Things They Don't Tell You When You Follow God Closely — The Storms Get Worse Before They Get Better

This is the first post in Things They Don't Tell You When You Follow God Closely, a weekly Sunday series from Alpha VI Battalion. Every week we cover one truth about walking closely with God that the highlight reel version of Christianity leaves out.

They Did Not Tell You the Storms Get Worse

When you first come to faith, or when you recommit to walking closely with God after a season of distance, there is a version of the story you expect. Things settle. Peace comes. The chaos that characterized your life before starts to quiet down because you are now aligned with something bigger and better than whatever was driving you before.

That is not always what happens.

Sometimes the opposite happens. You draw closer to God and the storms intensify. Relationships get harder. Financial pressure increases. The thing you thought God was going to fix gets worse before it gets better. And you are left standing in the middle of it wondering whether you made the right decision or whether God is even paying attention.

Nobody warns you about this. And because nobody warns you, you interpret the storm as evidence that something went wrong. That you misheard. That faith is not working. That maybe this was not for you.

That interpretation is wrong. And it is costing people who could have become something significant in God's hands.

The Storm Is Not a Sign That God Left

The disciples were in a boat with Jesus when the storm hit. Not without Him. With Him. He was asleep in the back of the boat, which is its own conversation, but the point is that the storm did not come because Jesus was absent. It came while He was present.

The storm is not evidence of abandonment. Sometimes it is evidence of proximity. God does not give His hardest assignments to people He does not trust. He does not allow His most refined soldiers to walk easy terrain. The ones who follow Him closely often walk through things that the ones who stay comfortable never face. Not as punishment. As preparation.

The fire does not destroy gold. It removes what was never gold to begin with.

What the Storm Is Actually Doing

Every storm in the life of someone walking closely with God is doing one of a few things. It is revealing what your faith is actually built on. It is removing something that was going to cost you more later if it stayed. It is building something in you that cannot be built any other way. Or it is positioning you for something that requires you to have been through exactly this.

None of those things feel good while they are happening. All of them make sense in retrospect if you do not quit before you get to the other side.

The people who quit in the storm never find out what was waiting after it. They carry the pain of the storm without receiving the benefit it was sent to produce.

You Were Not Promised Easy. You Were Promised Present.

God never promised the follower who walks closely that the road would be smooth. He promised to be on the road with them. That is a different promise and it requires a different kind of faith to receive it. Not the faith that says God will remove this. The faith that says God is in this and that is enough to keep moving.

That is the faith that changes people. That is the faith that produces the kind of character that can be trusted with something real. And that is the faith that most people never develop because they turn back when the storm hits instead of recognizing it as part of the process.

The storm got worse when you followed God closely. That is not a malfunction. That might be the most important thing that ever happened to you.

Stay in it.

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