Never Die in Your Nest

By odon Bulamba

Job29:18; Deut 32:10-11

 

Every day comes with its own realities, yesterday has passed and we won’t see it anymore and we don’t know what the future holds for us, only what we have in our hands today.

 

Job said in job 29:18, “I will die in my nest”.  Other Bible versions say, “I shall die in my nest”.  Job faced a lot of problems, lost His children, His belongings, His health and preferred to die rather than to live regardless of His friends coming to encourage him every day.  He had a skin problem which forced him to use a stone to scratch His skin because it was so intensely itchy.  Everybody put him aside because of the boils all over His body and His wife said, “why don’t you ask God to kill you”.  He answered, “Better to be the way that I am and die in my nest”. 

 

I want to tell you today to never and ever die in your nest. Don’t accept to die in your nest of challenges, secrets or problems.  Wherever you are with your problems, don’t let them wear you but make sure that you wear your problems. 

 

Deut 32:10-11,

“In a desert land he found him,
in a barren and howling waste.
He shielded him and cared for him;
he guarded him as the apple of His eye,

 like an eagle that stirs up its nest
and hovers over its young,
that spreads its wings to catch them
and carries them aloft.”

 

The first song we sang today was, “This is my desire”.  What is my real desire?  I might say a big mansion, or nice car, or to be completely healed, to have children, or to have money.  What is your desire?  If God asks you that today, “What do you want me to do for you, for your family?” what will you answer, is it to get a nice job or clothes or something else?

 

As the eagle stirs up the nest: don’t ever die in your nest. The eagle which is a big, intelligent bird can fly up to a great height in a few seconds come down and pick up something from the ground and they have incredibly perfect eyesight.  This eagle can spread its wings and can go to wingspan of 9 feet and can weigh around 20 kg but can pick up 60kg.  The eagle can mate while in the air and no other bird can do that.  It’s an amazing bird.  They are special, unique and if we go through all their characteristics we can picture God.  God called Himself an eagle in the Bible and if God our father, the eagle, who is capable of seeing everything and doing everything then His children will be called eaglets (little eagle chicks).

 

When it’s time for eagle to lay eggs, they will collect materials to make a nest by going from one place to another collecting one branch from here and another from there to make a big nest.  Every single branch will come from a different corner of the world with its own history.  Only the eagle can tell you where that branch is from and knows why he collected it. 

 

Once the nest is done, the eagle has to smooth the inside of the nest so that the eggs can’t be destroyed by a branch piercing it.  The eggs are laid and now the real job begins.  When you are called by God, before you are even born He started to collect all the materials.  He collected pieces from here and there in order to make a house for you, to build a family for you by bringing your father from one place and your mother from another and putting it all together to make a family. 

 

Once I tried to destroy an eagle’s nest.  It’s not easy to destroy a nest built by an eagle, you have to be strong.  The eagle makes a solid perfect art .  Once you have your family, God starts to think about the eggs.  The colour of the egg is white but when the chicks are born, they are not all white.  The colour of the chick is different to the colour of the egg.  The chicks live in the nest and fight each other but the eagle doesn’t care, she leaves them there to seek food and water for the chicks.  God has given you a family and sometimes His presence isn’t there, He is away to seek for you and you blame and fight others.  At work, you find people who tell you that you don’t deserve to be here, your colleagues put you down and when you are studying your lecture tells you that you know nothing and you feel depressed, ashamed and you ask yourself where is God, why am I the only one who is attacked, while you are absent God everybody attacks me. 

 

Sickness attacks and there are problems after problems but the Lord will never let you down.  The Lord comes back and will never let you down in the same way the eagle returns with the food.  All the chicks beg for the food and the eagle gives to each chick and then the chick relaxes, sleeps and poops.  The mother who made such a nice house is rewarded with poo.

 

As the chicks grow up the mother starts to see they have feathers and the mother realizes that she doesn’t have to feed them anymore and eagle will start to stir the nest so that the branches turn on the inside and the nest is no longer smooth so that the prickles make the nest uncomfortable.  God changes everything so the chicks fly out and run away. Sometimes in your life you believe everything is comfortable and then suddenly it changes and you wonder why and how am I going to live and you try different ways but it doesn’t work, you are hurt and confused. 

 

The eagle will always put His nest up high, about 200-300m high on top of a cliff or tree.  The nest is right on the edge so that when everything is stirred up in nest and the chicks feel pain, the eagle starts to push them out.  The chicks see the distance down, they start to fear and the mother sometimes allows them the chance to decide whether they will fly.  Those that don’t want to fly; the eagle allows them to jump on her back.  The eagle will fly up to 4km of high and then somewhere she will twist herself and the babies fall off and have to find their own way.  If they don’t make it they will die so they struggle until they finally fly

 

God is telling you to leave your nest now.  It is now too small where you are and so you can’t stay there anymore.  When you were a teenager your parents started to prepare you for independence to leave the house.  What independence do you have in your Lord?  People say, God knows me and protects me but sometimes God will change your life and make it miserable for you so you will move out from your comfort zone to move ahead because what He has for you is bigger than what you see now. 

 

Many people feel they are better where they are now but maybe God has called you for something bigger.  If you want to be bigger for God, follow His instructions.  God looks at you and He knows you are capable because He sees you now have wings, so He starts to stir up the situation.  When God stirs up the situation, some people pray against satan and believe that everything negative only comes from satan.  If someone crosses a problem or challenge people believe it is only from satan but know that sometimes God does that in order to change you.

 

In Exodus 3, Moses went to Midian where he met Jethro, His father in law who told him to take care of his sheep.  Moses who grew up as a king in the palace of pharaoh, who was well educated, trained, knew many languages, had lived 40 years with servants doing everything for him and bowing down before him in a superpower country of Egypt with its extreme intelligence was now expected to tend sheep.

 

This happened because Moses had seen an Egyptian beating an Israelite and Moses intervened and killed the Egyptian and ran away.  God was stirring up Moses who was now in the desert where he found Jethro.  Moses would have thought to himself, “I’m Moses, the prince of Egypt,” so that meant nothing to Jethro.  Imagine you come from Hamilton to go to the Sahara desert where there are no trees or plants.  You can have a doctorate but that means nothing in the desert.  Moses was forced to live in a new lifestyle, to survive in the desert without the food he liked or was familiar to, without his parents, or character.  Moses was a prince with many skills but couldn’t use any of them in the desert.

 

Have you come across a situation where you had had knowledge but it’s not accepted.  Maybe you are working as a nurse for 15 years and suddenly you lose your job with all your skills and information.  God is trying to stir you. 

 

Jethro gave Moses a job looking after sheep: Moses a prince had to play the role of a dog by being a shepherd all day.  In New Zealand we use dogs to lead the sheep around but in those days people had to do that job.  How humiliating it is when you lose everything and people look at you as a piece of rubbish.  Your child talks badly to you like the chick pooping in the nest.  Here Moses had no choice, he had to tend the sheep with zero training and it was a flock of hundreds going up the mountain and he had to bring them back every day taking control over all of them.  How annoyed will you be when one sheep goes to the right and others to the left.  Sometimes the pressure of life breaks you in pieces, you go to the left, to the right and you wonder what you are doing. Some shepherds give up.  Never give up on life. 

 

As Moses was walking in the bush, he saw fire but it wasn’t consuming the tree, it was a strange fire.  Curiosity made him go close to see.  If you we fire in a bush, most of us will run away or call 111 for protection but Moses decided to go closer.  A voice called him, “Moses, Moses”.  Imagine a voice coming from nowhere in your house, what will you do?  You will fear, even run away because you might believe it was an evil power.  Moses was told to take off his shoes because He wasn’t to come close because this is a holy place.  Moses would have thought about his sheep that have walked and pooped on this place and it is now holy. 

 

A common place in your life can also become a holy place, your situations and problems can become a holy place and give you a mission.  God could only send Moses to go back to Egypt because he had learnt all the doors, gateways, languages, tricks and Moses could easily see Pharaoh because there was a good relationship between the two and no one could stop him from meeting with Pharoah.  What you have been through up to now is just a pathway in order to redeem others from Egypt and come to Jesus.  You know all the street languages, family members, signs and codes.  The time you spent with the people in your past time was a time of learning, and now God is asking you to go back to bring the slaves out.  The people in Egypt were slaves for 400 years and Moses was told to take them out of slavery.

 

Sinners are slaves and when we know many of them, we ate with them, spent time with them and then we leave them behind when we become Christians and they forget about us but when they see us again they welcome us back and we now have a chance to come and take the person somewhere safe.  Unfortunately, many Christians go back to the Egypt and use the old experiences to go back to their old lifestyle doing the things they did before they were saved and encouraging the weaknesses of others.  God becomes furious when you leave the nest only to back to the poop.

 

God loves you so much, more than we can love anyone on this earth and He is telling you, “you have to fly, take off from your lifestyle, start a new life”.  Moses had an accent and was not accepted by the Israelites because of His old life as an Egyptian prince although he was a Hebrew.  You can be rejected by others but God will continue to use you. 

 

When Moses came to help his people the magicians transformed a staff into a snake and Moses was also performing miracles took his staff and that also turned into a snake but swallowed the snake of the magicians.  Pharaoh wondered how Moses could learn such a thing because he had never seen Moses do anything like that.  This was a new skill God had given to Moses. What is the new skill you have that can impress your old friends?  What can prove to your old friends that you are a different person with different personality from when they knew you. 

 

Moses continued to live with God day after day.  Yesterday I was young, today I am old and one day I will die. What legacy will I leave behind?  What legacy will you have?  In my country if you are butcher people will bring cow heads to surround your graveyard.  What legacy will you leave in the life of your friends, family and children?  Never die in the nest, it is now time to fly out.  We are going to pray for ourselves, our community, and our family to come out of these problems and for God to use and allow us to be the leaders of our community.