Scripture: "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." (Isaiah 43:18-19)
I. The Braai of Yesterday's Ashes
The jacaranda trees outside my Akasia window are shedding their purple confetti again, a flamboyant farewell to another season. From my veranda in Pretoria North, I watch the city hum—buses rattling down Paul Kruger Street, hawkers calling at Wonderpark Mall, students spilling from TUT's gates with backpacks full of tomorrow's dreams. And I think about gates. Specifically, about the one I've been standing in front of for far too long.
We South Africans, we're masters of the braai, aren't we? We know the satisfaction of perfectly grilled boerewors, the aroma of the coals whispering promises, the camaraderie around the fire. But sometimes, the braai gets neglected. The ashes pile up—a grey monument to feasts past. The grid gets rusty, choked with remnants of charred dreams and half-hearted attempts. We stare at these remnants, clinging to the familiar chill of yesterday's coals, unwilling to embrace the heat of a new fire.
The Law of the New Gate is this: last week's weariness has no legal claim on this new Monday.
Let me tell you about my own ash heap. Three years ago, I stood in my study—a cramped corner of my Akasia home—staring at a rejection letter from a major publisher. My manuscript, eighteen months of wrestling with words and scripture, returned like a boomerang that forgot its owner. "Not commercially viable," they wrote. "The market isn't ready for this perspective."
I did what any respectable Pretoria pastor would do. I smiled on Sunday, preached about perseverance, then spent Monday through Thursday rehearsing the rejection like a favourite psalm. I'd wake at 2am, the letter's phrases scrolling through my mind like news tickers during load-shedding. Not viable. Not ready. Not enough.
The ashes grew. And I sat in them.
II. The Theology of the Gate
Let us define our terms clearly. What is a gate in the biblical imagination?
A gate is not merely an opening; it is a point of transition, a place of judgment (in the Hebrew sense of mishpat—decision-making), a threshold where identity shifts. In ancient cities, the gate was where elders sat, where contracts were sealed, where direction was determined. To pass through a gate was to consent to a new jurisdiction.
The Scripture declares unequivocally: "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past."
The Hebrew word for "dwell" here is rachash—it carries the image of stirring something up, like disturbing sediment in a glass of water. God isn't asking us to develop amnesia. He's commanding us to stop stirring the mud. Let it settle. The water won't clear until you do.
But here's where we must confront a pervasive error, a spiritual poison we've imported from the West and glued a Bible verse to: the theology of perpetual regret. This is the teaching that says your past defines your future, that your failures are permanent stains, that your mistakes have veto power over God's plans. It has infiltrated our churches, wrapped in religious language, dressed in Sunday suits.
A common objection arises: "But Pastor, you don't understand what I've done. The rejection, the betrayal, the failure—it's part of my story. How can I forget what shaped me?"
This objection fails because it confuses remembering with rehearsing. It mistakes acknowledgment for residence. You can visit a place without living there. You can pass through a gate without pitching a tent.
The argument can be formulated thus:
1. Major Premise: God declares Himself to be doing a "new thing" (Isaiah 43:19). The Hebrew chadash implies something freshly made, not merely refurbished.
2. Minor Premise: This new thing requires perception—"do you not perceive it?"—indicating that our attention determines our experience.
3. Conclusion: Therefore, dwelling on the former things actively blinds us to the new thing God is already doing.
This isn't positive thinking. This is spiritual physics. What you focus on expands. What you rehearse, you reinforce. What you meditate on, you materialize.
III. The Eskom Principle and National Deliverance
Picture it with me. Last month, during Stage 6 load-shedding, I sat in my dimly lit Akasia living room, generator humming outside like a mechanical prayer. My neighbour, an engineer at Eskom, had spent the day explaining the grid's challenges—aging infrastructure, saboteurs, debt, mismanagement. "The problem," he said, "is that we keep repairing the same failing systems instead of building new ones."
The Holy Spirit struck me like a Highveld thunderstorm.
That's us. That's the church.
We keep repairing the same failing systems—the grudges we won't release, the rejections we won't surrender, the failures we won't forget—while God is building a brand new grid. We're trying to restore Eskom when He's offering solar.
The Law of the New Gate operates on divine current. God's mercy is fresh every morning. Not recycled. Not refurbished. Fresh. The Hebrew chadash in Lamentations 3:22-23 carries the image of the moon's renewal—a clean cycle, a new phase, a different light.
Last week's weariness has no legal claim on this new Monday because weariness isn't a legal entity—it's an emotional state masquerading as truth. And states can change. Borders can shift. Gates can open.
IV. The 2024 Elections and the Prophetic Shift
Let's get local. The 2024 elections delivered their verdict—the ANC's support dropped from 57% to 40%, a seismic shift in our political landscape . Commentators called it many things: a wake-up call, a correction, a revolution. But I saw something else. I saw a nation refusing to be defined by its past.
For thirty years, we defined ourselves by the struggle against apartheid. Rightly so. That story shaped us. But a nation that only tells its origin story eventually forgets its destiny story. The new gate in our national life isn't about erasing history—it's about refusing to be imprisoned by it. Coalition governments aren't just political realities; they're prophetic parables. When God's people compromise with the past, He allows coalitions. But when they're ready for the new thing, He builds coalitions of a different kind—apostolic alliances that transcend old divisions.
My cousin Thabo, a mechanic in Ga-Rankuwa, taught me this. For years, he defined himself by his failed marriage, the one that collapsed in 2019. "I'm the guy whose wife left," he'd introduce himself, not in words but in posture. Then last year, he started declaring Psalm 91 over every car he fixes. "No accidents in these jalopies," he insists. Clients laugh. Until they survive head-ons on the N1. Now his WhatsApp status reads: "3 John 2 certified—bodywork AND soul-work!"
He stopped dwelling on the former things. And the new thing sprang up.
V. The Algorithm of Anointing
We're debating AI ethics at the 2025 G20 summit, but the real code rewrite is happening in prayer rooms across Tshwane . Students at UP and TUT are using ChatGPT to cross-reference healing scriptures, building databases of deliverance, mapping the geography of grace. Dangerous? Only if we fear technology more than timidity.
But here's the deeper truth: algorithms learn from data. If your data set is past failures, your future predictions will be failures. If your training material is rejection, your output will be rejection. The renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2) isn't just spiritual poetry—it's neural reprogramming. The Greek metamorpho means a complete change of form. New gate. New grid. New data.
The Law of the New Gate is this: your energy is being replenished from heaven's storehouse. Not your own. Not your ancestors'. Not your track record's. Heaven's.
I experienced this personally in 2023. After the publishing rejection, after the ashes settled, I received an unexpected call from a small press in Cape Town. "We found your manuscript in a slush pile," the editor said. "Someone printed it and left it on our table at a conference. We can't stop thinking about it."
Someone printed it. Someone carried it. Someone opened a door I didn't know existed.
Ideas that seemed stuck were flowing. Where I saw a dead end, God revealed a hidden door. The book—Finding God in the Load-Shedding—became a 40-day journey for skeptics and seekers . Not because I'm brilliant. Because I finally stopped stirring the mud.
VI. The Confrontation
Now, let me sound the alarm. We have a generation of Christians who know the theology of the new gate but live in the archaeology of the old ruins. You can quote Isaiah 43 while excavating Jeremiah's rubble. You can declare "new thing" while sleeping in the old grave.
Here's the confrontation: the spirit of cyclical fatigue is a demon wearing religious robes. It tells you that Monday is just Sunday's hangover. That this year is just last year with different dates. That your pattern is your prison.
But the Scripture declares unequivocally: "See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?"
The word "see" here is ra'ah in Hebrew—to observe, to perceive, to experience. God isn't asking if you believe in new things theoretically. He's asking if you're seeing the one He's already doing.
The problem isn't His activity. The problem is your attention.
VII. The Coalition of the New Gate
Imagine, if you will, a coalition government of your soul. The ANC of your past achievements wants a seat. The EFF of your radical failures demands representation. The DA of your careful planning insists on proportionality. They negotiate. They bicker. They form committees.
And while they argue, the new gate stands open.
The Law of the New Gate is this: don't bring yesterday's frustration into today's fresh potential
Your new beginning is not a wish; it's your spiritual inheritance for this moment. The Greek klēronomia—inheritance—implies legal right, not emotional hope. You don't hope for what you already own. You possess it.
Last week, I walked through Wonderpark Mall, past the cellphone shops and the bunny chow outlets, past the teenagers vaping near the entrance, past the grandmothers buying plastic flowers. And I thought: Every person here is carrying an archive. Rejection from a lover. Failure from a business. Betrayal from a friend. Words from a parent. And every person here has a gate in front of them they cannot see because they're facing the wrong direction.
VIII. The Prayer of Transition
Let's pray with our eyes open.
Prayer:
Father, I step out of the cycle and into Your new thing.
I renounce the right to rehearse my rejections.
I resign from the committee that reviews my failures.
I close the file on verdicts not signed by You.
Open the door only You can see.
Not the door I deserve.
Not the door my resume earned.
Not the door my ancestors prepared.
But the door Your mercy cut into the mountain.
The gate Your grace painted on the wall.
The entrance Your Spirit reveals to the humble.
In Akasia, in Pretoria, in this nation of load-shedding and resurrection,
Let Your new thing spring up.
Let me perceive it.
Let me walk through it.
Not because I'm worthy.
But because You're faithful.
In the name of Jesus Christ,
The One who walked out of the ultimate old thing
So I could walk into the eternal new thing.
Amen.
IX. The Final Word
The inverter beeps. The lights flicker. Eskom fails again. But the new gate doesn't run on municipal current.
Your destiny is decoded in your daily habits. What you rehearse, you become. What you neglect, you forfeit. The past has no legal claim on you because the Law of the New Gate supersedes all previous legislation. Calvary cancelled the old covenant's condemnation. The empty trumpet overruled the grave's jurisdiction.
Healing as divine inheritance isn't a metaphor—it's a land claim . And in a nation where 63% still battle poverty's symptoms, we'd better start occupying. The title deed? Signed in scarlet. The eviction notice? Served on Calvary.
So here's my question, my mlungu brother, my sesi sister: Whose report are you believing? The report of the former things, or the report of the new thing?
The gate is open.
The grid is renewed.
The braai has fresh coals.
Stop stirring the ashes.
Your new beginning is not a wish. It's your inheritance. Now—walk through.
Reflection Questions:
1. What "former thing" are you rehearsing that God has already forgiven or finished?
2. Where might you be missing a new gate because you're facing the old direction?
3. If your energy is being replenished from heaven's storehouse, what could you attempt today that you've been avoiding?
From my veranda in Akasia, Pretoria North, where the jacarandas bloom and the load-shedding schedule changes daily but God's mercies do not.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-law-of-the-new-gate/id1506692775?i=1000752405969
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