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.
If you don’t move, you can’t choose the wrong direction.
If you don’t move, you can’t make a mistake.
Standing still doesn’t restore clarity. It doesn’t bring orientation. It only prolongs lostness.
Walking, on the other hand, requires trust. You keep moving — not because you feel confident — but because you know where the light is.
This is where faith quietly shifts from emotion to orientation.
Walking in the light doesn’t mean trusting your instincts more. It means trusting Christ more. It means allowing His presence, His words, His character to matter more than how close or far He feels in the moment.
That changes the question we ask. Instead of asking,
“Why does this still feel dark?”
We learn to ask,
“Where is the light — and am I moving toward it?”
That question changes everything. Because walking in the light isn’t about eliminating shadows. It’s about direction. It’s about choosing movement over paralysis.
Orientation over emotion.
Following over self-navigation.
Once that shift happens, something subtle but freeing takes place. You stop diagnosing darkness as failure. You stop treating uncertainty as rebellion. You stop punishing yourself for needing light again. You realize that walking in the light is not a one-time decision made at conversion.
It’s a practiced way of living. A daily choice to stay oriented toward what is true, even when visibility drops. Especially when visibility drops.
Walking in the light isn’t about never encountering darkness.
It’s about refusing to let darkness decide where you go.
And that’s where freedom begins.
--- Part Two: What to Trust When You Can’t Trust Your Senses
One of the most dangerous moments in low visibility is not panic. It’s confidence.
In night flying, pilots are taught that when visual references disappear, their instincts will often insist that everything is fine. The aircraft feels level. The motion feels steady. Nothing seems obviously wrong.
That’s exactly when mistakes are made. When visibility drops, your senses don’t go quiet —
they grow persuasive. Your body tells you one thing. Your inner ear tells you another. Your instincts insist you’re oriented.
Very often, they’re wrong.
That’s why pilots are trained early to learn a hard lesson:
there are moments when you must stop trusting how things feel and start trusting what you know.
They are taught to rely on instruments. On fixed references. On indicators that don’t change just because perception does.
Spiritually, the same principle applies. There are seasons when faith feels intuitive — when what you feel and what is true line up neatly.
There are also seasons when they don’t. Prayer feels flat. Scripture feels distant. God feels farther away than He really is.
In those moments, the danger isn’t darkness. The danger is misinterpretation.
Darkness has a way of distorting distance. Things that are far away can feel overwhelming.
Things that are near can fade from view. A single light can feel like the whole horizon.
Nothing has changed — except perspective. When perspective is distorted, the question becomes:
What do you trust when you can’t trust your senses?
This is where walking in the light becomes practical. Walking in the light means learning to trust fixed references.
Not shifting emotions.
Not fluctuating confidence.
But things that hold steady when feelings do not.
Scripture becomes one of those references. Not as a collection of verses to fix your mood,
but as a stable witness to who God is and what He has done.
You may not feel its immediacy in every season, but its truth does not depend on how near or far God feels to you.
God’s presence becomes another reference. Not the presence you feel, but the presence He has promised.
“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” That promise doesn’t dim when visibility drops.
Community becomes another reference. Other people can often see what we cannot see in the dark. They help us regain perspective when we are tempted to trust distorted distance.
Prayer becomes something deeper than expression. Prayer becomes orientation. Not a way to generate clarity, but a way to realign ourselves with what is true.
This is where humility quietly enters the picture. Trusting instruments requires admitting that your instincts might be wrong. It requires letting something outside of you have authority.
That’s why Scripture describes faith not as sight, but as trust.
Not certainty, but dependence.
Illustration:
There’s a story about a battleship sailing at night. The captain spots a light ahead and radios, “Change your course ten degrees south.”
The reply comes back, “You change your course ten degrees north.”
Annoyed, the captain radios again, “I am a battleship. Change your course.”
The reply comes back, “I am a lighthouse.”
The battleship changed course.
Power does not determine direction. Position does.
Walking in the light means adjusting your course to what is fixed — not asking the light to move. That’s a hard lesson for all of us.
We want God to validate our sense of distance. We want Him to confirm our instincts. We want the light to shift toward us.
But light doesn’t negotiate.
Light reveals.
When visibility is low, the safest thing you can do is not argue with the light — but move toward it.
Walking in the light is not about intensity. It’s about alignment.
It’s about learning, over time, to trust what holds steady when your inner world does not.
Trust doesn’t remove darkness instantly. But it does restore direction. And direction is enough to keep walking.
--- Part Three
Staying Near the Light
At some point, walking gives way to something quieter.
You don’t stop moving —
but you stop rushing.
Once direction has been restored, the question is no longer where to go.
It becomes how to remain.
This is where many people struggle. They learn how to come to the light. They learn how to reorient when things feel dark. But they still live with a subtle anxiety — the fear that they might drift again. That fear often shows up as effort. Trying harder. Doing more. Staying spiritually alert at all times.
But Jesus never described life with Him as constant vigilance.
He described it as abiding.
“Abide in Me, and I in you.”
Abiding is not striving.
It’s staying.
It’s remaining near what is already true.
That distinction matters. Striving assumes the light might leave.
Abiding assumes the light stays — and we choose not to wander.
Walking in the light begins with movement. Abiding in the light is about nearness. Nearness changes everything. When you stay near the light, darkness loses its power to disorient — not because it never appears, but because it no longer determines your bearings.
This is why Jesus doesn’t say, “Make sure you always see clearly.”
He says, “Remain in Me.”
Clarity comes and goes.
Presence does not.
Many people misunderstand abiding because they imagine it as a spiritual technique.
More prayer.
More Scripture.
More discipline.
But abiding is not about accumulation.
It’s about attachment.
It’s the decision to stay close to what gives life.
That’s why Jesus uses such ordinary language. A vine and a branch. A shepherd and sheep. A light and those who walk by it.
None of those relationships are maintained by effort alone. They’re maintained by proximity.
Proximity does something effort cannot do.
It forms you.
When you stay near the light, your eyes adjust. Your sense of distance recalibrates. What once felt overwhelming begins to shrink. What once felt distant begins to reappear.
Nothing dramatic happens.
No flash.
No sudden breakthrough.
Just orientation.
And over time, confidence — the quiet kind.
Not confidence in yourself.
Confidence in the light.
This is where many people need reassurance. Because they assume that if darkness returns, they’ve failed at abiding.
But abiding does not mean darkness never appears. It means you no longer wander far enough for it to define you.
You come back faster.
You recognize it sooner.
You don’t argue with it as long.
You don’t confuse it for truth.
And that’s growth.
Not intensity.
Growth.
Abiding also reshapes how we understand obedience. Obedience stops being about fear. It becomes about alignment. You don’t obey to keep the light near. You obey because you are already near.
And that removes a great deal of pressure. Because the Christian life is not about holding onto God tightly enough. It’s about staying where He already is.
That’s why Scripture says:
“God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.”
Darkness does not exist where God is. Which means the invitation is not to fight darkness harder. It’s to remain closer.
The closer you are to Jesus, the less darkness there is — not because you’ve mastered faith, but because you’ve chosen presence.
And that brings us back to where we started. Darkness isn’t new. It isn’t ultimate. And it isn’t the enemy.
Lostness is.
And lostness is healed by light.
Not by effort.
Not by condemnation.
Not by striving.
But by staying near what is true.
Walking in the light begins with movement. But it is sustained by abiding. By choosing, again and again, not to wander far from the One who is light.
When you do that, even when the night feels long,
you remain oriented.
You remain grounded.
You remain home.
--- Conclusion — Coming Home to the Light
Most of us spend a great deal of our lives trying to fix darkness.
We analyze it. We fight it. We explain it. We blame ourselves for it.
But Scripture invites us to do something far simpler. It invites us to come closer to the light. Not because darkness is terrifying — but because light is trustworthy.
Tonight, we’ve said some things that may feel relieving. That darkness doesn’t make you bad. That confusion doesn’t mean failure. That uncertainty doesn’t signal abandonment. It simply means visibility is low. And when visibility is low, the most important thing is not intensity — it’s orientation.
Where are you facing?
What are you trusting?
Who are you staying near?
God doesn’t oppose darkness — He overwhelms it.
Darkness does not exist where God is.
And while darkness can feel powerful to us because we are finite,
it has no standing in the presence of God, who is light.
Which means the invitation of faith is not heroic.
It’s relational.
Not to fight harder.
Not to prove more.
Not to fix yourself.
But to remain.
To stay near.
To walk toward what is already true.
Some of you tonight may realize that you’ve been standing still for a while — not because you stopped believing, but because you were waiting for clarity before moving again.
Others may realize you’ve been trusting how things feel more than what you know.
Some of you may simply feel tired. If that’s you, hear this gently: The light has not moved.
God has not withdrawn. Nothing essential has been lost.
The invitation is still the same one Scripture has always offered:
“Come.”
Come closer.
Come back.
Come and remain.
You don’t have to see everything clearly to take the next step. You only have to stay oriented toward the light. And as you do, even if the night feels long,
you will not walk in darkness.
Because where God is, darkness does not exist.
---Appeal: Staying Oriented
I invite you to respond tonight — not to a feeling, not to a moment, but to a direction.
This isn’t an appeal to do more.
It’s an invitation to come closer.
Some of you may realize that you’ve been walking — but tired.
Others may realize you’ve been standing still, waiting for clarity before moving again.
Some of you may simply recognize a quiet longing to stay nearer to Jesus than you have been.
If that’s you — if you want to say, “Lord, I want to remain near the light. I want to stay oriented toward You” — then I invite you, right where you are, to quietly raise your hand.
Not for anyone else.
Just as a simple, honest response to God.
(Pause. Allow silence. Do not rush.)
Thank you.
You can put your hands down.
--- Prayer
Father,
You are light. In You there is no darkness.
Tonight, we come without striving.
Without pretending.
Without trying to fix ourselves.
We come as we are — sometimes clear, sometimes unsure, sometimes tired — but still longing to remain near You.
Thank You that darkness does not have authority over us.
Thank You that confusion is not condemnation.
Thank You that Your presence has not moved, even when our perspective has shifted.
Teach us to walk in the light — not by trusting our feelings, but by trusting You.
Teach us to stay near — not by effort, but by abiding.
For those who raised their hands tonight, and for those who wanted to, but didn’t —
meet each heart with Your steady presence.
Restore orientation where it has been lost.
Restore peace where anxiety has crept in.
Restore confidence — not in ourselves, but in You.
And as we leave this place, help us remember this simple truth:
Darkness does not exist where You are.
So keep us near.
Keep us oriented.
Keep us walking toward the light.
We pray this in the name of Jesus —
the Light of the world.
Amen.
