Storms

In my high school girls Bible study, we talked about storms last night.

Storms as in: your grandpa dying, or your parents divorcing, or your boyfriend pressuring you into more intimacy, or your girlfriends seeming more shallow lately, or your parents demanding too much from you.

Storms aren’t exactly a party. Storms are often the place people lose their faith in God, because they don’t like that He allows the storms to come.

The thing is, God isn’t like your mother—he’s not standing over people, holding that wooden spoon, and as soon as they start doing something wrong, whack! he nails them.

God lets us—ALL of us—make our own decisions, whether good for us or bad for us, whether good for other people or bad for other people. He also holds life and death in his hands, because he can see the larger picture of it all.

So, all that to say, storms will come.

But you’re not alone.

God wouldn’t allow these things to happen, but let you flail on your own. Whether you feel his presence or not, he’s there. The fact you can’t feel God or hear his voice doesn’t suddenly negate the fact that HE IS THERE.

And not just himself, but also the people around you who want to help you. Reach out to family or friends, to your youth pastor or youth group. God put them there, in your life, for a reason.

Ask them to pray for you. Sometimes when a group of people pray, you can physically feel the power of that many hearts asking for the same thing from God.

Help and healing won’t happen overnight, but if you keep asking for prayer, keep talking to people, keep praying yourself—one day you wake up, and the storm has blown over.

So for now, just weather out the storm.