The sons of Issachar brought a skill to David that the rest of the army did not have.
They could read a moment.
First Chronicles 12:32 “of the sons of Issachar who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their brethren were at their command;”
Saul’s kingdom was falling apart while David’s was rising. Every tribe had to decide where to stand.
Israel had plenty of soldiers. But Issachar brought something rarer. They understood the times, and they knew what to do about it.
You live in a moment like that right now.
Every morning your phone hands you a fresh stack of headlines about AI. Jobs disappearing. Fake videos of real people. Chatbots writing sermons. Each one is built to make you feel something before you think anything.
So you have two options. You can react to the news, or you can read it.
Reacting feels spiritual. You share the scary article, you warn the group chat, and you pray a prayer that sounds a lot like panic. But at the end of the day you know less than you did that morning, and you have built nothing.
Reading asks a better question. What is God doing in this moment, and what does He want me to build in it?
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That question slows you down long enough to think. It moves you from consuming the story to taking responsibility for your part in it.
Every major shift in communication has worked the same way. The printing press put Scripture in the hands of ordinary people. Radio carried preaching into homes that would never walk into a church. The internet gave a kid in his bedroom the same reach as a television network.
Each shift opened a window. The people who saw it early built. But the people who saw it late paid the builders.
AI is that window, and it is open right now.
Yet the enemy would love for you to stay too scared to climb through it. Fear has always been his strategy, because a frightened believer hands over territory without a fight.
That means you have a choice between two roles. A worrier sees the danger on the horizon and freezes. A watchman sees the same danger and sounds the alarm so the city can act. Both of them see the threat. Only one of them is useful to anyone.
God is calling you to the wall as a watchman. Watchmen still feel the weight of what they see. But they turn that weight into action for the people behind them.
After I spoke on AI at a summit, a woman named Diane wrote to me. Her biggest takeaway was “that AI can be a tool instead of just evil, that there are ways to change my business when I thought there wasn’t.”
She came in thinking her business had no way forward. She left seeing one.
Owen, a software engineer and startup founder, wrote me after the same summit. He builds technology for a living. Still, the line that stood out in his note was this: “I now have no fear.”
Both of them were looking at the same technology everyone else sees. But they read it differently.
So here is your action step for this week.
Pick one headline. Just one, the one that rattled you most. Write it at the top of a page, and under it write two lines.
“What does this tell me about the times?”
“What should I do about it?”
Answer the first line with what you see. Answer the second with one concrete move for your brand, your family, or your ministry.
Then pray over the second line. Ask the Holy Spirit to sharpen it, confirm it, or cancel it. Because Issachar’s gift was never information alone. They knew what Israel ought to do.
The headlines will keep coming. Let them inform you without letting them frighten you.
Read the times. Then build in them.
Kap Chatfield is a Christian content creator, filmmaker, pastor, speaker, and coach. He has directed two feature-length documentaries (Acts: The Time Is Now, 2021). He has amassed over 1 million subscribers on YouTube. He is the Online Pastor of Love Church in Omaha, Nebraska. He is married to Joy Chatfield and together they have four children.
