There’s an old story I like about a man who owned a chicken farm.
One day he came across a little baby eagle that had fallen out of its nest. So, he put it with all of his chickens. And as the eaglet grew, although he was the king of all birds, designed to soar above lakes and valleys, he acted like a chicken.
He never learned how to fly.
He never soared above the clouds.
He just walked around pecking at the ground, acting like a chicken. He identified as a chicken, not an eagle.
Before I started following Jesus, I thought I was a lot of things. For part of my life, I really identified as a sports guy…I wanted to be a pro baseball player. A lot of my family relationships revolved around that identity.
Later in life, I saw myself as a serious musician. And I reached a place where I was paying the bills as a bass player. It was a huge part of the lens I saw myself through.
And along the way, I also tried to be the guy who was the most fun in the room, as well as the ornery troublemaker.
But as I look back on it, I realize I never knew my true identity, because I didn’t see myself as a child of God. Once I came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, everything changed.
Once we make the decision to follow Christ, all of what God wants to do and is doing in our lives should flow out of who we truly are in Christ.
This is our true identity as children of God.
One of my very favorite scriptures is Isaiah 40:31. I encourage you to memorize it! It says, “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. And they shall walk, and they shall not faint.”
This is a powerful verse that speaks about those of us who wait on the Lord. Our identity and our strength get renewed. God’s not talking about personal strength here. It’s not about us learning to trust in ourselves more. It’s about us learning to trust the Lord, that He is all-powerful and He has everything squared away.
And in a lot of ways, that’s what happens to us when we don’t know who we are in Christ. If we don’t realize that we’re meant to mount up with wings like eagles, we will end up living our lives like chickens.
For all intents and purposes, that eagle was a chicken (even though he really wasn’t). And in the same way, as believers in Jesus, we don’t want to get stuck hanging around acting beneath who we truly are in our new identities. We want to step into the abundant life, the fullness of what God has for us. When you wait on the Lord, God will renew your strength. Then, you’ll be able to soar.
When the Bible invites us into all of these different ways of living that are unique from what we’ve been taught before, we have to remember that we don’t want to be pecking around on the ground like chickens. We should be soaring like eagles with the Lord.
God is inviting each of us into that new identity. But He doesn’t make us go there. So we have to make the difficult choice to wait on and trust the Lord, leaving behind our old ways of living as we continually move forward into the newness of life with Jesus.