LET'S GO THERE | WEEK 3
“Quitting Kalshianity”
Pastor Rory Chance
Quitting Kalshianity
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” —Jeremiah 29:11
Hope is an incredible thing. It keeps you invested. It keeps you engaged. But when you lose it, everything changes.
We’re living in a generation that’s losing hope fast. Only about a quarter of young adults say they feel hopeful about America’s future, and many have stopped believing they’ll ever own a home or get ahead the normal way. So they swing for the fences: rent money on lottery tickets, life savings on a meme coin, a bet on almost anything through apps like Kalshi. Some call it financial nihilism, the belief that being careful and planning long-term just doesn’t pay anymore.
But Kalshi is only a symptom. Behavior lives downstream from beliefs. When you lose hope in the long game, you’ll gamble on the short one.
That cynicism doesn’t stay in our wallets. It creeps into our faith. Our feeds tell us everything is broken and no one can be trusted, and an hour of scrolling for every five minutes with God will shape us. The result looks like Christianity but runs on prediction-market logic: small bets, fast payouts, no long-term investment, and cashing out the moment it stops paying. Call it Kalshi-anity. It shows up as lottery-ticket prayers, spiritual day-trading from one high to the next, and hedging our faith to keep our options open.
We’re not the first generation to struggle with hope. In Jeremiah 29, Israel was living in a place they didn’t choose. Babylon had broken down their walls, burned the temple and carried an entire generation into exile for 70 years. There was nothing they could do to change it. So God sent them a letter about how to live in a land you didn’t choose.
Be a Builder, Not a Renter
“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.” —Jeremiah 29:5
It’s easy to live like a tent dweller: there for a while, never really committed, ready to pull up stakes the moment things change. God calls His people to be house builders. He tells them to build, plant, marry, raise families and increase right where they are.
That’s the language of stewardship, which means treating a temporary season with the same weight as a permanent one. Everyone is here for a season, and we want to walk away able to say we stewarded it well. In a world of casual, choose commitment. In a world of flightiness, choose faithfulness. Leave a legacy.
For too long, “this world is not our home” has been an excuse to treat it like a rental. If this world isn’t our home, then let’s build a little bit of heaven here.
Be a Blessing in Your Babylon
“Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” —Jeremiah 29:7
When the world feels broken, our natural response is to tune out or turn against it. Culture says nobody is coming to save you, so focus on you. It sounds empowering, but it’s cynical at heart.
God gives His people a different mentality. “Peace and prosperity” is one Hebrew word, shalom. It means wholeness, with everything working the way God designed it, and it shows up three times in one verse. Seek the city’s shalom, pray for it, and in its shalom you’ll find yours.
Cynicism will make you angry at what’s broken. God calls you to be a blessing to what’s broken. Babylon should be better because you are there. Our prayer is that Genesis would be a blessing to our city, bringing love to the unloved, family to the orphan and freedom to the bound. And here’s the surprise: when you start healing Babylon, it starts healing you. Want to find peace? Start bringing it.
Invest in Slow Returns
“When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place.” —Jeremiah 29:10
The exiles heard two competing messages. False prophets like Hananiah promised a quick fix: two years and you’ll be home. Jeremiah said seventy years, a lifetime. The more we drift from future hope, the more transactional we get today. We end up living to fix our feelings instead of building a legacy.
God told the exiles to stop looking for quick fixes and start living for the return. In a culture formed by fast fixes, talk about the return of Jesus can feel unfashionable. But hope anchors the soul. It isn’t a reason to quit; it’s a reason to work. We’re not living for today. We’re living for that day.
What Are You Betting On?
Archaeologists have found around 200 Babylonian clay tablets from a village near Nippur called “Judah-town.” Within a generation of the exile, Judean families there were leasing farmland, paying taxes, buying livestock and doing business. They were also giving their children names that carried God’s name. They couldn’t be in Judah, so they brought Judah to Babylon.
Maybe you’ve been caught in the undertow of cynical thinking. Maybe you’ve put life on pause, afraid to commit, or written the world off and focused on yourself. Maybe you’ve gotten more invested in a fast payout than in a lasting faith. God is calling you to build something here and to bless someone here. He is also calling you to never forget that our true home is still ahead.
Be a builder. Be a blessing. Invest in slow returns.
Everyone is betting on something, either on man’s predictions or on God’s promises. And God has already told us how this ends: He knows the plans He has for us, plans to give us hope and a future. Let’s go there.
