As climate change continues to produce storms with increasingly devastating force, communities and policy makers must look widely at how disaster preparedness is achieved in vulnerable communities and how those affected communities recover in the wake of tropical storms. In Fiji, religion has been used as both a tool for preparedness and a therapeutic means during recovery. This policy brief explains how Fijians affected by Cyclone Winston in 2016 interacted with the idea of God and religion following a major disaster. Researchers used interviews and excerpts from journals to understand how the people of Ba District in Viti Levu, an area significantly damaged by Cyclone Winston, responded to the storm in conjunction with their faith. Many religious iTaukei (indigenous) Fijians view the cyclone through biblical terms and express a mixture of repentance, awe, fear of God’s power, and gratitude for being spared. Many expressed the view that disaster preparedness includes spiritual preparedness, a theme which is not generally found in secular disaster policy. This brief finds that while secular aid organisations and state agencies often claim supremacy in the disaster space, faith-based organisations such as those who responded in Fiji contribute greatly to disaster recovery and provide significant local knowledge.