Terry Thompson’s Blog

As noted in yesterday’s post, false signals in air navigation can be deadly.  So can life’s false signals.  Some can take their victims to the extremes of cults.  David Koresh’s Branch Davidians and Jim Jones’ People’s Temple were examples of false signals gone wild.  Most false signals, however, are much less obvious, but can be just as devastating.  It is easy to lose your adherence to the absolute truth of God’s Word when other ideas and standards seem more relevant to issues of our generation.  The world’s prevailing message of the day is to tolerate almost everything in the interest of unity and respect.  Prominent people speaking with authority are sending such false signals.  We must constantly identify the source of the signal, verify it with other inputs, and, if necessary, adjust back to the reliable truth of God.

In the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese place mobile navigation aids in strategic locations with the same frequencies as established stations used by American military aircraft.  These false stations would broadcast at a higher power and draw our fighters and bombers into the sights of the antiaircraft weapons.  The signals checked out as accurate in the cockpit, but they led the aircrew to their demise.

We have been given perfectly accurate and reliable direction for our lives that will keep us on course and progressing well on our journey.  This direction is clearly received from the Bible, from a Bible-teaching church, and from the Spirit of God within us.  However, today’s world sends false signals our way constantly.  We can be so easily fooled by a more inviting signal that appears genuine but actually takes us off course just enough to be disastrous.  Verify every signal you receive to make sure it is from the right source.  Failure to recognize the true signal could bring serious consequences.

It the headset turned up?  Are you on frequency?  Are you taking time everyday to get direction and guidance from the perfect Controller?   Jesus says He stands at our door and knocks, and if anyone hears His voice and opens the door, He will come in to fellowship with him (Revelations 3:20).  Determine today to reserve frequent and specific times to be alone with the Lord just to talk.  He wants to guide you in a fulfilling journey of life, both on this earth and throughout eternity.

If you have ever had in-flight radio failure, tell us how your felt and what you did.

Communication failure with God may be because you lack a true personal relationship with Him.  In such case, the only message you need to send is your acceptance of His call.  You may have so many interferences in your life that you don’t recognize Him when He contacts you or tries in a number of ways to get your attention.   Then again, you may have drifted so far out of the range of His influence that you are totally out of touch with what He wants to say to you.  As in any communication problem in the air, you need to get closer to Him, rid yourself of the interferences, identify yourself and say, “Go ahead.”  Then listen.

It’s a sinking feeling deep in your gut when it is critical to talk to someone on the radio and you can’t make the connection.  It may be your radio is inoperative.  Perhaps there is some kind of external interference. You may just be out of range.  In almost every case, though, the controller is trying to contact you, his transmission is going out loud and clear, but you are not getting the message. 

Sometimes we have the same problem in our communication with God.  We were created with a natural need to have connection with the Creator.  When we are out of regular communication with Him, we feel empty and alone.  We may have a lot of activity going on with family and friends surrounding us, but, without the supreme Controller, we feel lonely.  That’s when we need to check out our personal communications system, check for interferrence, and check on our range from the Transmitter. 

Give me your thoughts.

Deferring to God in daily living is not any more mysterious than deferring to our instruments when in the clouds.  First, we must accept the fact that our own judgment can be flawed , and that God’s judgment is perfect–our minds are not as accurate as the instruments.  Then, we pray for wisdom and consult the scriptures for application to our daily decisions–we crosscheck one instrument with the others.  When we are seeking Him through His Word and are in regular communication with Him through prayer, the decisions we make, large or small, will be aligned with His desires for our life–the instruments will keep us level and on course.  He asks nothing more of us…and nothing less.  Are you trusting Him completely?

In the airplane, with no outside visual references, we have to give our eyes something from which to reference our spatial orientation.  We replace outside references with our primary flight instruments.  We all know that the only option for flying in IMC is to trust our instruments, since we can’t trust ourselves in that environment.   The truth is we can’t trust ourselves in much of anything. Our mind and body will often betray us.  What seems right to us from logic and experience frequently turns out to be a mistake.  We can’t see and fully understand what is really out there. We need another reference that is more reliable.  Solomon put it plainly that anyone who trusts in himself is a fool (Proverbs 28:26).  As we develop our relationship with the Lord, we come to realize that we have in Him the source of all wisdom.  As our faith in the instruments rather than in our senses has proven successful, our faith in God rather than ourselves proves equally successful.

The instrument phase of my Air Force training included a session in the Barany chair named for Dr. Robert Barany, an Austrian Nobel Prize winning physician.  Dr. Barany’s early 20th century experiments led to the discovery of the vestibular system of the inner ear as the source of our sense of balance and body movement.  The Barany chair was mounted on a rotational axis.  The instructor would spin the blindfolded student in one direction, then slow the rate of rotation.  The student would feel the sensation of stopping and beginning to turn in the other direction.  It provided a lasting impression of the fact that you can’t trust your own sense of movement when you have no visual references. 

It is a physiological fact that we can’t trust our own senses without some form of reference.  We also can’t trust our own spiritual senses without God through His Word and Holy Spirit as our reference.  Isn’t it interesting how God, through our experiences, illustrates His relationship with us.  More on this in the next post.

If you are coming up on a life waypoint, or if you have just begun a new leg of your journey, learn from the past, celebrate it, and thank God for it.  Then, ask Him to show you how you can best prepare for and succeed in your promotion to the next phase.

“…Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”  (Philippians 3: 13b-14)

Like waypoints along a flight plan, it is important to look forward from life’s waypoints.  New factors will need to be assessed and adjusted for.  Perhaps new techniques and disciplines will have to be applied to make the new direction successful.  Some change will be inevitable, so don’t hesitate to make corrections or take another approach.  Every waypoint takes us one step closer to our destination.   It is a promotion to the next phase of life. We should take advantage of every opportunity to make the new direction better than the one we just completed.  It is a time of renewal–another chance.