When The Winds Are Released

THE STILLNESS BEFORE THE STORM

There is a moment in the story of Noah that almost no one talks about.

It isn’t dramatic.

It isn’t noisy.

It isn’t the rain or the rising waters or the thunder cracking over the mountains.

It’s the seven days of silence.

Noah entered the ark.

The animals were inside.

The door shut behind him — shut by the very hand of God.

And then…

Nothing.

No wind,

no cloudburst,

no storm on the horizon.

The world outside carried on as if nothing had changed.

If anything, the people grew more confident in their unbelief.

They may have gathered around that massive wooden vessel shaking their heads,

laughing at the sight of a preacher locked inside a floating barn on dry ground.

I can imagine the scene — the dust rising, the torches lit, the laughter growing louder.

A flood-rave at the ramp of the ark.

Delay became mockery.

Silence became evidence that judgment was a myth.

But inside that ark, Noah sat knowing something the world refused to believe:

**Delay is not denial — it is mercy.

And mercy has an expiration point.**

The stillness before judgment is not empty space.

It is God holding back the winds.

It is God extending opportunity.

It is God shaping character.

The same God who held back the waters of the deep in Noah’s day

is holding back the four winds of strife in ours.

Revelation says four angels are stationed at the four corners of the earth,

their hands gripping forces that would tear the world apart.

And they hold, not because God is slow,

but because God is merciful.

The angels hold…

and hold…

and hold…

Why?

So that something can happen in us

before something happens to the world.

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CHARACTER BEFORE CRISIS

It is a sobering truth, but it is a revival truth:

**The final crisis will not build your character —

it will reveal the one you already have.**

Noah didn’t become faithful inside the ark.

He brought his faithfulness with him.

The sealing in Revelation is not a last-minute divine emergency mark;

it is the natural outflow of a life surrendered day by day.

And this is the message the Spirit has been pressing into my soul:

> Character is the only thing that will pass through the final storm.

And character is formed in small, daily acts of trust long before the winds are released.

We like to ask how we will stand in the last days.

The better question is:

How are we standing today?

Because who I am today is who I will be when the winds begin to blow.

A crisis doesn’t invent character — it exposes it.

It presses out what is already inside.

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THE KUWAIT WAR — WHEN CHARACTER MET CRISIS

I learned this in a way I never expected — in Kuwait, during the war.

Those were days when the air was thick with fear,

when you didn’t know if the next hour would bring safety or danger,

peace or tragedy.

Emotionally, I ran the full range — fear, despair, confusion, weakness.

I discovered things about myself that I wish were not true.

I discovered that my character, the real substance of who I was,

needed to be far more present than it was.

War does not construct character —

it simply reveals what has been forming all along.

And yet, in the middle of that turmoil, God brought someone into my life

who changed everything.

Her name was Sarah.

She was the daughter of an emir —

young, courageous, compassionate —

and she found her way to me while I was in hiding.

She brought food.

She brought news.

She brought encouragement.

But she brought more than that.

In the quiet of those hidden hours, she asked questions about life,

about hope,

about Jesus.

And one day she said the most extraordinary words:

> “I want to know Jesus as my Savior.”

Heaven draws near in moments like that.

Even in a war zone, the Holy Spirit whispers in ways that cannot be silenced.

But Sarah noticed something else.

She noticed that I did not blend in very well.

I was an American in a place where Americans were hunted.

My lighter hair and lighter skin were a liability.

One day she came with henna, smiling as she handed it to me,

hoping it might darken my hair enough to help me move unnoticed.

We tried.

We laughed quietly.

It did nothing.

A few days later she returned, glancing over her shoulder,

holding a box in her hands —

Clairol black hair dye.

“This one is stronger,” she said.

So I put it on.

Hair, beard, even some of my skin —

anything to blend in,

anything to survive.

And then, wearing an old Egyptian dishdasha,