Rooted · Week 2 · Tuesday

Sent Into the Storm

He did the right thing, the genuinely hard and costly right thing, and he fully expected God to bless it. Instead, everything got harder.

He had made the obedient call, the one that cost him money, or standing, or a good deal of comfort. He was as sure as he had ever been that it was what God wanted from him. And somewhere in the back of his mind, he had quietly assumed that obedience like that came with a reward attached, that doing the right thing was supposed to lead into smoother water. So when the storm rolled in almost immediately afterward, he drew the conclusion most of us would. I must have gotten it wrong. I must have misread God.

He assumed obedience came with smooth water.

Who Put Them in the Boat

Then he looked, really looked, at how the disciples ended up in their famous storm.

Jesus put them in that boat. He made them get in. He sent them out onto that sea. And then look what the water did to them.

Beaten by the waves. Wind against them. And not one bit of it was because they had disobeyed. They were in that storm precisely because they had obeyed. Jesus sent them straight into it. The wind was contrary on the exact route he had assigned.

When, Not If. Through, Not Around.

This quietly rewrites how we read a hard season. We tend to treat a storm as automatic evidence that we blew it, took a wrong turn, fell out of God’s will somewhere back down the road. But sometimes the obedient path and the stormy path are the same path. Being in the wind is not proof you are off course. It may be proof you are exactly on it.

Read the small words. God says when you pass through the waters, not if. He never promised his people a life with no deep water. And he says through the rivers, not around them. The promise was never a detour that skips the storm. The promise is his presence in it, and his guarantee that it will not overwhelm us. If you did the right thing and the water still rose, you may not have missed God at all. You may be right where he sent you. Keep your eyes on Him, not the wind.

Tomorrow · He’s Praying for You