Lifted Up: Drawn To The Light

Night flying has its own unique challenges. During the day, a pilot has constant reference points.

The horizon.

The ground.

Landmarks that quietly tell you where you are in relation to everything else.

At night, many of those references disappear. You can still fly. The aircraft still responds. The instruments are still working. But things don’t look the same.

Distances appear different.

Lights that are miles away can look close.

Things that are close can disappear entirely.

A single light can feel like a horizon when it isn’t.

The landmarks haven’t moved —

but your ability to judge them has.

That’s where the danger lies. Not in the darkness itself, but in what darkness does to perception. Your senses begin to lie to you. Your inner ear tells you that you’re level when you’re not. It tells you that you’re climbing when you’re descending.

Perhaps, most dangerously —

it gives you confidence. False confidence.

Night flying doesn’t remove danger. It removes feedback. And when feedback is gone, pilots are trained to stop trusting how things feel and start trusting what they know.

They learn to rely on instruments. On fixed references. On truths that don’t change just because visibility does.

Long before anyone ever flew an airplane, Scripture named this condition. “Darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

That’s how the Bible begins. Not with sin. Not with failure. Not with rebellion.

With darkness.

Formless.

Empty.

Unoriented.

Notice what God does next. He does not condemn the darkness. He does not punish the chaos. He does not lecture the void.

He speaks. “Let there be light.” Light does not arrive as judgment. It arrives as orientation.

Before there is land or sky, before there is purpose or direction, before anything is named or shaped — there is light.

Light is what makes everything else possible.

Spiritually, many of us recognize this immediately.

There are seasons when faith feels clear —when prayer feels natural, Scripture feels alive,

and God feels near.

Then there are seasons when the lights dim. Nothing dramatic has happened. No rebellion. No great moral collapse. Just… darkness.

Suddenly, distances feel different. God feels farther away than He really is. Problems feel closer than they actually are.

Truth hasn’t moved — but our ability to judge it has.

Nothing has changed — except our perspective.

In those moments, the danger isn’t that we are bad. It’s that we are disoriented.

Darkness doesn’t make us bad.

It makes us lost.

Here is the good news Scripture has been telling from the very beginning: God doesn’t oppose

darkness — He overwhelms it.

Darkness does not exist where God is.

While darkness can feel powerful to us because we are finite, it has no standing in the presence of God, who is light.

That’s why walking in the light doesn’t mean life is always bright. It means you know where to look when what you feel can’t be trusted. It means you know which references hold when visibility is low.

Tonight, we’re going to talk about what it means to walk in the light — not as a burst of spiritual clarity, but as a practiced way of living.

Faith is not the absence of darkness. Faith is knowing what to trust when darkness is present.

--- Part One: Walking, Not Standing Still

One of the most common misunderstandings about faith is the assumption that clarity should be permanent.

We come to Christ, the light breaks in, and for a while things make sense.

Prayer feels natural.

Scripture feels alive.

Direction feels clear.

Somewhere along the way, often without realizing it, we begin to believe that this is how faith is supposed to feel all the time.

That once we’ve come into the light, darkness should be behind us.

Scripture never makes that promise. Jesus doesn’t say, “Whoever follows Me will never experience darkness.”

He says,

“Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness.”

Walking implies movement.

Attention.

Dependence.

Walking assumes uneven ground.

Darkness can still exist around you — but it no longer defines your direction. That’s an important distinction.

Walking in the light does not mean you never feel uncertain.

It means uncertainty no longer decides where you’re going.

For many people, this is where discouragement sets in. When confusion returns, they assume something has gone wrong. When doubt resurfaces, they assume they’re failing. When faith feels harder than it once did, they assume they’ve drifted too far.

But that’s not how walking works. No one expects a walk to be perfectly smooth. No one assumes that every step will feel the same.

Walking includes:

slowing down

adjusting your footing

paying closer attention when visibility drops

Sometimes, walking means shortening your stride. Sometimes it means stopping just long enough to reorient — not long enough to quit.

And that matters, because standing still in the dark often feels safer than walking.