Is “a bird in the hand worth two in the bush?”
You have all heard that expression. But what it doesn’t say is this—those who go for the two in the bush may wind up with one more bird than those who settle for the one in hand.
Going for the two in the bush requires boldness and willingness to risk. You must believe in your ability to catch birds. If you fail to catch the two, you might catch one. If you fail altogether, at least you’ve learned an important lesson in catching birds which may help you later.
A bird in hand is fine for those who don’t know how to catch them. But for those who know how to catch birds, it is no enough. The only thing that makes that lonely bird better than the other two is if you are not convinced that you can catch the other two.
That’s what faith is—going for the two in the bush.
Sometimes we take risks because we have no other choice. Usually, though there is a choice. We can choose to be cautious or to act boldly. If we are cautious, we risk little. We may survive today. But the more cautious we are, the more likely we are to achieve nothing in the end. We cannot keep our lives, our property, our relatives, our friends, or our fortunes. Eventually, we lose them all. If we never take risks, we may keep what we have in the end, but in the end, we will lose everything else.
Faith is trusting God enough to take risk. If we really trust in God—I mean really—there is nothing we cannot do. If we really trust in God—I mean really—we can move mountains, defeat armies, stop storms, walk on water, and win the prize.
But if we don’t trust God enough to try, we will achieve nothing.
As believers, we have put our trust in Christ as our Lord and Savior. That is called Saving Faith—the faith the Jesus has forgiven or sins and that we will go to heaven when we die. Saving faith is vital to every Christian.
But Saving Faith is not the only kind of faith we need from God. We need living faith. too, to use in our daily walk with Him on earth. Saving faith is for the future. Living faith is for today.
Living faith is trusting God enough to take bold and decisive action. Living faith is not being satisfied with surviving, but is interested in thriving. Living faith is the willingness to take God at his Word that He created us for greater things than the ordinary.
We may be believers, but that doesn’t mean we have a living faith. We know we have a living faith when we are ready and willing to sacrifice our present comfort for future blessings. Living faith is when we give our money sacrificially to God’s work, instead of holding onto it ourselves, because we believe that God is capable of providing for all our needs. Living faith ins being willing to try a new thing for God, instead of fretting that we don’t have the time, or don’t have the training, or because we’ve “never done it before.” Living faith is crossing social, ethnic, or class barriers, without fretting that we might have our hand slapped when we do. We trust God that we can handle how others respond, and we trust God to bring results from our sacrifices.
Living faith is not being satisfied with just a bird in the hand. It’s going for the two in the bush as well.
The next exhibit in the Hall of Fame of Faith is a splendid example of living faith. Their real names were Amram and Jochebeb. They are better known as Moses’ parents.
Without their faith, there would have been no Moses, no Exodus, and not Jewish people. In fact, if it were not for four people and three bold acts of faith, Israel would be no more than a memory.
The first act of faith happened before Moses was born. Look at Exodus 1:6-22.
Moses was born four hundred years after Joseph, when God’s people had become slaves in Egypt. They had been slaves for almost ten generations—or the same length of time between us and the Pilgrims.
What happens to people after they’ve been prisoners for a long time? The longer we are in bondage, the harder it is to imagine ever being free. Multigenerational slaves lose all hope for rescue. Their captors appear all-powerful. They not only believe it, but they also teach it to their children. Their hopelessness travels from one generation to the next.
But no matter how docile a group of people become, there are always limits in what they will tolerate. Pharaoh went one step too far when he ordered the death of all male Israelite babies. Pharaoh was smart enough to know that if he sent his troops into the slave villages demanding their little boys, not even his might could protect him. So he hit upon a much more subtle and devious kind of genocide.
Pharaoh called the Hebrew midwives together, probably in secret. He told them that it was their responsibility to kill the male children. “Do it quietly” Pharaoh would have told them. That way, there would be no riots, just a lot of grieving parents. In a generation, the Hebrew women would marry outside their tribe, and the Israelites would simply disappear.
But there were two midwives who resisted. Their names were Shiphrah and Puah. These two could not have been all the midwives there were—after all, there were over a million Hebrews! They were just the two who resisted.
There must have been other midwives, too. The reason we don’t hear about them is probably because they went along with Pharaoh. These other women had a choice to make, and they chose the other way. They must have had their rationalizations for doing it. But there would only be one real reason—they were afraid for themselves. Proverbs 16:2 says “All a man's ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the LORD.” In other words—we can rationalize anything.
But Shiphrah and Puah stood their ground They refused to kill children. If it weren’t for these two women, there would be no Israel.
But two greater acts of faith would follow it.
Hebrews 11: 23 By faith Moses' parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king's edict.
One of the children they saved was Moses. After his birth, Moses’ parents kept him hidden for three months, I violation of Pharaoh’s orders.
How do you keep a baby quiet for three months? They did not live in a palace. They lived in a slave village, with no glass on the windows, where every house was up against every other house. They had little or no privacy. How many times did his mother have to get up in the night to shush a baby that was not supposed to be there? How many narrow escapes must they have had when some overseer came down the crowded streets just before feeding time? If they were discovered, then the whole family would have been put to death for the sake of the children.
Moses’ parent risked their whole family for the sake of one boy. They did this because they believed that God had a special destiny for him, and that He would take care of the family.
But the greatest faith was yet to come.
After three months, Moses’ parents realized they could not keep the boy hidden. At the same time, they came to believe that this boy was the promised deliverer. We do not know how they came to that conclusion, but they did. If this boy was called by God, then he must be saved.
Mrs. Moses wove a basket. Mr. Moses covered it with pitch. Mrs. Moses got her finest blanket out of her chest. She wrapped her little baby Moses in that basket. Then they both kissed him goodbye, and set that basket in the Nile River.
The Nile river! Along its shallow banks live crocodiles, hippos, rats, and wild animals. The cities upstream from them dumped their sewage in that water. Yet somehow, these two people had such faith in God that they took their precious baby and let him loose in the wild waters of the Nile. Could there be in our wildest imaginations a greater act of faith than that?
The suffering of that woman and man must have been horrible. She cried because she believed she would never hold her baby again. He wept to think his son-his future—just floated off down the river. There was earthly reason to believe that anything would happen to that little reed basket except sink in the Nile. Even if by some miracle he survived, they would never see him again. They had just released their baby boy. All they to cling to was a feeling that God was in charge.
Some parents today make similar sacrifices. When a man or woman sees their child go to war, they do not know if they will ever return. When mother or father waves goodbye to their child going off in a mission trip, they put them in God’s hands. They may have saving faith, and know their child is saved. But they need more—they need a living faith to sustain them for the moment. They must believe that God is in charge, and that He is a rewarder of those who believe in Him.
God has other calls and other sacrifices that require the same living faith—when we move to a new home, when we leave a for a new job, when we decide to take a woman’s hand in marriage. We have no guarantees. But God is in control, and that He will honor our willingness to step out on faith.
Moses parents and the midwives all had choices. What if his parents or those midwives had acted differently? Suppose they decided to go along with authority, or to try to keep that baby boy all to themselves? What would have happened? Perhaps nothing. But there would never have been a Moses. There would never have been a deliverer. The Hebrew people would have been just a memory, and their God a distant but fading light.
Faith is required for living. Nothing is required for dying. Faith is required to find success. Failure may be achieved without it.
The problem with us is that we follow the path of least resistance, fight only the battles we are sure we win. If we encounter opposition, we shrink away, because we do not have faith. When we take the safe path is that we are content to exist rather than live.
In the next chapter of Hebrews, the writer says “Therefore, being surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses, let us run the race that is set before us. Looking unto Jesus, he author and finisher of our faith.” Moses’ parents are two of those witnesses. Moses is another. And all those other people mentioned in Hebrews 11 are on the sidelines, too, cheering us on. “Fight, run, persevere!“ They shout at us. We are the latest of their generations. We have been passed the baton. It is our time to run out race. One day, we will receive a crown of life, but only if we run with bold and fearless faith.
You have all heard that expression. But what it doesn’t say is this—those who go for the two in the bush may wind up with one more bird than those who settle for the one in hand.
Going for the two in the bush requires boldness and willingness to risk. You must believe in your ability to catch birds. If you fail to catch the two, you might catch one. If you fail altogether, at least you’ve learned an important lesson in catching birds which may help you later.
A bird in hand is fine for those who don’t know how to catch them. But for those who know how to catch birds, it is no enough. The only thing that makes that lonely bird better than the other two is if you are not convinced that you can catch the other two.
That’s what faith is—going for the two in the bush.
Sometimes we take risks because we have no other choice. Usually, though there is a choice. We can choose to be cautious or to act boldly. If we are cautious, we risk little. We may survive today. But the more cautious we are, the more likely we are to achieve nothing in the end. We cannot keep our lives, our property, our relatives, our friends, or our fortunes. Eventually, we lose them all. If we never take risks, we may keep what we have in the end, but in the end, we will lose everything else.
Faith is trusting God enough to take risk. If we really trust in God—I mean really—there is nothing we cannot do. If we really trust in God—I mean really—we can move mountains, defeat armies, stop storms, walk on water, and win the prize.
But if we don’t trust God enough to try, we will achieve nothing.
As believers, we have put our trust in Christ as our Lord and Savior. That is called Saving Faith—the faith the Jesus has forgiven or sins and that we will go to heaven when we die. Saving faith is vital to every Christian.
But Saving Faith is not the only kind of faith we need from God. We need living faith. too, to use in our daily walk with Him on earth. Saving faith is for the future. Living faith is for today.
Living faith is trusting God enough to take bold and decisive action. Living faith is not being satisfied with surviving, but is interested in thriving. Living faith is the willingness to take God at his Word that He created us for greater things than the ordinary.
We may be believers, but that doesn’t mean we have a living faith. We know we have a living faith when we are ready and willing to sacrifice our present comfort for future blessings. Living faith is when we give our money sacrificially to God’s work, instead of holding onto it ourselves, because we believe that God is capable of providing for all our needs. Living faith ins being willing to try a new thing for God, instead of fretting that we don’t have the time, or don’t have the training, or because we’ve “never done it before.” Living faith is crossing social, ethnic, or class barriers, without fretting that we might have our hand slapped when we do. We trust God that we can handle how others respond, and we trust God to bring results from our sacrifices.
Living faith is not being satisfied with just a bird in the hand. It’s going for the two in the bush as well.
The next exhibit in the Hall of Fame of Faith is a splendid example of living faith. Their real names were Amram and Jochebeb. They are better known as Moses’ parents.
Without their faith, there would have been no Moses, no Exodus, and not Jewish people. In fact, if it were not for four people and three bold acts of faith, Israel would be no more than a memory.
The first act of faith happened before Moses was born. Look at Exodus 1:6-22.
Moses was born four hundred years after Joseph, when God’s people had become slaves in Egypt. They had been slaves for almost ten generations—or the same length of time between us and the Pilgrims.
What happens to people after they’ve been prisoners for a long time? The longer we are in bondage, the harder it is to imagine ever being free. Multigenerational slaves lose all hope for rescue. Their captors appear all-powerful. They not only believe it, but they also teach it to their children. Their hopelessness travels from one generation to the next.
But no matter how docile a group of people become, there are always limits in what they will tolerate. Pharaoh went one step too far when he ordered the death of all male Israelite babies. Pharaoh was smart enough to know that if he sent his troops into the slave villages demanding their little boys, not even his might could protect him. So he hit upon a much more subtle and devious kind of genocide.
Pharaoh called the Hebrew midwives together, probably in secret. He told them that it was their responsibility to kill the male children. “Do it quietly” Pharaoh would have told them. That way, there would be no riots, just a lot of grieving parents. In a generation, the Hebrew women would marry outside their tribe, and the Israelites would simply disappear.
But there were two midwives who resisted. Their names were Shiphrah and Puah. These two could not have been all the midwives there were—after all, there were over a million Hebrews! They were just the two who resisted.
There must have been other midwives, too. The reason we don’t hear about them is probably because they went along with Pharaoh. These other women had a choice to make, and they chose the other way. They must have had their rationalizations for doing it. But there would only be one real reason—they were afraid for themselves. Proverbs 16:2 says “All a man's ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the LORD.” In other words—we can rationalize anything.
But Shiphrah and Puah stood their ground They refused to kill children. If it weren’t for these two women, there would be no Israel.
But two greater acts of faith would follow it.
Hebrews 11: 23 By faith Moses' parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king's edict.
One of the children they saved was Moses. After his birth, Moses’ parents kept him hidden for three months, I violation of Pharaoh’s orders.
How do you keep a baby quiet for three months? They did not live in a palace. They lived in a slave village, with no glass on the windows, where every house was up against every other house. They had little or no privacy. How many times did his mother have to get up in the night to shush a baby that was not supposed to be there? How many narrow escapes must they have had when some overseer came down the crowded streets just before feeding time? If they were discovered, then the whole family would have been put to death for the sake of the children.
Moses’ parent risked their whole family for the sake of one boy. They did this because they believed that God had a special destiny for him, and that He would take care of the family.
But the greatest faith was yet to come.
After three months, Moses’ parents realized they could not keep the boy hidden. At the same time, they came to believe that this boy was the promised deliverer. We do not know how they came to that conclusion, but they did. If this boy was called by God, then he must be saved.
Mrs. Moses wove a basket. Mr. Moses covered it with pitch. Mrs. Moses got her finest blanket out of her chest. She wrapped her little baby Moses in that basket. Then they both kissed him goodbye, and set that basket in the Nile River.
The Nile river! Along its shallow banks live crocodiles, hippos, rats, and wild animals. The cities upstream from them dumped their sewage in that water. Yet somehow, these two people had such faith in God that they took their precious baby and let him loose in the wild waters of the Nile. Could there be in our wildest imaginations a greater act of faith than that?
The suffering of that woman and man must have been horrible. She cried because she believed she would never hold her baby again. He wept to think his son-his future—just floated off down the river. There was earthly reason to believe that anything would happen to that little reed basket except sink in the Nile. Even if by some miracle he survived, they would never see him again. They had just released their baby boy. All they to cling to was a feeling that God was in charge.
Some parents today make similar sacrifices. When a man or woman sees their child go to war, they do not know if they will ever return. When mother or father waves goodbye to their child going off in a mission trip, they put them in God’s hands. They may have saving faith, and know their child is saved. But they need more—they need a living faith to sustain them for the moment. They must believe that God is in charge, and that He is a rewarder of those who believe in Him.
God has other calls and other sacrifices that require the same living faith—when we move to a new home, when we leave a for a new job, when we decide to take a woman’s hand in marriage. We have no guarantees. But God is in control, and that He will honor our willingness to step out on faith.
Moses parents and the midwives all had choices. What if his parents or those midwives had acted differently? Suppose they decided to go along with authority, or to try to keep that baby boy all to themselves? What would have happened? Perhaps nothing. But there would never have been a Moses. There would never have been a deliverer. The Hebrew people would have been just a memory, and their God a distant but fading light.
Faith is required for living. Nothing is required for dying. Faith is required to find success. Failure may be achieved without it.
The problem with us is that we follow the path of least resistance, fight only the battles we are sure we win. If we encounter opposition, we shrink away, because we do not have faith. When we take the safe path is that we are content to exist rather than live.
In the next chapter of Hebrews, the writer says “Therefore, being surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses, let us run the race that is set before us. Looking unto Jesus, he author and finisher of our faith.” Moses’ parents are two of those witnesses. Moses is another. And all those other people mentioned in Hebrews 11 are on the sidelines, too, cheering us on. “Fight, run, persevere!“ They shout at us. We are the latest of their generations. We have been passed the baton. It is our time to run out race. One day, we will receive a crown of life, but only if we run with bold and fearless faith.
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