Meeting God in the Whirlwind: Trusting Him When Answers Never Come

by Bart Denny

There are moments in life when what we want most from God isn’t relief—it’s clarity.

Many of us can endure pain more easily than we can endure not knowing why. When life goes dark, we instinctively reach for explanations. We tell ourselves that if God would just explain what He’s doing—if He would tell us the reason, the lesson, the purpose—then we could handle the rest.

And so our prayers subtly change. They stop sounding like cries for help and start sounding like demands for answers:

What did I miss?

What are You trying to teach me?

Why this?

When the silence stretches on, something settles into our hearts. Not outright rebellion, but frustration mixed with confusion. We’re still praying. Still showing up. Still believing. But underneath it all is an assumption we rarely name: If I understood what God was doing, this would be easier.

That assumption isn’t unique. It’s deeply human.

We live in a world that runs on explanations. When something breaks, we diagnose it. When something goes wrong, we look for causes. When someone hurts us, we want to know why. So when suffering enters our lives, we bring that same expectation to God. We assume peace will come when the mystery clears up, that faith will steady once the explanation arrives.

And honestly, that feels reasonable. If God is good, wise, and loving, surely He can tell us what He’s doing.

That expectation shapes how we approach God in hard seasons. We don’t just want His presence; we want His reasons.

Which is why it’s comforting to know that for thousands of years, God’s people have been asking the same question. And there may be no clearer example in Scripture than the book of Job.

When “Why?” Isn’t Answered

By the time we reach Job 38, Job has lost everything—his livelihood, his wealth, his security, and in a single devastating wave, all ten of his children. His body has turned against him with painful sores that bring no relief. What remains are a grieving wife and a group of well-meaning but misguided friends.

Like suffering people have always done, Job asks the question that rises naturally from deep pain: Why?

Why did this happen?

Why would God allow this?

What did I do to deserve it?

And God does not answer.

Instead, Job’s friends step in with explanations. They are certain they understand how God works. Their message, repeated in different ways, is always the same: There must be a reason. There must be a cause. And Job, it must be your fault.

Their theology is tidy. Their certainty is strong. And none of it helps.

Rather than easing Job’s pain, their answers intensify it. Instead of drawing him closer to God, their confidence drives him deeper into anguish. Job refuses to curse God, but he does demand a hearing. He wants an explanation.

Chapter after chapter passes. Job speaks. His friends respond. The arguments circle endlessly. The pain remains. And God is still silent.

Surely now—after all the suffering, all the human explanations, all the unanswered prayers—God will finally explain Himself.

God Speaks—but Not as Expected

When God finally does speak in Job 38, He does not answer the “why.”

Instead of an explanation, God gives Job a revelation of who He is.

“Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm” (Job 38:1, all Scripture quotations are from the New International Version).

The word LORD here is Yahweh—the covenant-keeping God of Israel. This is not an impersonal force or a distant deity. It is the God Job has trusted all along. And He does not whisper. He speaks from the whirlwind.

Before God addresses Job’s questions, He re-establishes the relationship. God is God. Job is not.

God’s first words do not defend His actions. They reposition Job’s perspective.

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” (Job 38:4).

The question isn’t meant to humiliate Job. It’s meant to remind him where he stands. Reality did not begin with Job’s suffering, and it does not revolve around it. Job’s story matters—but it is not the center of the universe.

This is how God consistently works. He reveals Himself before He resolves confusion. At the burning bush, God tells Moses who He is before telling him what He will do. In Isaiah’s vision, God reveals His holiness before issuing a call. When Jesus calms the storm, He doesn’t explain the weather—He reveals His authority.

God addresses fear and confusion not by shrinking Himself to fit our questions, but by expanding our vision of who He is.

A Larger World Than Our Pain

As God continues speaking in Job 38, His questions move beyond Job’s personal suffering and into the vastness of creation itself. Every question exposes the limits of human perspective.

Job was not present when the foundations of the earth were laid. He did not set its boundaries or establish its order. Long before Job existed, before his suffering ever began, creation came into being amid joy—“while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7).

God is not belittling Job. He is enlarging reality.

Scripture never treats suffering as insignificant. But it consistently refuses to treat it as ultimate.

That distinction matters.

When God asks Job where he was at creation, He isn’t dismissing Job’s pain. He is correcting the assumption that pain defines reality. The world did not begin with Job’s loss, and it will not end with it either.

The same truth echoes throughout Scripture. Isaiah reminds weary exiles that the Creator still reigns. Paul tells us in Romans 8 that creation itself groans—not aimlessly, but toward redemption. Suffering is real, but it is not the final word.

God’s questions relocate Job’s pain inside a world God still governs, sustains, and will one day restore.

From Answers to Encounter

After God finishes speaking—after chapter upon chapter of divine questions—Job still does not receive an explanation. But he receives something better.

“I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted… Surely I spoke of things I did not understand” (Job 42:2–3).

Job’s repentance is not an admission of secret sin. God Himself affirms that Job has spoken rightly. What Job relinquishes is not honesty, but presumption—the belief that understanding must come before trust.

“My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you” (Job 42:5).

Job moves from information to encounter. From distance to presence.

Faith matures not when all questions are answered, but when trust replaces our demand for full understanding.

Job still does not know why. But now he knows who. And that is enough.

When God Gives Us Himself Instead of Answers

Most of us will never hear God speak from a whirlwind. But many of us know what it’s like to live in the long silence Job endured. We know unanswered prayers, unresolved grief, and questions that linger.

And faith is tested not by whether God can explain Himself, but by whether we will trust Him when He doesn’t.

Even when God is silent, He is not absent. Even when He does not explain Himself, He has not lost control.

Scripture does not call us to trust God after everything makes sense. It calls us to trust Him instead of leaning on our own understanding. Sometimes the most faithful prayer we can offer isn’t “Explain this,” but “Help me trust You here.”

When the “why” remains unanswered, God invites us to hold tightly to the “who.”

And that trust is not blind. It is anchored in what God has already made clear—most fully in Jesus Christ. The God who met Job in the whirlwind has met us at the cross, not with every answer, but with His own life given for us.

Choosing Trust in the Waiting

Most of us live somewhere in the middle of the story—not at the resolution, but in the waiting. Faith there looks less like certainty and more like staying. Listening. Holding on.

If you are in a season where clarity has not come, that does not mean your faith is weak. It may mean your faith is growing.

Sometimes the deepest work God does in us is teaching us not just to understand Him—but to trust Him.

About the Author

Dr. Bart Denny is the lead pastor of Pathway – A Wesleyan Church in Saranac, Michigan. He is a retired U.S. Navy officer, a seminary instructor, and a pastor with a heart for honest faith in hard seasons. This blog post is adapted from the sermon “Meeting God in the Whirlwind: Trusting Him When Answers Never Come,” preached on February 8, 2026. The full sermon can be viewed on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g41NK-JKvqE