Title: The Stamina of the Sent: Why Waiting is Warfare in a World That Refuses to Rest
By Harold Mawela | Akasia, Pretoria
I. A Confession from the Dark
Last Thursday, Stage 6 load-shedding hit our grid like a knockout punch. I sat on my veranda in Akasia—laptop battery at 7%, deadline looming, and the neighbourhood silent except for the hum of generators fighting their losing battle. My spirit mirrored the grid: depleted. I had been running—running to meet demands, running to answer calls, running to fix problems I never created. And like Eskom’s crumbling infrastructure, I was moments from total collapse.
Then, cutting through the darkness like a torch in a Soweto alley, the Spirit whispered Isaiah 40:31: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”
I laughed. Wait? In this economy? With this load-shedding schedule? With these petrol prices? Lord, waiting feels like luxury I cannot afford. But as the night deepened and the jacaranda outside my gate stood motionless yet rooted, I understood: I had confused waiting with wasting. And they are not the same.
II. The Great Definition: What Waiting Is Not
Let us define our terms clearly, for the enemy loves to blur the lexicon of faith.
Waiting is not passivity. The Hebrew word qavah, which Isaiah deploys here, carries the tension of a rope being twisted—strands intertwining under pressure until they become unbreakable . Picture the women in Marikana twisting grass into rope, their hands moving with purpose even as their bodies rest. That is qavah: active expectancy, not passive resignation.
Waiting is not panic. In our South African moment—with the rand performing its daily high-wire act, with service delivery protests flaring like veld fires, with a government of national unity trying to hold together what apartheid could not break—panic seems the rational response. But the Scripture declares unequivocally: “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15). Panic prays; waiting positions.
Waiting is not hurry dressed in religious clothes. We have perfected the art of the rushed prayer, the grabbed blessing, the prophetic declaration shouted over fleeing taxis. But as the Great Isaiah Scroll—preserved for centuries in the caves of Qumran—testifies, God’s promise remains: renewal comes to those who wait, not those who race .
III. The Eagle’s Anatomy: Why Wings Require Waiting
Imagine, if you will, the eagle of our Drakensberg skies. She does not flap incessantly. She does not exhaust herself with frantic wing-beats. She waits—for the thermal, for the updraft, for the invisible force that will carry her above the storm without a single expenditure of her own strength.
This is the scandal of the gospel: Your stamina is not manufactured; it is received.
I learned this from Oupa Solomon, an elder in our Akasia congregation who spent forty years underground in the gold mines. “Boy,” he told me last Sunday, his voice like gravel wrapped in velvet, “underground, you learn one thing: you cannot breathe without the surface. The air comes down, or you die. We think we are strong because we dig. But the strength is in the breathing, not the digging.”
His words pierced my theology. We have become a nation of diggers—scratching at the earth for solutions, for wealth, for security—while forgetting that the air we need comes from above. The stamina of the sent is not self-generated; it is Spirit-supplied.
IV. The Political Theology of Fatigue
Here is the truth we must confront: Fatigue is a strategy of the enemy.
Look at our nation. Look at the exhaustion etched into the faces of our leaders—from the Presidency to the parish. We are tired because we have been trained to believe that everything depends on us. The protests, the negotiations, the coalitions, the crises—they demand our constant attention, our endless adrenaline, our sleepless striving.
But consider the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15). She came to Jesus desperate, persistent, seemingly ignored. Yet her waiting—her active, hopeful, unwavering trust—drew from Him the declaration: “Woman, great is your faith!” She did not storm the throne; she waited at its foot. And in that waiting, she received what all the frantic pushing of the crowd could not produce.
A common objection arises: “But Harold, you don’t understand my situation. If I don’t push, nothing happens. If I don’t fight, I lose everything.”
I understand. I am a black man in South Africa. I know what it means to fight for every inch. But I also know this: the battles we win in our own strength become burdens we must carry forever. The battles God wins become testimonies we sing for eternity.
V. The Logic of Renewal: A Syllogism for the Weary
Let us reason together, as Isaiah himself would plead:
Premise One: All human strength, no matter how vigorous, eventually fails. “Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall” (Isaiah 40:30). The evidence is before us: athletes retire, economies crash, nations crumble. Our best efforts have expiration dates.
Premise Two: God’s strength operates on a different economy—it is inexhaustible, renewable, and offered freely to those who trust Him. “The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary” (Isaiah 40:28). His grid never fails; His power knows no load-shedding.
Premise Three: The connection between our weakness and His strength is forged in the discipline of waiting. “Those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength” (Isaiah 40:31).
Conclusion: Therefore, waiting is not the absence of action but the presence of alignment. It is the deliberate choice to tether our exhausted souls to His eternal supply.
The argument stands or falls on this: Do you believe God is who He says He is? If He is the Creator who neither faints nor fails, then waiting on Him is the most strategic action you can take.
VI. The Prophetic Confrontation: Against the Spirit of This Age
I must sound the alarm against a heresy sweeping through our pulpits and podcasts: the doctrine of relentless striving. It tells you that God helps those who help themselves. It tells you that the blessing belongs to the busy, the breakthrough to the bustling, the anointing to the anxious.
But the Scripture declares the opposite: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). The Hebrew word raphah means to sink down, to let drop, to abandon. It is the posture of a child falling backward into a father’s arms, trusting they will be caught.
In our South African context, this is revolutionary. We have been trained by apartheid to fight, by poverty to scramble, by injustice to demand. And all of that is right—in its place. But if we fight without first waiting, we become like those who build without blueprints: loud, busy, and ultimately lost.
Look at the headlines: The GNU negotiations, the land debate, the energy crisis—everywhere, human striving colliding with human striving, producing more heat than light. But where are those who wait? Where are the prophets who have listened long enough to speak with authority? Where are the leaders whose stamina comes from the throne, not the polls?
VII. The Personal Testimony: What I Learned in the Dark
That night on my veranda, as the load-shedding stretched into its fourth hour, something shifted. I stopped checking my battery percentage. I stopped calculating how much time remained. I stopped strategizing how to salvage my deadline.
I simply sat. And waited.
And in that waiting—that active, expectant, hopeful stillness—the renewal began. Not as a lightning strike, but as a slow rising, like the sun over the Magaliesberg. Ideas came. Peace descended. Stamina, inexplicably, returned.
By morning, I had written more in two hours than I had in the previous two days. The work was better. The words carried weight. And I understood: The waiting had not wasted me; it had weaponized me.
VIII. The Call: Four Disciplines for the Weary Warrior
If you would receive the stamina of the sent, practice these disciplines:
First, practice the Sacred Pause. Before you speak, pause. Before you decide, wait. Before you act, listen. In a world addicted to speed, your stillness will be your strength .
Second, cultivate the Garden of Silence. The French philosopher Blaise Pascal observed that all of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone . Create space for silence. Let God’s voice fill what your noise has evacuated.
Third, embrace the Surgeon’s Cut. Correction is not rejection; it is redirection. When a true friend speaks hard truth, receive it as divine surgery. The wound of a friend heals; the kisses of an enemy deceive .
Fourth, build on the Bedrock of Integrity. Your hidden character determines your visible destiny. What you do in the dark when no one watches becomes the foundation of what God can do through you in the light .
IX. The Theology of Eagles: Why the Heights Require Depths
Here is the mystery: eagles do not soar because they are light. They soar because they have learned to catch the wind. And the wind—ruach, Spirit, breath of God—cannot be manufactured. It can only be awaited.
Jesus Himself modeled this. Before His public ministry, forty days in the wilderness. Before choosing disciples, a night in prayer. Before Calvary, agony in Gethsemane. The Son of God waited. How much more must we?
The same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you (Romans 8:11). But that resurrection power is not activated by your frenzy; it is released through your faith. And faith, as Hebrews defines it, is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Hope waits. Faith trusts. Love endures.
X. The Final Word: Your Help Is on the Way
Friend, I do not know what has depleted you. Perhaps it is the long fight for justice in a nation that forgets its promises. Perhaps it is the lonely battle against sin that will not surrender. Perhaps it is simply the exhaustion of surviving in a system designed to wear you down.
But I declare this over you today: Your help is being dispatched from the throne room right now. While you wait, you are not forgotten. While you rest, you are not abandoned. While you sit in the darkness of your Akasia night, the Eagle is preparing your wings.
The stamina of the sent is not the stamina of the self-sufficient. It is the stamina of those who have learned to wait—actively, expectantly, worshipfully—upon the Lord.
And when the wind comes—and it will come—you will not run and be weary. You will not walk and faint. You will mount up with wings as eagles, and the nations will wonder at the source of your strength.
“But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of Him everywhere” (2 Corinthians 2:14).
Even in Akasia. Even in the dark. Even now.
Prayer:
Father, in a nation that never stops striving, teach us the sacred art of waiting. Forgive us for treating Your presence as a pause between our plans. Renew our strength not by removing our struggles, but by revealing Your supply. Lift us on wings of grace above the storms of circumstance. Make us eagles in a world of chickens—soaring not by effort, but by encounter. In Jesus’ mighty name, who waited three days in the tomb before He rose in triumph—Amen.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-stamina-of-the-sent/id1506692775?i=1000753007838
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