How Do You Keep The Enemy From Stealing Your Promise

The cuckoo doesn't build a nest. A mama cuckoo bird doesn't need a nest  and the story behind the "why" is absolutely cuckoo! Cuckoo means crazy as a Bessie bug in Southernese. A Mama Cuckoo Bird is able to incubate her eggs inside her body at least 24 hours longer than most birds. While many mama's have finished laying their eggs and are sitting contently or so it would appear, on their nest, the mama cuckoo hasn't even started laying her eggs. When she is ready to lay her eggs, she watches for a nesting bird to leave the nest for a quick meal. Her favorite host is the warbler, but any vacant nest will do. Then the female cuckoo flies to the unguarded nest, where she gobbles a single egg and then deposits her own egg in its place. In a matter of seconds she is on her way to the next nest! She never comes back to check on her babies. She lays her egg and flies off without any natural mothering instinct. I told you it was cuckoo, but it's about to get even more cuckoo! Because she incubates her eggs longer internally, her  egg is always the first to hatch. The little cuckoo chick is born with a special scoop on its backside. Naked and helpless it struggles shove every egg, one at a time, up and out of the nest. I told you it was cuckoo! The newborn is tired, but more than tired, it is HUNGRY! It opens its bright, red-orange mouth and demands to be fed. Like all good parents, the mama and the papa warbler begin to feed the newborn in their nest. The baby cuckoo continues to beg for food. They feed this one baby as much as they would normally feed their entire family. The baby pleads so loudly that neighboring mothers will drop by with an occasional bug. The baby cuckoo grows, and grows, and grows . . . until it outgrows its nest. At 14 days the cuckoo chick is 3 times bigger than the adult warbler. A brood of warblers typically leave the nest, or fledge in 12-13 days, but the cuckoo chick sticks around for 17-21 days begging to be fed. Crazy huh! Absolutely cuckoo!   he common cuckoo is a parasite. A parasite thrives at the expense of its host. The mama cuckoo isn't interested in building, so it steals and kills and as I've already stated, so do the babies. Because the baby cuckoo is only concerned about itself,  it removes the competition so it can eat, and eat, and EAT! Pretty gruesome when you think about it! Now track with me. You know me well enough by now to know that I am headed somewhere. The Word of God contains some exciting promises. They should excite us. They are awesome promises. Promises that if we actually take possession of them, they will bring us tremendous joy, peace and victory...right? More than excite us! But God didn't give us His Word only to excite us. Remember the parable of the sower? (I used a whole podcast to talk about that parable in my "Think God's Way for a Change") Remember, the seed that was planted in the stoney ground didn't make it. The stoney ground received the seed with joy, but then it wilted when things got tough. That's not fruitfulness! God is looking for fruitfulness. I want fruitfulness, don't you? God gave us His Word to impregnate us. Oh, my dear friend, please listen carefully. As I was studying for this podcast, this truth has just exploded in my heart. I could hardly wait to share it with you. I believe there is a strong parallel of how the seed works in the natural to how it operates in the spiritual realm as well. The living Word of God is a seed. Just as sperm fertilizes an egg, when you deliberately wrap God's Word with faith, that seed is planted in the womb of your spirit. That Word impregnates you. It is out of prayer and the revelation of Precious Holy Spirit that we nurture and give birth to those things...out of the womb of our spirit. Gestation It is so important that we grasp the reality that just as the human seed has a gestation period, so does the Word in your spiritual womb. I understand that an elephant's pregnancy lasts over 18 months...yep,18 month! 9 months doesn't sounds so bad when you compare it to 18...I know, I might have looked like an elephant, but I am so thankful it didn't take 18 months to deliver my babies. I don't know how long the gestation period is for the Promise that God has given you and you don't either. You could be a lot closer to victory than you realize. So don't quit believing. One more thing... the victory is worth the wait. Quit worrying about how long it is taking and focus on Jesus. The Word must be nurtured or brooded. When I say brood I don't mean you worry over it and let it fester. I mean brood like a mama bird warms and turns and protects her little eggs. She broods over them and incubates them. We see Precious Holy Spirit brooding at creation. I see a picture of brooding in Luke 2:19 NIV "But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." Mary didn't hear the words of the angel and then forget about them! How do you forget an announcement like that? No, she thought about those words... she pondered, discussed it in her mind, thinking, wondering, chewing on them to understand what God was saying to her.   My dear friend, I want to encourage you to mediate, ruminate and digest what God is saying to you. Mary treasured God's message. I wonder if one of the reason's we don't see more results, more fruitfulness is because we don't treasure God's Word. Something to think about! Don't you realize that God, the God that made this Universe, has given you some precious promises in Scripture. You've got to mine them out the Gold Mine called the Bible. Don't be a George Walker, remember him from last week's post. The thief wants your faith. I've gotta warn you though, just like that mama cuckoo robs the nest...the enemy wants to steal your faith, your joy and your peace. And when that ole deceiver steals it (any of those three), he robs you of the victory that it produces. The thief's strategy is to deceive us so that we don't even realize that what we have hatched a lie...so we don't realize what we are feeding is a lie. Don't feed the lie. A mama warbler will feed the lie, I'm talking about the baby cuckoo, its not her baby, but she will feed it  just as if it were her own baby...I think she believes it is. Her job is overwhelming, so she and her mate  will spend all their time feeding, constantly feeding an imposter-- a parasite that will repeat the same killing and stealing of it's real parents. Isaiah 59:5 NLT "They hatch deadly snakes and weave spiders' webs. Whoever eats their eggs will die; whoever cracks them will hatch a viper." The word that is translated snake here, actually means serpent. What is a the meaning of serpent beyond the actual snake that comes to mind? A serpent is a spiteful or treacherous person. Sounds like the serpent in the garden of Eden, doesn't it. His treachery continues to be one of his strongest tactics. Whoever eats their eggs will die, whoever cracks them will hatch a viper. There's something confusing in this verse; vipers typically give birth to live offspring, so let's look at the symbolic meaning here instead of the literal meaning. The second snake word that is used in this verse is a totally different word. It is translated viper. It comes from a word that means hissing. Again, let's look at the imagery here. What do you do when you hear the distinctive hissing sound of a snake? Well, I can tell you what I do! I whirl in the direction of the sound and if I'm facing a venomous enemy, pure adrenaline courses through my veins. That adrenaline tells us to do one of two things run or fight. But my adrenaline tells me only one thing--runnnnnnn! I'm telling you I know the voice of my enemy... Do you know the hissing sound of your enemy... your enemy is probably different than mine. That hissing sound breaks our focus, intimidates us, warns us, offends our senses. I know some people that live in Arizona... When they are confronted by a venomous snake on their property, they don't wait for the snake to hiss at them; they just end the confrontation with a bullet. That's how Jesus dealt with the devil in the wilderness as recorded in Matthew 4. It's not called a bullet in the Bible. In the Bible, it is called the sword of the Spirit. When He dealt with the devil using the Word of God it ended the hissing intimation of the enemy! I'm telling you dear friend, we have got to start defeating the lies of the enemy with the truth of  God's Word. We don't have to hatch the deceptive lies of enemy! We have a role to play in what we believe and what we do with hell's lies. And what we do sets us up for victory or defeat. Isaiah 59:5 says "They hatch deadly snakes (serpents)" Who is the "they" that Isaiah is referring to in this verse? If you look at this verse in it's context, Isaiah is talking about people who are comfortable with their sins. The context describe people that have stopped realigning themselves according to the Word of God. It is talking about people that are living according to their own desires. Proverbs describes it as  "There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.  In the biblical context, it describes people that are no longer redirecting their steps according to the light of  Scripture. How do we forget? Devil evil! God good! When we feed lies...they grow. God has called you to be fruitful; to multiply, and to take dominion. There is no doubt this instruction has physical implications...but it also has both mental and spiritual components too! That lie, even when we think it is the truth can never make us fruitful, so we settle for busy. The enemy's lie can NEVER satisfy our craving... I'm talking about the good craving... the God craving in our hearts to fulfill His purpose for our life-- to do the works of Jesus, so we let compromise, pacify us. In the feeding frenzy that ensues from the constant demands of the lie we have hatched, there's no time for the spiritual disciplines that are essential for spiritual health-- so doubt creeps into the cracks of neglect so we let go of other promises too... like a child clutching a rigid kite string that grows tired and then lets go... confused, we back down and back off --- settling for comfort and instant gratification instead of fulfilling God's divine design for our life. Lies use guilt and rejection to make us slaves to our responsibilities. We find ourselves feeding a cuckoo lie that can never be satisfied. So we join the rat race of frustration called success. Can I tell you what I see in my spirit... I see you sitting on a nest of promises--happy and contented. Normal life happens... so you leave the nest to take care of normal things. Meanwhile the thief robs your nest of a promise...it's only a single promise, but what he does next can be disastrous - he replaces your promise with his lie. Only one...little lie, but that lie contradicts God's Word. When it is incubated it will hatch and when it does it will begin to push other promises out of the nest too.  But this is where the choice comes in, you don't have to let it hatch. There are things, some promises that God wants you to  birth...don't allow the enemy to abort what God is doing in and through you!! Don't misunderstand me, I'm not making you the hero of this story. I'm just reminding you that again and again God chooses to work through people. People that will partner with God...not people with great faith...people with a great God. Abraham believed God enough to obey Him. He had persistent faith...faith that didn't give up when the situation didn't change. God blessed Abraham. Galatians 3:13,14 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: 14 That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. In verse 14 the word that is translated promise here is used 52 times in the New Testament. It also means summon. When you see a promise of God, He is calling you to participate in His blessings... to participate in His love, in His joy... in His peace.... He is calling you to participate in His commission to be a carrier of His glory! Dear friend, I realize giving birth can be excruciating. I know. I know how easy it would be to simply give up. And some folks do, they quit; but those folks don't get to possess their promise. Don't turn loose of your promise. Sometimes God fine tunes us in the process, but don't quit. I believe God is right beside you and He's whispering in your ear. In your darkest moments, He's whispering...it's time! Come on...daughter.... Come on son, yes, sons have spiritual wombs too!  Your heavenly Father is whispering...come on.  You can do this...it's time to PUSH. You know what PUSH means..."Pray Until Something Happens!"