The New Thing God Is Doing

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” — Isaiah 43:19

God has a habit of doing His most significant work quietly, at the margins, while the centers of power and culture are looking the other way.

He did it in Egypt, raising up a deliverer in a basket on the river. He did it in Bethlehem, born in a stable while Rome busied itself with empire. He did it in an upper room in Jerusalem, filling a handful of ordinary people with fire while the religious establishment carried on with business as usual.

And He is doing it again.

Isaiah 43:19 is a verse worth sitting with carefully. God speaks it to a people in exile — a people whose world had completely fallen apart. Their institutions had failed. Their city was rubble. The systems they depended on were gone. And into that disorientation God says: Behold. Look. Do you not perceive it? Something is springing forth.

The new thing almost always comes when the old thing is visibly crumbling. And the old thing is visibly crumbling.

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The World That Is Coming Apart

We do not need to be alarmists to observe what is plain. Trust in institutions — government, media, medicine, finance, even established church structures — is collapsing on a global scale. The systems that generations depended upon for stability, truth, and community are fracturing under the weight of their own corruption and complexity.

Supply chains have proven fragile. Financial systems are under stress. The sense that someone, somewhere, has things under control — that sense is fading for millions of people simultaneously. And underneath the noise of politics and headlines, something deeper is happening: people are being pushed back toward the local, the tangible, and the real.

This is not coincidence. This is preparation.

When God wants to do a new thing, He often has to loosen the grip of the old thing first. And the old thing — centralized, institutional, consumption-driven, screen-mediated — is losing its grip.

FOR REFLECTION

“I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

Isaiah 43:19b

Four Movements of the New Thing

What God appears to be doing is not random. There are patterns — movements — that a discerning eye can begin to trace.

The Decentralization of Everything. For generations, power, information, community, and commerce have all moved toward centralization — bigger systems, bigger platforms, bigger institutions. That tide is turning. People are being scattered back toward the local. Toward neighborhoods, toward land, toward face-to-face community. God has always worked most powerfully at the local and the particular. He is not a God of abstractions. He is the God of this place, these people, this soil.

The Re-Rooting of the Church. The attractional church model — built on programs, platforms, celebrity, and production value — is hollowing out. What is quietly growing in its place are smaller, incarnational, covenantal communities. People who actually know one another. Shepherds who live among their flock, who share the same zip code, the same weather, the same concerns. This is not a new model. It is the original one. And it is becoming the future again.

The Return to the Land. Food security, supply chain fragility, and a deep hunger for something real are waking people up to a truth that was never lost — only forgotten: knowing how to grow things, tend things, and steward the earth is not a hobby. It is a foundation. The homesteader who seemed eccentric a decade ago is beginning to look prophetic. The person who knows how to feed their family from the ground has something no app can replicate.

The Hunger for Fathers. Perhaps the deepest need of this generation is one that no technology can meet: the presence of rooted, present, knowing men. Not platforms. Not content. Not programs. Actual fathers — spiritual and natural — who know who they are, know the land they stand on, know the God they serve, and are willing to shepherd others into the same. That hunger is enormous. And it is largely unmet. God is raising up men to meet it.

“The homesteader who seemed eccentric a decade ago is beginning to look prophetic.”

WHAT YOU ARE BUILDING IS BECOMING MORE VALUABLE, NOT LESS.

The Technology Question

A fair and necessary question arises here: what about technology? Is the new thing God is doing a return to simplicity — a stepping back from the digital world? Or does technology continue to advance?

The honest answer is: all three directions at once, depending on what you are looking at.

THREE TRAJECTORIES

INCREASES

AI, surveillance, financial technology, and systems of centralized control will grow more sophisticated. Scripture’s vision of a world where commerce is globally managed does not require less technology — it requires more.

BECOMES UNRELIABLE

Grid dependability, supply chain consistency, and centralized infrastructure will become more fragile and contested. Dependence on these systems will become a vulnerability for those who have no alternative.

GETS RE-EVALUATED

A growing number of people will make a conscious choice to step back from tech dependency — not because they cannot access it, but because they recognize what it is costing them: attention, community, rootedness, and sovereignty over their own lives.

The defining tension of the coming generation will be the tension between the kingdom of technology and the Kingdom of God. One offers efficiency, control, and connection without covenant. The other offers roots, presence, sacrifice, and actual life.

The believer’s calling is not to reject technology wholesale or to embrace it uncritically, but to be someone who can operate within the technological world without being owned by it. To hold it loosely. To know that if the grid went dark tomorrow, your life would not collapse — because it is built on something older and more solid than any system man has made.

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You May Already Be Standing in It

Here is what is remarkable about this moment: the things God is calling people toward — rootedness, land, local community, embodied presence, covenantal relationship, practical wisdom, spiritual shepherding — many of His people have already been quietly building. Not because it was fashionable. Often because it was simply faithful.

The farmer tending his land. The believer investing in his neighborhood rather than his platform. The shepherd who knows his people by name and not by username. The family growing food, keeping animals, learning to live with less dependence on systems they did not build and cannot control.

These people are not behind the times. They are ahead of them.

Isaiah says the new thing is already springing forth— present tense, active, alive, growing — even as he asks: do you not perceive it? The invitation is to open your eyes and recognize what God is already doing. To understand the season. To align yourself with what He is building rather than clinging to what He is dismantling.

“The things God is calling people toward — many of His people have already been quietly building.”

NOT BECAUSE IT WAS FASHIONABLE. BECAUSE IT WAS FAITHFUL.

How to Walk in This Season

Perceive what God is doing. Ask Him for eyes to see the season clearly. Do not be so consumed with the noise of what is falling apart that you miss what is springing forth. Study the times. Study the Word. Hold them together.

Root yourself deeply. In your land, your community, your local body of believers, your family. The instinct of this age is toward the virtual and the mobile. Resist it. Plant yourself. The tree that survives the storm is the one with the deepest roots.

Build for others, not just yourself. The new thing God is doing is not a retreat into self-sufficiency. It is the construction of an ark — a place of refuge, wisdom, and provision — for those who will desperately need it. Your garden, your skills, your knowledge, your spiritual depth — these are not just for you. They are for your neighbors, your community, the ones who will come looking when their systems fail.

Hold technology as a tool, not a master. Use what is useful. Refuse what diminishes you. Never let a screen replace a covenant. Never let efficiency replace presence. Know the difference between a tool in your hand and a chain around your neck.

Stay close to the Holy Spirit. The new thing God is doing will not be fully visible from the outside. It requires discernment — the ability to hear what He is saying, to perceive what He is building, to recognize His movement even when it does not match any existing template. That only comes through intimacy with Him.

The world is shifting. The old structures are straining. And God — as He has always done — is doing a new thing in the middle of it all.

Behold, He is doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it?

Open your eyes. It is already springing forth. And you may already be standing in the early edge of it.

To God be all the Glory. Hallelujah.

A PRAYER

Father, give me eyes to see what You are doing in this hour. Where I have been focused on what is falling apart, shift my gaze to what You are building. Root me deeply — in Your Word, in my land, in my community, in Your presence. Make me a place of refuge for those who will need it. Give me the wisdom to hold the tools of this age loosely and the courage to invest in what will last. I want to be found faithful in this season — not clinging to the old, not chasing the new, but walking in step with You. To You be all the Glory, now and forever. Amen.

T