Will the Church Choose Reaction or Revival in 2026?
As the Church steps into another year, we do so amid a constant hum of noise—arguments and counterarguments, accusations and counteraccusations. The issues commanding our attention are not trivial. Politics. Failing states. Immigration. Health care. Economic inequality. Climate change. Women’s rights. Gaza. Ukraine. A rapidly shifting global order. These are weighty matters, each carrying real human consequences. They require wisdom, compassion, and moral seriousness. And certainly, our response as the Church of Jesus Christ.
And yet, as I observe how we are engaging this moment, I find myself unsettled—soberingly so. Not because the Church is indifferent to suffering, but because of the manner of our concern.
There is a difference between moral seriousness and perpetual reaction. Increasingly, it feels as though the Church is being drawn into a state of constant agitation—always responding, always reacting, always contending. We are busy. We are loud. We are visibly engaged. And yet, I am not so sure we are truly effective.
The apostle Paul offers a caution that feels particularly timely: “So that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not ignorant of his devices” (2 Corinthians 2:11). This is not a casual aside. Paul assumes the presence of strategy—patterns of influence that succeed precisely because they appear reasonable, urgent, even righteous. Ignorance, in this sense, is not a lack of information. It is a failure of discernment.
It is possible to be sincere, theologically informed, and relentlessly active—and still find ourselves subtly misdirected. Few tactics are more effective than keeping the people of God perpetually reactive, expending enormous energy while losing sight of what actually shapes hearts to build God’s Kingdom.
History offers a sobering lesson about how wars are lost through misdirection. By the early 1940s, Adolf Hitler was convinced of his own inevitability. A string of victories had hardened into hubris. He no longer saw himself as merely winning battles; he imagined himself reshaping history. A modern emperor. Europe, he believed, would fall.
When the Allied forces prepared to land in Normandy, they did not confront Germany’s strength head-on. Instead, they deceived it. Inflatable tanks. Dummy camps. False radio transmissions. Entire phantom armies. Every signal pointed toward Calais. Germany shifted its best troops to the wrong battlefront. Normandy fell. And with it, the momentum of the war. Germany did not lose because it lacked power. It lost because it was looking in the wrong direction. Spiritual warfare often works the same way.
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