The War in Your Will

The War in Your Will: A Gethsemane Strategy for a Nation on the Brink

By Harold Mawela

Akasia, Pretoria

The jacaranda trees outside my window in Akasia have just exploded into that furious purple bloom—October’s divine confetti carpeting our streets, sticking to tires, clinging to windscreens like God’s stubborn grace. But this morning, as I scraped petals off my old sedan before heading to the AFM church, I found myself staring at something else: the fuel gauge.

R3.06 per litre more for petrol. R7.37 more for diesel. Paraffin—the lifeline of our poorest—up by nearly R12. A 15% jump in petrol. A 35% leap in diesel. And somewhere in Hammanskraal, a mother lights a paraffin stove in a one-room shelter, three children studying by a flickering flame, wondering how she will make next week’s SASSA grant stretch to cover the hike. Just yesterday, labour federations announced coordinated action against this soaring cost of living, warning that workers are being “trapped” by rising prices, unemployment, and retrenchments. We are a nation gasping. And in the gasping, we face a question far deeper than the budget deficit:

Who holds the will?

The Anatomy of a Clash

Let me confess something. I’ve wrestled with this. Last month, during a twelve-hour outage—stage something, the numbers blur after a while—the craving hit like a rogue taxi cutting through traffic. Addiction thrives in darkness, I’ve learned. But so does faith. The chains we South Africans know aren't just Eskom’s debt or potholes swallowing cars. They are the chains of will—the quiet, stubborn fist we clench around our own way when God’s path looks like a dirt road leading nowhere.

Picture a world where you hold the steering wheel, foot on the accelerator, windows down, music loud. You know this road. You’ve mapped it. The GPS of your preference has calculated the fastest route to your preferred destination. Then suddenly, God reaches over and gently—or not so gently—takes the wheel. The turn He signals leads into a dark tunnel. The destination on His screen doesn’t match the one in your heart.

That is the war in your will.

Gethsemane’s Strategic Doctrine

The Scripture declares unequivocally: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

Now let us define our terms with theological precision. This verse reveals something both astonishing and deeply comforting: Jesus possessed a genuine human will capable of shrinking from suffering, yet simultaneously exercised perfect, active submission to the divine will. He was not a Stoic philosopher numbing himself to pain. He was not a robot executing pre-programmed commands. He was the Second Adam—the last Adam—entering the very garden where the first Adam fell, and there, under the ancient olive trees, He reversed the rebellion.

Where the first Adam said, “My will, not Yours,” the last Adam said the opposite. In that single prayer, Jesus secured righteousness for many. In that one surrendered breath, He unlocked the door of salvation for every struggling, stubborn, sin-weary soul.

But here is where our modern South African Christianity often gets it dangerously wrong. We preach a gospel of human performance dressed in glittering robes of empowerment. We whisper to our deepest insecurities: “God’s blessing is contingent on your moral record, your spiritual intensity, your seed offering, your cultural authenticity.” It is a theology of the ledger, forever calculating debits and credits with heaven. It confronts our poverty not with the sufficiency of Christ, but with the pressure of spiritual performance. It is exhausting. And it is not the gospel.

True submission—Gethsemane submission—is not about trying harder. It is about trusting deeper.

The Logic of Surrender

A common objection surfaces: “If I surrender my will, am I not abdicating my responsibility? Am I not becoming passive, weak, fatalistic?” The question deserves an answer, and the answer demands rigorous reasoning.

The argument can be formulated thus:

Premise One: Jesus Christ—fully God and fully man—voluntarily submitted His human will to the Father’s divine will, and in doing so, accomplished the most powerful act of redemption in history.

Premise Two: Jesus explicitly commands His followers: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

Conclusion: Therefore, the surrender of the will is not passive weakness but active, strategic power. It is not abdication but relocation—moving your will from the fragile throne of self to the unshakeable foundation of God.

This objection, however, fails because it confuses surrender with passivity. Jesus did not stop acting. He did not stop fighting. He went to the cross—the most aggressive, confrontational, world-shattering act in cosmic history. Surrender was not the end of His war. Surrender was the weapon.

The Cup and the Cost

Consider the image: “Take this cup from me.” In ancient Jewish idiom, the “cup” represented one’s allotted portion—the bitter draught of suffering, judgment, and separation. Jesus knew exactly what was in that cup: not merely the physical agony of crucifixion, but the spiritual horror of becoming sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), the unfathomable weight of the Father’s turning away. An angel had to strengthen Him (Luke 22:43). He sweated drops of blood—a physiological phenomenon known as hematohidrosis, triggered by extreme psychological anguish.

He asked for another way. He was honest about His pain. He did not pretend the cup was easy.

And then He drank it.

Here is the strategic principle you must tattoo on your heart: You will never defeat what you are unwilling to face, and you will never overcome what you are unwilling to submit.

The war in your will is not won by pretending you have no will. It is won by bringing your trembling, reluctant, fearful will to the Father and saying, “Not my will, but Yours be done.”

Akasia’s Olive Press: A Personal Confession

Let me take you to my own Gethsemane. It was 2019. I stood on the cracked pavement of Akasia’s Ext 12, staring at a mural of Mandela peeling like old skin. My small publishing ministry was hemorrhaging money. The creditors were calling. My wife was looking at me with that quiet gaze that said, “I trust you, but I’m afraid.” And I had a choice: fight to keep my plan alive, or surrender to a God whose plan seemed to involve a lot of empty bank accounts and unanswered prayers.

I remember kneeling in my study—the generator humming outside, load shedding plunging the room into candlelit half-darkness—and wrestling with the same words. “Father, if You are willing, take this cup from me.” I meant it. I desperately wanted a different path. But somewhere in that darkness, the Spirit pressed me to finish the prayer: “Yet not my will, but Yours be done.”

The surrender cost me. The ministry restructured. We lost staff. We lost income. For a season, I lost sleep.

But here is what I gained: I discovered that God’s will—even when it leads through the valley—is infinitely better than my will, which would have kept me safe, small, and spiritually sterile. The olive must be pressed to release the oil. The grape must be crushed to pour the wine. And the will must be surrendered to unleash the power.

The War in Our Nation’s Will

South Africa in 2026 stands at its own Gethsemane. We have recorded four consecutive quarters of growth, secured a sovereign credit rating upgrade, exited the FATF grey list, and seen debt-to-GDP peak. The lights have stayed on for over 300 days—a miracle many thought impossible. President Ramaphosa opens the Investment Conference in Sandton, declaring that we are moving “from recovery to expansion”.

And yet. The fuel price surge threatens to undo everything. The paraffin hike—a brutal 35% increase—hits the poorest where they live. Labour unions warn of mass action. The cost of living crisis traps millions in a cycle of survival, not thriving.

Our nation’s will is pulled in a thousand directions. We want the prosperity without the pruning. We want the blessing without the burden. We want to keep the lights on without addressing the corruption that dimmed them. We want the resurrection without the cross.

But the law is immutable: What you refuse to surrender, you will never possess. What you clutch, you lose. What you release, God redeems.

The Paradox of Power

Here is the wisdom that has transformed my life, and I pray it transforms yours:

Loneliness is not the absence of affection, but the absence of direction.

You will never become rich, until you hate poverty.

Your destiny is decoded in your daily habits. What you repeat, you become. What you neglect, you forfeit.

And now I add a new law, forged in the fires of Gethsemane:

Your surrendered will is your strongest weapon. What you give to God, He multiplies. What you keep for yourself, He leaves untouched.

The world tells you to assert your will. God invites you to surrender it—not to lose yourself, but to find your true self in Him. Jesus did not lose His identity in Gethsemane; He fulfilled it. And so will you.

A Prayer for the Battle

Let us pray—not a timid whisper, but a warrior’s cry:

Lord, I stand in my own Gethsemane today. The cup before me is bitter. The cost is high. My flesh trembles. My will rebels. But I bring my trembling hand to hold Your cup without spilling my complaint. Teach me that surrender is not weakness but warfare. Let my surrendered will become my strongest war cry. Not my will—not my comfort, not my plan, not my reputation, not my bank account—but Yours be done. For the war is Yours, the victory is Yours, and I am Yours. In the name of Jesus Christ, who drank the cup and defeated death, Amen.

The Call to Action

My fellow South African, my fellow believer: the war in your will is not a private skirmish. It is the central battle of your spiritual life. Every morning you wake to load shedding or rising costs or family crises or career crossroads, you face the same choice Adam faced, the same choice Jesus faced: My will, or God’s will?

Choose wisely. Choose courageously. Choose surrender.

And watch what God does with a will that has been laid down at His feet.

—Harold Mawela, Akasia, Pretoria

AFM Akasia | Lead Pastor | Author of "Unearned, Unmerited, Unstoppable"

Reflection Question: What “cup” are you asking God to remove today? Are you willing to pray the second half of the prayer?

Further Scripture: Philippians 2:5-8; Hebrews 5:7-8; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:24-25