Pilots and Christians

I read a story by a pilot friend of mine about the importance of checking all the instruments and gauges on the dash of a plane or jet. There is a gauge called an attitude indicator and the standby is a gyro. The attitude indicator is the instrument that shows you up from down. Some younger pilots will tend to ignore the gyro because it needs more maintenance—it needs to be righted after big turns and rolls. This friend wrote how even he tended to ignore the gyro in his younger days. There was one day he was thankful he maintained his gyro and paid attention to all the instrumentation—the day his main attitude indicator went out. If he had continued to only pay attention to his main indicator, he would have continued into a nosedive and crashed. Instead, by maintaining the gyro and watching all the other instruments, he was able to right the plane and land safely—with a little help from the approach controller.


As I read that story, it reminded me so much of our Christian lives. We can walk into a situation and ignore our initial reaction, our conscience, our attitude indicator. We can make excuses. We can try to rationalize. But if we read our Bibles every day and keep the communication open with God and surround ourselves with Christian friends who will keep us accountable, we can still right ourselves instead of crashing and burning in temptation.


Proverbs 15:22 (New International Reader's Version)
22 Plans fail without good advice.
But they succeed when there are many advisers.


P.S. You can read the pilot’s story here:
The Ops Check That Saved My Life