The Command of Your Sail

 The Command of Your Sail

Scripture: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?” (Mark 4:41)

Let me tell you about the Wednesday the lights went out and my faith nearly went with them.

It was three weeks ago here in Akasia. Eskom had blessed us with Stage 6 load-shedding again. There I sat, candle flickering on my kitchen table, cellphone battery dying, and the news on my radio telling me that our beloved South African rand was taking another beating. My mind began its old, familiar dance: How will you pay the school fees? What about the car repair? Your mother’s hypertension medicine—did you budget for the price increase?

I caught myself begging. Not praying begging. Whimpering at the storm like a man drowning in ankle-deep water.

Then the Holy Spirit—bless His relentless kindness whispered: Stop begging the waves for mercy. I slept in your storm. Now speak to it.

Define Your Terms, Lest You Drown in Confusion

Let us be precise, because confusion is the devil's favourite language.

The storm is not your enemy. The storm is the raw material of your testimony. Every howling wind, every crashing wave, every loan rejection, every taxi that nearly kills you on the R80, every promise broken by someone who swore they loved you—these are not punishments. They are professors.

The sail is your will. Not your feelings. Not your circumstances. Your choices. Your daily, grinding, unglamorous obedience to God’s Word when every cell in your body wants to curl up and cry.

The rudder is Christ’s lordship over your life. You do not steer yourself. You surrendered that right at the cross. A ship that refuses its rudder does not find freedom it finds rocks.

The anchor is hope in God’s character. Not hope that the storm will stop. Hope that the storm has a purpose.

The command is what you speak after you have stopped screaming.

The Great Error of Our Generation

Here is what I must say, and I will not apologise for the volume:

The charismatic church in South Africa has sold you a lie wrapped in a prophecy and tied with a seed-sowing bow.

We have been told that the Christian life is a constant summer. That storms are demonic attacks to be rebuked away rather than divine classrooms to be sat through. We flock to crusades where handkerchiefs are waved and breakthroughs are declared, yet our marriages are bleeding, our teenage sons are joining gangs in Mamelodi, and our daughters are trading dignity for data bundles.

Listen to me carefully: Jesus did not calm the storm to give you a comfortable boat ride. He calmed the storm to prove who He is.

The disciples asked, “Who is this?” Not “How do we avoid future storms?” Their theology was forever altered because they saw that storms obey. Which means storms are subjects. Which means storms serve a King.

Your problem is not that you have storms. Your problem is that you have been treating the storm as your equal.

A Logical Argument for the Sane

Let me construct this as simply as I know how:

Premise One: God is sovereign over all creation, including meteorological, economic, relational, and political storms. (Psalm 135:6-7)

Premise Two: God is perfectly good and cannot act against His character. (James 1:13,17)

Premise Three: Therefore, any storm that reaches you has passed through the filter of God’s goodness and sovereignty.

Premise Four: A good sovereign does not permit storms without purpose.

Conclusion: Your storm is not random. Your storm is assigned.

Now, the objection comes racing in like a taxi on a red light: “But Harold, what about the people killed in the floods in KZN? What about the woman raped in Diepsloot? What about the child who starved in the Eastern Cape? Are those ‘assigned storms’?”

I feel the weight of that question in my own gut. Let me answer with tears and truth:

The fall of humanity broke everything. We live in a groaning creation. Sin has real consequences, and those consequences fall on the just and the unjust alike (Matthew 5:45). But here is what the Scripture declares unequivocally: God does not author evil, but He does author redemption. Joseph’s brothers meant their betrayal for evil. God meant it for the salvation of nations (Genesis 50:20).

The storm that kills one man becomes the bridge that saves another. The rape that broke a woman becomes the foundation of a ministry that rescues hundreds. The starvation of a child in a village becomes the moral alarm that wakes an entire nation from its corruption-induced slumber.

Do not accuse me of minimising pain. I buried my own father in Limpopo last year. But I refuse to make the atheist’s error of demanding that a good God must run a universe without suffering, while simultaneously living in a world where suffering is the very thing that produces compassion, courage, and Christlikeness.

The Personal Testimony I Did Not Want to Write

In 2019, I lost my job at a Christian radio station in Pretoria. The board decided my theology was “too confrontational.” I was forty-seven years old, with three children and a bond in Akasia, and the market had no appetite for a man my age.

I did what any good Pentecostal would do. I prayed. I fasted. I declared. I sowed seeds. I attended every “breakthrough service” within a fifty-kilometre radius.

Nothing changed.

For six months, I watched my savings evaporate. I watched my wife’s eyes learn a new language of worry. I watched my son ask why we couldn’t buy the new school shoes everyone else had.

Then one night, at 2 AM, sitting on my veranda listening to the N4 highway hum with trucks carrying hope from Gauteng to the rest of Africa, God spoke:

“You have been begging the wind to stop. I am asking you to raise your sail.”

I realised I had been praying for deliverance from the storm while God was preparing direction through the storm.

The next morning, I stopped praying for a job. I started writing. Not books—not yet. Just letters. Letters to every pastor I knew. Letters offering to teach, to counsel, to clean toilets if necessary. But I wrote with command, not desperation.

Within three months, I had three speaking engagements. Within six, I was consulting for a ministry in Soshanguve. Within a year, this book you are reading began to form.

The storm did not stop. It redirected.

What Is Popular in South Africa Right Now And Why It Is Killing You

Allow me to be the prophet in the room while the musicians are still tuning their instruments.

What is popular:

· Gospel singers who charge R50,000 for a “cameo” while their congregants can’t afford bread.

· Prophets selling “anointed water” from the Jordan when we have tap water that local municipalities can’t keep clean.

· A prosperity gospel that measures blessing by the size of your house in Midstream rather than the size of your surrender.

· Young Christians obsessed with “covering” and “spiritual warfare” while neglecting basic financial literacy, marital fidelity, and work ethic.

· The endless scrolling after your quiet time—Instagram revelations replacing Romans revelations.

What is killing you:

You have confused information with transformation. You know more theology than the Apostle Peter, yet you have less power than a garden slug.

You can quote Ephesians 6 about the armour of God, but you have never actually worn it into a real fight. You rebuke demons in your bedroom, then you gossip in the church parking lot. You declare financial breakthrough, then you gamble on the FASSET horses.

South Africa, my beloved nation we are drowning in anointing and starving for obedience.

The War-Time Mindset

Picture a soldier in the trenches of Ukraine. Does he ask, “Why me?” when the shelling begins? No. He asks, “What now?” His training kicks in. His commander’s voice overrides his fear.

You are not on a cruise. You are in a war.

The enemy the real one, not your mother-in-law or your difficult manager—has one strategy: Get you begging so you stop commanding.

Because the moment you command, you remind the storm who its Master is. And the moment you remind the storm, the enemy flees—not because of your volume, but because of your authority.

Jesus gave you His name (John 16:23-24). He gave you His Spirit (Acts 1:8). He gave you His Word (2 Timothy 3:16-17). What exactly are you missing?

You are missing guts. You are missing discipline. You are missing the willingness to raise your sail in a hurricane and say, “Blow, wind. I am going somewhere.”

The Six Laws of the Sail

Harold Mawela does not give suggestions. He gives laws. Write these down:

First Law: Your tears change nothing. Your choices change everything. (Joshua 24:15)

Second Law: Every delay is a divine appointment. What you call a detour, God calls a shortcut. (Acts 16:6-10)

Third Law: Fairness is a phantom. Justice is a person and His name is Jesus. Stop asking for what you deserve; you cannot survive it. (Romans 6:23)

Fourth Law: The same wind that wrecks the fool fills the wise man’s sail. The storm is neutral. Your response decides the outcome. (Matthew 7:24-27)

Fifth Law: You will never possess what you are unwilling to pursue. Faith without action is not faith it is fantasy. (James 2:26)

Sixth Law: Obedience is the master key. Not feelings. Not experiences. Not prophecies. Do what He said. (John 14:15)

A Current Event for Your Consideration

You read the news. You saw what happened during the July 2021 unrest. Businesses burned. Malls looted. Lives lost.

Now answer me honestly: How many of those who lost everything were begging God to protect their shops the night before? And how many had already prepared insurance, security, community networks, contingency plans?

Faith without prudence is presumption. James says faith without works is dead. Paul says if a man does not work, neither should he eat.

I am not blaming victims. I am asking you: Where is your sail? Not your prayer cloth. Not your anointing oil. Your sail. Your practical, daily, grinding obedience that says, “I will store grain like Joseph. I will build like Nehemiah. I will plan like Jesus who told His disciples to count the cost.”

The storm is coming for every South African the economic storm, the crime storm, the political storm. The question is not whether it will arrive. The question is whether your sail is raised.

What Jesus Actually Said About This

Go back to Mark 4. Read it carefully.

Jesus did not say, “Let us avoid the storm.” He said, “Let us go to the other side.”

The storm was not a deviation from the plan. The storm was the route

And here is the detail we always miss: Jesus was asleep on a cushion. In a boat that was taking on water. On a sea famous for sudden, violent squalls.

He was not exhausted from ministry. He was not careless. He was demonstrating. While the disciples trained fishermen who knew this lake better than anyone panicked, the carpenter from Nazareth slept.

Why?

Because He knew something they did not yet know: The storm has a limit. The storm has a Master. And the Master is in your boat.

When He woke, He did not join their panic. He spoke to the wind. He commanded the sea. And creation which had been groaning since Eden—finally heard a voice it recognised.

“Peace. Be still.”

Not begging. Not pleading. Commanding.

The Confrontational Question

Let me look at you through these pages. Let me speak to the person reading this at 1 AM because you cannot sleep.

You have been asking God to change your circumstances. But what if He is waiting for you to change your response?

You have been praying for the storm to stop. But what if the storm is the only thing that will get you to the other side?

You have been begging for mercy from waves that have no ears. But you have a mouth. And you have a King. And you have a sail.

Raise it.

Not when you feel ready. Not when the wind dies down. Now.

The Apologetic for the Skeptic

I hear you, my sceptical friend. You are saying, “This sounds like positive thinking dressed in Bible verses. The storm is real. My marriage is ending. My child is on drugs. My business is bankrupt. You cannot command that away.”

You are correct. You cannot command away the consequences of sin yours or others’. But you can command your response.

Here is the evidence I offer you: The resurrection of Jesus Christ.

A tomb. A stone. Roman guards. Religious authorities. Every possible storm gathered against one dead Galilean.

And on the third day, He commanded the grave to open. Not begged. Commanded.

If that tomb is empty and the historical evidence is overwhelming that it is then every storm you face is a paper tiger. The same power that split the sea, raised the dead, and silenced the accuser lives in you if you belong to Christ (Romans 8:11).

So no, you cannot command your marriage to heal like a magic spell. But you can command your tongue to stop speaking death. You can command your feet to walk to counselling. You can command your hands to serve when you feel like quitting.

That is not positive thinking. That is obedience empowered by the Spirit.

The Prayer That Changed My Life

I stopped praying, “Lord, change my storm.”

I started praying, “Lord, change my sail.”

Here is the prayer. Pray it like you mean it or don’t pray it at all:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, who slept in my storm and spoke to my sea: I confess that I have spent too many years begging the waves for mercy. Today, I raise my sail. I stop asking “Why me?” and start asking “What now?”

You are my rudder. You are my anchor. You are my rising.

I do not know how to command the wind but I know the One who does, and He lives in me.

So I command my mouth to speak life. I command my hands to work. I command my feet to walk in obedience even when the path is flooded. I command my heart to hope when every sense tells me to drown.

I will not be a victim of the storm. I will be a vessel through it.

For Your glory. In Your name. Amen.

The Final Word

Beloved of God in Akasia, in Mamelodi, in Soweto, in Mitchells Plain, in the township and the suburb and the village and the city:

The universe owes you nothing.

God gave you His Son.

Fairness is a phantom.

Discipline is a fortress.

Every delay is a divine appointment.

Every problem is a silent professor.

What breaks the fool becomes the wise man’s bridge.

So stop begging.

Command your sail.

The wind is listening.

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)

Not some things. Not easy things. ALL things. Through Christ. Not through comfort, not through answers, not through storm-free skies—through Christ.

Raise your sail, South Africa.

The other side is waiting.

—Harold Mawela, Akasia, Pretoria

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0p6gyJweQbfEcJJhdmi3aY?si=0W-5jJDOTgyORBSAAUvhrw

https://podcasts.apple.com/cy/podcast/the-command-of-your-sail/id1506692775?i=1000766750182&l=el