Sparrow, Parrot…Same Basic Idea

Here’s a wild story.

In 2009, Dave Rodenborn’s parrot Splint flew off. Dave let Splint’s feathers get a little bit too long, and Splint shot out the front door and got away. Parrots have no desire to obey, and you can’t rely on them to do the things you’ve trained them to do, so you can’t just call them back. If they feel like coming back, they come back. If not, tough. And once they’re a few dozen yards from your house, they have no idea how to get back. The general rule is that they stay lost, and they die. They don’t know how to cope in the wild, the North American climate can kill them, and hawks love them.

At the time, I was highly distressed. I know how it feels to lose a parrot due to my own mistake. And I thought about Splint, out there in the wilderness, lonely and starving.

I put in some prayer time for Splint, and when I did, I felt a powerful flow of faith, telling me he was coming back.

After months had passed, I figured my faith had been wrong. Non-spiritual teachers are always telling us not to trust what we feel, which is a little bit crazy, considering how obvious the Holy Spirit’s power and presence can be. The fact is, most teachers don’t get good results from prayer, and they assume anyone who claims to have a better experience is a kook or a liar. They don’t want to set people up for disappointment, so they actually tell people NOT to trust God! How crazy is that?

These days, when I pray, I can literally, physically, mentally feel faith pouring through me. I don’t have to feel it in order to believe, but experience has taught me that when I do feel it, it’s real. I believe it comes from praying in tongues. When you pray in tongues, you deposit power in your supernatural bank account, and it’s there when you need to make a withdrawal.

Last night, I got an unexpected response to a Youtube comment in a thread in which Dave was participating. In the thread, Dave said Splint had returned! Someone yanked him out of a tree near Dave’s house, and it took them a year to find Dave! How do you like THAT?

So here is the position I’m in: I had faith, and God rewarded it, even after I decided my faith was wrong. Is that possible? Apparently so. It has happened to me before. I think your best bet is to hold onto what faith tells you, no matter what, but God may come through regardless of your foolishness.

Faith is a crazy thing. Sometimes you will pray for a thing and be sure you’re going to get it, yet you’ll still be amazed when you see it come to pass.