When Faith Takes Flight-Blog

Jim Walters’ book, “When Faith Takes Flight“, is a new aviation book that demonstrates how flying an airplane applies to the Christian life. We hope this excerpt of Chapter 4 encourages you.

Chapter Four-Saved by Faith:
Wheels Up and on the Way

“As long as the skies are blue, the actual work of flying a
plane is a snap. You can see the ground, you can tell where
you are by the passing landmarks, and you can tell if your
wings are level just by looking out the window. This kind of
flying is pure fun!

However, if your plane flies into a cloud, everything
changes. The second the plane slips into the gray mass,
visibility goes to zero. You can’t see a thing beyond the
windshield—it’s as if you are flying inside a jug of milk. No
sky, no ground, and no horizon. Those were your references
to know if your wings were level or not. Also, since the
human brain depends on visual clues for orientation, it
quickly becomes confused about which way is up. It’s hard
to keep the wings level if you don’t know which way is up!

For pilots, learning to trust the instruments over the inner-ear sensations is the ultimate act of faith. This kind of faith involves trusting in a system that cannot be seen or verified by bodily means. If my instruments tell me I’m turning, even though my body tells me I’m not turning, I must trust the
instruments and adjust the controls. At first, this is hard to
learn, as it goes against everything your body tells you is
true, but it does get easier over time. I’ve spent enough hours flying in the clouds that it’s no big deal anymore. You might say, when it comes to instrument flying, my faith in those instruments is solid.

People ask me, “What does God really want from me?”
Trust! That’s what He wants. He wants you to trust Him as
if He were the pilot of your life. Absolutely risk it all on His
claims and promises. You put your life in His hands and
go forth with Him at the controls. You transfer to Him the
responsibility to save your soul for eternity, and you give to
Him the control of the direction of the rest of your life. This is what is called “saving faith.”

In the New Testament, the
word faith refers to a transfer of trust from self-worth and
self-righteousness (as well as from good deeds and church
membership) to God. Faith specifically trusts that God is
who He says He is, and that God will do what He says He
will do. It’s something like taking a nap while the pilot is
flying through the clouds.”