By Harold Mawela, Akasia, Pretoria
Let me take you to a place we all know too well in this country—the corner of Sefako Makgatho Drive and the R80 off-ramp in Akasia. You know that spot. It is where the pothole lives. It has been there for three rainy seasons, swallowing tires and testing the patience of saints and sinners alike. Every morning, I navigate my Toyota around it, cursing under my breath, accepting it as a permanent fixture of my geography. I had learned to drive around the problem.
One morning, I saw something that rewired my theology. A man—just a man in a faded overall—walked into the middle of that intersection during peak traffic. He did not carry a wheelbarrow. He did not hold a sign demanding the ward councillor’s attention. He carried a shovel and a bag of asphalt. While the cars hooted and the taxis swerved, he began to fill the pothole. Right there, in the chaos, he preemptively struck against a hazard we had all learned to tolerate. He didn’t wait for the municipality to schedule a repair. He didn’t wait for a formal approval. He saw the problem, and he attacked it with what he had.
That is what I want to talk to you about today. Praise. Not the polite, Sunday-morning, organ-accompanied version we have domesticated. But praise as a preemptive strike. Praise as the spiritual equivalent of a man filling a pothole while the traffic of hell is still hooting at him.
The Theology of Premature Celebration
We have been taught to praise God after the victory. We raise our hands after the bank approves the bond. We shout after the prodigal returns. We sing after the medical report changes. But the Scripture presents a far more dangerous, far more effective strategy. It presents a strategy called preemptive praise.
Consider, if you will, the war council of King Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20. The enemy coalition was three armies deep. The intelligence report was catastrophic: “A great multitude is coming against you from beyond the sea.” The natural response would have been to deploy the archers first, to position the cavalry, to calculate the angles of defense. But what did Jehoshaphat do? He “appointed those who were to sing to the Lord and praise Him in holy attire, as they went out before the army.” He sent the praise team ahead of the army. He put the worship leaders where we usually put the shock troops.
Let us define our terms clearly. Preemptive praise is the strategic act of declaring God’s victory over a situation before the evidence of that victory appears in the natural realm. It is not pretending that the problem does not exist. It is refusing to let the problem have the final word. It is the sound of faith going first.
The Argument for Preemptive Praise
We can formulate the logic thus:
Premise 1: God inhabits the praises of His people (Psalm 22:3). His presence is not merely a comfort; it is a territorial claim. Where His presence is invited, His authority is established.
Premise 2: The enemy—Satan and his spiritual forces—has no authority in the presence of God. His chains, his prison doors, his midnight strategies are nullified when the King of Glory enters the room.
Premise 3: Therefore, if you will praise before the chains fall, you invite the presence that breaks the chains before the enemy can finish forging them.
This is not positive thinking. This is strategic warfare. The enemy’s greatest advantage is the element of surprise. He strikes at midnight—at your lowest point, your darkest hour, your moment of greatest vulnerability. But what did Paul and Silas do at midnight? They did not wait for dawn. They did not form a prison committee to negotiate with the warden. The Scripture says, “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.”
Notice the strategic brilliance of this move. By praising at midnight, they turned the enemy’s chosen hour of attack into the hour of their own ambush. The enemy came expecting to find despair, but he found a praise party. He came expecting to hear the sound of weeping, but he heard the sound of warfare. And what happened? “Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened.”
The chains fell during the praise, not after it. The doors opened while they were singing, not after they had finished the closing prayer. Praise was not the celebration of the victory; it was the mechanism of the victory.
Addressing the Objection: “But This Feels Dishonest”
I can hear the objection forming in your mind. You are a practical South African. You deal with load shedding, rising petrol prices, and the reality that your neighbour’s house was broken into last week. You are thinking, “Harold, how can I praise God for a victory I do not yet see? Would that not be lying? Would that not be ignoring reality?”
Let me answer you with the precision of a theologian and the tenderness of a pastor.
Reality is not merely what you see with your eyes. Reality is what God has spoken, what Christ has accomplished, and what the Spirit is guaranteeing. You are not ignoring the problem; you are refusing to worship it. You are not pretending the prison is not real; you are declaring that the prison is not final.
We must distinguish between denial and declaration. Denial says, “There is no problem.” That is foolishness. Declaration says, “There is a problem, but my God is greater than this problem, and I will magnify Him until the problem shrinks to its proper size.”
When you praise in the midnight hour, you are not acting as if the chains are not there. You are acting as if the One who breaks chains is more present than the chains themselves. You are aligning your declaration with His dominion. This is not psychological manipulation; it is spiritual warfare. The enemy does not fear your emotions. He fears your praise because your praise carries the presence of the One he has already been defeated by.
A Modern South African Parable
Let me bring this home. I was speaking with a young man in Soshanguve two weeks ago. He had finished his matric with distinctions. He had applied to every university in Gauteng. He had the marks. He had the drive. But he did not have the funding. The applications came back: “Pending,” “Waitlisted,” “Unfortunately, due to budgetary constraints…”
His mother called me. “Pastor Harold, we have done everything. We have gone to NSFAS. We have gone to the ward committee. We have gone to the bank. The door is closed.”
I asked her one question: “Have you praised?”
She looked at me as if I had asked her to dance in the rain during a thunderstorm. “Praise? My son is sitting at home while his classmates are registering. What is there to praise?”
I told her: “Praise is not the celebration of the open door. Praise is the key that opens the door. You have done what you can in the natural. Now do what you must in the spiritual. Send your praise ahead of your petition.”
She was a woman of faith. She went home, and she did what I suggested. She gathered her son and her two daughters, and they began to praise. Not for the funding they did not have, but for the God who does not change. They praised for His faithfulness in the past. They praised for His sovereignty over the future. They praised until the atmosphere shifted.
Three days later, a call came. A small business development fund, one they had never applied to, had received a recommendation from a source they did not know. The funding was approved. The door opened.
Was it magic? No. It was the preemptive power of praise. They sent the worship team ahead of the army. By the time the enemy thought he had secured the prison doors, the earthquake had already been scheduled.
The Philosophy Behind the Practice
Let us go deeper, because I know some of you are intellectually robust. You need to know why this works, not just that it works.
There is a philosophical principle at play here: the primacy of the spiritual over the material. We live in a culture—a deeply South African culture, I might add—that has been seduced by materialism. We believe that what we see, touch, and quantify is the ultimate reality. The bank statement is more real than the promise. The medical report is more authoritative than the prophecy. The political situation is more determinative than the prayer meeting.
But the Christian worldview inverts this. The Scripture declares that “what is seen is made from what is not seen” (Hebrews 11:3). The material world is the shadow; the spiritual world is the substance. When you praise, you are not escaping reality; you are entering the deeper reality. You are stepping behind the curtain of the natural to access the realm where the final decisions are actually made.
Imagine, if you will, a courtroom. In the natural courtroom, the judge bangs the gavel and delivers the verdict. But suppose you have access to the judge’s chambers before the trial. Suppose you can present your case to the One who will ultimately decide before the courtroom session even begins. That is what praise does. It gains you access to the throne room before the battle reaches the field. It secures the verdict before the enemy can mount his defense.
The Error We Must Confront
We must sound the alarm against a subtle but devastating error that has crept into the South African church. It is the error of passive Christianity. We have been taught to pray, to wait, to hope, but we have not been taught to attack. We have domesticated our worship into a pre-sermon warm-up, forgetting that worship was always intended to be warfare.
Look at what is happening around us. Crime is rampant. Corruption is normalized. The family is under assault. Young men are losing their purpose. Young women are being exploited. And what is the response of the church? We hold prayer meetings. We lament the state of the nation. We plead with God to intervene.
But I ask you: have we praised? Have we sent the worship team ahead of the army? Have we declared the dominion of Christ over the streets of Hillbrow, the suburbs of Sandton, the townships of Soweto, the villages of Limpopo, with the same ferocity that the enemy is declaring his dominion?
The enemy is not passive. He is not waiting for us to get our act together. He is strategizing. He is deploying. He is filling the potholes of our society with his own asphalt. And we, the church, are sitting in the traffic, complaining about the pothole we have learned to tolerate.
Praise is not a retreat. It is a calculated advance. When you praise, you are not waiting for the enemy to stop attacking. You are attacking his capacity to attack. You are preemptively striking at the spiritual infrastructure that supports his operations in your life, your family, and your nation.
The Practical Application
So what does this look like in the ordinary life of a South African believer?
It means that when you wake up in the morning and the load shedding schedule says you will have no power from 8 to 10, you do not start your day with a complaint. You start your day with a declaration. You praise the God who is the Light, and you declare that no darkness can overcome His light. You preemptively strike against the spirit of darkness that uses physical darkness to create fear and despair.
It means that when you get the call from the school saying your child has been expelled, you do not fall into a spiral of anxiety. You lift your hands—perhaps with tears streaming down your face—and you praise the God who restores what the locust has eaten. You preemptively strike against the spirit of rejection before it can take root in your child’s identity.
It means that when the medical report comes back with words you do not understand—words like “malignant” and “metastasis”—you do not let those words be the final authority. You open your mouth and you praise the God who is the Healer. You preemptively strike against the spirit of death before it can claim jurisdiction over your body.
It means that when the enemy brings the memory of your past failure—the abortion, the affair, the business deal that went sour, the addiction you thought you had defeated—you do not engage in a conversation with him. You do not debate him. You praise. You say, “Lord, You are the God who forgives and forgets. You have cast my sins into the depths of the sea. I will not fish what You have drowned.” You preemptively strike against the spirit of condemnation before it can build a prison around your mind.
The Joy That Is Your Strength
Do you see the pattern? Preemptive praise is not about feeling happy when you are sad. It is about accessing a deeper joy that is not dependent on circumstances. Nehemiah said, “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). Not your happiness. Your circumstances can steal your happiness. But your joy—the joy that comes from knowing that your name is written in heaven, that your future is secured by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that your victory was purchased at Calvary—that joy cannot be stolen.
And that joy is strength. Strength to endure. Strength to persist. Strength to fight. Strength to fill the pothole while the traffic of hell is still hooting.
The Ultimate Preemptive Strike
Let me anchor this in the greatest preemptive strike in history. Before the foundation of the world, God knew that humanity would fall. He knew that sin would enter. He knew that death would reign. He knew that the enemy would claim dominion over the creation.
And what did God do? Did He wait for the fall to happen before He formulated a response? Did He hold an emergency council in heaven after Adam ate the fruit? No. Before the first sin was ever committed, before the first chain was ever forged, before the first prison door was ever closed, the Scripture says that “the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8).
God preemptively struck against sin, death, and hell before they ever launched their attack. He sent His praise—His Son, Jesus Christ—ahead of the army. He sent the Victor before the battle began. He sent the Resurrection before the first grave was ever dug.
And when Jesus hung on the cross, at the darkest hour of human history, when the sky went black and the earth shook, He was not waiting for deliverance. He was delivering. He was not waiting for the chains to fall. He was breaking them. And He said, “It is finished.”
That is your foundation. That is your confidence. You do not preemptively strike because you are brave. You preemptively strike because the war has already been won. You praise because the enemy you are fighting is already defeated. You fill the pothole because the road has already been paid for.
The Call to Action
So here is my challenge to you today. Stop waiting for the chains to fall before you praise. Praise until they fall. Stop waiting for the door to open before you celebrate. Celebrate until it opens. Stop waiting for the enemy to retreat before you sing. Sing until he retreats.
You have the same weapon that Jehoshaphat used. You have the same weapon that Paul and Silas used. You have the same weapon that the early church used when they prayed and the place was shaken. It is the weapon of praise. And it is not a defensive weapon. It is an offensive weapon. It is a preemptive strike.
When you praise, you are not reacting to the enemy’s attack. You are launching your own attack. You are declaring that your God is greater than your problem. You are declaring that your God is greater than your fear. You are declaring that your God is greater than your enemy. And in that declaration, the foundation of the enemy’s operation begins to shake.
The Prayer of Preemptive Praise
Let us pray.
Father, I thank You that You are not a reactive God. You are a preemptive God. Before the enemy laid his plans, You had already laid the foundation. Before the chains were forged, the Lamb was slain. Before the prison doors were closed, the earthquake was scheduled.
Lord, make my praise a preemptive power. Teach me to strike before the enemy can strike. Teach me to declare before the enemy can deceive. Teach me to sing before the enemy can silence.
I will not wait for the chains to fall. I will praise until they do. I will not wait for the doors to open. I will praise until they do. I will not wait for the victory to be visible. I will praise until it is.
For the joy of the Lord is my strength. And in that strength, I advance. I fill the pothole. I shake the prison. I ambush the enemy at midnight.
In the name of Jesus Christ, who has already won, I praise. Amen.
Go and Preemptively Strike
Do not leave this place as you came. Leave as a warrior. Leave as one who knows that your praise is not background music for your life. It is the soundtrack of your warfare. It is the key in the lock. It is the shovel in the pothole.
The enemy may have chosen the hour. But you have chosen the weapon. And your weapon—praise—is the preemptive strike that guarantees your victory.
Go and praise your way through. Not because the chains are already off. But because the One who breaks chains is already with you. And where He is, chains cannot remain. Doors cannot stay closed. Enemies cannot stand.
Praise is not your response to victory. Praise is your preemptive strike for victory.
Let the midnight praise begin.
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