It was just another Tuesday morning. 115 passengers boarded their flight as passengers always do: they found their seats, stuffed their carry-ons into the overhead bins, half-listened to the safety demonstration, and settled in for the journey ahead. Nothing suggested that this flight would be remarkable in any particular way.
Air Traffic Control saw the flight climb, level-off at cruising altitude, and fly away.
Air Traffic Control at the destination airport saw the flight come into range and waited for a call that never came. Standard procedure called for a check in, routing confirmation, and any approach instructions. But nothing came. So ATC tried reaching out to the plane, but there was no response. They tried again, and again, and again. For the better part of an hour the controllers tried everything they could think of to get in contact with the plane. The plane wasn’t responding—but it also wasn’t doing anything alarming. It was flying beautifully, actually. Perfectly trimmed. Holding altitude. Maintaining course.
But in a post-9/11 world, an unresponsive commercial airliner was not something anyone was prepared to take lightly, so the call was made to scramble two F-16s to intercept. When the fighter jets pulled alongside the silent plane at altitude, the pilots saw something deeply alarming: the captain’s seat was empty. What in the world was happening here?
And then—movement. A figure appeared in the cockpit. A man, dressed in a flight attendant’s uniform, slipped into the captain’s seat. He looked out through the glass at the military jets flanking him, and… he waved. This was not a distress signal, it seemed to be a greeting. Some reports even claim that the man offered a gentle smile.
Why was no one responding? Why was a flight attendant now sitting in the captain’s seat at 34,000 feet?
We’re going to find out at the end. For now, let’s put the Silent Flight in our pockets, and open our Bibles to…
Ephesians 5:15-20
15 Be careful, then, how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, 16 making the most of the time, because the days are evil. 17 So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, 20 giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Prayer
Father, open our eyes to see clearly and our hearts to yield quickly. Guard us from drifting through these days unaware. As we hear Your Word, make us attentive, responsive, and ready to be governed by Your Spirit. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Walk Carefully (vv15-16)
15 Be careful, then, how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, 16 making the most of the time, because the days are evil.
Be careful, then. In light of what we just learned, we should be careful. So what did we just learn? What did Paul cover in verses 3-14? Paul said that we are no longer darkness but light in the Lord. This is critical: Paul doesn’t say we were merely in the darkness—as though it is some kind of trap we’ve fallen into, but that we were the darkness, children of it, one with it, part of it. But no longer! Now, thanks to Jesus, we are the light, children of the light, and we are to be a light in that same darkness we were transformed out of! We are to expose the darkness—something light cannot help but do! So then, if we are lights living in the darkness, we need to be careful, right?
We need to be careful how we live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.
This verse is pivotal to understanding this passage because it seems to be one of those verses that gets twisted, warped, and misunderstood—by ill-intentioned, well-meaning, and the poorly-informed alike. This verse does not mean:
- Maximize carefulness by avoiding a world of evil
- Maximize wisdom by aggressive pursuit of knowledge
- Maximize minutes by efficiently calendaring your life for God
Some of us might bristle at that list and find their spirit bubbling up with indignant questions like: Are you saying we shouldn’t be careful of evil? Are you saying we shouldn’t pursue knowledge? Are you saying we shouldn’t set aside time for God? Rest assured I am not saying any of that. But the greatest lies of Satan are not the ones that are obviously lies—they are the ones so close to the truth that without discernment you’ll fall right into them. Each of these distortions is subtle enough to fool us if we don’t understand what Paul is actually pushing us toward. So let’s get into it.
Careful means to “look diligently” or to “pay careful attention.” When my elder son was little he would often inhabit his own world, and I tried to drive home with him the importance of having a general awareness of what was unfolding around him. When he was 5 or 6, this was particularly important on the baseball diamond—if you start swinging a bat around with another child standing right behind you, things can end very poorly. And so I would always say to him, “Jonas, what’s it called when you know what’s happening around you?” And he—to this day—will reply: “situational awareness.”
What about us? Do we have situational awareness? Here’s the thing, if we lack situational awareness, we’ll miss both danger and the opportunity. Did you know there is a so-called “silent revival” happening around the world right now.
- Bible sales in the UK have nearly doubled since 2019—up 87% in volume, according to Nielsen BookScan data.
- Here in the west, the narrative has been one of decline and deconstruction—but Barna’s 2025 research tells a different story. Among Millennials, weekly church attendance has nearly doubled, from 21% to 39%, since 2019. And Gen Z is following close behind. The tide is turning.
- In Iran—a Muslim-majority theocracy where conversion carries devastating consequences—somewhere between one and two million people have come to Jesus in recent years, driven by Bible distribution, online outreach, disillusionment with the regime, and—remarkably—visions of Jesus. And given that this is a country where you cannot safely be counted, the true number is almost certainly higher.
Relativism has been pushing a “post-truth” culture for more than a decade, but that lie is driving people—young people especially—to seek out something true, grounded, and trustworthy. With the rise of AI and the algorithm, everything is tailored specifically to you, and as a result nothing feels real, nothing feels genuine. And so people are craving something transcendent, historical, relational, and rooted. And church… I think we might know a guy, amen?
So while we can get bent out of shape about whatever culture war headline is burning this week—the fact remains that whatever lies the world puts forward will eventually fail people, as lies always do. And we need to be there, offering something true and hopeful and pure. Hate might drive views online, but it doesn’t transform lives—it only destroys them. We are called to be thankful in every circumstance, because from the book of Acts to the country of Iran, wherever the Gospel is oppressed, it spreads. So if you feel like the government is coming for the Gospel here in Canada, praise the Lord—because some folks are about to get saved!
Someone give me an amen!
That, church, is why we must be careful how we live. Not as unwise, but as wise. Paul told us to walk “in love” back in 5:2, then “in light” in 5:8, and now in wisdom. Wisdom, Biblically, means understanding God’s purposes. If we want to live well, we need to look to the Designer. We can probably muddle our way through and figure something out on our own—but if we want to make the most of the time, we should check the instruction manual. There is no problem or situation we will find ourselves in for which Scripture is silent. Everything from marriage and children to stewardship of the earth, to how we vote, to how we navigate the internet—it’s all in these pages. Ecclesiastes tells us there is nothing new under the sun. That new thing you’re experiencing isn’t actually new. It’s just a remix of an old problem, a classic lie wearing a moustache and glasses.
Because when Paul talks about time, he isn’t worried about maximizing the clock—he’s talking about squandering it. We live in evil times, which has been true since we left the Garden of Eden. And because we live in evil times, in the midst of a sea of darkness, we cannot afford to squander what we’ve been given. The phrase Paul uses actually means redeem the time—like Christ has redeemed us. Take something destined for destruction and use it for the glory of God. We are in the midst of evil days, and so we must intentionally be a light into that darkness.
Which is why those three distortions I mentioned matter so much:
- Maximize carefulness by avoiding a world of evil — We don’t want to embrace the darkness, but we don’t want to hide from it either. We are called to shine into it.
- Maximize wisdom by aggressive pursuit of knowledge — Knowledge alone is inadequate. James tells us that even the demons have knowledge. If we don’t put it into practice, what has it benefited anyone—including ourselves?
- Maximize minutes by efficiently calendaring your life for God — This has a good heart, but it’s too effort-focused. It reminds me of when the church used to celebrate the idea of “burning out for Jesus!” Being a slave to our calendars isn’t honouring God—it’s missing the point entirely.
Growing up nominally Catholic, my mother had a picture of John Paul II on the wall with the following quote attributed to him:
“When I stand before God, He will simply ask me: ‘How did you use the gift of life I gave you?'”
For some this was a fist-pump moment, and for others it was a gut-punch. Because Paul isn’t asking us to maximize our productivity for Jesus — he’s asking us whether we’re going to let these evil days pass by us while we hide our light in the walls of our homes and churches or whether we’re going to redeem this gift of life—of time—that we’ve been given. Let’s take something previously destined for destruction and use it for the glory of God, amen!?
Amen. Let’s keep reading.
Understand Clearly (v17)
17 So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
Understand the will of the Lord. I have lost count of the number of times—particularly as a youth pastor—that a student asked me how to determine God’s will. And even as adults, this still feels like a perplexing problem. But notice something here: Paul doesn’t present it as a mystery to unravel. He presents it as the solution. It’s almost as if understanding God’s will is not the complicated part.
Paul has just told us to walk wisely and make the most of our time as light in evil days. Now he restates it negatively: do not be foolish. In other words, don’t live disconnected from wisdom. Don’t operate independently of the Lord. And where do we find His wisdom? In His holy, inspired, authoritative Word. Foolishness is not lack of intelligence—it’s living untethered from what God has already revealed.
But within the church we have this strange tendency to mysticize everything. We act as though God’s will must be hidden behind some elaborate National Treasure-style puzzle, and if you don’t have to decode prophetic symbols and string together timelines that muggles and “normies” could never understand, then the answer must not be very spiritual. I’m not railing against prophecy or symbolism—those are gifts when they help us know Christ. What I am saying is that we don’t need to complicate God’s will. It isn’t meant to be esoteric or inscrutable. It’s meant to be obeyed, even enjoyed.
Here’s what we usually mean when we ask about God’s will: big decisions. Do I take the safe corporate job at Lodge Industries, or pursue my dream of being a musician? Do I follow the opportunity in Greendale, or stay in Riverdale? Do I marry Betty or Veronica? We secretly want an Acts 9 moment—light from heaven, audible voice, clear instructions: “Go here. Do this.” That would make things simple.
But here’s the good news: it’s still simple. Not mystical—simple. If neither option requires you to sin, neither option violates Scripture, and neither option pulls you away from obedience, then you are free to choose in faith. God’s will is not usually a hidden blueprint; it is revealed character. I don’t believe in a single secret soulmate floating somewhere in the cosmos. Covenant faithfulness makes “the one.” If I had stayed in web development, God’s redemptive purposes would not have collapsed. He is not wringing His hands over your job offer.
Now, I still pray over every decision. I ask the Lord to bend my will toward His, to influence my desires by His Spirit and not my flesh. When we prayed over our church budget, it was the same: “Lord, take my name out of this. Take my ambition out of this. Let every dollar be for Your glory.” But notice—that prayer is about alignment, not secret information.
So if the monumental, life-course decisions are entrusted to us under God’s sovereignty, what exactly is His will? The small stuff. Are we truth-tellers? Reconcilers? Contributors? Encouragers? Extravagant forgivers? Imitators of Christ? Light in the darkness? If you want to be in God’s will, read His Word and weigh your decisions against it.
Is the job at Lodge Industries going to require you to fudge the numbers? Proverbs 11:1 tells us, “A false balance is an abomination to the Lord.” Is the move to Greendale really an escape from reconciliation in Riverdale? Romans 12:18 tells us, “As far as it depends on you, live at peace with all.” Is Betty a follower of Jesus where Veronica is not? 2 Corinthians 6:14 warns us, “Do not be unequally yoked.” Scripture speaks. And when Scripture speaks, the will of God is not confusing.
If we are faithful in the small things, we will be faithful in the big ones. Pray for the Spirit’s guidance, open the Bible, examine your heart, and then—make a decision. Walk in it. Keep your eyes on Christ as you move. God’s will is not a maze you must decode. It is a path you must walk.
Let’s keep going.
Be Governed Properly (v18)
18 Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.
Paul has been building his argument carefully, but now he shifts hard into a practical comparison. Drunk with wine versus filled with the Holy Spirit.
In ancient Roman culture, drunkenness was common — not much has changed there — but it was also understood as a pathway to union with the gods. A religious experience you could drink your way into. Well, flirting with other gods is certainly not something Christians should engage in. And even setting aside the religious dimension, voluntarily surrendering your clarity in ways that lead to reckless behaviour is not something Christians are called to.
Why? Paul tells us plainly: that is debauchery. The original Greek word carries the idea of wastefulness, self-ruin, and squandering. It means reckless living. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but reckless sounds a lot like foolish to me — and we just established that foolishness is exactly what we are called away from.
The contrast couldn’t be more stark: what is your controlling influence? The substance that lowers your guard and leads you to feed the flesh, or the Holy Spirit who protects you and guides you into all righteousness?
But before you think “I don’t drink, so this doesn’t apply to me” — think again. Paul highlights drunkenness because it was the dominant cultural problem of his day. But both then and now, there are other things competing to establish a controlling influence in our lives. Let me name a few.
Comfort and entertainment. Streaming, gaming, scrolling — none of these are inherently sinful. But they can become sedation. Escape. A controlling influence as powerful as anything in a glass. How often do we reach for our phones for no particular reason, hoping there’s a notification on the lock screen, or cycling through the same handful of apps looking for something interesting? If that’s reflexive — if it happens before we’ve even made a conscious decision — that is a controlling influence.
Anxiety and outrage. Some of us aren’t drunk on wine — we’re drunk on fear. Or we’re drunk on outrage. Every headline spikes our blood pressure. Every post feels like a five-alarm fire. And when fear governs us, restraint disappears. When outrage governs us, nuance disappears. We start reacting instead of discerning, assuming instead of listening. That’s a controlling influence — and it alters our judgment just as surely as alcohol does. Only this one feels righteous.
Ambition and achievement. We would never call this intoxication. We call it drive. Hustle. Faithfulness. But when success becomes our governing influence, we compromise — slowly, then quickly. Justification replaces discernment. We get very good at finding pathways to achievement and very bad at hearing the Spirit. We measure worth by productivity instead of obedience. And the worst part? We won’t even feel intoxicated. We’ll feel responsible.
Approval and image. Living for applause is a powerful intoxicant. When we are governed by what people think of us — online or in person — we begin to edit ourselves constantly. We soften truth. We exaggerate virtue. We perform instead of worship. And the frightening part is that it begins to feel normal — even noble. We convince ourselves we’re building a platform for the Gospel. But we are no longer being governed by the Spirit. We are being governed by the crowd.
In just a few moments we’ve outlined comfort intoxication, emotional intoxication, productive intoxication, and social intoxication — alongside Paul’s example of chemical intoxication. The list could go on.
The point is this: where do you reach first? What is actually driving your habits? These are the true controlling influences in your life. And if anything is taking rank ahead of the Holy Spirit, it needs to be reordered. That doesn’t mean reading a Bible verse before you check your email, or feeling guilty every time you watch a show. This is not about performance. It’s about governance. It’s about posture. It’s about who sets the tone for your mind and your heart.
What if — before you opened Instagram — you simply paused five seconds and prayed: “Holy Spirit, guard my heart. Don’t let comparison or envy or outrage take root here.” Before the headlines: “Lord, help me respond with wisdom, not fear.” Before the meeting: “Guide my words.” Before you replied to that text that annoyed you: “Restrain my tongue.” Soaking our ordinary moments in prayer puts us in a posture where the Spirit can actually lead.
Being led by the Spirit is not so much dramatic as it is deliberate. It is waking up and saying: You lead. Not my impulses. Not my fear. Not my ambition. You.
It is inviting Him into the ordinary before the ordinary has a chance to shape you.
And sometimes it is the profound act of simply noticing. Noticing when your pulse quickens at a headline. Noticing when you reach for your phone out of boredom. Noticing when approval tastes sweeter than obedience. That moment of awareness — that is an invitation to repentance. That is the space where the Spirit governs.
It’s not about becoming a monk sequestered in a mountaintop monastery. It’s about being attentive.
Overflow Corporately (vv19-20)
19 as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, 20 giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
And here we come to the section where Paul describes what the Spirit-filled life actually looks like. What its markers will be. This list carries on into the next few weeks, but for today we see three things: singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another, singing and making melody to the Lord in our hearts, and giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything.
Singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another: Much has been made of what differentiates psalms from hymns and both from spiritual songs. We aren’t going to pursue those distinctions here — it becomes a forest-for-the-trees situation. The key thing to notice is that the first attribute Paul reaches for is worship, and not just any worship — worship within community. We are called to this not just privately, for our own benefit, but publicly, because it glorifies God and encourages our fellow believers.
Singing and making melody to the Lord in our hearts: The public act of worship must not be performative. It isn’t a show we put on — it’s something that bubbles up inside us and spills out from us. And notice what Paul says marks the Spirit-filled life: not knowledge — worship. We tend to think that knowing more is the flex, but Paul tells us that loving more is the actual flex. A collection of facts is not adequate. Worship and praise are absolutely essential elements of the Christian life. If we aren’t living every day with hearts full of praise, we need to yield more of ourselves to the Holy Spirit. Jesus needs to be our heart’s song.
Giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything: This is perhaps the most straightforward of the three, so let me simply put this question before us: how would our lives change — right now, today — if we continually stopped to be thankful? Constantly. Every time we put our shoes on. Every time we arrived somewhere. Every time we finished a conversation. How might that posture of gratitude reshape everything we do?
Paul has outlined what the life that walks carefully, understands clearly, and is governed properly will look like, what the signs of that full life will be. The things that we would expect to see if everything is operating as it should be…
Out of the Pocket
Which brings us back around to the Silent Flight we put in our pockets at the beginning.
This was the true story of Helios Flight 522, and here is what actually happened on that plane—and why it matters.
Before the flight departed, a ground engineer had been performing a routine pressurization check on the aircraft, which required him to switch the pressurization system to ‘manual’. Standard procedure. But he forgot to switch it back. The system that should have been automatically maintaining cabin pressure at a breathable altitude was left in manual. And nobody caught it. Not during the pre-flight check. Not during the after-start check. Not during the after-takeoff check. Three separate opportunities to catch a single misplaced switch. All three missed.
So the plane climbed — and as it did, the cabin pressure quietly bled away. At around 12,000 feet, a warning horn sounded in the cockpit. The pilots heard it. They responded to it. They just got it wrong. They misidentified the pressurization alarm as a takeoff configuration warning — a horn that by design can only sound on the ground. So they did what seemed reasonable given their diagnosis: they kept climbing and called the airline’s operations centre to report a technical issue.
Meanwhile, the oxygen in the cabin was thinning with every passing minute.
On the ground, the same engineer who had performed the pressurization check was patched into the radio call. He heard the pilots describing their symptoms and he asked them one direct question: “Can you confirm the pressurization panel is set to auto?”
The captain didn’t answer. His brain was already deprived of oxygen. The earliest stage of oxygen deprivation doesn’t feel like suffocation — it feels warmth, like mild intoxication, like things are basically fine. It impairs judgment before it impairs consciousness, which means you can be dying and actually feel pretty good. The captain’s final transmission was an unrelated circuit breaker question.
The plane climbed to 34,000 feet and levelled off. The autopilot held it there, steady and obedient, flying a precise holding pattern over Athens while every soul aboard slipped one by one into unconsciousness. The warnings had sounded, the solution was offered, but by that time too many links in the chain had been broken—they could no longer hear the solution.
That is the flight those F-16 pilots intercepted. That is the cockpit they peered into — the captain’s seat empty, the first officer slumped over the controls. That is why the flight attendant who appeared in the window could only wave. He had stayed conscious on portable oxygen long enough to reach the cockpit, long enough to realize there was nothing he could do, long enough to watch the left engine flame out as the fuel ran dry. The right engine followed ten minutes later. And so Helios 522—the ghost flight—perfectly configured and neatly on course, fell out of the sky and into the Greek countryside killing all 121 souls on board.
One switch. Left in the wrong position. Everything else — the checklists, the calls, the cockpit activity, the holding pattern, the F-16 escort — was just the sound of a plane that didn’t know it was already lost.
This is what it looks like to live as the unwise, the foolish, the one whose controlling influence is something — anything — other than the Holy Spirit. We can run through all the motions. We can show up, check the boxes, look composed, maintain altitude. But if the thing that is supposed to be governing us has been quietly switched to the wrong setting — if comfort or ambition or outrage or approval has taken the seat — then all of that activity is just the autopilot doing its job while the oxygen slowly runs out. We feel fine. We feel functional. We might even feel righteous. And the warnings, when they come, get misdiagnosed and filed away.
We want to picture the road to destruction like a Meat Loaf song: a motorcycle launched off a cliff, tumbling end over end through a fireball of shrapnel, screaming toward the canyon floor in a blaze of magnificent and terrible glory. And sure — sometimes it looks like that.
But for most people it’s quieter. It’s chasing ambition as the governing purpose, soothing disappointments with whatever is close at hand, and gradually escaping into the scroll. A slow, gentle, almost imperceptible drift into a coma — while the fuel quietly runs out.
And those people won’t know how wrong they were until they stand before Christ. Which is precisely why we are here — because someone, at some point, loved us enough to tell us the truth. That there is a God who made us and knows us. That we have run from Him and the wreckage is real. And that rather than leave us drifting toward empty, He entered the wreckage Himself — took on flesh, bore the weight of every wrong governing influence we have ever surrendered to, died the death our drift deserved, and walked out of the grave so that we could be filled with His Spirit rather than ruled by our flesh. That is the only reason any of us are not the ghost flight. And it is the only reason we have anything worth overflowing.
So let us not become a ghost flight. Let us not drift through evil days outwardly stable and neatly configured while something other than the Spirit occupies the cockpit. When the Spirit fills a people, there are signs. There is worship directed upward. Encouragement directed outward. Gratitude that permeates ordinary moments. Responsiveness to God rather than silence toward Him.
The world does not need another community that looks composed while slowly running out of fuel. It needs a church that is awake — whose worship, thanksgiving, and love make it unmistakably clear that Christ is Lord and the Spirit is present.
So this week, before we default to comfort, ambition, outrage, or distraction — let’s pause and yield the seat. Invite the Holy Spirit to govern our thoughts, our reactions, our speech, and our habits. And then let what He produces in us spill outward — into our families, our workplaces, this church, and this city.
Not quiet drift, but living overflow. Not silence, but song.
Let’s pray.
Closing Prayer
Holy Spirit, we confess how easily we drift — how quickly comfort, ambition, fear, or distraction can take the seat meant for You. Forgive us for the quiet compromises and the unnoticed surrender of governance. Awaken us. Make us attentive in evil days. Shape our thoughts, steady our reactions, and guard our words. Fill us so fully that worship rises naturally, gratitude marks our steps, and encouragement flows from our lips. Let this church be alive — responsive to You and radiant before the world. Not silent, but singing. Not drifting, but directed. We yield ourselves to You now, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Benediction: Galatians 5:25