In John 6:16-21, Jesus comes to his disciples in a storm, walking on the water. The passage is only six verses – a boat, a headwind, a man walking on water – easy to read past quickly. But when we zoom out the more we see how much it teaches us about discipleship to Jesus.
Following Jesus doesn’t always feel like spiritual highs. A lot of times it feels like rowing into headwinds. Sometimes it feels like rowing into a violent storm that Jesus himself sent you into.
Two Ways God Works: Consolation and Desolation
Right before this scene, Jesus has just fed five thousand people. It’s a mighty miracle. The crowd wants to crown him king on the spot. It’s the highest of highs. So what does Jesus do with that momentum? He makes his disciples get in a boat (the Greek word is anankazo, compelled, forced) and sends them out alone, at night, toward a storm. Consider the whiplash the disciples must have felt. From being at the center of the largest crowd they had ever drawn to being alone in a boat. From miracle bread to waves and wind. From the exaltation of the crowd to exhaustion in a storm wondering if Jesus had abandoned them.
That’s not an accident. I believe there is a principle here we need to understand — God uses both highs and headwinds in our discipleship.
Others have called this consolation and desolation.
Consolations are the mountaintops. Circumstances are good, and God feels close and obvious. Desolations are the deserts and the storms. Circumstances are hard, and God feels far away.
We see this all across the Bible — Abraham gets a great moment of faith, then a famine. Moses gets the parted sea and the mountain at Sinai, then forty years in the wilderness. David slays Goliath, then spends a decade on the run for his life. Paul gets extraordinary revelation, then a thorn he begs God to remove.
God uses both consolation and desolation to form us.
Given the choice, you’d choose consolation every time. So would I. Young believers especially tend to live off consolation. They chase the spiritual high, often mistaking spiritual warm fuzzies for faith. But there is a work God wants to do in us that he can only do in desolation. If we never understand that, we’ll spend our whole walk with Jesus either chasing highs or panicking in the lows, and we’ll miss what he’s actually doing in both.
Why This Framework Matters for Your Growth
Here’s why this matters so much. Most of us build our whole theology of spiritual maturity around consolation. We assume growth looks like an upward line: more faith, more peace, more evidence, less struggle. So when the headwind hits, we don’t read it as part of the plan. We read it as a detour, a mistake, or a sign we’ve done something wrong.
That’s a dangerous place to stand as a disciple, because it means the moment God does his deepest work in you is the exact moment you’ll be tempted to walk away from him.
Maybe some part of your discipleship feels like a headwind right now. You obeyed. You trusted him. Instead of smooth water, you’re rowing hard and getting nowhere.
- The marriage that’s taking far more work than you expected.
- The ministry that’s costing more than it seems to be producing.
- The step of faith that was followed by financial strain that won’t let up.
- The season where it’s 3 a.m. and the baby won’t sleep and you can’t remember the last time you felt close to God.
It shouldn’t be this hard, right? You did what he asked.
Here’s what this passage won’t let us avoid. Jesus does not promise to protect his disciples from headwinds. He promises to see them through. He didn’t calm the sea before the disciples set out. He let them row. He let them sweat. He let them grow weary and wet and afraid for the better part of a night before he showed up.
Desolation Reveals What Consolation Can’t
Why would he do that? Because the headwind exposes something calm water never would.
It’s easy to trust Jesus when the water is glass and the wind’s at your back. It’s in the headwind, tired and wet and frustrated, that you find out whether you actually believe he’s good, or whether you’ve just been coasting on good circumstances.
In Deuteronomy 8:2, God tells Israel plainly that the wilderness existed to reveal what was in their hearts. Look at the sequence. The plagues, the exodus, the parted sea were all spectacular and easy to believe in. Then came the wilderness. It wasn’t random, and it wasn’t punishment. It was purposed.
James, Jesus’s own brother, says it directly:
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 1:2-4
Steadfastness has a full effect. That’s maturity. And James says it’s produced by testing, not avoided by it.
Kyle Strobel, in his new book, puts it this way: “Our call is not to generate an experience or get out of desolation but to inquire of the Lord about what it means to be faithful and obedient from the heart.” I’d add one more layer. Our call is simply to look for the Lord.
In desolation, most of us default to one of three postures. We assume God is punishing us. We assume he’s abandoned us. Or we go to work manufacturing our way back to a feeling of consolation. What we miss is that God wants to meet us right there, in the dark, in the boat. Not after the storm. In it.
Jesus Doesn’t Calm Every Storm. He Comes Into It.
Here’s where the passage turns. The disciples have been rowing for hours, exhausted, when they see Jesus walking toward them on the water, and it doesn’t comfort them. It terrifies them. Mark tells us they thought he was a ghost.
That should tell us something. Jesus isn’t showing up as their buddy to help row. In the storm, he reveals who he actually is.
Then he speaks: “It is I; do not be afraid.” In Greek, two words: ego eimi. The same two words God speaks to Moses from the burning bush. “I AM WHO I AM… Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). This is a theophany, a visible unveiling of God’s own glory, right in the middle of the wind and the waves. The one walking toward them across the chaos is the same I AM who spoke from the fire.
Notice this wasn’t a public miracle. No crowd saw it. Only the Twelve, in the dark, in the storm. Some of what Jesus wants to teach you about himself he can only teach you in the boat. Not in a sermon, not in a podcast, not in a Bible study. In the 3 a.m. moment where you have nothing left to offer him but your fear.
This is why understanding consolation and desolation isn’t optional theology for the mature disciple. It’s the difference between running from your headwinds and recognizing them as the very place Jesus intends to reveal himself.
His Presence Is What Carries You Through
Once the disciples know it’s him, everything changes. They’re glad to take him into the boat. Then, immediately, they’re at the shore. John doesn’t even tell us the wind stopped. He just tells us they were carried.
That’s the whole point. Jesus sends his people into real headwinds, not because he’s careless with us, but because the headwind will show us the depth of his love more than good circumstances ever could. His presence doesn’t always remove the storm. His presence carries us through it, and it’s that carrying that matures us.
If you’re in a headwind season right now, tired and wondering if Jesus sent you into something he’s forgotten about, he hasn’t. He sees you. He isn’t far off and indifferent. He is coming.
The Ultimate Desolation
This passage points to something bigger than a night on the Sea of Galilee. It points to another storm, one Jesus wouldn’t just walk into, but be swallowed by. The storm of Calvary. The winds and waves of sin’s penalty and death’s sting.
That storm should have wrecked us. Instead, Jesus entered the ultimate desolation, forsaken so we would never have to be, so that anyone who turns to him in repentance and faith would be carried safely to the other side. We who were far off, he has brought near. We who stood under the storm of God’s judgment, he has made peace for by the blood of his cross (Col. 1:20).
That’s the gospel underneath the boat story, and it’s why this framework matters so much. Peace with God, and the presence of God with us, to carry us through whatever headwind we’re in.
If you’re walking through a season of desolation right now, I’d love to pray with you and talk it through. Reach out here.
