The Burden’s Blessing

The Burden’s Blessing

Let me tell you a story from right here in Akasia, under our relentless summer sun. For weeks, the relentless "load-shedding" had become more than an inconvenience; it was a cage . My own spirit was experiencing its own scheduled blackouts—frustration with the national grid mirrored a deeper frustration with a project at work that felt equally stuck, a burden on my shoulders and my time.

One evening, during another scheduled outage, I sat in the fading light on my porch near the Akasia Golf Club. The silence was deafening. No humming fridge, no television news, just the weight of my own thoughts. I prayed, not with eloquent words, but with a groan of the spirit: "Lord, take this burden away. Restore the power. Fix this problem."

And in the quiet, a different kind of current began to flow—the unmistakable whisper of the Holy Spirit. It was not the answer I wanted. He said, "Stop seeking an exit from the load-shedding. This darkness is not your prison; it is your birthing room."

The Paradox of the Grid: Where Power is Made Perfect

My mind raced, "How can a lack of power be a source of power?" It sounded like nonsense. But then I turned to the Scripture that has become the anchor of my soul: "But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'" (2 Corinthians 12:9, NIV) .

Let's define our terms with logical precision, as any good apologist must. The world says weakness is a liability. It is a failure, a shortcoming to be hidden, a problem to be solved by our own grit. We see this in the way our society often values only visible strength, success, and self-sufficiency. But the Apostle Paul, under divine inspiration, presents a radical, counter-intuitive truth: weakness is, in fact, the very platform upon which Christ’s power is most perfectly displayed.

Think of it not as a contradiction, but as a divine circuit. In our man-made grid, when the power is on, we are self-sufficient. We light our own homes, power our own devices. But when load-shedding hits—that sudden, utter weakness—we are forced to seek another source. We fumble for generators, for inverters, for candles. God’s economy operates on a similar but infallible principle. Our strength, like Eskom's grid, is unreliable and prone to failure . It is only when we acknowledge the blackout in our own souls that we finally plug into the divine generator, whose fuel is grace and whose output is limitless.

A common objection arises: "Is this just a spiritual excuse for passivity? Should we not fight against the problems that plague our nation and our lives?" This is a fair challenge, and it fails because it mistakes the source of power for the presence of action. God does not call us to inaction; He calls us to dependent action. The miracle is that the burden you are carrying—the very thing you are praying for God to remove—is often the concealed conduit for a miracle you cannot yet perceive.

The Akasia Classroom: Cultivating Character in the Cage

That corporate cage I cursed? It became my classroom. The persistent project, the "thorn" in my side, forced me to develop patience I did not possess. It cultivated a character corporations would later commission. It taught me to lead not from a place of noisy authority, but of quiet dependence. The obedience to carry it, to show up even when I felt powerless, unlocked a divine provision—a resilience, a wisdom, a compassion for others under pressure—that I couldn't previously perceive.

This is not a truth confined to a private devotional life. Look at our beautiful, fractured "Rainbow Nation" . We celebrate our diversity, yet we grapple with a profound lack of trust among one another . We see political rhetoric that scapegoats the foreigner, instead of seeking godly solutions to complex economic problems . We have laws to protect women, yet violence against them escalates at an alarming rate . The world offers solutions rooted only in human strength: more legislation, more protest, more division.

But what if the church in South Africa began to proclaim and live out the paradox of power-in-weakness? What if, instead of presenting ourselves as a moral powerhouse looking down on society, we first confessed our own spiritual load-shedding? What if we acknowledged that our own light has failed, and that we desperately need the current of Christ's power to flow through our communities, our families, our parliament? True liberation begins not when we topple every Goliath with our own sling, but when we, like a young David, declare, "I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty... for the battle is the LORD’s" (1 Samuel 17:45-47). That is a power no load-shedding can dim.

A Stronger Back, Not a Lighter Load

So, my brother, my sister, in Pretoria and beyond, hear this word today. Your miracle is hidden in the very thing you are carrying. That financial pressure, that health diagnosis, that family strife, that national crisis—it feels like a prison. But Christ’s power is perfusing your pressure right now.

Do not pray merely for lighter loads. Pray for a stronger back. Pray for the spine of faith that can only be forged in the furnace of weakness. The world says, "Save yourself." Christ says, "My grace is sufficient for you." . The world says, "Hide your flaws." Christ says, "My power is made perfect in weakness." . The world's power fails. Our generators sputter and die. But the divine current flowing from the throne of God? It never, ever loadsheds.

Therefore, I will rather boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses—in my Akasia blackouts, in my personal failures, in my national sorrows—so that the power of Christ may rest upon me . For when I am weak, when the lights go out and my own strength is gone, then, by His glorious, sufficient grace, I am truly strong.

Prayer: Lord, not for lighter loads, but for a stronger back. Let Your power be perfected in my pressure today. Let the burdens I carry become the birthing rooms of Your breakthrough. In the mighty name of Jesus Christ, who bore the ultimate burden for my eternal blessing, Amen.