I have been watching something develop. I am not going to tell you what it is. But I will tell you this — it is ugly, it is building, and everything in me wants to step in. And that right there is exactly where I have to stop. Because before I do anything, I need to ask a question most people skip entirely:
Who started this?
Not who is involved. Not who said what. Not who is right and who is wrong. Who. Started. This. Because the answer to that question changes everything about what I am supposed to do next.
There Are Only Three Sources
When you see a storm forming — in your family, your friendships, your church, your workplace — it is coming from one of three places. God allowed it or caused it to reveal something, prepare you for something, or grow you through something. Satan stirred it to distract you, divide something you love, or pull you into a reaction that makes things worse. Or your own flesh is reading the situation through fear, pride, or past hurt — and amplifying something that may not even be what it looks like.
Three sources. Three completely different responses required. And if you react before you know which one you are dealing with, you are gambling with the outcome.
1 John 4:1 says, “Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God.”
Test the spirits. That is not just about people claiming to be prophets. That is a principle for every situation. Not everything that feels urgent is from God. Not everything that looks threatening is Satan. And not everything bothering you is as real as it feels in the moment. Test it first.
When God Is Behind It
Sometimes God allows a storm to form right in front of you — not to punish you, and not because things are falling apart, but because He wants you to see something you would not have noticed otherwise. He lets you see the inconsistency. The pattern. The thing quietly building before anyone else picks up on it. And the question He is asking you in that moment is not “What are you going to do about it?” The question is “Do you trust Me with what you are seeing?”
Joseph watched storms form around him his entire life. Betrayal by his brothers. False accusations. Years in prison for something he did not do. None of it looked like God’s hand from the outside. But Genesis 50:20 tells us what it actually was: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.”
What looked like destruction was actually preparation. When God is behind what you are watching, the right response is not to intervene — it is to pray, stay close to Him, and watch what He does with it. If you want to go deeper on this, I wrote about it in God Was Preparing Me for This.
When Satan Is Behind It
Here is what I know about Satan: he does not show up in a red suit carrying a pitchfork. He shows up in situations that look almost right. Almost reasonable. Almost justified. He stirs things that should make you react. He creates scenarios designed to pull you off your foundation and into the middle of something that was never yours to fight.
1 Peter 5:8 says, “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”
A lion does not announce itself. It circles. It waits. It looks for the moment you are distracted or off balance. And the bait Satan uses most effectively on people who love others deeply is this: he makes you feel like if you do not step in right now, something terrible is going to happen and it will be your fault. That urgency? That pressure to react immediately? That is almost never God. God leads with peace even when He is calling you to act. Satan leads with panic.
Ephesians 6:11 says to “put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil.”
Strategies. Not random attacks. The enemy has a plan — and reacting without discernment is usually part of it. I went deeper on this in Faith Isn’t Soft — It’s War. If you have not read that one, it ties directly into what we are talking about here.
When It Is Your Own Flesh
This is the one nobody wants to talk about. Sometimes the storm feels huge because of what you have already been through. You have seen this pattern before. You know how it ends. You have the scars to prove it. And so your past experience, your unhealed wounds, or your fear — not God, not Satan, but you — is making something look worse or more urgent than it actually is.
Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how much it can deceive?”
That verse is not just about moral failure. It is about perception. Your heart will tell you things are worse than they are. It will tell you to move when you should wait. It will dress anxiety up as discernment and call it wisdom. I have been there. I have felt completely certain I was reading something correctly — and been wrong about the source entirely. I was reacting to my own fear, not to what was actually happening. I wrote about what that looks like in Get Out of Your Own Way — because sometimes the biggest obstacle between you and the right response is you. That is why the question who started this has to come before anything else.
How to Tell the Difference
So how do you actually know which one you are dealing with? You get still. You pray specifically. You do not move until you have some clarity.
Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.”
He will show you. But you have to stop long enough to let Him. Here is what I have been doing with what I am watching right now: I have been taking it to prayer in detail. Not just “Lord be with the situation.” I am telling Him specifically what I see, what I feel, what I want to do — and asking Him to show me whether this is His hand at work, an enemy trying to bait me, or my own flesh trying to run the show. And I am staying on my knees until I have enough peace to move — or enough clarity to stay still.
Romans 8:26 says, “And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.”
There are moments I do not even know how to pray what I am feeling. So I just ask God to hear the part I cannot put into words. Because He already knows every detail of what I am watching. He knows the people involved. He knows the motives underneath what I can see. He knows the truth of it. If you have ever felt that way — like you want to pray but cannot find the words — read When You Don’t Know How to Pray, Pray Anyway. That one was written for exactly this kind of moment. My job is not to figure it all out. My job is to stay close enough to Him that when He tells me to move, I move — and when He tells me to stay still, I do not let my flesh talk me out of it.
The Most Dangerous Reaction
There is one reaction that makes every storm worse regardless of who started it. Moving before God sends you. It does not matter how right you are about what you see. It does not matter how good your intentions are. It does not matter how much you love the people involved. If God did not send you, you are walking into a fight without your armor on.
James 1:19-20 says, “You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires.”
Quick to listen. Slow to speak. Slow to anger. That is not weakness. That is warfare — the kind that actually wins. Because the enemy wants you reactive. God wants you ready. Reactive people walk into traps. Ready people walk in covered. This connects directly to something I wrestled with in Winning the Argument While Losing Your Heart — because you can be completely right about what you see and still make everything worse by how you respond to it.
What I Am Choosing Right Now
I am going to be straight with you. Right now, in this season, I can see more than one storm forming. And every part of my flesh wants to do something about it. But I have lived long enough to know that my unfiltered reaction has never once made a storm smaller. So I am choosing to pray before I speak. I am choosing to ask who started it before I decide what to do about it. I am choosing to trust that if God wants me in the middle of it, He will make that clear — and He will go in with me. And if Satan is behind it, the worst thing I can do is give him the reaction he is looking for.
Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
Not be still and do nothing forever. Be still long enough to know who you are dealing with and who is actually in charge. He is. Not me. Not the situation. Not whatever is brewing out there. Him. And that is enough to keep me from walking into something I was never supposed to enter.
Closing Prayer
Lord, when I see storms forming around me, give me the wisdom to stop before I react. Help me ask the right question first — not what do I do but who started this. Show me when You are at work in what I am watching. Show me when the enemy is trying to bait me into a reaction that serves his plan and not Yours. Show me when it is my own fear or flesh driving what I feel. And in those moments when I cannot tell the difference, give me the peace to be still until You do. I trust You with what I see. I trust You with the people involved. I trust You with the outcome. You are God over every storm — the ones around me and the ones still building inside me. Amen.
