A Wind from the Wilderness
Job 1:13–20
Preached at Seddon Baptist Church — Pell City, Alabama
August 23, 2026

There are some churches that become very dear to your heart through the years, and Seddon Baptist Church is one of those places for me. I cannot express how much I love this church and its pastor. Pastor Dale Foote has been a mentor and friend to me for the last fifteen years, and I have watched God do so many wonderful things at Seddon through the years.

Every time I go there hoping to be a blessing to them, I leave with my own cup overflowing. There is such a sweet sense of the presence of the Lord when this church gathers together, and I treasure every opportunity Pastor Dale gives me to stand behind his pulpit.

This year was a little different. Normally my wife and daughter travel with me, and we arrive in Pell City the evening before. But with my oldest daughter expecting our second grandbaby any day now, my wife wanted to stay close to Chattanooga. So I got up early Sunday morning and made the drive to Pell City alone.

I had slept very little the night before, and this particular message had been unusually heavy on my heart. When I stood to preach, I struggled.

That has happened before. It will happen again.

Sometimes you walk into the pulpit and everything seems to flow. Other times, every sentence seems to have to be pulled uphill. Whether that comes from spiritual warfare, the weight of the Biblical subject, physical weariness, or some combination of all three, I can’t always say. I just knew Sunday morning that I was having a difficult time delivering what God had put on my heart.

But I was obedient. And the results belonged to the Lord.

The message came from one phrase in Job 1:19 that has echoed in my heart for several years: “There came a great wind from the wilderness…” Job never saw that wind coming. He could not stop it. He could not explain where it came from or why God had permitted it. All he could see was what it left behind.

And sometimes that is where we live.

We can describe the wind. We can tell you when it came. We can tell you what happened and what it cost us. But we cannot always explain the wilderness from which it came.

The burden of the message was simply this: We may not understand the wind from the wilderness, but we can trust the God over the wilderness.

Job teaches us that faith does not mean pretending our wounds do not hurt. He rent his garment. He shaved his head. He grieved. He questioned. He wept. Yet somehow, through all of those tears, his wounded heart still turned toward God. Two things fell that terrible day—the house fell, and Job fell. But the house fell in destruction; Job fell in devotion. When everything around him was falling, Job fell toward God.

And above everything Job could see was a truth he could not yet understand: there was still a Sovereign over the wilderness. The wind was never sovereign. Satan was never sovereign. The sorrow was never sovereign. There was still only one throne in the universe, and God was still sitting upon it.

I walked away from Seddon Sunday feeling that I had struggled through the message.

Then God reminded me who gives the increase.

A young lady was there that morning who works as a waitress at a local restaurant. Someone from Seddon had invited her to church. That morning, she trusted Jesus Christ as her Savior.

Glory to God!

Several others came to me with tears in their eyes and told me how directly the message had spoken to where they were living right then.

I usually do not write very much about people’s responses to a message. But I wanted to record this one because the Lord used it to teach my own heart again something I already knew but sometimes forget.

Paul said, “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.” — 1 Corinthians 3:6

The power was never in how well I thought I preached it.

The power is in the Word of God, and the increase belongs to Him.

Maybe you are living through your own wind from the wilderness right now. Maybe life has been divided into before and after. Maybe you know what happened, but you still cannot understand why. Job gives us something greater than an explanation: “But he knoweth the way that I take.” You may not know. But He knows. You may not be able to see God. But God still sees you.

I hope you will take some time to listen to “A Wind from the Wilderness.” My prayer is that somewhere in the message the Lord will remind you that when you cannot understand His ways, trace His hand, or explain the wind, you can still bow before His throne and say, “Blessed be the name of the LORD.”