They shall mount up with wings as eagles
Isaiah 40:21-31
28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. 29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. 30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: 31 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 40:28-31)
The film, “Chariots of Fire” shows us two ways in which “young men” can run. First, Harold Abrahams is every inch the driven man. Explaining why he must win gold at the 100 metres, he says: “I have 10 seconds to justify my existence.”
On the other hand, we have Eric Liddell: a man who knows how to wait on the LORD. Liddell even forgoes Olympic glory to rest on a Sunday. Does this mean he has forgotten about running? No. It’s just that he runs for a very different reason: “When I run I feel His pleasure.”
One man runs to prove himself. The other abandons himself to the LORD and simply enjoys it. Two ways to run – two ways to live. We can do it in our own strength, to justify our own existence. Or, in dependence on the LORD’s strength, we can entrust our justification and life to Him. When we do this we receive it back as renewed strength.
When verse 31 says that the LORD shall “renew” their strength, it’s a word that most often means to “change” or “exchange”. Like a divine swap.
The LORD receives our weakness to Himself. In that ultimate sense, He takes on our frailty, becoming flesh and running our race all the way to its bitter end at the cross (Hebrews 12:1-3). But He rises again by the power of the Spirit and offers us a cross-shaped strength – a strength-in-weakness.
Sometimes this strength will be “eagle’s wings”. Sometimes it will be running with endurance. And sometimes it will be just enough to walk “and not faint”. But at all points it’s the LORD Jesus who upholds us.
We can run in our own strength and run ourselves into the ground. Or we can stop self-justifying. We can swap human strength for Christ’s, and simply run in His good pleasure.
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