I stared out at the vast ocean and breathed deep the warm, salty air. I felt my mind slowly reconnecting with my body and suddenly realized—I hadn’t been truly present in a long while. It took feeling my feet in the sand, the warm sun against my face, and the sound of nothing but the gentle waves lapping to realize I was detached from the world around me. The length and intensity of suffering had been too great. It was easier to just keep moving, avoiding the pain of being present.

But as I closed my eyes and breathed deep, the dam of self-protection finally gave way, and the tears it had locked away for far too long finally flooded to the surface. I had been running from doubts and questions, feelings of hurt and anger, and spiritual confusion on a deeper level than ever before. For as long as I could remember, prayers only seemed to lead to a worsening of circumstances. The greater the plea, the worse the sorrows grew. Hurt and confusion quickly followed.

But as I looked out at these waters, feet sinking into the soft sand, a thought rushed to the forefront as if it wasn’t my own. My sorrows and circumstances have boundaries, just as the waves before me do. This far they will come, and no further, says the Lord.

My heart needed to be reminded that the pain of this world isn’t endless or limitless. Maybe yours does too.

When God’s Ways Defy Our Understanding

As followers of Jesus, we will all be forced to wrestle with the compassion, goodness, and faithfulness of God when life hits us square in the face with difficult trials and unanswered questions. The truth is, we may know countless spiritual truths intellectually, but it’s not until those truths are put to the test that we come to know what we truly believe. These seasons expose Christian cliches for the empty fluff they really are. Our suffering strips us of self-confidence, and the seasons reveal how much we live with the delusion of control—a delusion we may suddenly find shattered into a million pieces.

And yet, it’s that very realization of how out of control we are that can lead us to the life-giving peace of knowing that there is One who is in control—and He is entirely for us (Romans 8:31).

No, we may not understand God’s silence, His ways, or His purposes at times, but we can be assured of this: If He has the power to put boundaries on the powerful waves of the ocean, He has the power to put boundaries on our circumstances as well. Even more, because of Jesus’s proven love for us, we can know that He will not allow one hair to fall from our head that is outside of His good plan for our lives (Luke 12:7).

Resting in Who God Is

What challenges seem impossible to overcome right now? What sorrow or trial seems unredeemable from your vantage point? What questions of faith remain unanswered?

We will all face these crucial moments—when our man-made understanding of God is shattered and we either walk away in unbelief or we are driven to Jesus in utter dependence.

These seasons, albeit painful, are the very soil where the roots of our faith are deepened and matured—faith in who He says He is, not in what we can see.

This is why God’s response to Job’s questions and spiritual wrestlings was not an explanation of Job’s unimaginable suffering. Instead, He settled Job’s questions of why with a reminder of who was sovereign and Lord over them:

Where were you when I established the earth?

Tell me, if you have understanding.

Who fixed its dimensions? Certainly you know!

Who stretched a measuring line across it?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Who enclosed the sea behind doors

when it burst from the womb,

when I made the clouds its garment

and total darkness its blanket,

when I determined its boundaries

and put its bars and doors in place,

when I declared, “You may come this far, but no farther;

your proud waves stop here”?

Have you ever in your life commanded the morning

or assigned the dawn its place

so it may seize the edges of the earth

and shake the wicked out of it? (Job 38:4–5, 8–13)

We serve a God who spoke your life into existence. He has set the foundation and boundary lines on the family you were born into, your physical body, and every single circumstance that enters your life. None of it is a surprise to Him, and none of it is outside of His good and faithful providence.

It doesn’t always look like it.

It doesn’t always feel like it.

But we can trust that He will show Himself faithful in the end.

Little by little, as we wrestle with the mysteries of this life and the spiritual questions they bring, God will settle our hearts with the truth that He is a powerful God whose hand is upon every aspect of our lives. His sovereign, good, loving, faithful hand.

As we lay down our questions, sorrows, and confusion at His feet, our circumstances may not change, but we will—not because our lives became easier but because we were brought into the very presence of God, poured into our hearts through the life of Jesus.

Like Job, we will begin to experience and reflect a pure faith, like gold that’s been forged through the fire of affliction. For “he [God] knows the way I have taken; when he has tested me, I will emerge as pure gold” (Job 23:10).

Our lives will contain countless mysteries. But our job isn’t to understand God’s ways, it’s to trust Him even when we can’t: “So then, let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust themselves to a faithful Creator while doing what is good” (1 Peter 4:19).

Our circumstances may seem as rogue as the ocean waves, knocking us down around every corner. But He has set the boundaries, and they can go no further. Our job is to simply trust the One who rules over the waves and promises to bring His good and perfect will for us to pass.

Press on today in the sure hope of God’s loving sovereignty in your life. What might feel like the undoing of your faith may, in fact, be the deepening of a true, lasting faith.

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Author Bio

Sarah Walton is the coauthor of the award-winning book Hope When It Hurts, the forthcoming book Jesus Will Meet You There, Together Through the Storms, and He Gives More Grace, and the author of Tears and Tossings and The Long Road Home. You can find more of her writing at her Substack, Deep Well of Hope (substack.com/@sarahpwalton). She and her husband, Jeff, live in Colorado Springs with their four children.

Additional Resources:

When Storms Rage		Job Bible Study		Grace in the Wilderness | 1 Peter Bible Study
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