The Shaking Before the Breakthrough

Happy almost September!

It’s going to be a wild fall. I can already tell just by looking at my upcoming commitments and schedule. There’s a lot on the horizon: new launches, new opportunities, new doors opening that I never could have orchestrated on my own. Some of it has come together so quickly it’s honestly been a little dizzying to keep up with.

And even just thinking through everything ahead of us feels exhausting, if I’m being honest.

But here’s the thing. They are all amazing things. They are answered prayers in different ways. They are opportunities I’m excited about. They are doors that God has opened that I never could have forced open myself, no matter how hard I tried.

And I keep coming back to this feeling that there is a theme happening right now, not just in my own life, but in the lives of so many people I’ve been talking to.

A Theme I Can’t Shake

I really believe so many of us are on the cusp of something. Something new. Something we’ve been praying for. Something we may not even fully recognize yet.

I feel like there is a shaking happening in the Kingdom right now, and things are falling off of people. Old seasons. Old mindsets. Old relationships. Old identities. Things that we’ve held onto because they were comfortable, familiar, or maybe because we simply didn’t know how to let them go.

And shaking is hard.

When everything feels like it’s moving underneath you, it can feel incredibly uncomfortable. It can feel like things are falling apart. It can make you question what God is doing and whether you heard Him correctly in the first place. When the ground you’ve stood on for years suddenly feels unstable, your first instinct is rarely to think, “Oh good, something new is coming.” Your first instinct is to panic. To grab for something solid. To wonder if you did something wrong to end up here.

I think that’s such a human response, and I don’t think God faults us for feeling it. But I’ve been reminded lately that sometimes what feels like everything falling apart is actually God making room for something new.

There’s actually a passage in Hebrews that talks about this exact kind of shaking. It says God’s voice “shook the earth” at Sinai, but now He has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens” (Hebrews 12:26). And the very next verse explains why: so that only the things that cannot be shaken will remain. The shaking isn’t random. It isn’t punishment. It’s purposeful. It’s God removing what was never meant to last so that what’s actually built to endure can stand clearly in view.

Haggai talks about something similar — “I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come” (Haggai 2:7). Shaking, in Scripture, is almost always followed by an unveiling. Something clearer, sturdier, and more valuable emerges once the loose things fall away.

The Biggest Breakthrough Often Comes After the Biggest Breakdown

I’m seeing and hearing so many stories right now of people walking into breakthrough right after what felt like an absolute breaking point. I’ve heard stories of God restoring things people thought were completely lost, doors opening that people never expected, people stepping into new seasons, and prayers being answered after years of waiting.

And honestly, I am so encouraged by the testimonies I’m hearing about God’s goodness.

It reminds me of what Jesus said about a grain of wheat: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain” (John 12:24). There’s something in that image that I think describes the shaking season so well. Before the fruit, there’s a falling. Before the multiplication, there’s a death of sorts, a letting go of the single seed’s comfortable, self-contained existence so that something far bigger can grow out of it.

Nobody enjoys that part of the process. Nobody signs up for the falling-into-the-ground stage. But it’s not optional if you actually want the harvest.

If you’re in the middle of a season like that right now, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you’re reading this today. I think it’s confirmation. Confirmation that the discomfort you’re feeling isn’t a sign that God has abandoned the plan. It’s often a sign that the plan is actually moving.

Why Intentional Community Matters So Much

This week I was able to make our Thursday night prayer call within the membership community, and it was such a powerful reminder to me of why intentional community matters so much. The Bible says:

“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matthew 18:20)

Isn’t that incredible? But what I loved about the call wasn’t just that people showed up. It was how intentionally they showed up.

Some people came with notebooks ready to write down prayer requests. Others came with questions, asking how things were going since the requests from the week before. Some were checking in on one another and holding each other accountable to the things they had said they were going to do.

And as I watched all of this happening, I thought, this is why community matters.

Because we need people who will go to battle with us in prayer. We need people who will check in on us and actually remember what is going on in our lives. We need people who will celebrate our victories. And we also need people who love us enough to hold us accountable when we’re not doing what we said we were going to do.

There was something so beautiful about watching everyone intentionally show up and almost silently say, “I’m here, and I’m about my Father’s business.”

That’s the kind of community I want to build.

I think one of the enemy’s favorite tactics during a shaking season is isolation. When things feel unstable, our instinct is often to pull inward, to go quiet, to handle it ourselves so we don’t have to explain what we don’t fully understand yet. But Scripture consistently points us in the opposite direction. James tells us to “confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16). Healing, breakthrough, and clarity so often come not in isolation but in the presence of people who are willing to carry a piece of the burden with us. The early church in Acts didn’t scatter when things got hard, they devoted themselves to fellowship, to breaking bread together, to praying together (Acts 2:42). Community wasn’t a nice extra. It was survival, and it was strategy.

If you don’t currently have people like that in your life, people who will go to battle with you in prayer, who will check in and actually remember, who will celebrate and also hold you accountable. Can I gently encourage you to go find them? Or better yet, to become that person for someone else first? Sometimes the community we’re praying for starts with us showing up the way we wish someone would show up for us.

Something Just Broke

And honestly, somewhere this week, I feel like something just broke.

It’s almost hard to explain. It suddenly felt like everything got a little brighter. The weariness I had been carrying lifted. And I found myself thinking, Oh… I think we’re about to walk into a completely new season.

Which feels especially fitting because tomorrow is September 1st, the beginning of meteorological autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere. A new season. A changing of the leaves. Things falling away. And eventually, new things growing.

There’s something so fitting about creation itself modeling this rhythm for us every single year. Ecclesiastes reminds us, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). Trees don’t fight the season where their leaves fall. They don’t cling to what’s dying and try to force it to stay green. They release it, trusting that the barrenness of winter isn’t the end of the story, it’s just one part of a rhythm that leads back to growth. Isaiah 43:19 says it this way: “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” God’s newness often starts small, quiet, and easy to miss if we’re too focused on what just fell away to notice what’s beginning to spring up in its place.

If You’re in the Shaking Right Now

So if you are in the middle of the shaking right now, let this be your reminder that breakthrough is coming.

Don’t give up in the middle of the process.

And if you are walking in breakthrough right now, don’t forget to stop and thank the One who brought you through it.

Sometimes we get so excited about the blessing that we forget to look back and worship the One who made a way.

Either way, stop for a second today and have yourself a little praise break. Put on the worship song. Go for the walk. Lift your hands. Thank Him in the car. Whatever it looks like for you.

Because He is worthy of our worship in the shaking and in the breakthrough. Not one or the other, both. Worship isn’t just a response to answered prayer. It’s an act of trust in the middle of the unanswered one, too. It says, “I trust You before I see the outcome, not just after.”

I think that’s actually the harder worship, the kind offered in the shaking, before you know how the story ends. But I also think it’s the kind that shapes us the most. Anyone can praise God after the breakthrough. It takes something deeper to praise Him in the middle of the process, when the ground is still moving and the outcome is still unclear.

I’ve found that a praise break doesn’t have to be complicated or big to be meaningful. It’s not about performing a certain amount of gratitude before God will move. It’s simply about redirecting your attention, even for two or three minutes, away from the shaking and back to the One who is steady through it. Some days that looks like sitting in silence and just saying “thank You” over and over until you actually mean it. Other days it looks like turning up a worship song loud enough to drown out the noise in your own head. Either way, it’s a small act of defiance against the fear that wants to convince you nothing good is coming. It’s you saying, out loud or in your heart, “I still believe You’re good, even right now.”

A Request for Prayer

Through all of this breakthrough we feel like we’re walking into right now, I would really appreciate your prayers.

There is a lot happening, and while I am incredibly excited about all of it, I also know that stepping into new seasons requires wisdom, discernment, strength, and a whole lot of Jesus.

So if you think about us, pray for us. Pray for wisdom. Pray for protection. Pray for this community. And pray that everything we build would ultimately point people back to Him.

I really believe we’re about to see some incredible things.

And I can’t wait to watch God do what only He can do.

If you’re in a season of shaking today, I’d love to be praying for you too. Whatever it is you’re standing in the middle of — the uncertainty, the loss, the waiting, the not-knowing-what-comes-next, you are not walking through it unseen. The same God who promised that only the unshakable things will remain is the same God holding you steady while everything else moves. Trust the process. Trust the Shaker. The breakthrough is coming.