Too often the religious life is seen as a superstitious life. The religious person prays to a deity in order to affect the world around. The individual, through a series of rituals or incantations, entices the gods to sway the fortunes and manipulate an outcome to the desires of the individual. The mature follower of Jesus knows that prayer is less about changing God and more about changing the self, but nonetheless prayer is seen by some as nothing more than vain attempts to change the future.
Christianity teaches a way of life that is aware we cannot control the storms around us. We cannot control much in the world and there are so many things that are beyond our influence. Christianity knows that storms will come, no matter what we do, and we cannot control them. We cannot make it stop raining. We can only learn to live through the storm.
Christianity teaches a way of life that does not seek to control the storms but to give people a solid foundation to stand on when the storms come. Christianity is a way of life that weathers the storms not eliminates them. Eliminating the storms is a dream of utopians, weathering storms is the hope of Christians.
Perhaps this is why many are disinterested in Christianity. Christianity has been taught as a way to eliminate the storms by just doing the right things (the right prayer, right profession, etc.). Additionally, people have tried weather-controlling Christianity and seen that it does not work - the storms still come. Can we build churches less focused on controlling and more on standing firm when the rains begin to fall.