Ernest Hemingway once described bankruptcy as arriving “gradually, then suddenly.” Small, invisible shifts accumulate beneath the surface until one day the collapse is total and the speed of it shocks everyone. I have been thinking about that phrase a lot lately, not in relation to personal finances, but in relation to the global marketplace itself.
Something is simmering. The tremors are already being felt in supply chains, in the upheaval of entire industries by artificial intelligence, in the fracturing of economic systems that once seemed indestructible. It is not full-blown yet. But the warning signs are unmistakable to those with eyes to see them.
And here is what grips me: Jesus said that the last days would look exactly like the days of Noah. Normal. Busy. Transactional. People making deals, building brands, hitting quarterly targets — until suddenly, they weren’t.
“As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away.”
Matthew 24:37–39, NIV
The marketplace was functioning. Commerce was alive. And then it wasn’t. And on the day Noah entered the ark, none of it mattered; not your market share, not your brand dominance, not the quarter where you surpassed your annual revenue target in three months. If you were not inside the ark, everything you had built perished with you.
This is the question I believe every Christian entrepreneur, professional and leader must answer honestly today: In this hour, are you Noah — or are you everyone else?
The system has an agenda
Here is something the comfortable version of Christianity rarely tells us plainly: the world system is not neutral. It is sophisticated, it is ruthless, and it is relentlessly pursuing its own agenda — the consolidation of wealth, influence, and power away from the purposes of God. It does not rest. It does not take sabbaticals. And for far too long, many of us who carry the Kingdom inside us have been playing by its rules, building by its metrics, and measuring success by its standards, while the real battle for the marketplace has gone largely uncontested.
Noah was not special because he was a shipbuilder. He was special because he heard something no one else was paying attention to, and he obeyed it, at enormous personal cost, in full public view, over many years. The ark was not a side project. It was the primary assignment of his life. And it was not built for him. It was built to preserve what God wanted to carry through to the other side.
Your business is not merely a vehicle for personal prosperity. It is meant to be an ark — built by divine instruction, for a purpose far beyond yourself.
I did not understand this when 2020 arrived.
The year the income went to zero
When the pandemic swept across the world, I was not ready. Not financially, not strategically, and if I am honest, not spiritually, at least not in the way that mattered for the marketplace. I had not positioned myself to hear. I had not been asking God what was coming or what He was saying about my industry. I was building, yes — but I was building according to my own understanding, my own projections, my own plans.
The economic impact was devastating. Income fell to zero for an entire year. I had to relocate my entire family. Rebuilding was painfully slow, and the lessons were hard in the way that only humiliation and loss can teach you.
But here is what that season broke open in me: I began to see, clearly for the first time, just how sophisticated and ruthless the world system truly is. It was not personal. The system was simply doing what it was designed to do, and I had not been standing in the right position to weather it, let alone to lead others through it. The turning point was not a business strategy. It was a shift in my understanding of why I was in the marketplace at all. The question was no longer how do I recover? It became: what is God saying, and am I positioned to hear and obey?
That shift — from self-preservation to Kingdom deployment, changed everything about how I see my work.
The man who shut himself in for three days
At precisely the same time that the pandemic was paralyzing industries and dismantling businesses around the world, Fela Durotoye did something remarkable. He shut himself away for three days and went into the secret place with God.
The stakes were enormous for him — he had an organization, a team, dependents, responsibilities. But instead of reacting, he retreated to listen. And what came out of those three days was not a crisis management plan. It was a Kingdom assignment.
He had gone in asking God to show him the light at the end of the tunnel. God’s response reframed everything. Stop looking for the light at the end of the tunnel. Ignite the light in your heart, and you will see the way out, and you will lead many with you.
He then received three clarifying questions that became the blueprint for a global online coaching company he built in the middle of that global disruption:
Whose problem are you solving? What are you helping them do? How will you help them? (Who, Solution, Process)
Same pandemic. Same collapsing economy. Completely different outcome — because one man heard, and obeyed, and built according to instruction. That is the difference between Noah and everyone else in the marketplace.
You are the modern-day Noah
As a son or daughter of God in the marketplace, this is your identity in this hour. Your business, your platform, your professional influence; these are your ark. And an ark is not built for the one building it. It is built because God has something He wants to preserve and carry through a season of upheaval (people, provision, purpose) and He has chosen you as the builder.
This is why becoming a 21st-century marketplace Noah is never fundamentally about self-preservation. It is about the increase of the government and peace of God in the earth. The city is blessed when the righteous prosper, not because righteousness is a formula for personal wealth, but because God-aligned prosperity flows outward. It employs. It funds. It solves. It carries others through the flood.
“I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you by the way you should go.” – Isaiah 48:17, NKJV
God is not indifferent to your business outcomes. He teaches you to profit, but He leads you in the way you should go. The profit and the path are inseparable. The wealth that comes from walking in divine instruction is assignment-specific. It carries an anointing the world’s money cannot replicate, and it builds things the world’s strategies cannot sustain.
The question you cannot afford to ignore
So let me ask you what I had to ask myself in the wreckage of 2020: What is God whispering to you about your industry? What disruption is already gathering beneath the surface of your sector, and what has He been nudging you toward in response? What step of faith have you been postponing because it does not yet make sense on a spreadsheet?
Noah did not build the ark because the rain had started. He built it because God spoke, long before anyone else saw a cloud. Obedience in this season will rarely look logical by marketplace standards. It will look like shutting yourself away for three days when everyone else is in crisis-reaction mode. It will look like pivoting your business model toward a problem God has assigned you to solve. It will look like deploying your resources toward Kingdom outcomes rather than hoarding them for personal security.
The blessing of God is not distributed randomly. It is assignment-specific. It follows those who are found in the place of obedience — hearing, building, and leading others through.
Heaven is hiring for this moment. The vacancy is not for the most talented or the most experienced. It is for those willing to hear and obey; to be the ark-builders in their industries while everyone else is still watching the sky and wondering if it might rain.
The question is not whether the flood is coming. The question is whether you are building.
