Mike Weaver (2nd from left) and his band Big Daddy Weave are all smiles, despite some hurricane related struggles last year.

Mike Weaver has weathered some serious storms—literal and spiritual—in the past year. As leader of the band Big Daddy Weave, he wondered why new songs for their new album just "weren't coming to him." As the band prayed for direction, Hurricane Ivan leveled his parents' house, where Weaver was living at the time. But surprisingly, Ivan also brought some answers to those prayers, opening Weaver's eyes to God's power—and his own powerlessness. Weaver had been wrestling with personal struggles, but in the wake of Ivan, he gave them up to God, finding release from the bondage that had held him back for years. Weaver recently shared his journey—from that dark and stormy night to the bright side of hope and healing—in this interview.

Trials and suffering will eventually affect everyone. For the Weaver family, it really struck last year, didn't it?

Mike Weaver: Suffering is the weirdest thing. You start having a different set of eyes and ears because of how different the world is for you.

My parents' house was destroyed by Hurricane Ivan last year. It was turned into an aquarium, but it's really nothing compared to the physical pain many people go through every day. The house, our office, and everything inside that was lost were simply material things. Only some of those things can be replaced, but that's nothing compared to having something terrible done to your body. That's so much more harsh to accept and work through.

How did the hurricane affect you and the band?

Weaver: Our story of loss and suffering goes back to when we were working on the record. We were on the road and there just wasn't any real fodder for new songs. So, as we began to pray about why the songs weren't coming to us, the hurricane came and trashed everything in our area. The only house that was truly affected badly was my folks' place. That's kind of our office, and that's where I was living at the time. When the hurricane stuck our community, it threw our lives completely out of order.

My folks moved in with [my brother] Jay and his wife, who were just in their first year of marriage and who just found out they were pregnant. So, that was an "interesting" situation for all of them. Our community was torn to pieces, but then we saw how people began to join together. In times like that, you see things come out of people that look a whole lot like Jesus. That's what we saw, and it was beautiful.

Did that time leave you with more understanding or confusion about your life and your career?

Weaver: I don't understand why it takes situations like that one in order to bring the best out of us. I don't know why God uses trials to put the things in us that we were asking. The only thing I know about that is that in the middle of it, the perspective we had was different than when it all started.

Was the hurricane the biggest struggle of your life so far?

Weaver: No. I went through pain this past year on a whole other level while the Lord was trying to remove some things in my personal life. He told me one day that the things I battle on the exterior are because of a root that is deep inside of me. He told me that root was the fear of being rejected. The Lord began to uproot that from me, saying, "If you'll allow me to, I'll remove it from you.."

I wondered why the Lord was asking my permission. My thought was, "Just get rid of it!" But he took me through a time of dealing with hurts from my past—dealing with things that were deep down inside. I was taken through the path of having to deal with faces and situations from the past that I had buried.

I grew up as the "fat kid" in school and lived with the rejection of who I was. During my [recent] time of uprooting, for a few days all I could do was weep—yet nothing would come out. In the middle of all of that, I found God. I don't think I would've ever been desperate enough for him while in my times of comfort. So, deep in the trial, in the discomfort, I found a great measure of who God is; I found the character of Jesus in a whole new way of understanding. I think that's God's highest priority for us.

And it seems that's best understood in the center of the conflict—in the "eye of the storm" if you will.

Weaver: That's so true! We live in a Christian culture that says that if you embrace the gospel, then you'll go on to live a life of wealth, wisdom, and happiness. There's nothing wrong with nice things, but before God wants to give us anything else, I think his highest priority is for us to be conformed to the image of Jesus.

I don't know why God allows what he allows, or why he so often works through trials. But I find that most often he's poking a hole into the ground so he can plant seed into there. The poking hurts. The conflict between us, in all of our relationships, is something we have to work through. That presents us with the opportunities to find the Lord in a place we didn't expect to find him.

What else have you found inside suffering?

Weaver: Through all of these situations I've mentioned, the Lord has told me that if anything is to be birthed, if anything is to be fashioned or made, it takes some form of conflict. I mean, think about having a baby. For the woman, it's a painful period of time. But at the end of the season, there is this new life, a new birth.

When we're at various stages of that process, we often cannot see what good is ahead for us. And there are some days when all we can do is hang on to the last thing that God said. But in the fullness of time, I truly believe we will see the hand of God and what he was doing.

Personally speaking, I would be willing to go through it all again. And not only am I not angry at God for letting this happen, but I wouldn't have it any other way because of what he did in my life. When the hurricane hit, I moved to Nashville because of it. And that brought about the start of a dating relationship with Kandice that led to our wedding back in May of this year.

It's puzzling yet fascinating that God can bring beauty out of pain and suffering.

Weaver: I was talking with some friends about a little girl in the news who had been missing for six weeks. Her parents were killed and her brother was gone. She was abused by that guy multiple times, and I was thinking about how she's never going to have a day in her life when she doesn't remember what happened to her. We were left wondering where God was for her.

Then, it was as if the Lord pulled back the curtain for me to see his pain for what had happened. It broke me in two, and it left me on the floor repenting because it made me aware of sin in my life. It felt as if I were shaking hands with that same thing that hurt that little girl. No matter what we think it is, it's part of the same side—the side that opposes God's holiness. The Lord allows that to continue until the fullness of time.

God has not exempted himself from pain. He experiences pain on a level that we've never even dealt with—even more than that little girl went through. That all hit me in a profound way. I've not seen the entire effect of that moment played out in my life yet. I mean, if the Creator of the universe, who can do anything, does not exempt himself from pain, then why in the world do we think we're going to get out of going through our painful times?

So, what's that mean for you?

Weaver: I've been foolishly believing through all of these years that when I'm in a painful situation, I would immediately start rebuking the devil. But the Lord allows that to happen, and he has bigger plans. As Jeremiah said, "He has plans for our future, plans to prosper us." God wants us to prosper, even as our souls prosper. That just puts the idea of prosperity in a true, new light. Biblical prosperity is a whole new understanding.

Now, the times I look to the times in my life when I got my way, I see them as my biggest failures. I was adamant about doing it my way, but all I see now was that I messed up each of those times. In all, God's goodness is not reliant upon the situations that surround me, and that's so good to finally understand.

For more about Big Daddy Weave, visit the band's artist page on our site. Click here to read our review of their latest, What I Was Made For. Visit Christianbook.com to listen to sound clips and buy the music.

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