Learning to Stand When the World is Shaking

Have you ever been following GPS when suddenly you realize the road it wants you to take isn’t there anymore? Your phone confidently says, “Proceed to the route,” while you’re staring at a construction barricade thinking, “I WOULD… IF THERE WAS STILL A ROAD THERE.” I wonder if that’s how a lot of people feel about life right now.

There’s a tension in the air that most of us can feel, even if we struggle to put our finger on exactly what it is. Groceries cost more. Housing costs more. Insurance costs more. Debt is everywhere. Technology is changing at an incredible pace. There’s geopolitical uncertainty, cultural change, and enough breaking news every morning to make you want to throw your phone across the room before you’ve even finished your coffee.

The problem is that pressure doesn’t stay neatly contained in one area of our lives. Financial pressure eventually finds its way into marriages. Debt affects parenting decisions. Stress impacts relationships. Lack of margin can even keep us from pursuing dreams, opportunities, and callings that God has placed inside of us. Eventually, the question becomes bigger than, “How do I make it through this?” The better question is, “Who do I need to become so that I can remain unshaken no matter what happens around me?”

Two Very Different Stories
Depending on who you listen to, there are two very different stories being told about the moment we’re living in. One says we’re approaching an extraordinary season of spiritual awakening, opportunity, innovation, and even economic transformation. There are people praying for and expecting a tremendous move of God and a harvest unlike anything we’ve experienced before. Then there’s another narrative that talks about economic disruption, centralized systems, geopolitical instability, and changes happening around the world that can sound remarkably similar to things Scripture tells us will eventually take place.

So which one is right? Maybe that’s not even the best question. Could tremendous opportunity and tremendous difficulty exist at the same time? Absolutely. In fact, Scripture repeatedly shows us seasons where God was moving powerfully while the world around His people was incredibly unstable. The prophets even used the phrase “the great and terrible day of the Lord.” Great and terrible. Those two words sitting beside each other tell us something important. The same season can look very different depending on where you’re standing and what you’re prepared for.

That’s why I’m less interested in trying to predict exactly what happens next and much more interested in asking, “God, how should we live right now?”

What Happens When the Map Changes?
Most of us were handed a pretty straightforward map for life. Work hard, get a good job, buy a house, pay your bills, save some money, put something into retirement, take care of your family, work for 40 years, and hopefully there’s enough waiting for you at the end to enjoy life. For generations, that map served a lot of people pretty well. But what happens when the terrain changes and the map doesn’t?

Some of us remember MapQuest. You’d print six pages of directions before leaving the house, and heaven help you if you missed turn number 17. Once you were off course, those papers had absolutely no idea where you were. Modern navigation works differently. It recognizes where you actually are, sees what has changed around you, and recalculates. Maybe we need to do a little recalculating too.

That doesn’t mean everything previous generations taught us was wrong. They navigated the world they understood, and many of the principles they gave us—hard work, discipline, saving, generosity, and living within our means—are timeless. But some of the assumptions surrounding those principles may need to be reconsidered because the terrain around us has changed. Wisdom requires us to understand the world we’re actually living in, not simply the world we wish still existed.

The People Who Understood Their Moment
There’s a fascinating statement tucked into 1 Chronicles 12:32. Israel was going through a massive transition. Saul’s reign was ending, David was rising, and the nation was moving from one era into another. In the middle of all those people gathering around David, Scripture specifically points out the sons of Issachar because they “understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do.”

I love that because they didn’t just understand what was happening; they knew what to do about it. There’s a big difference. We have access to more information today than any generation in human history. We can know what the stock market did before breakfast, what happened overnight on the other side of the planet, what somebody in Washington said five minutes ago, and what 4,000 strangers on social media think about it. But more information doesn’t automatically produce more wisdom.

Understanding without action is just information, and action without understanding is just reaction. But when understanding produces the right response, that’s wisdom. God isn’t calling us to become experts at cataloguing everything wrong with the world. He’s calling us to understand our moment well enough to faithfully respond to Him within it.

Joseph Didn’t Panic. He Prepared.
Joseph gives us one of the clearest biblical pictures of this in Genesis 41. Pharaoh has two disturbing dreams. Seven healthy cows are devoured by seven starving cows, and seven healthy heads of grain are swallowed up by seven scorched ones. Nobody knows what it means until Joseph is brought before Pharaoh. Joseph explains that seven years of incredible abundance are coming, followed by seven years of devastating famine.

Now imagine being given that information. Joseph could have panicked. He could have spent seven years telling everyone how terrible the famine was going to be. He could have started the ancient Egyptian version of a YouTube channel and posted a new famine prediction every Tuesday. Instead, Joseph developed a plan. During the years of abundance, they would intentionally set aside part of what was being produced so there would be provision when the season changed.

That gives us an important biblical principle: sometimes what God provides today is intended for something He already knows about tomorrow. We tend to think provision means, “God gave me enough for today,” and sometimes it does. But sometimes God puts something extra in your hands today because there is an assignment attached to it tomorrow. The question is whether we have the wisdom to recognize it and the discipline not to consume everything that passes through our hands.

Faith That Actually Does Something
Sometimes Christians can become uncomfortable when we start talking about preparation. We can almost make preparation sound like a lack of faith. We say, “I’m just trusting God,” and we absolutely should trust God. But biblical trust frequently resulted in action.

Hebrews 11:7 says that Noah was warned by God about things he had never seen, and by faith he prepared an ark. Catch that: by faith, he prepared. Noah didn’t build because he didn’t trust God. Noah built because he did. Joseph believed, so he stored grain. Noah believed, so he built an ark. The wise virgins believed the bridegroom was coming, so they brought oil. Their preparation wasn’t the opposite of faith; it was the evidence of it.

That challenges me because if what I say I believe never changes what I actually do, eventually I have to ask myself how deeply I really believe it. Real faith eventually changes the way we live.

Maybe We’re Asking the Wrong Question
Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us that there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. Farmers understand this better than most of us. You don’t harvest during planting season, and you don’t plant during harvest. There’s nothing wrong with either activity. You simply have to know what season you’re in.

Maybe that’s one of the most important questions we can ask right now. Instead of asking when everything is going back to normal, who has the perfect prediction about what happens next, or how we can make sure nothing difficult ever happens to us, perhaps the better question is, “God, what season are we in, and what does wisdom look like in this season?”

The goal isn’t to become so prepared that we no longer need God, and it certainly isn’t to become afraid of everything happening around us. The goal is to become the kind of people who can stand when everything else is shaking. We want to be people who understand the times without becoming consumed by them, who prepare without panicking, who steward what God puts in our hands, and who have enough margin to say yes when God opens a door.

Ultimately, our confidence isn’t in an economy, a government, an investment account, or somebody’s prediction about the future. Our confidence is in the God who already stands in tomorrow. The terrain may change. The map may need some recalculating. The world around us may shake. But we don’t have to. We can stay rooted, walk in wisdom, prepare in faith, and whatever season comes next, we can remain Unshaken.