New Beginnings

Topic: New Beginnings

The New Thing: Why Your Fresh Start Depends on Dying to Your Old Story

Scripture: "Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert." (Isaiah 43:18-19, KJV)

I. The Akasia Dawn: A Personal Witness to New Beginnings

The Pretoria morning cracks open like an egg over my Akasia veranda—golden yolk of sunlight spilling across the zinc roofs, chasing the last shadows of load-shedding darkness from my study. I sit here, laptop open, watching the Magaliesberg轮廓 sharpen against the sky, and I remember.

I remember the year the river dried up.

Not the Apies River, mind you—that stuttering stream still trickles through the city, muddy and determined. I mean my river. My "Cherished Creek," as I called it in my book Knots of Problems . The contract work in Centurion that had flowed steady for seven years—seven years!—evaporated overnight. The company restructured. My position dissolved. My income, my identity, my carefully constructed sense of purpose—gone. Poof. Like a Soweto electricity meter rejecting a depleted token.

I sat in this very spot, watching the same sun, and felt old. Not mature—old. Fossilised. The future looked like a N1 highway at rush hour: gridlocked, hopeless, going nowhere.

But here is the truth I learned in that wilderness, the truth I must declare to you today: God's new thing always requires the death of your old thing. You cannot receive fresh manna while clutching yesterday's mouldering bread. You cannot drink from rivers in the desert while still swimming in your stagnant of comfortable memory .

II. The Tyranny of the Former Things: Why We Cling to Dead Maps

The Scripture commands us: "Remember ye not the former things." Not "consider them occasionally." Not "reminisce fondly." Remember ye NOT. This is divine surgery, not suggestion.

Why such severity? Because memory, left untethered from the Spirit, becomes a tyrant. The past—especially the painful past—wraps around our souls like bindweed, strangling the new shoot before it can break ground.

I see this everywhere in our beautiful, struggling South Africa:

· The unemployed graduate who applies for jobs with a CV that screams 2020, while the economy has shape-shifted into 2026, demanding skills she doesn't yet know she needs. She remembers the "former things"—the promise of university, the guarantee that education equalled opportunity. But that map is obsolete. The rivers have moved.

· The business owner in Soshanguve, clinging to a retail model that worked before COVID, before load-shedding decimated foot traffic, before e-commerce crept into every township smartphone. "The way we've always done it," he insists, even as bankruptcy circles like a vulture.

· The political loyalist, ANC or DA or EFF—it matters not—who defends party failures with tribal ferocity because "we've always been this party." They remember the former things—the liberation struggle, the great speeches, the historic victories—while the nation burns with service delivery protests and coalition chaos .

· The church leader preaching a gospel of guaranteed ease, promising that faith means avoiding the wilderness, when Jesus Himself was driven into the wilderness by the Spirit .

Stagnation is an altar, my friends. And too many of us are bowing before it, sacrificing our futures on the blood-stained stone of "how it used to be."

III. The Idolatry of the Familiar: Confronting the Heresy of Stasis

Let us name the demon. Let us call it out with prophetic boldness.

There is a pervasive, poisonous teaching infecting the body of Christ—imported from Western prosperity pulpits, wrapped in KJV verses, and sold to hungry African souls like miracle water in fancy bottles. It is the Gospel of Uninterrupted Ease. The lie that says: If you have enough faith, your life will be a smooth highway. If you're truly blessed, you'll avoid the wilderness. If God loves you, your grid will never fail.

This is syncretism. This is blending Babylonian materialism with the pure milk of the Word .

Define your terms clearly:

· Faith is not a remote control for comfort. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1)—even when—especially when—the seen looks like a desert.

· Blessing is not the absence of problems. Blessing is the presence of God in the problem. It is manna in the wilderness, water from the rock, a pillar of fire when the night is darkest.

· New beginnings are not renovations of the old house. They are demolition projects. God doesn't remodel crumbling structures; He raises the dead.

The Scripture declares unequivocally: "Behold, I will do a NEW thing." Not a refurbished thing. Not an upgraded version of your failed plan. New. From scratch. Ex nihilo. The same God who spoke galaxies into nothingness is speaking over your wasteland right now.

IV. The Logic of Newness: An Apologetic for Divine Disruption

"But Harold," I hear the objection rising from the pews, "my past wasn't all bad! I had good things—relationships, achievements, seasons of blessing. Surely God wants me to remember those? Surely the Psalms tell us to remember His works!"

A valid thrust. Let us sharpen the argument with precision.

We must distinguish between:

1. Memorial praise—remembering God's faithfulness to fuel future faith.

2. Functional fixation—clinging to past methods, identities, or expectations that God has deliberately closed.

The argument can be formulated thus:

· Premise 1: God is doing a new thing (Isaiah 43:19, divine declaration).

· Premise 2: To perceive and participate in the new thing, we must stop basing our expectations on the old order (Isaiah 43:18, divine command).

· Premise 3: The old order, while perhaps once blessed by God, has fulfilled its purpose and is now passing away (2 Corinthians 5:17).

· Conclusion: Therefore, faithful discipleship requires active, intentional release of former frameworks to embrace God's unfolding revelation.

A common objection is: "But this sounds like disrespecting my heritage! My ancestors, my history, my struggles—they made me who I am!"

This objection fails because it confuses gratitude for the journey with imprisonment in the past. The Israelites were right to thank God for Egypt's deliverance. They were wrong to yearn for Egypt's leeks and garlic when the wilderness got hard (Numbers 11:5). Memory becomes idolatry when the past's comfort outweighs the present's calling.

The evidence strongly supports this from Scripture itself:

· Abraham had to leave Ur—his entire identity, family, security—to receive the promised child.

· Moses had to flee Pharaoh's palace, then return, shedding the prince's robe for a prophet's staff.

· Ruth had to leave Moab—her gods, her people, her inheritance—to be woven into the lineage of Jesus Christ.

· Peter had to abandon his fishing nets—his livelihood, his expertise, his comfortable competence—to become a fisher of men.

· Paul had to count his religious pedigree as dung (Philippians 3:8) to gain Christ.

Every new beginning in Scripture required a funeral first.

V. The Wilderness Way: Why God's Detour Is Your Destination

Picture it with me. The children of Israel at the Red Sea. Behind them? Egypt—slavery, yes, but also familiarity. The leeks and garlic. The houses they knew, the streets they'd walked, the graves of their fathers. Ahead? Impassable water. Around them? Pharaoh's chariots thundering closer.

And God says: "Go forward" (Exodus 14:15).

Forward? Into the sea?

Yes. Because the way through is always forward. Not back to Egypt. Not sideways into compromise. Not paralysis by analysis on the shoreline. Forward.

This is our South African moment, beloved.

Look at our nation:

· Coalition governments shifting like Drakensberg mist .

· Load-shedding Stage 6 plunging our cities into medieval darkness.

· The Rand dancing a dizzying, downward tango.

· Crime statistics that read like war casualty reports.

· Unemployment figures that would crush any other nation's spirit.

We are at the Red Sea. Behind us, the "former things"—the post-1994 hope, the rainbow nation dream, the economic boom years that seem like a fever dream now. Before us? A wilderness.

But here is the sacred secret: The wilderness is not a detour from your destiny. It IS your destiny's delivery room.

Isaiah didn't promise a way around the wilderness. He promised a way in the wilderness. Rivers in the desert. Not rivers that bypass the desert. In. Within. Through.

God's new thing isn't waiting on the other side of your struggle. It's springing up in the cracked, barren soil of your current crisis. Do you not perceive it? .

VI. The Streams in Your Wasteland: Practical Signs of New Beginnings

Let me tell you what my wilderness looked like, that year my Centurion contract died.

I mourned. Oh, how I mourned. I checked my bank balance like a patient checks a terminal diagnosis. I sent CVs into the void. I watched younger, cheaper candidates get the jobs I should have had.

But here's what I also saw, when I stopped staring at the dead map:

· Stream #1: A freelance editing gig from a publisher I'd never approached. They found me. The work paid less than my old contract, but it introduced me to a network that, three years later, published my first book .

· Stream #2: Time. Glorious, terrifying time. Time to sit on this veranda and actually write. Time to mentor young writers at TUT. Time to develop the Morning Power podcast that now reaches listeners across Africa .

· Stream #3: A new intimacy with Christ that only scarcity produces. When your own resources dry up, you learn the taste of daily manna. You discover that He is not just your source of living water—He is the water .

The streams didn't look like I expected. They didn't flow where I wanted. But they flowed. And they were enough.

VII. The Prosperity Gospel's Bankruptcy: Why Easy Believeth Fails

We must sound the alarm, friends. There is a false gospel spreading through our land like invasive pompom weed, choking out the native wheat. It is the Prosperity Gospel of More—the lie that says God's will is your wealth, your health, your comfort, your ease.

This theology collapses completely when the lights go out .

It offers:

· A cardboard shield against spiritual warfare.

· A mirage of water that vanishes when you most need drink.

· A foundation of sand that washes away when coalition governments shift and economic storms rage.

The Scripture declares unequivocally: "In this world you will have trouble" (John 16:33). Not "you might have trouble." Not "if you lack faith, you'll have trouble." You WILL have trouble. Jesus said it. Period.

But He didn't stop there: "But take heart! I have overcome the world."

The overcoming isn't the absence of trouble. It's the presence of the Overcomer in the trouble.

True liberation is found only in submitting to Jesus Christ as Lord—not using Him as a celestial concierge who fulfills your earthly wishes. Your breakthrough is not a bigger house; your breakthrough is a deeper well. Your new beginning is not an easier path; your new beginning is a stronger back.

VIII. The Discipline of Forgetting: Practical Steps to Embrace the New

How then shall we live? How do we actively "remember not" the former things?

1. Audit Your Attachments.

Sit down with a notebook. List everything you're clutching from your past—relationships that have served their purpose, careers that have died, grievances you're nursing like sickly children, expectations God never endorsed. Be brutally honest. Then, one by one, open your fingers. Release them. Say aloud: "Lord, I release this. It is former. You are doing a new thing."

2. Renovate Your Prayer Life.

Stop praying for resurrection of dead plans. "Lord, restore my old job! Fix my old marriage! Revive my old ministry!" What if God wants to give you something better, not just restore something familiar? Pray instead: "Lord, open my eyes to see what You're doing new. Align me with Your present movement, not my past memory."

3. Reframe Your Wilderness.

Every time load-shedding plunges you into darkness, practice this: "Lord, what are You saying in this dark? What stream are You carving in this blackout?" Every time your bank account drops, ask: "What manna are You providing today that I'd miss if I were still stuffed on yesterday's bread?" .

4. Recalibrate Your Relationships.

You will never embrace the new while surrounded by people who only talk about the old. Find your prophetic community—those who see what God is doing now, who speak vision not nostalgia, who carry shovels for digging new wells instead of buckets for drinking from dried-up cisterns .

5. Remember Strategically.

Yes, remember God's faithfulness—not to build an altar to the past, but to fuel faith for the future. "He who fed me then will feed me now. He who opened the Red Sea then will open this impassable door now. He who raised Jesus from the dead can certainly raise this dead dream—or give me a better one."

IX. The Call: Costly Discipleship in a New Season

This new thing God is doing? It will cost you.

It cost Abraham his country.

It cost Moses his palace.

It cost Ruth her security.

It cost Peter his business.

It cost Paul his pedigree.

It cost Jesus His life.

New beginnings are not cheap. They demand the death of the old self—the self that knows, the self that controls, the self that achieves, the self that deserves. They require the humility of a child who must learn to walk all over again, falling, failing, but getting up.

But oh, the glory of the new walk!

The freedom of dropping the crutch of past identity!

The exhilaration of discovering streams where you expected only sand!

The intimacy of knowing the Way-Maker personally, not just knowing the way!

This is the call, beloved. This is the hour.

The calendar has turned. The season has shifted. The old map is obsolete. The former things? God Himself commands us to stop remembering them. Not because they weren't real. Not because they weren't blessed. But because they are former—and He is doing something new.

X. The Benediction: Go Forward

So here is my word to you, from my Akasia veranda to wherever you sit reading these words:

Stop checking the rearview mirror. The road behind is closed. The road ahead? It looks impossible. It looks like a Red Sea. It looks like a wilderness. It looks like a desert with no water.

But the same God who spoke light into primordial darkness is speaking over your darkness right now. The same Jesus who calmed Galilee's storm is calming your chaos. The same Spirit who hovered over the waters at creation is hovering over your chaos, ready to speak forth new worlds.

"Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it?"

Yes, Lord. By Your grace, we will know it. We will see it. We will step into it.

The new thing is here.

The rivers are flowing.

The way is opening.

Go forward.

Prayer

Father, give me eyes to see Your new thing and the faith to follow it. Break the spell of my past. Sever the cords that bind me to former seasons, former identities, former fears. When I'm tempted to yearn for Egypt's leeks, remind me of Egypt's chains. When the wilderness stretches endless before me, show me the manna at my feet. When the Red Sea blocks my path, whisper, "Go forward." I renounce the prosperity gospel of ease. I embrace the costly discipleship of the cross. I release my dead maps and receive Your living Word. Do Your new thing in me, through me, and despite me. For the glory of Jesus Christ, the ultimate Way-Maker, the eternal New Beginning. Amen.