Life on Wings. The Possibilities of Pentecost

The following is one of my all time favorite articles by Carrie Judd Montgomery. She talks about her healing encounter and her Spirit baptism experience then moves on by highlighting that being in His presence is the most important thing of all. Stopping, being still and simply knowing that He is God. She shares her secret of how to walk in His inheritance for our lives.

Carrie Judd Montgomery, “Life on Wings. The Possibilities of Pentecost,” Triumphs of Faith 32:8 (August 1912), article was taken from an address delivered at the Stone Church in Chicago in 1910 and revised by the author (CJM). Transcribed by Jen Miskov.

I want to talk to you about “The Life on Wings.” Read with me Deuteronomy xxxii :9-14. That the Lord’s people are the Lord’s portion is a precious thought, for He left everything in order that He might have this portion. So, I believe the Lord means for us to realize how very, very precious we are to Him. We remember how in our own experience He found us in a “desert land” and in the “waste howling wilderness,” and led us about and instructed us and kept us as the apple of His eye.

Then in this scripture there follows the picture of the eagle stirring up her nest. Many of you have probably read the description as has actually been witnessed by some who have climbed to the dizzy height of rocks and watched the mother eagle break up the nest of her young. The time had come when the mother-bird saw that the eaglets must learn to fly, and in order that they might learn to do this, she took her strong beak and made havoc of the nest; pulled it to pieces in order that the eaglets might no longer have a resting place there. Then she throws the young eaglets out of the nest down over the dizzy precipice, and of course, the little things think they will be dashed to pieces on the great rocks beneath, but with one great swoop the mother-bird sweeps down under them, and the little eaglets, instead of falling down to be dashed to pieces on the rocks below, fall upon the safe, strong wings of the mother.

This is the picture that God gives us as the actual way in which He deals with you and me. We can all of us think as we look back, how He stirred up our nests. We had such nice ones; all fixed up for ourselves. They were softly lined, and cozy and warm, and we expected to stay but God came, spoiled all our plans, broke in pieces the nest and tumbled us out. Why? In order that we might learn to fly; in order that we might find the wings which He had already caused to spring forth within our very hearts, but which we had not learned to use, the wings of faith. I look back and remember how He tore my nest to pieces. I had it all arranged. I had my aspirations and ambitions as a young girl. I knew just what I wanted and what would make me happy, and what, in a vague way, I trusted would make me useful, but God permitted the nest to be pulled to pieces. That awful sickness that followed after I had fallen and injured my spine, those days and nights of suffering, of anguish, of helplessness ; those days when the very room had to be darkened on account of the suffering in my head, were but a mere shadow of the darkness that had come into my life and into my very soul. Through this awful trial it seemed as though everything was lost; I could not see that there ever would be any brightness in life. I was a confirmed helpless invalid. For two years and two months I lay there, being taken down at the age of eighteen, at a time when a girl’s .life usually looks the brightest. Oh, how hard it was! Nobody knows how hard, and I was so hungry after God. My soul was utterly unsatisfied, but God was breaking up the nest of human ambitions, human hopes and aspirations. He knew what He was doing, although I did not.

Job said, “He knoweth the way that I take; when He hath tried me I shall come forth as gold.” He knew the way for Job and He knew it for me also. Now, after all the years of blessing that have been mine since I was so wondrously healed by the Lord, I realize more and more it was because the snug nest in which I thought I was so secure, was broken up. Now I am able to encourage other hearts that are going through the shadow and through the valley. So take heart, dear friends; it is better farther on, for as some one has said, there are two openings to the tunnel. We go in at one end, but there is another end to come out. We may he in the tunnel today, beloved, but the other end is there, and you will go through if you go on with God.

What would my life have been without that stirring up? God only knows, but I know it would not have been what it has been. After the long period of suffering and anguish and the coming down to the very jaws of death, the Lord swept His great eagle wings under the poor little frightened eaglet and I found His great wings to rest upon.

He says in Exodus xix:4, “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto Myself.” Oh, what a blessed goal! Unto Himself! On the strong eagle wings God bears us unto His very heart of love. Oh what a wonderful day that was when He answered prayer for me! The time had been set for prayer by that dear colored woman, Mrs. Mix. How wonderful it was that we heard about her at all! The Lord knew what the result would be when He let that little account of her healing of consumption in answer to prayer, be published in a Buffalo paper, and let it catch my father’s eye. In those days very little was known, especially in this country, about Divine Healing. Do not think, beloved, we ever had such meetings as these we now enjoy. I would that yet might realize your privileges!

When this dear colored sister in Connecticut wrote and said “The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up,” I didn’t know that was in the Bible. She said, “This promise is for you as though you were the only person living. That was a wonderful thought, and the Lord gave me a mighty inspiration of divine faith I never had before. He revealed Himself to me, raised me up, caused all the diseases to depart in one instant of time, and gave me my first introduction to the Holy Spirit. Oh how wonderful it all was! No words can describe it.

Those days were days of praise when it seemed as though I should call upon everything around to help me praise the Lord. I found the eagle’s wings. At first it seemed as though I only knew the dove wings; they were not very strong; the little attempted flights of faith, in certain directions had to be increased. You remember the Psalmist said, “Oh that I had wings like a dove, that I might fly away and be at rest.” But the dove wings would not take us very far; we need the eagle wings. So through different teachings and especially through many testings and trials of faith, the Lord changed the dove wings into the eagle wings.

But some are saying, “How are we to get this faith?” The only way God can develop our faith is through trial. You ask the Lord to give you a stronger faith, and what does He do? He puts a trial upon the faith you already have. He will take your faith and test it and try it, and you think all is lost, but that very testing and trying of your faith is what brings out the pure gold and causes you to have a stronger faith than ever you had before.

In California we have many gold mines even yet, although they are not so plentiful as they used to be. There are two kinds of mines: one is the placer mine which contains the loose gold mingled with the sand and which therefore can easily be separated; the other is a quartz mine, where the gold is in the rock. When it is free gold it can very easily be separated from the rock, but in many of the mines there is what the miners call rebellious ore; they also call it refractory ore, and when I first heard my husband call the ore rebellious and say it was a technical term they used, I said, “That is just like some people, rebellious ore, refractory ore; the gold is there but very hard to get out.” This gold is so united with baser metals that they must have a different process to get the gold free from the baser ore; they do not care anything about the baser ores, they can be burned up or volatilized, but the miners are after the gold.

Now God is after the gold in us. “I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayst be rich.” They have different processes now, but one process which is used a good deal is a row of furnaces through which it is put one after the other and each one is hotter than the preceding. We ask to be delivered from one of God’s furnaces and we may get into a hotter one. I visited a mine and I saw the whole process. First, they broke the rock in pieces and then pulverized it, then there were large canvas sheets spread out, slightly on an incline, and the pulverized rock and ore was put on there and a stream of water was run over it, and some one stood at the top and swept it down carefully. The pulverized rock which was light went off with the water, but the metal, which was heavier, stayed on the canvas and it was swept off in little piles. It didn’t look’ at all like gold, and you know, beloved, it is only God that can see the gold in us sometimes; I am sorry we haven’t more spiritual perception to enable us to see the gold in each other. May God help us to see the gold in each other’s souls!

Those sulphurets, as they call them, look something like mortar; you couldn’t see any gold at all, but it was there. We went into the furnace room, and saw where they were putting it into one furnace after another; my husband is a mining man and he took me to visit this large mine that I might see all the processes.

The superintendent stood by me and we saw a lot of little sparks flying in every direction, and he explained that that was the baser metals being burned or volatilized, and then, not knowing he was uttering a great spiritual truth, he said, “When the sparks stop flying we take it out of the fire. It is finished.” That was so good I looked up at my husband and said: “Why, that is the way it is with us; the Lord takes us out of the furnace when the sparks stop flying, the sparks of doubt, the sparks of fear, the sparks of impatience and of lack of love; when they stop flying then God the Great Refiner knows it is time to take US out of the furnace.” Let us ask God to do His work quickly that the sparks may stop flying, but when we do see the sparks flying in ourselves or in each other shall we not be more patient now that we know what the sparks are? that they are only flying because God is working with us or working with some other soul? May God help us to be patient with each other when the sparks fly! Sparks are not always agreeable especially when they fly upon us, but the Lord can make us patient.

Oh, I often think that if in stead of getting impatient with the dear tried ones when perhaps their love fails, or their patience fails, or their faith fails, if we could only stand in love and tenderness and resist the enemy for them, claim the victory of the blood for their poor, tried souls how much better it would be and how much faster the Lord could work with our own souls. The Lord help us! He is trying to teach us to love one another with a pure heart fervently. I understand “fervently” here, in the Greek, means to be “boiling hot” in our love. You never can have the love that keeps up to the boiling heat all the time unless you first have a pure heart. “Love one another with a pure heart fervently.”

We want to look again at the thought of the winged life. We get it in that well-known passage in Isa. xl:28-31. “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.” I wonder if there are any faint ones here tonight. He says He will give you power. The fainting are the very ones to whom He promises power, but to them that have no might at all He increaseth strength.

All that we have must be surrendered to Him to use as He wills. The one thing I found hardest to consecrate to the Lord when I was a girl and He was seeking to lead me to Himself, was a little talent I was born with, and that was a little gift of writing verses and also prose and when the Lord sought to lead me to Himself during that awful suffering, I gave God all but that one thing, and about that I said, “No, it is good and I do not have to give it up.” He pressed it upon me that I had to surrender it to Him, and finally I told Him I would hold on to it as tightly as I could and that He would have to pull it away from me. That wasn’t very pleasant for the Lord, nor for me, but He was faithful; He saw I had to take the hard way. So when I got to the place of full surrender, just before I was healed, I said “Lord, I am willing to have Thee make me willing,” and He took me at that. When I got there I gave it all up to Him as best I could, and I never expected Him to let me write another thing.

I had written from a child and had a volume of poems printed, written before I had finished my eighteenth year, but I never expected to be able to write again, and so after my healing it was a wonderful joy to find that that which had gone to Calvary with Him was given back in resurrection power. There only was this difference: Instead of using it myself, the Holy Spirit uses it. God seems to keep it, as it were, locked up in a cupboard, and whenever He wants me to use it for Him, He enables me to use it in the power of His endless life, and then takes it back again for safe keeping. That is why the Lord is pleased to use the little book, “The Prayer of Faith,” so greatly, because He wrote it through me. This is a little illustration to show you that everything you have, has got to go down into death, all your natural ability, all your natural talent, all your natural knowledge and wisdom. Everything! If He chooses to give you back anything in resurrection life, all right, and if He doesn’t it is better not to get it back. It is an empty life, wherein you feel absolutely nothing; perfect weakness, emptied out for Jesus; you feel nothing but blankness and God causes you to stand before Him. It is just a question of trusting Him; letting Him take possession of your mind, and “when our weakness leans upon His might, then all is right.”

People know very little about the mind being cleansed by the blood and being emptied of all its human thoughts. I cannot begin to tell you what God has done in my mind since I have had this fuller baptism of the Holy Ghost. He shows me that people are having their minds corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ Jesus. He shows me that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God. He shows me I cannot reason in the old way. Oh the wonderful realization that God has emptied my own mind out, and that I have the mind of Christ. This is so restful; it feels as though my brain was having a holiday, and all the busy, wearisome thoughts are gone.

This is a part of the life on wings. In all the many years of blessedness before this fuller baptism, I did not know what I am talking about now, this freedom of the mind from all care; of course, I had a great deal of blessing and a great deal of freedom from care, and felt that God had guided me and blessed me wonderfully, but I didn’t know what I am talking about now. Now I feel that the Holy Spirit holds my brain just as He does the rest of my being, but it is just as loving and tender as it is strong.

Now He tells us He exchanges our strength. We shall mount up with wings as eagles, and this is wonderfully true not only in the spiritual and the mental, but true in the physical, and since this mighty baptism in the Holy Ghost which I received over two years ago, I know what that mounting up with wings is in my physical being. I feel oftentimes when I walk along the streets as though I could hardly walk properly, I am so full of something which seems as though it was lifting me up on wings; wings on my feet, wings on my limbs, wings all over. I realize it as I run up and down the stairs. It is Romans viii:11, “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.”

Early this morning as the power of God was upon me, and I was recognizing, as I so often love to do, the presence of the indwelling indwelling Comforter, and worshipping Him in His temple, with the Father and the Son, was led out in prayer for different things, but all at once He said to me, “I want you to recognize definitely that I am filling the temple.” Of course, I know He always fills it, but this was something a little different and He wanted the recognition that every part of spirit, soul and body was pervaded with His presence, and that meant, as He revealed to me His meaning, that I should drop even prayer for the time and be occupied with the presence of His glory, and I said, “Oh, God, the Holy Ghost, Thou art filling Thy temple,” and immediately, just as though a little vial of attar of roses had been broken in this room and every part of it would soon be filled with the perfume, so the presence of His glory, sensibly pervaded every part of my being and even love and prayer were lost in worship. Then I thought of the time in the Old Testament when the temple was so filled with God’s glory that the priest could not even stand to minister.

There is, therefore, an experience beyond service and beyond prayer, and that is a revelation of His own personality to such an extent that there is nothing but adoring worship filling our being. Usually it is a blessed experience to be able to speak in tongues, to let the heavenly song flow out, but there are times when even tongues cease, when His presence is so all-pervading and the atmosphere so heavenly that I cannot talk at all in any language, but the power of His blessed Spirit upon me is so marvelous that it seems as though I were almost dwelling in heaven.

I hope this testimony will make some one press on for the fulness. The Word tells us, “That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.” Philemon 6. Through our faithful testimony somebody else’s torch may be lighted in the love and providence of God, and suppose we should hesitate for fear of persecution, should stop acknowledging every good thing which is in us in Christ Jesus and somebody’s torch should fail to be lit. We have a great responsibility, and if we fail in testimony our own light will grow dim.

If you acknowledge everything that is in you in Christ Jesus He will be ready to give you more good things, and just so far as you have gone on with Him you will be able to help somebody else. I find a great many witnesses who have failed God. It means a great deal to be a witness for God in these deeper and higher things, because doing it means reproach; it means going outside the camp, and I have found some people that do not like reproach and draw back and try to compromise; but I pray that we may always be kept true. Beloved, keep true and testify faithfully to Him. He tells us in Revelation that because we have a little strength and because we have kept His Word and have not denied His Name, He has set before us an open door. I could go back and tell you of one door after another that God opened in my own life. When the little doors were opened He could open larger ones, until now the doors are so large and so many I never know which to enter, only as God makes it clear. So, beloved,
be faithful and do not deny His Name.

In Ps. ciii :5, we read, “Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Here is a reference to the eagle again, the youth renewed like the eagle’s. Beloved, I do not believe in growing old, do you? I believe God means just what He says. Isn’t it beautiful? I never expect to grow old. The years may slip over my head, but what of that? That has nothing to do with it. He who has eternal youth is my youth and my strength.

Now, who is going to trust God for the winged life? You can crawl instead if you wish. God will even bless you if you crawl; He will do the best He can for you, but oh how much better to avail ourselves of our wonderful privileges in Christ and to “mount up with wings as eagles, run and not be weary, walk and not faint.” O beloved friends, there is a life on wings. I feel the streams of His life fill me and permeate my mortal frame from my head to my feet, until no words are adequate to describe it. I can only make a few bungling attempts to tell you what it is like and ask the Lord to reveal to you the rest. May He reveal to you your inheritance in Christ Jesus so that you will press on and get all that He has for you.

© Jennifer Miskov