When I was in junior high school, I was assigned Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock. The warning was unsettling even then: technology and social change could begin moving faster than people were able to adapt.
More than fifty years later, that future does not feel theoretical.
Work changes. Technology changes. Communication changes. The way we receive information changes. Even the meaning of expertise is changing. Often, the next disruption arrives before we have fully adjusted to the last one.
That creates a deeply human fear:
What if I can’t keep up?
What if the skills I spent years developing no longer matter?
What if I fall behind?
What if I become irrelevant?
In this first teaching episode of The Formed Future, I want to go beneath the predictions about what may happen next.
Because the future is not merely coming toward us.
It is already forming us.
The Question Is Not Only What Comes Next
Rapid change creates pressure to move faster.
Learn more. Read more. Master another tool. Follow another expert. Pick up another skill. Try to understand the next platform before everyone else does.
Learning is good. Curiosity is good.
Fear-driven learning is different.
When we become convinced that we must constantly keep up in order to remain valuable, there is no finish line. There will always be another development tomorrow.
And eventually that pressure begins shaping the inner person.
Fear about money shapes us.
Feeling behind shapes us.
Worry about artificial intelligence and changing jobs shapes us.
The effort to remain relevant shapes us.
So before we ask, What is going to happen next?, perhaps we need to ask:
What is all of this already forming in me?
No Longer Tossed Around
Paul gives us a powerful picture of maturity in Ephesians 4:13–15.
He describes immature people as being tossed back and forth and carried around by every wind. The alternative is not knowing enough to predict every wind.
The alternative is growing up.
Growing into Christ.
Paul’s answer to instability is maturity.
That distinction matters in an age when information is nearly unlimited.
We can know a great deal and still have poor judgment.
We can have access to more information than any generation before us and still be easily manipulated.
We can become highly capable without becoming spiritually mature.
Romans 12:2 describes another side of this same process:
“Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”
Conformity shapes us from the outside.
Transformation works from within.
The world around us will exert pressure. We cannot stop that. But we do not have to allow the world to do all the forming.
From Fragmentation to Coherence
One of the words I keep returning to in The Formed Future is coherence.
A coherent life is one in which the pieces increasingly fit together around Christ.
What I believe about God begins to fit with the way I make decisions.
My understanding of who I am begins to fit with the way I respond to fear.
My work, relationships, values, hopes, and choices increasingly grow from the same center.
Future shock tends toward fragmentation. Everything feels urgent. Our attention is pulled in several directions at once.
Formation in Christ moves us toward coherence.
I believe four qualities will become increasingly important as we move into the future:
Coherence
I know what holds my life together. I do not need to reinvent my identity every time the world changes around me.
Discernment
I learn the difference between what demands my attention and what actually deserves it.
This becomes especially important with artificial intelligence. AI can dramatically increase our capabilities. It can help us think, research, compare, create, and solve problems.
But capability is not judgment.
More answers do not automatically make us wiser.
We still have to think, question, evaluate, compare what we encounter with Scripture, experience, wisdom, community, and the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Confidence
Our value cannot depend upon the current market value of our skills.
Jobs may change.
Roles may disappear.
Ways of contributing may change.
That can be painful, particularly for someone who has spent decades becoming very good at a particular kind of work.
But changing usefulness is not the same as changing worth.
Our value comes from somewhere deeper.
Steadiness
Steadiness does not mean never becoming worried, surprised, or confused.
It means those emotions do not automatically get to make our decisions.
We can feel pressure and still choose our response.
We can face change without allowing change to determine who we become.
I Felt This Pressure Too
I have had to confront this in my own work.
When I began seriously building Power Love and Miracles, writing books, producing podcasts, and developing my work as a subject matter expert, I was in a hurry.
More accurately, I was panicked.
I was looking ahead financially and believed this work might need to begin producing meaningful income quickly.
Suddenly, work I loved carried another burden:
It had to work. And it had to work fast enough.
That changes the questions you ask.
Instead of asking, What am I called to create?, you start wondering what will get attention fastest.
Instead of allowing skills and an audience to develop, you feel behind before you have really begun.
I had to realize that I was asking this work to carry more weight than it was supposed to carry.
I still want it to grow.
I want these books, podcasts, devotions, and teachings to reach people.
But I do not have to create from panic.
That is a very different posture.
Spiritual formation does not always remove the pressure surrounding us.
Sometimes it changes the person standing within the pressure.
Formation Practice: Notice Before You React
This week, don’t try to solve the future.
Notice what it is doing inside you.
When you feel pressure to keep up, ask:
Where am I feeling pressure to keep up?
What am I afraid will happen if I don’t?
What is that fear forming in me?
Then ask:
Is this making me more coherent, discerning, confident, and steady—or less?
We cannot discern a pressure we refuse to name.
The future will bring changes none of us can completely predict. Some will be difficult. Some will be wonderful. Many will probably be both.
But we are not helpless.
We do not have to become faster than the future. We need to become deeply enough formed in Christ to meet it.
The question is not only:
Can I keep up?
The better question is:
Who am I becoming while I try?
Scripture
Ephesians 4:11–16
Romans 12:2
Coming Next
In TBU 106 — Guarding the Inner Gate, we move from noticing what is forming us to asking another question:
What are we allowing access to our inner life in the first place?
Once we recognize the forces competing to shape us, we can begin exercising discernment about which voices are allowed to remain.
The Formed Future is about becoming the kind of people who can meet rapid change with maturity rather than fear—formed deeply enough in Christ to stand, discern, love, and participate faithfully in whatever comes next.
