Flying by Instruments
—By Dr. Richard Sizemore, Blacksburg, VA
When I was kid, my family owned a small 4-seat airplane – a Cessna 172. During that time, I learned a good bit about flying. One of the things I learned about flying was the importance of trusting my instruments while flying in bad weather.
When it is cloudy and foggy and the pilot cannot clearly beyond the plane, itself, their senses can easily be fooled. What one might think is the right direction and orientation of the plane can be deadly wrong. A person must depend on their instruments to tell them the correct direction and orientation of the plane. If not, the pilot can easily crash.
There are so many crazy mindsets, philosophies, ideologies, and things occurring in the world today that are creating a foggy and cloudy atmosphere. We cannot trust our soulish senses to tell us what direction we should take and/or our orientation of what is right and wrong.
It seems crazy to me that so many people are confused about their gender, much less about their sexual orientation. I hear people who confess to be the people of God approving and overlooking the ungodly words and actions of many Christian leaders.
With the pendulum of political and cultural thinking swinging back and forth in extreme arcs, we find ourselves flying in a foggy and cloudy atmosphere. We must depend on the instrumentation of God’s truth as revealed in the Bible to tells us our orientation and the correct direction to stay on course.
I believe James 3:13-18 is a very important passage of scripture for this time. It says:
“Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom…But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”
We must be able to identify the different types of wisdom in this passage. We must be able to identify when wisdom is earthly, natural, or demonic. Above all else, we must be able to clearly identify and walk in the only true wisdom which is from God.
I believe the Lord is inviting us to meditate on the characteristics of Heavenly wisdom that are identified in James 3:17-18. I hope we will search out this passage and meditate on its truth.
We desperately need it in this hour!