When the Future Feels Frightening

Recently, someone asked me how I keep coming up with things to write about for this Morning Brew section three times a week.

That made me smile, because the truth is—I don’t have a big master list somewhere with two years’ worth of inspiration waiting to be used. I take it day by day.

Whatever happens to be on my heart, I try to look for what God might be teaching me through it. Sometimes it’s something beautiful. Sometimes it’s something funny that happens around our house. And sometimes it’s something difficult or troubling.

I figure if I’m wrestling with it, I probably can’t be the only one who needs the reminder God is placing on my heart. And I pray about these stories. A lot.

I ask God to give me something worth sharing, because I’m pretty convinced that anything I come up with entirely on my own is eventually just going to sound like rambling. I want these little reflections to point to something much bigger than me.

This week, though, I’ve wrestled with what to write. If you’ve been watching the national news over the last few days, you may have seen some of the interviews with artificial intelligence (AI) researchers who are sounding alarms about where this rapidly developing technology could be headed.

One of them is Jacob Coxon, a researcher who worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Very recently, he resigned from Anthropic and publicly voiced serious concerns about the race to develop increasingly powerful artificial intelligence. Other researchers have since spoken publicly about their own concerns.

I’m including a few of those news clips below if you’d like to hear what they’re saying for yourself. And I’ll tell you something. The more I listened and read this week, the more I could feel fear beginning to creep in. Maybe you’ve felt it too.

It’s that feeling that comes when something seems so much bigger than you. You can’t control it. You don’t know where it’s headed. And your mind starts racing ahead, imagining every possible what-if.

That’s usually when I know I need to stop feeding the fear and start feeding my faith. Not because difficult things aren’t real. Not because we should bury our heads in the sand or pretend there aren’t legitimate questions that need to be asked about powerful new technologies.

Wisdom matters. Accountability matters. The decisions being made today matter. But fear doesn’t get to be in charge of my heart. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that over and over—however many times it takes before my heart finally catches up with what my head knows.

God is still in control. He wasn’t caught off guard by the news report I watched. He isn’t wringing his hands wondering what mankind might invent next. And He hasn’t handed the future over to Silicon Valley, Washington, scientists, corporations, or anyone else. The same God who has held this world through every frightening chapter of human history is holding it now.

That doesn’t mean we sit back and do nothing. Scripture tells us to pray. So instead of allowing all those what-ifs to run circles through my mind, I’ve decided to turn them into prayers.

I’m praying for the engineers and researchers developing these technologies—that God would give them wisdom, humility, and the courage to put human well-being ahead of competition or profit.

I’m praying for the executives making decisions about how quickly and how far to push—that responsibility and concern for others would outweigh the pressure to be first.

I’m praying for our leaders and lawmakers—that they would seek wisdom, listen carefully, and protect human dignity as they make decisions about technologies most of us are only beginning to understand.

And I’m praying for all of us—that we won’t place our ultimate hope or trust in something human beings have created, nor allow ourselves to live in fear of it.

That prayer was inspired in part by one I recently read from The Pour Over, and it helped redirect my thoughts exactly where they needed to go. Back to God.

One of my favorite reminders comes from Colossians 1:17. “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

All things. Those two little words mean a lot when the future feels uncertain.

I don’t know where artificial intelligence will be six months from now, five years from now, or twenty years from now. Neither does anyone else. But I know where God will be. Exactly where He has always been.

So I’m going to stay informed. I’m going to pray for wisdom for the people making enormously important decisions. And I’m going to remind myself—probably more than once—that I don’t have to carry tomorrow today.

God is already there.

And when my mind starts racing toward all the frightening what-ifs, I’m going to keep bringing it back to the One in whom all things hold together. I hope this comforts you today as it does me.

September 13, 2026 Morning Brew