It's turkey season 12 months out of the year! Let's get that out of the way up front.
Turkeyship is determined by where you are coming from. When you see life as I do, I'm never a turkey. When you see life as you do, you are never a turkey. But all of us have a few turkeys in our pen. Even Jesus did. Turkeys by today's definition are those persons and events in our lives who irritate us on a fairly regular basis.
Jesus was always confronted by nine student disciples who had not done their spiritual homework. He rebuked his ineffective disciples: "You have so little faith! Less than a mustard seed." It was an unpleasant moment.
Turkeys come in several categories: events, circumstances, and even people. Sometimes people who are not, as a rule, turkeys have some turkey experiences. James and John, eagle types, pulled a turkey stunt and begged Jesus to put them on His right hand and left when He came into power. How do we deal with turkeys?
It is the control of our responses to the turkeys in our lives that gives us the freedom to fly like eagles. Sydney Harris was a newspaper columnist. One day he wrote about being in New York with a Christian author, John Powell. John Powell stopped at a news stand and asked for a newspaper. The man was unbelievably discourteous and rude. John Powell thanked him for the newspaper and walked on. Sydney Harris was astounded and asked, "Do you stop at that news stand often?" Powell said, "Yes, every day." "That fellow treated you like dirt. Does he do that every day?" "Yes, every day." "Why don't you tell him off?" "Because I refuse to have him determine what kind of day I'm going to have or what kind of response I'm going to make."
The Bible says Jesus is within you. Therefore put away anger, malice, and wrath. Be kind to one another, forgiving one another as God in Jesus Christ forgave you. Be angry, but do not sin.
Hayward McDonald in the 1950's was climbing the chain of command in the U. S. Navy. Then he was inoculated by accident with an unsterilized needle and contracted polio. Ultimately he lost the complete use of his legs. He was asked how he had kept from letting the polio make him angry and bitter at life. "The disease paralyzed my legs. It never touched my heart." If your heart is open to Christ, if He is welcome to come in, He comes. And He begins to enable you to master your responses. He takes from your soul "the strain and stress… and lets your ordered life confess the beauty of your peace."
Jesus in the heart moves you to controlling your responses to the turkeys and that is what makes you free to fly like an eagle. And SOAR!
Stifle the temptation to gobble back.
Okay the use of appropriate strong responses to turkeys.
Abandon your turkey-like responses (turkey calls).
Resist losing control.
SOAR! and even when you're surrounded by turkeys, you can fly like an eagle.
