MHR EP 2603 What “flight plan” have you filed for your “Life’s Plan”?

Just like aircraft depend on ATC and things like progressive taxi and vectoring instructions; maybe we need to rely on our spirit team to help us navigate our journey on earth. Find out how to file an IFH© flight plan with STC© for your Life’s Plan. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

What flight plan have you filed for your life plan?

SPEAKER_00 0:08

What if I told you that there's more to it? That there are benefits and resources from heaven that are available to help you in this life, and you've never heard about them. Are you curious? Well, join Gordon Merrill as he digs deeper into making heaven real in this life.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Welcome back to making heaven real. Flying small aircraft is what the FAA calls general aviation. When you fly these small aircraft, the FAA does not require a flight plan. Although both in most cases it is still a very good idea. If you don't file a flight plan, the FAA doesn't really follow you. They don't really check up on you. They don't make sure that you're in a safe position, other than maybe moving other aircraft around if they can't talk to you or they can't get your attention. When you fly with the FAA, they have two basic categories of flight plans VFR and IFR. In the FAA rulebook, VFR stands for visual flight rules, and IFR stands for instrument flight rules. So basically, if you're not an instrument-rated pilot, your flight plans will most always be VFR. Now Jeanette and I both served for a while with the Air Force Auxiliary and we're both fully trained FEMA incident commanders. So as such, we've both been around a good deal of experience with general aviation aircraft, primarily Air Force, small aircraft, and of course with flight plans, which had to be reviled for every flight in the Air Force assets. Most of what we did was search and rescue missions. And during that time, a lot of it kind of turned into a joke where IFR for us meant more like I follow roads. Unless someone had a more accurate set of coordinates for us to start finding our way towards the search and rescue area. A lot of the information would come in, well, you know, off of interstate so-and-so, take a left on so-and-so, and see where you end up. And that's how we started our anticipated search grid for the search area. Now there's other factors that were that came into play too. And you know, if it was an aircraft, there may be a beacon and a few other things that would lead us to that general direction. But if it wasn't, and it was just a search for a person, then something like that would have started with following roads. My late wife was very organized, very detail-oriented. As such, she held several very meticulous job titles, did a lot of intense, in-depth, detailed work. In a couple cases, I know she actually put together case files of documents and exhibits for attorneys for cases they were working on. And even towards the end there, she was an attorney herself. With all of these things that she did on a regular basis for each job, when it came time for vacation and trips, she wanted to relax. Hands off. Don't make me do anything, just let me enjoy the trip. We had gotten to where we were noticing things on different TV travel shows, and if it was something that piqued our interest, we had a book beside the couch, and we would sit there and flip through the book and basically have a page just about for every state or country, and we'd make notations of things that we'd seen that if we were in that area we might want to take in as a part of our trip. When it came time to go to the Northeast in the New England area, we started pulling out those places that were in the book for those states, and I started working on it a couple months in advance, and basically put together a loose itinerary. We never followed anything very structured or strict, and we never really wanted to make sure that we were tied down every minute of every day. But things like the flights, the car rentals, motels, the B and Bs, places we thought we'd like to take a meal, attractions, points of interest, all of those things kind of went into a pile, and I started working through them to make sure that they all came together in a nice little package for our vacation. When we started on this vacation, she basically just followed me around, enjoyed the time with me. But the main part of that was that she was able to be relaxed, have no stress, no details to worry about, no reservation numbers, no reservation appointment times for meals, nothing at all to worry about. She just followed me. Before long for her instead of IFR, she decided to call it IFG. I follow Gordon. So if you have a minute and you're not driving, close your eyes. Take a deep breath and relax. Now try and picture your life just like you would be Jeanette on a vacation. Relaxed. No stress. No details. No concerns. No projects. No bosses. No case briefs to put together. No worries. Everything left to someone else to handle. You got that image in your mind? Can you feel that in your body? Well, you have just now visualized Heaven's ultimate goal for your spirit. So instead of I follow Gordon, I'm calling this I follow Heaven. As we've gone through some of this in the previous episodes, we know at this point that we are Heaven's spirit. Heaven worked with us to predetermine a plan for us for this lifetime. Heaven put us into an earthly body and sent us here to learn, to grow, and to mature. What makes you think heaven would not be ready and willing to help at every turn? Picture this like parents sending their high school graduate off to college. Hopefully, to learn, to grow, and mature. Parents aren't going to want to be involved. Parents are going to want to help however they can. They're going to want to be an integral part of what's going on. And the parents will try and help if there's an obstacle that comes up along the way. So why wouldn't heaven do the same thing? Even when you go to scripture, mentions in Scripture that involve heaven helping to control, manage, or point you on your path in this life are all over the place. Depending on the version reference that you that you're using. References range from like 120 to 220 in the Bible. Things like your words, a lamp under my feet, and a light on my path. The Lord makes firm the steps of those who delight in him. It's a firm step. It's a guide. It's a help. You make known to me the path of life. That's in Psalm 16. I think that's awesome. We're here on a life's path in the first place. And now Psalmist David is saying, You make known to me the path of life. Lean not unto your own understanding and all our ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs three. That's just a few of the references that we can look back on. So let's take the airline and flight idea a little further. Seems like everybody has some kind of a special interest, if not infatuation, with air travel. When you're up there looking down, it just it's somewhat magical in some ways, and people just love having that ability to be in an airplane, and in some cases even piloting and being in control of a small airplane. But in doing that, when you file a flight plan, one thing is for sure you've already agreed to go by the FAA air traffic control regulations and guidance, and at the same time, they've agreed to get you to where you need to go and keep you safe. There's two things that you learn as a pilot that are very interesting, I think, for this analogy. If you come in as a small aircraft into a large airport with six, seven, eight different taxiways, and it's your first time that you're there, air traffic control provides what they call progressive taxi instructions. You can ask for that on the radio. And what that ends up being is like turn-by-turn directions. Continue down the runway till you see the sign for taxiway C, make a left on taxiway C and wait for the next instruction. It's an example of a progressive taxi instruction from the tower. In flight, air traffic control provides you vectoring instructions. And that has all kinds of reasons. But you'll be flying along perfectly well in your flight plan, and all of a sudden ATCE will call you by tail number and say, you know, vector 20 degrees left and maintain that until further instructions. May help with avoiding weather patterns, coordinating speed control in order to make sure they don't get to the arriving airport too soon because of too many aircraft already backed up waiting to land. All of these things are in the back of air traffic control, keeping you safe by giving you instructions to turn, lose altitude, gain altitude, stay away from and avoid obstructions. That last comment is interesting. Just stay away from and avoid obstructions. There's a couple very interesting examples that I've run into over my time working with the Air Force Auxiliary and also with working as an incident commander and flying in smaller aircraft. I remember time one time Air Traffic Control called my tail number and said, you know, I need you to help with the situation. So there was two of us in the airplane, two pilots. Not a problem with being able to maintain and control our aircraft. But we were close to a major airport. And there was an American Airlines plane coming in, getting ready to land at that major airport. But when their landing gear came down, the light didn't come on. So rather than take a chance that the gear wasn't down before they landed, air traffic control had them fly a certain direction and altitude, had us fly a certain direction and altitude, and we kind of crossed paths at a certain location where we could look out the window and verify whether the landing gear was down or not. It's a perfect example of the turn-by-turn directions, the vectoring for safety, for verification, in order to make sure that the next steps that they were going to ask the American Airlines flight to do were safe. One other situation where we were flying in a smaller aircraft, there's several different types of commercial airfields. And one certain type of commercial airfield is rated with so high of a traffic pattern of commercial aviation that general aircraft is not allowed to fly into that area at all. So if you have filed a flight plan with air traffic control in a smaller aircraft, they will definitely use the vector directions to fly you around that airspace to keep you out of that traffic pattern. However, I remember one time we were in a small aircraft and we were on a specific mission, and we actually had air traffic control call and verify the skill level of the pilots in the aircraft, and then actually told us to maintain a certain altitude and a certain degree pattern, and literally flew us right through the center of this highly restricted commercial air pattern. Normally not allowed. But if air traffic control sends you there, it's allowed and approved. But that was done not only for our safety and protection, but also to help with the traffic pattern around this major airport. Avoiding an obstacle, avoiding a situation, by following directions from air traffic control. I'm starting to run out of time here, so I'll keep this as short as possible. But one other illustration that I think is very critical for this discussion today. I remember back when I was a student pilot, I'd gotten to the point where it was time for me to take several solo flights in my training program. And on this one day, I had a pilot instructor who looked at the plane, looked at me in my preparation, looked at the airfield, signed it off and said, okay, go fly, be safe. And clouds moved in so thick and so soupy that you could not see the ground. Now understand most student pilots are in the visual flight rules only, and that only applies if you can see the ground. Obviously, if I'm on a solo flight, I can't see the ground. And I know I took off from an airport that's surrounded by trees. Real easy to get to a situation where panic would set in. But I'm trying very meticulously to go through the facts, do the navigation the way I was taught, and figure out how to find my way back to the airport safely. Finally, I'd done the best I could and thought I was in the right direction and headed the right way, but I couldn't see the ground to verify. So I ended up having to call a traffic control and tell them student pilot, solo mission, unable to see the ground. I need progressive instructions to land at Airport X. After they were able to verify certain pieces of information, he came back and asked me how I got to where I was. And I outlined for him how I had used what I was taught in order to triangulate between two VORs, they call them, which are navigation points. And when you triangulate those with the aircraft, you pretty much can pinpoint on a map, on an aviation map, where you are. And the best I could tell, I thought I was straight in line with the runway, but if I can't see the ground, I'm not going to try and land. He came back and said, You know what? You are perfectly in line with the runway. You made it to exactly where you need to be. So go ahead and start lowering your altitude. I'll walk you through it and we'll figure out when you can actually see the runway to land. Frequent radio checks from him. You're on target, you're where you need to be. Maintain that vector. Slowly descend at such and such a rate. Let me know when you can see the ground. It got to the point where I was almost ready to touch down before I could see the ground. But the only way I got to the ground was with the assistance and guidance of air traffic control. As a student pilot, I was flying blind. I couldn't see anything. I was unable to find the runway or the airport. And I needed the assistance to navigate to get to where I needed to be. The safety of the mission, the safety of me getting back to the ground depended on it. For a student pilot, I had air traffic control. As a spirit, we have what I'm calling spirit team control. So instead of ATC, we're going to call it STC. We have a spirit team control. So when you're feeling like you're flying blind, when you're not sure what the next target is that you need to hear. You're at the point where, well, you know, I'm not sure what the next step is, but you know, I need some assistance. Or the safety or the completion of your life's plan depends on it. You have spirit team control. We've talked several times about letting the spirit team in heaven that's around you help you. We've talked many times about what we call heavenly equity. And we've talked about how everybody in that team is there for your best interest to help you, to work with you, to guide you. We were talking about a few times, about not worrying about what's six weeks or six months out, because by the time you get there it may be gone. If you're engaging your spirit team to help manage and guide and direct you, more than likely it will be gone. If you're flying an airplane and there's an obstacle in your path, ATC will vector you around it, make sure that you don't collide with it, and arrive safely at your destination. If you see something six weeks, six months out that you're concerned about, let STC take care of it for you. Let them guide you, let them direct you, let them make sure that your obstacle is no longer an obstacle when you get there. It's as important to them to land you back in heaven safely as it is to you. ATC doesn't want to have a plane go down on their watch. STC doesn't want a spirit to not complete their mission safely on their watch. The student pilot that couldn't find his way around apparently wasn't really supposed to have been approved by the pilot instructor for that flight, may have got himself in trouble with the air traffic control tower. Well, that's another story for another day. But the student pilot did make it to the ground through the intervention, through the dedicated support of ATC. We are on this earth to learn things, we are on this earth to grow, which means we're going to have things that are thrown at us that we're not really ready for and we don't understand why. But STC can help us navigate it. So before you take off into the next phase of your life, be serious with your spirit team. Take the time to connect with them daily. Take the time to let them be in charge of your day. Then make contact with your STC and file your life's plan for IFH. Allow them to give you turn-by-turn directions and provide vectoring instructions to avoid obstacles so that you complete your plan safely. IFH will definitely make heaven real in your life.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

We hope you learned something new about God's love and his resources during our time together. Please like and subscribe so you don't miss out. You can find our social media links and our contact info in the show notes. When you're commenting, please reference the episode number. Join us next time as we begin search out the ways of making heaven real in this life with Gordon Merrill.