I want to say something plainly before anything else: this book was not written from a comfortable distance.
I did not sit down to write Riding Out of the Storms as someone theorising about trials from a position of ease. I wrote it as someone who has stood in the middle of the kind of seasons that make you question everything, and who, in those very seasons, had to reach for something that held. Something that would not move even when everything else did.
That something was God. Not just the idea of God, but the actual, living, present, faithful God of Scripture who has never once cancelled a promise He made.
“The presence of the storm does not mean the absence of God. On the contrary, it is often in the storm that we see Him most clearly!”
This is the truth at the heart of this book. And I wrote it for every person who has ever looked at their situation and wondered whether God could still be trusted in it.
We live in a world that tells you two contradictory lies about suffering. The first lie is that following God should protect you from storms. The second lie is that when storms come, they mean God has abandoned you.
Both are lies. And I have watched them destroy people’s faith.
The truth is that Jesus Himself said it plainly: ‘In this world you will have trouble.’ Not might. Will. The Christian life was never promised to be storm-free. What was promised is infinitely better, that Christ would be in the boat with you!
I wrote this book because I believe the Church needs a language for suffering that is honest, biblical, and hopeful. Not the false cheerfulness that says ‘just pray more and it will go away.’ And not the fatalism that says ‘this is just how things are.’ But the sturdy, grounded, scripture-soaked confidence that says: I do not understand this storm, but I know the One who governs it, and He is good!
Riding Out of the Storms moves through thirteen chapters that walk the reader from a place of honest reckoning with suffering all the way through to emergence, that moment when you come out of the trial not merely relieved but transformed.
We begin by understanding storms. Not minimising them. Not spiritualising them prematurely. But naming them for what they are: real, painful, disorienting forces that come in many forms, financial, relational, physical, spiritual, emotional.
Then we move into the resources God has placed in our hands for enduring them. His mercy, which is not sentiment but fierce, loyal love that refuses to abandon us. His favour, which does not always remove the storm but carries us through it. The weapon of thanksgiving, which does not deny pain but declares that pain will not have the final word. His promises, His Word, prayer, community, and His own unchanging character.
“Hope does not promise the absence of storms, but the presence of Christ in every one of them!”
And then we look at what emerges on the other side. Because storms do not only take. When surrendered to God, they give. They give depth, compassion, resilience, a clearer understanding of what truly matters, and a voice that can speak healing to others who are still in the middle of what you have just come through.
This book is for the person who is in a storm right now and cannot see the shore. It is for the one who came out of a storm recently and is still trying to make sense of what happened. It is for the minister or counsellor who walks with hurting people and needs language and theology that is both honest and hopeful.
And it is for the person who has not yet faced a severe trial but knows one will come, because that is simply the nature of this life. This book will prepare you. It will put anchors in your soul before the winds arrive.
You are not alone in your storm. God is in your boat. And this book will help you find Him there!
Riding Out of the Storms is available now