How To Be Resilient When Times Get Tough

Being a Christian in a world full of bad news and crisis can be tough.

Speaker John Harding takes us to an Old Testament reference to find wisdom for our current moment. The Sons of Issachar were valued on King David's team because "they understood the times and knew what Israel should do." They understood the world they were living in, and more importantly, how to respond to it. John believes we need that same clarity today.

A World Shaped by Crisis

John is 45 years old, and he notes that the first 40 years or so of his life in the UK were largely characterised by peace and stability. His mum, now 88, had a different experience. Her early years were disrupted by war. She was put on a train and sent from the city to live in the countryside. After the war, food was restricted and rationed.

But that wasn't John's lived experience. He's lived in a time where he could work and buy a house and have a pension plan. He received exceptional free healthcare. For many of us, despite what the newspapers have told us, the reality is that we have lived for many years in a place and time that has been incredibly safe and stable.

But there's been a shift. Whether real or perceived, the dominant narrative that many of us now live under is one of crisis.

The big obvious shift was a global pandemic. Covid disruption. Why are we still talking about it? Because the impact, the trauma, the grief is still present and may continue until we deal with it. An unprecedented crisis entered and disrupted our world.

Then Brexit. We divorced from Europe with promises of greater freedom and financial growth, but as yet, it's hard to see evidence of that. As a nation, we already struggled with a healthy sense of national identity, and it's hard to see how that might be addressed and resolved in a healthy way.

Then there's climate change. For some, it's become the number one crisis facing humanity. Perhaps it's not surprising that in this present cultural moment, one where the narrative is around fear and crisis, the environment has become an amped up, emotive, divisive issue. There's evidence to suggest that the narrative in schools and media around climate change is leading a younger generation to experience climate anxiety, eco anxiety, contributing to a mental health crisis.

And we could talk about the massive rise in fuel costs, food costs, mortgage rates, the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The list goes on and on.

John is careful to say he's deeply concerned about these things. He doesn't want to make them seem flippant. We face massive issues as a society. But he's naming something: if you, like him, have experienced a shift, if you sense a change, if life used to feel more stable and predictable and peaceful and under your control, and now the dominant narrative in your subconscious is one of uncertainty and crisis, then what do you do? How do you respond?

Good News People

As Christians, the question is: do we just bury our heads in the sand and hope it's all going to blow over soon? Maybe Russia will pull out of Ukraine. Maybe the cost of living will go down. Maybe someone will discover amazing clean energy. Maybe our politicians will get some morals and backbone. Maybe we'll be able to afford eggs if they're on the shelf.

But, we are good news people. We have Jesus. We are woven into a better story, a better narrative that frees us from fear. John believes that through the Holy Spirit, we can be like the Sons of Issachar. We can understand the time, the moment that we are in, and we can know what to do. We can work out what sort of world we're living in and how to live well in that world.

What follows are simple ideas John has learned from Christians around the world, particularly Christians who have lived in unstable places and unstable times. Christians who have learned how to live well, to live as God intended, when the world around them is unstable and extremely challenging.

Choose Your Narrative

The first thing is about choosing your narrative. It's about working on making God's story, the gospel narrative, the loudest dominant story in your life. It's about spending enough time in the good news of Jesus that it really soaks into us and shapes us.

John thinks it's unlikely that the narrative from the media will anytime soon shift away from fear or crisis. They used to say 10 or 20 years ago that "sex sells." But if sex sells, fear grips us. It keeps us coming back for more. Apparently newscasters use the saying these days: "If it bleeds, it leads." That's your top story. We just can't get enough of the bad news.

So we have to keep coming back to the good news of Jesus, the gospel message. We have to learn how to preach that gospel message to ourselves, to our souls, and to one another. In all that we do, to get that better story deep into our subconscious, deeper into our souls. As we do so, John believes we are liberated from fear. That's the power of narrative.

You might even want a period of fasting the bad news, in order to help you break through into that better narrative.

Predictable Patterns

In a shifting world, in a world that feels outside of our control, we can build predictable, consistent routines into our lives. John has no control over the price of fuel; he has no control over Putin and Russia. But he can get up and start every day reading God's word.

Like John, we can all steadily and consistently over days and weeks and months and years and decades work through God's story again and again. This is something far more powerful than randomly and occasionally dipping into your Bible. This is the sort of confidence that comes through consistency. Really deeply getting to know who God is and how he works for his people throughout generations as we gaze at him in his word daily through the whole of the Bible.

The same goes for prayer. Predictable patterns of prayer. It's good, it's wonderful to shoot up little arrow prayers wherever you are, whenever you are, whatever you're doing. But in an unpredictable and changing world, there's incredible power in consistent, almost liturgical prayer.

All godly, mature, stable, secure Christians that John knows have discovered this. They've developed a pattern, a formula of prayer that they follow nearly always at the start of each day. Whether that's the Lord's Prayer as a pattern for prayer, or for John, over recent years, the priestly prayer of Numbers 6:22: "The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you his peace."

He uses the elements of that prayer as a springboard into praying for his family, praying for his spiritual family, his church. Predictable patterns. John actually thinks consistency and faith are linked together.

Commitment to Community

As Christians, gathering regularly in small groups is one of the most powerful things we can do. John says this might be controversial, but he's not sure it really matters what you do in the group. It's not about whether you use the group for mission or Bible study or prayer, as important as those things are. It's more about consistency of relationship. It's more about what the New Testament calls fellowship, or koinonia, or spiritual family.

Being committed to those sorts of groups has placed deep in John's subconscious, deep in his soul, the knowledge that if disaster hits, if he ever finds himself in crisis, if something happens to him or his family, something out of his control, he has a spiritual family. He has a handful of people who have got his back. People who will cook meals for him and his family, who will visit him if he's sick in hospital, who will offer financial support if he needs it.

And he says that because he's experienced it from people he's been in community with. He likes to think he's contributed that to the lives of others too.

John thinks as Christians these days, we can tend to approach our faith like a therapeutic self-help thing, an individualistic thing. Feeling a bit down today? I'm going to go to the gym or take a yoga class or shopping. Maybe I'll have a takeaway tonight. Maybe Chinese, maybe Indian. Maybe I'll read the Bible. Maybe I'll go to church. That'll pick me up.

Those things aren't bad things to do. But in an uncertain world, the power, the transformation comes through community, through consistency, through commitment. These things allow us to bring order and peace and stability and a good news narrative deep into our souls.

Learning from the Global Church

John believes this present cultural moment in the UK, maybe in Europe, maybe in the Western world, is a time for us to look to and learn from our brothers and sisters in the Southern hemisphere. In less economically developed parts of the world. The church in China, in Iran, in India, in parts of Africa and South America.

Believers who for decades, for generations, have had to learn how to live well in times of uncertainty. They model to us the power of the gospel through predictable patterns and the priority of community.

Conversation Street

Has there always been crisis, or is this moment different?

Anna Kettle noted that humanity has always had some form of crisis because that's part of our story as humankind. It's part of the impact of living in a world that's still under sin. We believe Jesus came and made things right, but the outworking of things being made right isn't complete yet. We live in a broken world and there's constantly, throughout any generation, stuff going wrong.

But she agreed with John that for British Christians, this current season feels harder economically and emotionally than she can ever remember in her adult life. Not just one thing, but one thing after another consecutively, like a season of crisis.

Matt wondered if we're also living in an echo chamber. We have more media, more access to more information globally than ever before. We live in a digital age where information is constantly on our phones, connecting us to crises from all over the world instantly. People are debating and complaining on social media all the time. Perhaps the intensity of how we're experiencing crisis is different too.

How do you preach the good news to yourself?

Anna admitted she doesn't do this as much as she should. Working in NHS communications means her day job is listening to a lot of bad news about the health system. She wondered if she spends as much time in God's word getting his perspective as she does getting the negative perspective the media pedals.

What she's trying to do more of is fill the small cracks of time with truth. When driving to work, cooking dinner, doing ordinary stuff, she plays worship music or a Christian podcast. Taking those cracks of time and making sure she's filling them with God's truth rather than just listening to the news or consuming more negativity. Small choices, but they can be difficult when you're already tired, burnt out, or feeling down.

How do you define resilience?

Anna defined resilience as the ability to bounce back. Not denying hard things or pretending painful things don't hurt, but the ability to come back from them and find God's hope even in the midst of difficulty.

Julie commented that resilience is faith that it will be okay.

Matt read James 1: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance." He suggested you could throw the word "resilience" in there. There's an element of faith, a trust as a Christian that God's on our side, he's in us, he's for us. Not denying what's going on, but believing that somehow tomorrow we'll be able to wake up and put another step in front of the other and just keep at it.

Anna added that what Christians have that's unique is knowing the truth that life isn't all about our immediate circumstances. Trying to keep that eternal perspective that circumstances now can really suck sometimes, but these challenges are only temporary. It's not the end of the story. God's story is so much bigger. When you make God's story bigger, it enables you to get a better perspective on your problems. It almost shrinks your problems and enlarges God.

Why is community so important when we already know what to do?

Matt observed that as Christians, we've heard this stuff a lot. We know that if we draw near to God, we'll see problems through his eyes. We can reframe things. But when push comes to shove, we often don't do it. We know what to do, but we don't do it.

Anna agreed. Sometimes she's forgotten to do it, or she's in a huff with God because life doesn't look the way she wants, or she's just tired and would rather binge Netflix than open her Bible. Our world makes it so easy to consume passively and distract yourself from difficulty rather than turn to God.

But Matt said this is where community makes the difference. If you isolate yourself, it's easy to binge watch Netflix and distract yourself. We're masters at not thinking about problems because that requires something of us. But when he's been in difficult situations, there have been people around him who've said, "Matt, dude, come on. Let's pray. Let's trust God. Let me help you with your faith in this."

There's something about getting together with other Christians that motivates and builds you up. Sometimes God delivers you through something, not out of it instantly, and that's not always a quick process. People around you are in it for the long haul.

Anna added that it's one thing to have friends who care about you, but having a community of believers is different. They're the people who will speak God's truth to you when you're struggling to believe those truths. They'll pray for you when you've got nothing left inside yourself. She's had times where she couldn't pray about something anymore, and friends got around her and prayed for her and stood alongside her in that season. That's really powerful.

Your Next Step This Week

Here are practical ways to build resilience in uncertain times:

1. Choose your narrative — Consider a period of fasting the bad news. Reduce your consumption of crisis-driven media and intentionally increase time in God's word and the gospel message.

2. Build predictable patterns — Develop a consistent daily rhythm of Bible reading and prayer. Not random dipping, but steady, sustained engagement that builds confidence through consistency.

3. Find your prayer pattern — Consider using a structured prayer like the Lord's Prayer or the priestly blessing of Numbers 6 as a springboard into your daily prayers.

4. Commit to community — Join a small group and stick with it. The power isn't primarily in what you do together but in the consistency of relationship that creates a safety net for when crisis hits.

5. Fill the cracks — Use the small moments, driving, cooking, walking, to play worship music or listen to content that fills your mind with truth rather than anxiety.

Understanding the Times

John wonders what sort of world you live in and how you can work that out and work out how to live well in that world.

We may not be able to control the price of fuel or the decisions of world leaders. But we can choose our narrative. We can build predictable patterns. We can commit to community. These things allow us to bring order and peace and stability and a good news narrative deep into our souls.

The Sons of Issachar understood the times and knew what Israel should do. Perhaps this is our invitation to do the same.