DAY 2

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. - Romans 8:5-6.

Stuart Briscoe tells a story about the cuckoo bird. Now the European cuckoo bird is much larger than the cuckoo birds in the United States. The mother European cuckoo bird has forgotten how to build a nest. It flies around until it sees another nest with eggs in it and no mother bird around. The cuckoo quickly lands, lays an egg there, and flies away.

The mother thrush, whose nest has been invaded, comes back and gets to work hatching the eggs. It apparently does not bother her that there is an extra egg in the nest. What happens? Four little thrushes hatch, but one large cuckoo hatches. The cuckoo is two or three times the size of the thrushes. When Mother Thrush brings to the nest one large, juicy worm, she finds four tiny thrush mouths, and one huge cuckoo mouth.

Guess, which bird, gets the worm? A full-sized thrush ends up feeding a baby cuckoo that is three times as big as it is. Over time, the bigger cuckoo gets bigger and bigger, and the smaller thrushes get smaller and smaller. Stuart says that when he was a kid he could always find a baby cuckoo’s nest. You just walked along a hedgerow until you found dead little thrushes, which the cuckoo throws out one at a time.

Spiritually we are similar to the thrushes and the cuckoo. We have two natures in one nest (i.e.: in one body). James says in James 5:19, “Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth....” I would submit to you that the primary cause of wanderers from the truth is the feeding of the sinful nature and not the spiritual nature. If we would grow spiritually then the spiritual nature must be fed. At the same time we must stop feeding the sinful nature. The sinful nature is just like the baby cuckoo. If we keep on feeding it the sinful nature will destroy us.

Which nature have you been feeding?