Ron Hutchcraft Ministries - How to Know Where You're Going When You Can't See - #5942

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

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Hooper Bay, Alaska, isn't the first remote place we've gone with our outreach teams of Native American young people, but it's a tough one. Each Summer of Hope, it's our privilege to take teams of Indian and Eskimo spiritual warriors to the reservations and the villages where America's most devastated young people live and die too young. The suicide rate among young Native Americans is four times that of the rest of America's young. In some places in Alaska, it's twenty times greater. Hooper Bay, Alaska, is one of the hardest places in this country to grow up. We had to take our team there.

But getting there the first time was a real adventure. My wife was on the first plane into this village that is 400 miles from the nearest road. Sitting in the co-pilot's seat, she should have had a great view as they approached over the Bering Sea. But there was no view. It was suddenly almost zero visibility, but those missionary pilots - they are amazing! My wife watched him with his flight plan on his knee, constantly comparing it to the readings on his instruments. Looking out the window sure wasn't going to help find his landing strip. Ultimately, they were so close to the ocean that their propellers were whipping up the ocean around them. A Native Alaskan in the back just kept praying over and over, "Oh, Jesus, Jesus, please help us." Suddenly, right below my wife's window, she saw the landing strip, and they landed right where they were supposed to land!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How to Know Where You're Going When You Can't See a Thing."

Maybe that's how you feel right now about the flight of your life; you're flying blind with no clear path ahead. Visibility is close to zero; it's scary. It would be easy to make a big mistake right now and you can't afford one.

I'm happy to report that there is a flight plan, laid out by the God who says in the Bible, "I know the plans I have for you...plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future" (Jeremiah 29:11 ). You don't want to miss that. But your feelings are all over the map, your circumstances are up for grabs, and you could crash if you don't know where you're supposed to go. Take a lesson from the pilot in the fog over that Eskimo village. He couldn't trust his feelings. He couldn't trust His surroundings. He could trust only one thing - what His instruments were saying. He kept checking his course by the unfailing accuracy of the instruments.

For you, that is the Bible, the unchanging Word of God. His promise in Psalm 119:105 , our word for today from the Word of God, is that His Word is a "lamp to my feet and a light for my path." And that psalm says, "Your Word, O Lord...stands firm in the heavens." It won't change if the earth melts away. And you're going to make it if you risk everything, if you base everything on what His Word says to you, each new day. No matter what your feelings; no matter what your environment are saying to you.

Through His forever-trustworthy words, God will keep for you His promise for the days when you can't see where you're going. You can stake everything on this promise: Isaiah 42:16 - "I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them."

That is all you need to know to land exactly where you're supposed to land!