What Is the Wind Telling You?
Day 20 — Headwind: Acts 27:25, Romans 8:31-32
Introduction
Yesterday you wrote the word on one side of the page and the resistance on the other. You looked at both together and asked which one came first.
Today we stay with that question — but we go deeper into it.
Because the principle is one thing. Paul on a ship in a Mediterranean storm, holding a word from an angel, standing up to deliver it to a terrified crew — that’s a remarkable story, and it carries real truth. But the truth only becomes formation when it moves from the page into the specific shape of your life. Not resistance can be a compass in the abstract. But this resistance, in this direction, may be telling you something about where you are and what you’re getting close to.
That’s the work of today. And it requires a kind of honest attention that most of us haven’t been taught to practice.
Scripture
“So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me.” — Acts 27:25 (NIV)
What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? — Romans 8:31-32 (NIV)
Reflection
What’s Happening in the Text
Paul’s confidence in Acts 27 is not bravado and it is not denial. He has already acknowledged the damage — you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete. He knows the ship will be lost. He is not pretending the storm isn’t real or that the cost hasn’t been significant. What he has is something more durable than optimism: a word that was spoken before the storm arrived, and a God whose character doesn’t change with the weather.
I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. Not just faith in God in general — faith that the specific word is still operative. That the destination is still the destination. That the storm’s violence has not revised the commission.
Romans 8 reaches underneath that confidence and names its foundation. If God did not withhold His own Son, there is nothing He would withhold that you actually need to get where He’s sending you. The resistance has a ceiling. The opposition has limits. The adversary can make the voyage costly — but he cannot change the coordinates.
What This Means for the Reader
Here is what you need to know about the resistance you are facing: it is not random.
Opposition clusters around things that matter. The enemy does not waste his efforts on inconsequential trajectories — he is too strategic for that. Which means that the places in your life where the headwind is most severe, most sustained, most personal are worth examining carefully. Not with fear. With the specific attention of a navigator reading the weather.
Where is the resistance loudest right now? What direction is it pushing against? What is it trying to stop, discourage, disqualify, or delay? And here is the question underneath all of those: is that the thing God called you to?
Because if the answer is yes — if the resistance is concentrated precisely at the intersection of your calling and your current season — then what feels like opposition may be the most directional information you have. You are not lost. You are not off course. You may be closer than you think to the thing that matters most, and the storm’s intensity is the confirmation rather than the contradiction.
This is not an excuse to ignore wisdom, plow through every closed door, or mistake stubbornness for faith. The test is not the intensity of the resistance. The test is the word. Does the word hold? Was it spoken? Has it been confirmed? Is it still alive in you, even under the weight of what’s pressing against it?
If it is — hold the heading. The Captain has been to the other side of this storm. He has already calculated what you need to arrive. And what He did not withhold at the cross, He will not withhold now.
You don’t attack something that isn’t a threat. The resistance that’s wearing you down may be the most honest confirmation that you’re getting close.
Grace Note
“The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.” — Psalm 138:8 (ESV)
The psalmist doesn’t ask God to remove the opposition. He asks God to fulfill the purpose — and rests the request on something that doesn’t change: the steadfast love that endures. The work of God’s hands does not get abandoned mid-voyage. What He started in you, He intends to finish.
Prayer Prompt
Jesus, I’ve been sitting with this question — what is the resistance telling me? And I’ll be honest: I’m not entirely sure I want the answer. Because if the resistance is concentrated where I think it is, that means the thing I’ve been most tempted to walk away from may be the very thing I’m supposed to hold.
I don’t know if I have Paul’s courage. He stood up in front of everyone and said keep up your courage when the ship was coming apart. I’m still working on believing it privately, let alone saying it out loud. But I know You spoke. I know there was a word. And I know that the storm’s opinion of my destination is not the same as Yours.
So I’m asking for the thing Paul had — not his circumstances, not his dramatic angel visitation, but his settled confidence that the word is still good. That what You said before the storm is still true in the middle of it. That the resistance pressing hardest against me is not evidence that I’ve gotten it wrong, but evidence that I’m going somewhere that matters.
Hold me to the heading. Finish what You started. And when I’m tempted to read the storm as a verdict — Remind me who set the course and is at the helm. Amen.
Response
1. Carry It Forward (Connective): Return to what you wrote yesterday — the word on one side, the resistance on the other. Underneath both, write your honest answer to this question: Is the resistance concentrated where God called me? You don’t have to have certainty. Write what you actually think, not what you think you should think.
2. Mark the Heading (Kinesthetic): Find something small and physical to carry with you today — a stone, a coin, a folded piece of paper with the word written on it. Something that fits in your pocket. Every time you touch it today, let it be a reminder that the destination hasn’t changed. The Captain has the heading. You’re still on course.
3. Say It to Someone (Relational): Find one person today — someone who knows what you’ve been carrying — and tell them one true thing about where you believe God is taking you. Not the resistance. The destination. Speak the word out loud to another person. What Paul did for the crew on that ship, you can do for someone in your life today.
To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/headwind
© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way