Flying Right Side up in an Upside Down World

This message was delivered by Sheila Schuller Coleman from the pulpit of the Crystal Cathedral. It was aired during the Hour of Power program on Hong Kong's ATV World Channel on 21 Feb 2010.

My message today is "Flying Right Side up in an Upside Down World." You can soar! Today, I'm going to teach you how to fly. I'm going to teach you how to soar effortlessly, counting on God to right your flight.

Vacations for those of us who have little ones, young parents with a lot of children, vacations can sometimes be more trouble than they're worth. Do I get an amen? My husband and I, we had our boys in very quick succession. I thought, where could I go, what can I do where mom also gets vacation and some time to rest? I thought Hawaii. Hawaii, here we come. I thought it'll be a challenge to get there, but at least the boys can play in the sand underneath a palm tree and it'll be peaceful and restful.

So we saved our money, and decided not to buy tickets for the two youngest. Jason was three, Chris was one, and Scott was a baby. We decided we'd hold Chris and Scott on our laps, buy a seat for Jason and then we would take Auntie Phil with us. Auntie Phil is short for Aunt Phyllis and she was my husband's aunt. She was never married, never had children and we thought well we'll take Auntie Phil along. She'll enjoy Hawaii and of course I selfishly was thinking and I'll have some help. I'll have another pair of hands to help me with these three little boys.

So we got packed up, we got to the airport, got to LAX in time to get bulk seating, but then we waited because that one word, you never want to see on the flight screen popped up: delayed. There you are with all these children, delayed. Delayed. Delayed. Two hours we were delayed there. I used up my whole bag of tricks before we even boarded the flight.

Finally, they said that those of us with children could board first and I was like hurray! Finally! I'm thinking, gosh Sheila, that's kind of stupid. That just means you get to sit on the plane longer than everybody else does. But of course, I wasn't thinking very clearly at that time; I was a frazzled young mom. So we got on the plane and, as people were coming, you know how they are. They go down those aisles, it's tight, they're waiting, they're impatient, and, of course, that whole plane was full of grumpy people and grumpy flight attendants. Right away Jason spilled his Legos into the aisle and we're trying to gather them up as quickly as we can when the flight attendant says to please keep your children's toys out of the aisle. Of course, we know, we know. Give us a chance.

Those boys were yelling and screaming, but not Jason. He's here today. He was a good boy. His two younger brothers who aren't here, they were trouble, let me tell you. And so we had our hands full. I think today we probably would have been bumped off the plane by one of those flight marshals or whatever they call themselves. But people were still coming down, putting their luggage in the overhead compartments.

First of all, you have to understand the arrangement. There were three seats and three more seats. So there was Auntie Phil, Jason, Jim with Chris, big Chris. He was 10 lbs. 4 oz. at birth. And I'm right behind him holding Scott. So I'm kind of out of the loop but I'm trying to make sure my family's okay, watching from behind. And I hear Auntie Phil push the call button for the flight attendant. Mind you, people are still putting things in their overhead compartments. She says I would like a drink. A drink? A drink? I've never seen Auntie Phil drink before in my life. Maybe she's nervous. I don't blame her. I mean there had been a two-hour delay, grumpy people, and maybe she's scared to fly. I thought, oh my goodness, I didn't know. Maybe she's scared to fly.

Now my husband told me after the first service, be sure you tell everybody, Sheila, it was just wine. Well, a drink is a drink. Right? So it was a mess. Everybody was frazzled, and a half-hour into this flight, Auntie Phil pushed that call button again. She sure did. And that flight attendant came over and I heard Auntie Phil say, I'd like a drink. Two drinks? One half hour? Oh my gosh. I'm really nervous. I'm thinking, she's not going to be any help! In fact, I'm feeling now like I've got four kids, not three. Nevertheless, things settled down and we were off to paradise.

About halfway there, about two and a half hours into the flight, I see the flight attendant coming back to this row in front of me again, and I thought, oh here we go again. Has Auntie Phil called for another drink? As I say, I've never seen her drink before or since. However, that wasn't it. The flight attendant actually didn't look grumpy at us like she had been every other time. I heard her say to my husband, I couldn't hear what he said, but she said, very concerned, "Well, sir, I'll go ask the captain. She turned, walked towards the cockpit.

I tapped Jim on the shoulder; I said, "What's going on?"

He turns his head over as far as he can and he says, "Half my face is frozen. I can't blink this eye and I can't smile. Only this side goes up and only this eye blinks. Half my face is frozen."

I thought, oh my gosh. I'm halfway up in who knows where, above the Pacific Ocean with an aunt who doesn't know too much about children and has had a couple drinks, and three babies, and a husband whom I'm afraid has had a stroke.

The flight attendant comes back and she said, "The captain wants to know if you want to turn around and go back." I thought of all these grumpy people who'd waited for two hours, who are not happy with us already and, can you imagine if they said, oh by the way, we're going back to LAX because this family up here wants to go back. I tapped him on the shoulder, I said no, no, no, we are not turning around, we are going forward.

Well she said I'll let the captain know. So she went back, and pretty soon she came back with... (and I have to tell you, I forgot to tell the ending at the first service, so if you see people from the 9:30 service, be sure you tell them how this ends.) ...smelling salts from the captain and she said, "Try this. Sometimes that works."

So Jim broke the smelling salt and sniffed this pungent odor and the vapors apparently eased whatever was going on up in his sinus cavities and a full smile came across his face. Great, nothing wrong, but by this time we were soaring and we went on to paradise and had a wonderful vacation.

So, do you feel frozen, stuck, your world upside down? Don't know whether to turn around, go back. Maybe your mortgage is turned upside down. Maybe you paid more for your home than what it's worth today. It's happened to a lot of us. Maybe your dream has turned upside down. Everything you've worked for, dreamt about, given your life to as a career, has turned upside down. Maybe it's crashed and burned. Maybe your relationships with your family are ruptured. A spouse or a child or a sibling. And you don't know where to turn and you see no hope of reconciliation. Well, I want to say to you today, you were made to fly. You were made to soar. You were made to fly right side up. Even if the world's turned upside down, that doesn't mean that you and I have to give in to that feeling of discouragement and fear and depression. We can continue to fly right side up. We can continue to soar. We can continue to soar with wings like eagles. Because God will right the flight.

Airplanes weren't made to fly upside down, were they? No. And God didn't make you and me to fly upside down either. This is what happens to both planes and to us if we fly upside down. First of all, there's drag on the wings. And of course, that means a drag on our spirits, and we become weighed down if we are upside down. The other thing that can happen to us is we can become very disoriented, very confused, and lost. Did you know that planes, when they're upside down, they have a hard time getting fuel and lubricants. They're not made to fly upside down. They can actually stall and drop like a rock. Well the same thing can happen to us if we're not letting God right our flight; we will stall, we will run out of gas, we will run out of motivation, and we can drop like a rock.

I couldn't possibly think of doing this message on flying without talking to Danny Cox. Danny Cox (DC) and his wife Teddy (TC) are members of our congregation and they're here every single Sunday. Usually they're at the first service, so you know how story ends, you guys. Danny was a super sonic air pilot.

DC: Yes.

SSC: Flew supersonic jets for ten years.

DC: Yes, ten years, yes.

SSC: As a stunt pilot?

DC: Well, I did air shows, yes. Test pilot for maintenance problems and that kind of thing.

SSC: And so we spent some time this week, you were trying to help me, but you're also a motivational speaker, which people need to know, and very, very successful at that.

DC: Thank you.

SSC: As we were talking, what I heard was that inverted flying, whatever is a life and death situation.

DC: Well it is. It can get really bad in a hurry especially the F101-B model that I flew. Never fly the A model of anything. If it's a B, then you can go on.

SSC: It worked out, in case you missed that. They worked out the bugs on A so B is a safer plane to fly, right?

DC: Right. The airplane I flew was a 1,200-mile-an-hour airplane; that's 20 miles per minute.

SSC: Wow.

DC: And when you get that kind of performance, you can also expect a few little problems along the way. One day I was going up 56,000 feet at a thousand miles an hour, and I was going for 60,000. But this airplane had a real bad problem. It's called a pitch up. It would literally tumble out of the skies. And they had taught us the standard pitch up. I had a non-standard pitch up. Instead of going nose over tail, mine was going wing over wing. In other words, it was trying to put the push me out of the cockpit. And I was really concerned about it as we started the tumble. I thought, where do I go? What do I do? And that's when you say a little prayer. We called it the test pilot's prayer. It went like this: Okay, God, get this thing on the ground and I'll taxi it in for You. And then the message that came to me was, don't fight the controls. You're fighting the controls. Neutralize the controls. And I did that, and then I reached up to the handle that deploys the drag shoot out behind, that's what we normally used on landing. I deployed the drag shoot, got the air flowing over the airplane again, and I was able to recover after we'd lost 30,000 feet of altitude. Fortunately, we started at 56,000.

SSC: And not at 28,000.

DC: Right, and I made it back. We always said that it's great if you have the same number of landings as you do take offs. And I did. So it worked out fine for us, but that little pause where you don't know what you're going to do, that message comes to you.

SSC: That's right. Pray and ask God and He gives you an answer. You waited on the Lord. And, Teddy, you were a young wife with three little girls.

TC: I was, yes.

SSC: Your first husband was a fighter pilot in Vietnam.

TC: That's right and he was shot down in Vietnam and I was left with three little girls, ages one, five and six, to raise. I barely got out of bed the first few days after I found out the news. But encouragement came through my earthly father who said, "You've got to get up; you've got responsibilities." And then my heavenly Father, my God, gave me all the strength I needed. He was with me every step of the way, which He promised. He is still with me and with Danny every step of the way.

SSC: And God corrected your flight.

TC: Absolutely.

SSC: And He brought Danny into your life. Tell us about what happened with your little girls and the proposal and all of that. It's such a sweet tender story.

TD: Well, after he proposed, I said yes and then I went across the street, because we just lived across the street from each other, to tell the girls. They were all excited, so I told him to come on over, they all know. He wondered what they were thinking, what were they saying. When he opened the door, my middle daughter, Kendra, she is a gymnast, came bounding across the living room floor, jumped up in his arms, and said, "I know something! You're going to marry us!"

SSC: That's so sweet.

DC: And I did.

SSC: And you did. So, God answered your prayers, both of your prayers when it looked like your worlds were turned upside down.

TC: He righted my life.

SSC: He righted your life. Well, thank you for sharing and being such faithful, faithful congregants.

DC/TC: Thank you.

SSC: What do we do when our world is turned upside down? How do we get our flight turned right side up again?

Let me read to you from Isaiah. "But those who wait for the Lord..." and this is the amplified version, so it says, "...those who expect, look for and hope in Him shall change and renew their strength and power, they lift their wings and mount up close to God as eagles mount up to the sun. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint or become tired."

Now this doesn't say that they're going to flap feverishly, it just says they lift their wings and they soar. And this is so different from gliders. I don't know if you've seen the birdmen of Norway where they put these body suits on and they just fly, they soar. But anybody who glides, whether it be human or otherwise, eventually comes down to earth. The whole point is that it's coming down; it's descending, descending, descending until it gets to the ground. But these eagles that Isaiah's talking about, they soar. And they stay up there. They're not coming down. And they're not flapping their wings. They are riding a thermal lift, the air that has been warmed by the sunshine. I like to think spiritually that God gives us a thermal lift when He warms our spirits through His Son-shine, S-O-N, Son-shine.

Did you know that when a thermal lift hits a mountain, it goes up? It goes up. So that means that the larger your mountain, the bigger your challenge, the more likely you are to find a thermal lift. And so if you will just wait on the Lord, pray, lean into the thermal lift, and let God carry you through your upside down times, He will right your flight.

So, you say to me, okay Sheila, I've waited. I've waited and things have gotten worse. God hasn't answered that prayer. In fact, I got the diagnosis too late. The doctor says he can't treat me now. The marriage is done. It's gone. My husband wouldn't go to counseling. I asked him to; I prayed that he would go. He wouldn't go. Now the marriage is done. It's gone. Done. My business has gone bust. I've had to declare bankruptcy. The dream is done. It's too late. It's too late.

Have you had this conversation with God? I asked You, God, months ago for help and nothing came, in fact, it's gotten worse. Why did You wait so long, God? Don't You love me? Don't You care? If you've had that conversation with God, and I believe that there are many of you here who have. God knows you've had the conversation. You're in good company because Mary and Martha, who had wonderful relationship with Jesus, did. They were like sisters to Him. They had a very similar conversation with Jesus. They would cook for Him, they would work for Him, they poured their expensive perfume on His feet, and so when their brother, their beloved brother got sick, they thought that Jesus would help. Jesus will save our brother and they sent word to Him. They made sure He knew. "Jesus, our brother is sick. We need You to come and make him better."

Do you know what Jesus did? He delayed. He did not come when they called Him. He delayed for two days, and it's very specific in the Bible that He delayed Himself for two days. So by the time He got to Mary and Martha, their brother had died. And when He came and, He finally came, Martha goes running out to Him and she says, "Why now? Why didn't you come when I called? Why did You wait? Now he's dead. You could have saved him. But You didn't come in time. Why?"

When I say wait on the Lord, that means sometimes you're saying to Him, I am going to wait, even knowing your time is not my time. And you just might delay.

You know what Jesus said? He said to them, when Martha asked Him why he hadn't come earlier, "For your sake I wasn't there so that you may believe." Can you imagine? Today you've said to God, I need a job. I've asked You for a job, and now I don't have money to pay the rent. I've asked and You've delayed. And He says to you, yes. For your sake, I have not given you a job yet. For your sake, I haven't answered your prayer. For your sake, you will face foreclosure. So that you will believe. Does that make any sense at all? It does if you know the end of the story.

Because Jesus' delay was actually an added blessing because then He says to Mary and Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life. Even though you die, you shall live." Do you believe this?

Lazarus had been dead four days. That's very, very important and this is why Jesus delayed. He wanted Lazarus to be dead four days. Why? Because we get a hint as to what happened. When Jesus actually went over to the tomb, He told them to roll that stone away. Martha said, no, don't do that, because it's going to smell. That tells us the decay had begun. Jesus wanted to make sure that everybody knew Lazarus was dead. He wasn't sleeping, it wasn't a coma, he was dead. Because He wanted the people to believe. He wanted to show them that He was the resurrection and the life. As He would demonstrate that for them, they would believe. And so He said, "Lazarus, come on out." And Lazarus came out.

So, people of God, I ask you today, do you believe? Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life." Do you believe? Your dream has died. But Jesus is a resurrection and the life. Do you believe? Your relationships are ruptured. Maybe that marriage is dead. But Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Do you believe? The doctor has given you a death sentence, but Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life." Do you believe?

Let us pray. Lord God Almighty, even though our life's been turned upside down, You can right the flight. Even though our life seems hopeless, You will not let us down. You made us to soar. You made us to live victorious and to be a blessing to others, so we wait on You knowing Your timing is always best. Trusting the delays only increases the blessing. We expect You to be a thermal lift, our resurrection, and our life. We believe it. Thank You, Amen.

© Copyright Hour of Power 2010. This message was delivered by Sheila Schuller Coleman from the pulpit of the Crystal Cathedral and aired on the Hour of Power, January 17, 2010.