Jacob here, is Israel. He is talking about the nation that came from this one man.] 10 “He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of a wilderness; He encircled him, He cared for him, He guarded him as the pupil of His eye. [God came to the Israelites while they were in captivity in Egypt.] 11 “Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that hovers over its young, He spread His wings and caught them, He carried them on His pinions. [God stirred them up and taught them to fly in freedom as opposed to the the slavery they had known for over 400 years.] 12 “The LORD alone guided him, and there was no foreign god with him. 13 “He made him ride on the high places of the earth, and he ate the produce of the field; and He made him suck honey from the rock, and oil from the flinty rock, [After God brought Israel out of Egypt, he blessed them and gave them the land of Canaan, a land “flowing with milk and honey.”] 14 Curds of cows, and milk of the flock, with fat of lambs, and rams, the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the finest of the wheat– and of the blood of grapes you drank wine.”
The passage goes on to say that, in spite of all God did for Israel, they ultimately turned away from Him and turned to idols.
Verse 11, the statement that pictures God’s care being like to the eagle caring for her young.
11 “Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that hovers over its young, He spread His wings and caught them, He carried them on His pinions.”
What a beautiful picture of how God deals with his people! A mother eagle training her young to fly. In the same way the eagle deals with her young, God dealt with Israel and deals with us today. There are at least seven stages that a young eagle goes through when learning to fly. These stages are also evident in God’s “training” us to live the life of faith. That is the basis of the comparison.
The Seven stages are: (1) Demonstration, (2) Discomfort, (3) Danger, (4) Decision, (5) Direction Change, (6) Doing (7) Deliverance.
1. The Demonstration Stage
As the time draws near for a young eagle to begin flight training, to the mother eagle will frequently push off from the perch where the nest is and hover above her young. In response, the eaglets begin to flap their wings wildly in imitation. It’s as natural and instinctive for them as breathing.
That is what verse 11 is referring to when it says the eagle “hovers” over its young. At this stage the eaglets don’t have enough feathers to fly, but they begin to develop their wing muscles. The key word here is demonstration. The eagle demonstrates flying for her young and they imitate her in response.
What a great picture to describe what God has done for us through Jesus! Jesus came to earth as Immanuel, “God with us,” the Bible says. He demonstrated the kind of faith and life we should be leading.
We read in Romans 5:8 that “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
In 1 Timothy 1:16 we read, “And yet for this reason I found mercy, in order that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience, as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life.”
God hasn’t left us to figure things out on our own. He has cared enough about us to give us a living demonstration. Remember when Jesus said, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father”? Jesus was and is the perfect and indispensable demonstration of how we should live the life of faith.
You know, among churches of Christ in the past, we’ve spent a lot of time in Acts and the Epistles learning about the structure of the church. I wonder, though, if we’ve spent as much time as we should in the gospels, getting to know Jesus? Do we put forth as much effort in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as we do in Acts?
Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:8, “Remember Jesus…” We must not forget the One who is the embodiment and demonstration of all we are called to be!
The next stage in the training of young eagles, and God training us. In verse 11, it says, “Like an eagle that stirs up its nest…”
It’s one thing for those young eagles to flap their wings in the security of their down-filled home. It’s quite another for them to move to the edge, look over, and imagine stepping out on nothing! Naturally, they don’t want to do it. So the adult eagle does something the young eagles won’t understand until later. She begins “stirring up” the nest! She actually begins to poke through the bottom and tear the nest apart. The young eagles are literally forced to fly.
What often happens to us at this stage of God’s teaching the faith-life is that we begin to be bothered about something. We recognize that something isn’t right. We begin to get a little worried, a little anxious. There is a growing uneasiness in us. Something is out of whack and we don’t quite know what it is, or if we do, we are ignoring it. Like Job in Job 30:27, we might say, “My heart is troubled and restless…”
It can be about anything that is bothering us. A relationship. An unfulfilled dream. A stress in our lives. A fear. A weakness. An indulgence. We find ourselves thinking, “One of these days I’m going to have to start working on that.” The trouble is, like the eaglet is reluctant to get too close the edge of the nest, we, too, are reluctant to move out of our comfort zone and face whatever it is.
This is God stirring up our nest. He’s getting us ready for change. He wants us to face something we’ve not faced before, so He makes us uncomfortable. Do some of you know what I mean?
Perhaps He wants us to face our neglected finances. Maybe it is a relationship he wants us to mend or maybe even one He wants us to break off. Whatever the case, there is a growing discomfort and uneasiness in us that is hard to ignore.
You know, the sad thing is that some people live their entire lives in this stage. They cling to their nest like terrified eagle chicks, afraid to do anything about their problem. They’d rather live with discomfort than risk flying. “At least the discomfort is predictable,” they think. “If I were to change, who knows what might happen?”
When we find ourselves stalled at the discomfort stage, we might understand why God brings us to the next stage of our learning.
3. The Danger Stage
Eventually, in the case of eagles, the mother eagle gets all the kids out of the nest. We know that for sure. Have you ever seen a full grown eagle still perched in the nest of its parents, peeping like a baby for them to bring him something to eat? No, you haven’t, because one way or the other, he gets booted out of the nest with nothing between he and the hard ground but air. He either learns to fly or falls to his death. Eagles weren’t meant to be nest-sitters. They were meant to fly! This danger stage isn’t mentioned directly in verse 11, but it is certainly implied.
Now, what does that say to us? What I think it says is that God often allows a danger or a crisis to come into our lives that moves the issue we’re ignoring off the back burner. He sends us a wake up call. All of a sudden the pain gets so bad we can’t ignore it anymore. Suddenly we get fired or we have an accident or a serious illness. Perhaps a spouse threatens to walk out or a creditor starts foreclosure. Like the eagle’s nest, the bottom falls out from under our lives and we realize we’ve got to do something – fast!
It has probably happened to all of us. It happened to King David. In Psalm 119:67, it says, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Thy word.” It took a crisis of affliction to show David the need to learn to keep God’s word.
If you are in a crisis right now or have had one recently, could this be the reason? Is there something you’ve been ignoring?
Remember, God wants you to fly, not flutter in the nest. He wants you to grow up!
Well, the danger stage quickly moves us on to the next stage in our training, whether we like it or not.
4. The Decision Stage
The nature of danger or a crisis is that it forces us off the fence or, to use our analogy, out of the nest. We have to decide, “Am I going to move ahead or am I going to retreat? Am I going to face this or try to run away?
With the nest suddenly gone out from under him and the ground coming up fast, the young eagle has a choice to make. He realizes, “I’ve gotta do something – Now!” So he chooses to fly or fall – to soar or smash on the rocks below – literally, to live or die.
God often forces us to that place, have you noticed? Especially if we are reluctant to grow or pay attention to the need to grow.
If you are ignoring what you know is right, whether you are a Christian or not, what is it going to take to get you to come to a decision?
Is God dealing with you right now? Is this the issue? Is it your stubbornness or neglect? When will you decide?
The next stage is so close to the decision stage that I was tempted to put them both under the same heading, but there is a difference.
5. The Direction Change Stage
The young eagle, falling fast, has decided he must do something. What is it? He must change direction! He must start going up instead of down.
When we’re talking about our response to God’s dealing with us, the decision stage and the direction change stage are called repentance.
Repentance is a decision to turn away from evil and turn back to God. It takes place in the mind. In that way it is a decision, but since it is a decision to change, there will soon be a direction change that results.
Sometimes we are reluctant to change direction. Often it is because we haven’t really made a decision to change. Oh, we were sorry things were the way they were. We even cried some real tears over it. But we never really turned loose. We never really changed our minds.
Often Christians struggle with sin. They are sorry for the struggle. They don’t like the prospect of the consequences. They might even come forward in church and let the whole church know. But there is no direction change as a result.
Paul warned us in 2 Corinthians 7:10, “For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation; but the sorrow of the world produces death.”
According to that verse, you can have two people side by side who are sorry about their sins. Looking at them, they both look like candidates for eternal life. Yet, one of them goes to heaven, the other goes to hell. The difference? One of them had a sorrow that produced repentance – a change of direction. The other was just sorry. There was no repentance.
What are we talking about? We’re talking about God teaching us to fly – to live the faith life in a way that is pleasing to Him and brings us to maturity. He uses these stages to do it: Demonstration, Discomfort, Danger, Decision, Direction Change.
There are still two more stages before we will be competent fliers.
6. The Doing Stage
The adult eagle can teach her young to fly but she cannot fly for them. They must do it. Have you ever seen two adult eagles flying piggy-back? Neither have I. It doesn’t happen. Flying takes effort on the part of each individual.
The Bible says in Galatians 6:5, “Each on shall bear his own load…” In the realm of our learning to walk the Christian walk, we must put forth effort. The very common “do nothing” religion around us is false. It is an aberration of the devil. It is a cheap substitute for the faith of the Bible.
Does this mean that we get to heaven on our own merits? Not at all! But God wants us to learn to fly.
Consider this: God often gave his blessings in Scripture while the recipients of the blessings were in the midst of obedience.
Remember when Israel crossed the Red Sea? Moses said “Move forward!” The people obeyed. Then when the feet of the priests touched the water, it divided.
When they crossed the Jordan on their way to the Promised land it was the same way. They moved forward, put their feet in the water, and it divided.
When Jesus cleansed the ten lepers, he told them to go present themselves to the priest. Then, “as they were going, they were cleansed.” (Luke 17:14)
The eagle learns to fly by striving against the gravity that is pulling him down – in short, by flying.
This sixth step of doing is critical to the young eagle’s learning to fly and it is critical to our growing up in Christ. We need to get with it when it comes to doing right. It is also critical to the final step.
7. The Deliverance Stage
This one is beautiful and it’s right in the text. Look again at verse 11: “He spread His wings and caught them, He carried them on His pinions.”
I am told that the adult eagle will actually swoop down and catch her falling offspring on her back and carry them back up to the home perch. What a beautiful picture of what God does for us!
Paul told young Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:11, “What persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord delivered me!”
In Psalm 34:19 we read, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous; but the Lord delivers him out of them all.”
In 2 Peter 2:9, the Apostle tells us, “The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation…”
You see, God doesn’t leave us to do it on our own. It’s just that we must be about the doing in order for the deliverance to come. The promise of deliverance is there. We must believe it and move ahead. We must be striving to fly even if we can’t quite do it yet.
Conclusion
Is God teaching you how to fly? If you are a Christian, there is no doubt about it! How is your personal “flight school” going? Are you cooperating or copping out?
Have you seen any or all of these stages of God’s flight school in your life? You can be sure they are there now or will be there soon.
What is your attitude toward them? Are you focused on the goal of being able to go “solo” or are you clinging to the comfort of the nest? Be sure that God will stir it up if you are reluctant.
And maybe, just maybe, you’ve wondered what is going on in the midst of all this. Maybe you’ve had some rough times recently and haven’t been able to figure out why. Perhaps now you have your answer.
Be sure of these things:
God does want you to learn to fly. | |
He will put you through flight school. | |
You can ignore it, but it won’t stop the process. | |
You can resist it, but it won’t stop the process. | |
You can cooperate and learn to fly for Him!
Thank you so much Darlene! God Bless you always! 1 Timothy 6:6-7 (NLT) “Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it.” For God’s Glory Alone, Dewey and Sharon |
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