A teaching post for women who wonder if God is silent because something went wrong
“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.”
— 1 Peter 4:12 (NIV)
You said yes. You took the step. You walked through the door you’d been praying about for months.
And then things got harder.
Not the way you expected hard — not the everyday friction of a new challenge. Something more targeted. More discouraging. The phone calls that stopped coming. The team that suddenly fell apart. The resources that dried up. The relationship that hit unexpected turbulence. The door that opened and then seemed to swing halfway back.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, a quiet question surfaced:
Did I misread this? Did I miss God’s voice? Is the resistance a signal that I took a wrong turn?
This question is one of the most common and costly misinterpretations in the spiritual life. We have been quietly taught — through our theology, through our spiritual formation, through well-meaning people who wanted our faith to be comfortable — that if we’re doing the right thing, things will go smoothly. That blessing looks like ease. That the open door is the problem-free one.
Peter disagrees. And he has a track record worth taking seriously.
Don’t Be Surprised
Peter wrote 1 Peter 4 to people who were in genuine crisis. These were not abstract trials — these were people facing real persecution, real hardship, real social and economic consequences for their faith. And his word to them is disarming in its directness:
Do not be surprised.
Not do not be afraid, though that would have been appropriate. Not do not give up, though that too was needed. Do not be surprised. As if the surprise itself was part of the problem. As if their shock at the difficulty was part of what the enemy was using against them.
He goes further: as though something strange were happening to you.
The Greek word there implies something foreign, alien, out of place. And Peter is saying: this is not foreign. This is not out of place. This is the path. It is strange only if you believed something that isn’t true — that the life of following Jesus would be frictionless, that the calling would come without cost, that moving toward your purpose would feel like open road.
When Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus that Lazarus was sick, they expected Him to come immediately. He was the miracle-worker. He loved their brother. They had every reason to believe that proximity to Jesus meant protection from loss. And then He waited. And Lazarus died. And they sat in the excruciating gap between the prayer sent and the answer given — wondering, perhaps, if they had done something wrong. If He had forgotten. If faith was enough.
He hadn’t forgotten. He was not absent. He was working toward something they couldn’t see from inside the gap.
What Resistance Is Usually Telling You
Here is the reframe I want to offer you:
Resistance is rarely a signal that you’ve made a wrong turn. More often, it’s evidence that you’re on the right one.
The enemy does not spend significant energy opposing a life that isn’t moving toward anything. He does not marshal opposition against complacency, against mediocrity, against the well-intentioned but safely stationary. He focuses his attention on movement — on the steps of faith that threaten to change something, on the callings that are beginning to take actual ground.
Think about it this way: you don’t clear a path through a jungle you have no intention of traveling. The work of clearing is proportional to the value of what’s on the other side.
The resistance you’re facing may not be a sign of failure. It may be a sign of significance. That what you’ve stepped into matters enough to be opposed. That the yes you said is a threat to something the enemy doesn’t want disrupted.
I’m not suggesting that every difficult experience is spiritual warfare — sometimes a hard season is just a hard season, and it requires wisdom and discernment to navigate. But the pattern of step of faith → increased difficulty is so consistently documented in Scripture and in the lives of faithful people that we should stop being surprised by it and start expecting it.
The Gap Between the Prayer and the Answer
The Mary and Martha story in John 11 is one of the most honest portrayals of this experience in all of Scripture.
They sent word: The one you love is sick. The message is simple and direct. They know who Jesus is, and they believe He can help. They are not asking for a miracle in as many words — they’re trusting that He will know what to do.
And Jesus receives the message, and He stays where He is for two more days.
Lazarus dies in that gap.
I want to sit there for a moment, because that gap is where many of us live right now. The prayer has been sent. The yes has been said. And God, who could act immediately and hasn’t, seems to be waiting for something we can’t see.
Mary’s lament to Jesus — Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died — is not a failure of faith. It is the honest voice of grief in the presence of the One who is trustworthy enough to receive it. She doesn’t run from Him in her pain. She runs to Him.
And He doesn’t correct her. He weeps with her. And then He rolls the stone away.
The delay was not indifference. It was strategy — not a strategy that required Lazarus to die, but a strategy that was working toward something resurrection-shaped that the disciples and the sisters and the witnesses couldn’t have seen from inside the gap.
Your gap may be working toward something you can’t yet see either.
Three Things to Do in the Resistance
When the resistance comes — and it will — here is what I have found to be most useful:
Name it honestly to God. Don’t perform peace you don’t have. Don’t pretend the opposition isn’t real or that the discouragement isn’t landing. Bring it directly to Him — like Mary at the tomb, like Elijah under the broom tree, like the psalmists who wrote their hardest days into the words we still pray. God is not threatened by your honest lament. He is moved by it.
Look for what the resistance is protecting. This requires some discernment and some distance from the immediate pain of it, but it’s a useful question: What is on the other side of this resistance? What is it trying to prevent? Sometimes the answer gives you clarity about why the opposition is proportional to the calling.
Stay in community. Resistance does its best work in isolation. The lie that says you’re the only one going through this, no one would understand, it’s not worth burdening anyone is itself a form of resistance. The women in your life who know you, love you, and believe in your calling are not incidental to your breakthrough — they are often the mechanism of it. Stay connected.
Do not outrun your interior life. The temptation in resistance is to double down on external effort — to push harder, do more, try to overcome by sheer force of output. But resistance is often a signal that something internal needs tending first. Return to stillness. Return to His feet. Let the doing come from the being, not the other way around.
He Is Still Working in the Gap
Peter doesn’t stop at don’t be surprised. He continues: Rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:13)
This is not a theology of suffering for suffering’s sake. It’s an invitation to trust that what looks like setback from inside the gap looks different from the vantage point of what God is building. That the resistance you’re facing is not the end of the story. That the one who began a good work in you is still completing it — in the gaps, in the difficulty, in the seasons when nothing seems to be moving.
He is still working. He was working when Lazarus was in the tomb. He was working when the disciples’ boat was taking on water. He was working in every hard chapter of every faithful life that found its way into the story He has been telling since the beginning.
And He is working in yours.
The resistance is not evidence that He has stepped back. Often, it is evidence that He is about to step in.
For Reflection
- Is there a step of faith you’ve taken recently that has been followed by unexpected resistance? How have you been interpreting that resistance?
- When you encounter opposition or difficulty after a faithful yes, what is your default response — to push through, pull back, question your decision, or bring it to God?
- What would change about how you’re walking through a current hard season if you genuinely believed that the resistance was evidence you were on the right path?
This teaching is drawn from the At His Feet, In His Service series — a book and companion study for women navigating the tension of calling, resistance, and trust. Learn more at https://awakewomensministry.com.