Today, or course, is Palm Sunday. All the world over, “Christians” are gathered in churches with palm branches in hand, commemorating the day when Jesus rode a donkey’s colt into the city of Jerusalem. As He entered the city, the people cheered out, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed be the One who comes in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” It was the nearest the people of Israel came to recognizing Jesus for Who He is, and enthroning Him as King in their lives. That was Sunday morning.

By Friday of that same week, the same crowds were calling for His death. What happened in those 5 days? How did things get so turned around – from ecstatic devotion one day, to complete rejection a few days later?

Well, a quick review of your Bible will reveal it to you. In fact, let me encourage you this week to read the events of that week. Begin with Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19 and John 12, and read the gospels through to their conclusion. You will find that at the beginning of the week, the people wanted to enthrone Jesus as their king, but as the week progressed, they began to realize that they didn’t want to go where He was leading them. His actions became unpopular, His authority was questioned, His teachings became unpleasant and He started talking about persecution and tribulation, and death.

The people of Jerusalem wanted Jesus to be their Leader as long as he led them where they wanted to go. He could be their Sovereign ruler so long as His rule benefited them and crushed their enemies. They wanted a king on Sunday, but they wanted to be in charge through the week!

Oh, how much like those people we are! On Sunday mornings we gather together to sing the praises of the Lord, and crown Him King of Kings and Lord of Lords – but by the time Friday rolls around, we’re ready to toss Him aside – we don’t like the direction He’s leading us. We don’t like the talk about trials and tribulations. We resist when our desires don’t match His direction. Many of the people around us want to consider themselves to be Christ followers without following Christ. They want all the benefits of faith without exercising faith.

Today, as we continue our discussion of the “Disciplines of the Christian Life,” we are going to discuss the discipline of Spiritual Guidance. Spiritual Guidance is “to recognize and respond properly to God’s personal communication through His Word, His Spirit and other believers.”

My intent this morning is to challenge each of us to NOT be “Palm Sunday Christians.” This morning my desire is to call each of us to enthrone Jesus as King of our lives – not just on Sunday morning – but right through ‘til Friday! Our call this morning is to develop the discipline of finding and following the direction of the Lord for our lives - to discern and obey His guidance, wherever it may lead.

Some of you might know that when I was a young man I took lessons to be a pilot. I’ve always been attracted to aircraft. My grandparent’s farm in West Virginia was situated right below a major approach vector for Pittsburgh Airport, and I used to love to watch the planes fly overhead. As a teen, we had a friend who had his license, and he took my brothers and me for a flight – and I was hooked! 

Getting airborne and flying an airplane is really not that difficult. The controls make sense, and it comes pretty quickly. You just keep your eyes open, and be alert to your surroundings, and you can be flying after just a few hours of training. My first flights were in a 1946 Aeronca Chief – it had no radio, lights or starter - you had to pull the prop manually to get it started. But most of my lessons were in a Cessna with all the modern features.

One of the most lasting impressions about flight training is time that is spent “under the hood.” The student pilot wears a plastic shield or special glasses that prohibit him from looking out the windows of the plane. He has to fly the plane by looking at, and trusting in, the instruments alone. If a pilot is flying by his vision, he simply keeps an eye on his surroundings, and goes where he wants to go. But when flying at night or in inclement weather, you need to be able to pilot and land the plane without being able to see. 

Imagine taking off on a beautiful clear day to fly to Green Bay. Suddenly, the wind shifts and you find yourself in a thick bank of clouds off Lake Michigan. You had better be able to keep your wits about you! The first thing that happens is an internal experience called vertigo. Vertigo causes you to think you are straight and level when in fact you are in an awkward position. 

John F Kennedy Jr. was flying to Martha’s Vineyard a few years over the Atlantic Ocean on a hazy day when the haze of the sky and the glare of the sea merged in such a way that he would not distinguish the horizon. Even though his head was telling him that he was flying straight and level, he was indeed in a steady descent, and flew his plane at full speed into the ocean, killing himself, his wife and her sister.

When faced with that type of situation, pilots are trained to do two things: 1. Trust your instruments and 2. Listen to your controller. If JFK jr. had simply kept his eyes on the attitude direction indicator, he would have known that he was nose-down. If he had watched his altimeter, he would have seen that he was descending. At the very least, when he found himself in that situation, he should have radioed for help and asked for an air traffic controller to guide him to safety. But he had just recently gotten is instrument rating. He had a piece of paper that said he was an instrument-rated pilot, and he was apparently convinced that he had everything in control. As a result he never radioed for assistance.

Fatal error. The official cause of the accident – “Pilot error.” It was in fact “Pilot Ego” – thinking he had it all together, ignoring the signs and refusing to seek help.

Way too many of us are guilty of the same attitude about out lives. We have this document that says that we are “Christians,” that we’ve been “baptized,” or are “church members,” or have completed this or that Bible study program, and we think that we’ve got our lives under control. The reality is that we have wrestled the controls of our lives from God, and we are ignoring His guidance. We’ve long ago stopped paying attention to the instruments that are provided to guide us, and we don’t seek the instruction and counsel of our controller, and we go along oblivious to the rapidly approaching disaster that looms ahead. And when we crash – we blame the God, whose advice and counsel we ignored, or we accuse Him of abandoning us. 

So how do we develop the discipline of receiving Spiritual Guidance? What do we do to avoid the crash? Two things: Check your instruments, and listen to your controller.

Check you Instruments

In an airplane, the two primary instruments that you need to keep constantly aware of are the attitude indicator and the altimeter [show picture of each]. The attitude indicator (that’s really what it’s called!) shows you the relative attitude of your plane in relation to the horizon. It tells you if you are nose down, or nose up. It lets you know if you have one wing slightly lower than the other. This is not necessary if you can see the horizon – but if haze, clouds or darkness blur the horizon – you need that indicator to keep you flying straight and level. The altimeter simply tells you how many feet you are above the ground – which is a pretty important thing to know when you are flying!

Instruments are important because they are an indicator of reality. They are not a matter of opinion or open for debate. They are absolute. When you are under the hood, your brain, which is feeling the affects of vertigo, will scream at you that you are in a dive. Your feelings will try to convince you that you are plunging into the ground – “pull up your nose!” But you have to keep your eyes on that attitude indicator and believe what it tells you – it does not lie. When it tells you that you are flying straight and level – believe it! Trust your feelings over your instruments, and you will face disaster.

When a student pilot is under the hood, the instructor, will sometimes say, “You’re not flying level! You’re going to kill us all!” To simulate for the student what it would be like to have a family member or friend in the plane that was not trained. He wants to see if the student will be convinced to listen to them, instead of trusting the instruments.

For the believer, there is one instrument that is equally absolute. It tells it like it is, and we have to keep our eyes fixed on it. It is the Word of God – the Bible. The Bible must be our primary attitude indicator. It will tell us if we are not traveling in line with God’s will. There will be times when our feelings will lead us off course – “come on, it’s only a little nudity! It’s art! After all, God made the human body – I’m just enjoying His creation!” Uh huh. 

There will be times when our friends or family will try to push us into a slow dive – “Dude! You’re almost 21 – it’s OK to have a drink – everyone else is!” “It’s only a little weed, man!” “You mean you DON’T have sex with your boyfriend? What are you, a NUN?!”

In those situations – you need to have something that will show you the horizon – something that will show you the truth about your situation – you need an absolute, non-debatable point of reference that keeps you from disaster – you need the Bible. David wrote,

“How can a young person stay pure? By obeying your word and following its rules. ~Psalm 119:9 NLV

Eugene Peterson translated Hebrews 4:12 this way:

God means what he says. What he says goes. His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon's scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey.

The Bible is your instrument panel – it is your first indicator of God’s will, and is the primary source of Spiritual Guidance. But it is not the only source. God also gives us His guidance through good counsel.

Listen to your Controller.

A young pilot had taken off on a beautiful day, but the weather suddenly changed for the worse. Visibility dropped to a matter of feet as fog descended to the earth. Putting total trust in the cockpit instruments was a new experience to him, for the ink was still wet on the certificate verifying that he was qualified for instrument flight.

The landing worried him the most. His destination was a crowded metropolitan airport he wasn’t familiar with. In a few minutes he would be in radio contact with the tower. Until then, he was alone with his thoughts. His instructor had practically forced him to memorize the rulebook. He didn’t care for it at the time, but now he was thankful.

Finally he heard the voice of the air traffic controller in his ear. "I’m going to put you on a holding pattern," the controller radioed. “Great!” thought the pilot. However, he knew that his safe landing was in the hands of this person. He had to draw upon his previous instructions and training, and trust the voice of an air traffic controller he couldn’t see. Aware that this was no time for pride, he informed the controller, "This is not a seasoned pro up here. I would appreciate any help you could give me."

"You’ve got it!" he heard back.

For the next 45 minutes, the controller gently guided the pilot through the blinding fog. As course and altitude corrections came periodically, the young pilot realized the controller was guiding him around obstacles and away from potential collisions. With the words of the rulebook firmly placed in his mind, and with the gentle voice of the controller, he landed safely at last.

While the Bible is our absolute indicator of Godly truth – it doesn’t speak to every situation we encounter. For example, it doesn’t tell you if you should move to Seattle, if you should change jobs or if you should marry Susie. But God does not leave us without guidance in those situations. He gives us the comforting presence of good counsel. 

The primary source of our counsel is the Holy Spirit. Jesus tells us, “When He, the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you…” (John 16:13) Jesus’ primary teaching about the Holy Spirit is in this vein – that the Holy Spirit is, indeed, HIS presence within us – God Himself living in us, giving us comfort, support, guidance and direction. The Holy Spirit’s direction is not our conscience – our conscience can often be like that vertigo – screaming at us to go in a deadly direction – we have to be careful and discerning about hearing the Holy Spirit’s guidance. How do we do that? Two quick steps: 

1. The Word. The Holy Spirit of God will never advise you to do ANYTHING that is counter to the Word of God that He Himself inspired! The Holy Spirit NEVER, EVER told anyone to get a divorce – no matter who tells you differently! The BIBLE says, “I hate divorce!” The Holy Spirit will NEVER, EVER tell a Christian to marry a non-Christian. The BIBLE says, “Be not unequally yoked.” The Holy Spirit NEVER, EVER told anyone that it was OK to take millions of dollars of the Lord’s money to pay off their personal debts. The BIBLE says, “Do not steal!” The Holy Spirit NEVER, EVER tells you to go ahead and sin, and God will forgive you later…He just doesn’t work that way! The BIBLE says, “Be holy, for I am holy!” Always check the promptings of that inner voice against the principles of the Bible.

2. Godly counsel. The second way we discern the leading of the Holy Spirit is through the counsel of godly people. Jesus said, “If two or three gather together in my name, there I am in the midst of them. When we gather together, in Jesus’ name, we have His promise that He will be present. The Holy Spirit will be present, and he can and does “use the checks and balances of other believers to ensure that our hearts are in rhythm with the heartbeat of the Father.”[i] 

You can hardly read the Biblical stories of great believers without seeing the input of others in their lives. Proverbs is filled with instruction to seek wise counsel. “When we walk with the wise, we will be wise (13:20);” “Listen to advice, and accept instruction, and you will be wise (19:20).” The story of the early church, from the book of Acts, is filled with examples of how the church should behave. When decisions were needed – corporate and personal – the people of the church prayed, fasted, discussed and waited on the Lord for direction. Whether it was selecting leaders, deciding on matters of doctrine, or sending out preachers, they gathered, prayed, sought the Lord, and trusted Him for divine guidance. In Acts 15:8, for example, when deciding on a huge matter of direction for the church, they prayed, talked and debated, they waited on the Lord, and in the end, they came to a unified conclusion. They said, “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…” They were able to trust that God Himself had led their discussion, and brought them to a decision.

In our lives, we need to do more of the same. When we have decisions to make, we all to often fail to solicit the input of godly counsel. When next faced with a major decision, make a point of gathering a group of people who demonstrate spiritual maturity, and have them sit as a “review board” for you. Present the situation, let them ask the tough questions, have them pray over it, and then ask them to give you a word from the Lord. Then trust that God will, as He promised, “direct our path, as we trust in Him with all our heart, and lean not to our own understanding.”

I pray that we will become a people who are safely guided, by the infallible instrument of God’s Word, and by the controlling voice of the Holy Spirit, through the treacherous and sometimes foggy times of life. May He alone be our Guide.