Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Instrument Rated Faith

As someone indwelled by God’s Spirit you can always find the way forward. There is never a time when you will be spiritually blind. Faith has given you the ability to move forward when no natural indicators are present to reveal your next step.
As someone indwelled by God’s Spirit you can always find the way forward. There is never a time when you will be spiritually blind. Faith has given you the ability to move forward when no natural indicators are present to reveal your next step.

When I was a young pastor, I augmented our family income as a flight instructor. Along with teaching beginner pilots, I was also an instrument instructor. I taught advanced students how to fly through inclement weather using only instruments, not sight, for navigation.

On one such flight, I had my student depart the Newport, Oregon airport for a night flight to Portland. We had a low ceiling on departure and the same condition was waiting for us at our destination.

As soon as we departed we were in the clouds. The city lights below us gave way to nothing but complete darkness. We were fully enveloped in the clouds. I had instructed the student to make sure he transitioned to his instruments as soon as he got airborne so he would be flying by instruments when we entered the clouds. A few minutes later we broke through the cloud layer and found ourselves on top.

It was a full moon night almost as bright as the full day. The rays of light coming from the moon illuminated the clouds below us. We droned along with a huge moon overhead and a bright pillow of moonlit clouds below. It was a magical flight to Portland. My student used the same instruments to get on top of the clouds as he did when we began our descent and entered the clouds once again to finally land safely at our destination. For the entire flight, he was following an instrument flight path.

A lot of people demand to see the way forward before they choose to obey. Life in the Spirit does not work that way. Some stay grounded refusing to step out into the unknown and miss places of spiritual beauty that are a lot like flying on top of billowy clouds on a moonlit night. They also miss the thrill of finally breaking out of the clouds to see a destination that was hidden by the dense cloud cover of disbelief.


Everybody, believer, and non-believer alike see the same circumstances of life. Faith can help you see through the obvious to bring fresh revelation and direction. The obvious can be just as dense a spiritual cloud cover as a dark night of the soul. If you have trained yourself to fly by faith at all times, when you do enter the clouds of uncertainty, you will be able to continue your journey when others turn around in fear. That is what it means to fly by the instrument of faith. No destination will ever be out of your reach. And no cloud cover of uncertainty will ever be an impenetrable barrier to your forward progress.



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