God is teaching us to spread our wings and fly…
as we’re learning to fly by Instrument Flight Rules (IFR)
by FAITH and not by sight
God’s Word
a Lamp unto my feet!
I will always remember the lesson my dad taught me as a boy. You see, my dad was a former fighter pilot, who flew P-51 Mustangs on bomber escort missions, with the Tuskegee Airmen over in Italy, during WWII.
He said that the hardest part of flight training, for him, was to learn to fly a plane by Instrument Flight Rules; where you have to disengage something you have trusted, and have been trained and condition to trust all of your life, and that is your feelings.
Instead, you have to disengage your feelings, and make yourself trust those little dials in front of you; that what they are telling you is true, in spite of the fact that your feelings are screaming at you the exact opposite.
You see if you are flying a plane in the soup, in inclimate weather, or in a fog, where you can no longer see the horizon, or have any visual reference points, and with all the G’s that are being exerted on your body, it is impossible for you to know what the attitude is of your plane. In fact, under those circumstances you could be flying upside down and not even know it!
He said that your feelings will scream at you to pull up or bank to the right or left; but that if you do any of those things, and ignore your only accurate reference point, which are those dials in front of you, then you will surely die!
When I later became a Christian, the analogy was amazing, and it hit me right between the eyes; because as Christians, we are asked to do the same thing, when we have lost our reference points.
When we can no longer see nor understand, and can no longer find our way in the natural, we too have to force ourselves to go against the grain of what we have always trusted, and we have to also learn to place our faith in our instruments, which is God’s Word… for we no longer live by sight, in what we see and feel, but we live by faith in the promises of God’s Word!
Also, as with the example with the pilot in inclimate weather, if you have never been trained to disengage your senses, and have had actual flight time doing so, either in a flight simulator, or with a flight instructor; if you haven’t ever had the actual experience of being in that situation, where you no longer have any natural reference points to rely upon, then the chances are, if you are ever caught in a real life situation, and have to choose between your feelings and those dials, you will most likely elect to trust what you have always known, and are familiar with… and again, you will die!
So if you are struggling with problems today, and cannot see your way through, and you have seemingly lost your way in the natural… understand that God is testing you, and He’s trying to teach you to fly, not by sight, but by trusting your instruments. Selah
In the following message, from Francis Frangipane, he also touches on this same subject, about finding your way in the dark.
Shalom,
Skip Barland
From: David
Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 9:00 AM
To: Undisclosed
Subject: Francis Frangipane
SB SALT AND LIGHT MINISTRIES 