When God sends you into the Storm

There is a moment in the fourteenth chapter of Matthew that is easy to overlook. Jesus has just performed one of the most staggering miracles in all of Scripture, feeding five thousand people with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. The crowd is fed. The disciples witness something extraordinary. And then Jesus does something that, on the surface, seems almost strange. He sends his disciples ahead of him into a boat, out onto the Sea of Galilee, knowing full well that a storm is coming.

He did not send them there by accident. He did not fail to check the weather. He sent them into the storm on purpose.

That single truth can reframe everything.

The question we are really asking
When life becomes difficult, when the winds pick up, and the waves start crashing, the question most of us ask is: where is God? It is a deeply human question, and it is an honest one. But a more important question lies beneath it. Not where is God, but why is this happening? Because if God is sovereign, if he hems us in behind and before as Psalm 139 verse 5 describes, then the storm is not a surprise to him. It never was.

The wilderness seasons of life, those stretches of confusion, loss, uncertainty, and pain, are not accidents. They are not signs that God has forgotten you. They may, in fact, be signs that he is paying very close attention.

Why we resist the Wilderness
The nation of Israel gives us one of the most honest portraits of what happens when people encounter a wilderness season. Delivered from four hundred years of slavery in Egypt, they found themselves wandering in a desert with no map, no guaranteed food supply, and no clear timeline. And what did they do? They complained. They looked back at Egypt and remembered it fondly. They talked about the meat and the bread as if slavery had been a reasonable trade-off for a decent meal.

This is not a story about weak people. This is a story about all people.

We resist the wilderness for several reasons that are worth naming honestly. First, we resist it because we prefer comfort. The wilderness is, by definition, uncomfortable. It strips away the familiar rhythms and routines we depend on to feel stable. Second, we resist it because we want control. In the desert, Israel could not control their food, their water, their location, or their timeline. They followed a cloud, described in Numbers 9:17, that moved when God decided it was time to move and stopped when God decided it was time to stop. That kind of dependence is deeply unsettling for people who prefer to set their own agenda.

Third, we resist the wilderness because we fear the unknown. Egypt was terrible, but it was familiar. The Promised Land was good, but it was unseen. The wilderness stood between the two, and standing in the middle of something with no clear view of the other side is one of the most disorienting experiences a person can have.

But perhaps the most significant reason we resist these seasons is the one we least like to admit. The wilderness exposes what is inside us. Deuteronomy 8:2 describes God leading Israel through forty years of wilderness specifically to humble them, to test them, and to reveal what was truly in their hearts. Comfort is very good at hiding things like pride, impatience, bitterness, self-reliance, and unbelief. A storm has a way of bringing all of it to the surface.

What God does in the Wilderness
Here is what is remarkable about the way God handles the wilderness in Scripture. He does not always remove his people from it. He sustains them in it.

When Israel cried out for food, God did not end the wilderness and take them immediately to the Promised Land. He sent manna every morning and quail every evening. His provision was daily, intentional, and consistent. It was also non-transferable. When people tried to hoard the manna, it rotted. The lesson was not subtle. God was teaching his people that he himself was enough, and that he could be trusted one day at a time.

This is a truth that prosperity cannot teach. Only the wilderness can strip away enough noise and comfort to make it clear that God's presence is not a supplement to a good life. It is the foundation of life itself.

Keeping our eyes on the right Thing
When Jesus walked out on the water toward his disciples in the middle of that storm, Peter did something remarkable. He asked Jesus to call him out of the boat, and Jesus did. Peter stepped out onto the water and walked. He actually walked on water in the middle of a storm. And then he looked at the waves.

The moment his focus shifted from Jesus to the storm, he began to sink. Not because the storm got worse. Not because Jesus moved. Simply because Peter looked at the wrong thing.

This is the central spiritual challenge of every wilderness season. The storm is real. The waves are real. The wind is real. But so is the one walking toward you in the middle of it. The question is not whether the storm exists. The question is where your eyes are fixed.

The questions worth asking
Rather than spending the entire wilderness season fighting to get out of it, there are better questions to bring into it. What is God teaching here? What is he trying to remove? What is he developing? What does he want you to see about him that you have not been able to see before?

The wilderness is not a punishment in disguise. It is not evidence of abandonment. It is, far more often, a place God has prepared, a season with a purpose, and a road he has already walked ahead of you.

As 2 Corinthians 5:7 reminds us, believers walk by faith and not by sight. That is not a suggestion for the spiritually advanced. It is the ordinary, daily posture of a life that trusts the one who goes before it.

The storm is not the end of the story. Keep your eyes on Jesus.