Thankful for the rain.
This morning while driving the kids to school, we were about to pray together like we do every morning and I asked them what they wanted to thank God for today, and Adley said, “the rain.”
That made me stop and pause because I had just been quietly grumbling about the rain in my head. It was cloudy. The warm sun wasn’t shining. It turned our 80 degree weather into gloomy cold 50 degree weather. My joints were hurting. The yard is muddy, so the dogs keep tracking muddy paw prints through the house.
I was only thinking about all the ways the rain was inconveniencing me. But when she said she was thankful for it, it stopped me in my tracks because she was right.
We should thank God for the rain. Without rain, the grass dies. The trees stop growing. Everything slowly dries up. Rain is necessary for life, even when it disrupts our plans.
That led me to think about spiritual rain. How often do we only count something as a blessing when it makes our lives easier? Or only thank God when things go according to our plan? The sunshine seasons?
But rain is what makes things grow.
It reminded me of the verse in James, about counting it joy when we face trials and tribulations, he’s not saying suffering is fun, but acknowledging what happens to us in those storms. Our roots grow deeper. James doesn’t mean fake plastic positivity. Not “yay suffering.” But Joy because hardship produces something eternal in us. It strengthens our Faith.
I don’t think God allows trials because He needs us to prove our faith to Him, God already knows us fully. He knows our every thought and decision even before we do. I think trials often reveal things to US. They expose what we trust in most, where our roots are planted, and whether our faith is shallow or deep. Trials prove our faith and God’s faithfulness to us.
When you walk through something hard and God sustains you, you come out knowing Him differently than before. Not just intellectually but experientially and personally.
Before the storm you might say, “I believe God is faithful.”
But after the storm you say, “I know God carried me through.”
Thats a huge mindset shift.
It’s like the disciples in the boat. Jesus didn’t create the storm because He needed information about them. But the storm revealed their fear, their dependence, and His authority. And afterward, they knew Him more deeply than before.
So the rain ruins your plans and suddenly you see your impatience. Loss happens and you now see where your security actually was. In the waiting you realize how little control you truly had in the first place.
And when you’re in that place, faith either deepens or it crumbles. When we lean into God instead of away from Him, suffering becomes transformative instead of just painful.
Then I started to wonder, what happens when there isn’t any rain? Does the grass die? Would our faith stay shallow, and our roots never grow deep? A tree that never experiences wind grows weak roots. But a drought forces roots deeper in search of water. I wonder if our faith is the same?
I don’t believe every single person needs a devastating tragedy to know God, but I notice that comfort seems to have a strange way of making us spiritually sleepy. We start relying on ourselves. We stop praying with desperation. We stop acknowledging our need for God because everything feels manageable on our own. Just like tree roots, without resistance, things stay shallow.
Jesus even talks about this in the parable of the sower. Some plants spring up quickly, but because they have no deep roots, the sun scorches them and they wither away. The issue wasn’t growth, it was depth.
Sometimes the “rain” is painful, but sometimes the “drought” is painful too. Too much comfort can slowly kill spiritual hunger. But suffering can expose whether our roots ever went deep at all.
I think that’s probably why some people encounter God most deeply in moments of grief, sickness, failure, loneliness, or uncertainty. Not because God delights in our pain, but because suffering strips away all the illusions. It exposes what we actually put our trust in.
Rain doesn’t just produce growth though, it gives life. If our lives were perpetually easy, comfortable, predictable, self sufficient. Would we slowly dry out spiritually without even noticing it was happening?
I believe the answer is yes, and Israel is a great example of this cycle in the Bible. When they faced hardship they were dependent on God. When God blessed them they became comfortable. In comfort they quickly forgot about God. Forgetting God led to destruction. It happened over and over. I guess some things never change because we are still in this cycle today.
The beautiful thing though is that God doesn’t let our storms go to waste. The rain may feel disruptive, cold, inconvenient, even frightening but afterward, things grow that never would have grown otherwise. And later on down the road when the storm passes you’ll recognize “That the hard season actually saved me from becoming someone with shallow faith, prideful, numb, or spiritually asleep.”
So how do we make sure that our roots grow deep and we don’t get scorched by the sun?
I’ve decided I think the answer must be surrender. Because two people can walk through the exact same storm but come out completely different.
One can become softer, deeper, wiser, more compassionate, more dependent on God. While the other might become bitter, cynical, hardened, angry, closed off.
Same rain. Different response.
So it must not be the storm itself that automatically grows the roots. I think It’s what we do during the storm. Do we run toward God or away from Him? Do we cling tighter or shut down? Do we become teachable or defensive?
Theres plenty of suffering in the world that just produces wounded people if it’s never surrendered to God. So I think humility also plays a huge part. Our roots grow when we finally realize, “I can’t do this by myself.”
That realization goes completely against our flesh. We all to an extent want to be in control. We want the security of guarantees. We want explanations. We want to know why the rain came now and whether it’ll stop tomorrow. But deep faith has the ability to grow in the space where answers don’t come. God tells us not to lean on our own understanding. We may never understand why the storm came but we can always trust that God is in control and working out all things for the good of those who love him. Sometimes that “good” is spiritual growth.
Dependence on God is regularly connected to pruning, refining, dying to self, carrying crosses. None of those are comfortable gardening metaphors. I think it’s also important that we allow storms to cause us to be honest with ourselves. Examine our hearts as Paul said.
In this generation we are constantly numbing ourselves with any distraction we can. Entertainment, doom scrolling TikTok, addictions, busyness of life. Anything to avoid sitting in the discomfort long enough to actually meet God there. I know I’m guilty of it. But if we stay open in suffering, even imperfectly, tearfully, even if it’s angrily praying through clenched teeth, those roots start going deeper.
Not because we’re “strong Christians,” but because even though it’s hard we’re still reaching for the life giving water.
I think our deepest roots are formed when all the shallow ones finally fail us. When the things we lean on most stop holding us up. Things like, money, health, certainty, people, even our own strength. Thats when we discover if Christ is actually enough or if He was just a decoration we added to our otherwise self sufficient life.
Most people with deeply rooted faith don’t get it from reading a cute inspirational social media post and hearing “live laugh love” sermons. They get it from surviving winters they thought would break them, and finding God still there in the middle of it. From clinging tightly and abiding in Jesus no matter what season they’re in.
When Paul asked God to remove the “thorn in the flesh,” God responds with, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9
notice God didn’t say “My power is made perfect in your strength, competence, control, or ability to keep it all together.” No, he said in our Weakness.
We spend so much of our life trying not to feel weak. Trying to prove to everyone or maybe even just ourselves that we’re capable and Independent. All perfectly put together, never struggling. But God continuously shows us throughout scripture that He works most powerfully through the people who KNOW their need for Him.
Moses was insecure. David was broken and messy. Gideon was terrified and full of self doubt. Peter was impulsive and Paul suffered constantly.
The pattern is almost comical at this point. God delights in using cracked vessels so no one, not even ourselves can confuse the source of the power.
This is relevant because like the trials we face, weakness drives roots deeper, our weakness forces our dependence. Not because suffering or weakness is holy, but because both remove our illusion that we were sustaining ourselves in the first place.
When we finally hit the end of our rope. The place where all our masks fall off and the polished Christian answers stop working. That’s often where peace starts showing up too. Not fake peace. Not blissful denial. But the peace that surpasses all understanding, the one that allows you to say with certainty, “I can’t do this but God will sustain me.”
So yeah, maybe sometimes the rain ruins our plans but it’s also the rain that keeps us alive and I’m great full today that my daughter reminded me to thank God for the rain.
💜🤟✝️