By Harold Mawela, Akasia, Pretoria
Scripture: "Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead" — Philippians 3:13
A Personal Beginning: The Taxi Rank Morning
Let me take you to a morning I will never forget. It was a cold July morning in 2023, and I stood at the corner of Jabavu and Kgosi Mampuru streets in Pretoria, waiting for a taxi to take me to a meeting in Soshanguve. The rank was chaos — vendors shouting, taxis hooting, hawkers selling everything from socks to sim cards. As I squeezed into the back of a beat-up Toyota Quantum, a young man stumbled in beside me, eyes bloodshot, shoulders slumped. He smelled of cheap alcohol and deeper despair.
"Umnumzana," he whispered, his voice cracking. "I was released from Kgosi Mampuru prison yesterday. Three years for a crime I committed when I was drunk. My wife left me. My children don't know me. My mother won't open the door. What am I?"
I looked at this broken son of the soil, and I saw a question that haunts millions of South Africans today. What am I? Not who am I, but what am I — as if his failures had turned him from a person into a thing.
I placed my hand on his trembling shoulder. "Mfethu," I said, "you are not what happened to you. You are what you choose after."
The Core Principle Stated as Law
Let me state this as an immutable law, as sure as gravity, as certain as the sunrise over the Magaliesberg:
Your identity is not forged in the fires of your past. Your identity is declared in the choices you make after the fire has cooled.
What you do daily determines what you become permanently. You will never possess what you are unwilling to pursue. Attack is the proof that your enemy anticipates your success. And the greatest attack the enemy ever launched against your soul is the lie that your yesterday is your forever.
What Does the Scripture Say?
The apostle Paul, writing from a Roman prison cell, declares unequivocally: "Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead" (Philippians 3:13). Not minimising the past. Not pretending it didn't happen. Forgetting. A radical act of the will empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Paul had a past that could have paralysed him forever. Before he met Jesus on that Damascus road, he was Saul the Terrorist — dragging Christians from their homes, approving their murders, breathing threats and slaughter (Acts 9:1). He held the coats of men who stoned Stephen to death. He was a monster dressed in religious robes.
But Paul understood something that we in Akasia, in Mamelodi, in Soweto, in the Cape Flats desperately need to grasp: The power of the cross is not that it erases your memory. The power of the cross is that it rewrites your meaning.
God did not look at Saul the Persecutor and say, "I'll take him as he is." God looked at Saul the Persecutor and said, "You will become Paul the Apostle. Now choose after that."
The Argument Formulated Logically
Let us define our terms meticulously. If we are to walk out of our tombs, we must understand the architecture of our prisons.
Premise One: The past consists of completed events that no longer possess causal power except the power you grant them through present attention.
Premise Two: The human will, redeemed by Jesus Christ, possesses the capacity to direct attention away from the past and toward the future.
Premise Three: Scripture commands this reorientation and models it as essential to Christian maturity.
Conclusion: Therefore, any continuing suffering from past events that persists beyond your present decision is self-inflicted — not because the events weren't real, but because you have become the jailer of your own soul, refusing to use the keys Christ has already given you.
A common objection is, "But the trauma was too severe. You don't understand what happened to me." This fails because it confuses the severity of the event with the duration of its power. The cross of Calvary was the most severe trauma in human history — the Son of God murdered by the creatures He came to save. Yet three days later, Jesus walked out of a tomb. If the Son can rise, the son (or daughter) of God can also rise.
The South African Context: We Are a Wounded Nation
Let me speak directly to my people. We live in a nation that has perfected the art of decorating prisons with old memories.
On 10 July 2025, riots erupted in parts of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal over rising food prices and persistent unemployment【16†L1-L4】. Shops were looted, trucks were burned, and again we saw the ghost of July 2021 walking among us. And what did we hear from our leaders? Blame. Accusation. "It's because of apartheid." "It's because of Zuma." "It's because of Ramaphosa." "It's because of foreign nationals."
Friends, I am not denying our history. I am not minimising the generational trauma of colonialism, apartheid, and the ongoing betrayal of the post-1994 dream. The wounds are real. The unemployment rate among young people remains above 45%. Load shedding — though better than the nightmare of 2023 — still reminds us that we are a nation held hostage by broken promises. The latest crime statistics from July 2025 show that 47% of South Africans report feeling unsafe in their own homes【16†L23-L25】.
But here is the uncomfortable truth that Harold Mawela will not stop preaching from this corner of Akasia: Your history explains your condition. It does not excuse your choice.
A man who was abused as a child is not to blame for his abuse. But if that same man, now forty years old, continues to beat his wife and children because "my father beat me," I must sound the alarm: His father's sin ended thirty years ago. He is now the sinner. He has become what he chose after.
The Metaphor: You Are a Gatekeeper
Imagine, if you will, that your mind is a kraal — a cattle enclosure with a single gate. Every memory, every insult, every betrayal, every failure stands outside that gate, mooing and stamping, demanding entrance. You are the gatekeeper. You hold the key. And the lock is your attention.
You cannot prevent them from coming to the gate. The other driver's rage will arrive. The friend's betrayal will knock. The bank's rejection will hammer on the wood. That is not your choice. That is simply living in a fallen world.
But listen to me carefully, child of God: You decide which cattle enter your kraal. A thousand insults cannot enter unless you open the gate. The memory of that drunken father cannot enter unless you turn the key. The shame of that abortion, that prison sentence, that failed marriage, that business that collapsed — none of it can get inside you unless you let it.
Now, what about those that are already inside? Those memories that have taken up residence, made themselves comfortable, built furniture in your mind? You must evict them. You must walk into your own kraal and drive them out. How? By declaring: "I am not my failure. I am not my scar. I am not my mother's disappointment. I am not my father's rage. I am the one who keeps walking. "
The Resurrection Pattern: Jesus Showed Us the Way
Let us anchor this in the gospel itself. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not merely a historical event to be believed. It is a pattern to be lived.
Jesus walked into a tomb on Friday. The tomb was not a metaphor — it was a real hole in a real rock, sealed with a real stone, guarded by real soldiers. Death had done its worst. The Roman Empire had been given a contract to kill God, and they had executed with professional brutality.
But on Sunday morning, Jesus walked out. Not because the tomb changed. Not because death apologised. Not because the Romans became nice. Jesus walked out because He was not what happened to Him. He was what He chose after.
What did He choose? He chose to rise. He chose to declare victory. He chose to breathe on His disciples and send them into all the world. And the moment He walked out, the tomb became irrelevant. It still existed. It was still a real place. But it no longer contained Him.
The same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives inside you. (Romans 8:11). If you are born again, the resurrection power of God Almighty dwells in your mortal flesh. The same Spirit that shattered the gates of Hades lives in your chest. And you are telling me that your past is too strong? That your trauma is too heavy? That your failure is too final?
You have made a god out of your wound.
The Prophetic Confrontation
I must confront a dangerous lie that has crept into our churches, especially here in South Africa. It is the lie of therapeutic victimhood wrapped in Christian language.
We have preachers who tell you, "You are a victim of generational curses." They want to sell you prayers and anointing oil to break the curses of your ancestors. I tell you today, by the authority of the blood of Jesus Christ: The only generational curse you need to worry about is the curse of refusing to take responsibility for your own choices.
Yes, visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children is in the Bible (Exodus 20:5). But read the whole verse, child of God. It applies to those who hate God. You are not hating God. You are here, reading this devotional, seeking His face. The moment you come under the blood of Jesus, you are transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light (Colossians 1:13). The ancestral curses that once applied no longer have jurisdiction. Your ancestors, whatever they did, have no authority over a child of the King.
We must also confront the lie that we are powerless against our circumstances because "the system is rigged." Yes, the system is rigged. Yes, corruption in South Africa has reached levels that would make a crocodile blush. The recent elections in May 2024 saw the ANC lose its majority for the first time in thirty years, and the Government of National Unity that followed has been a chaotic dance of competing interests【16†L5-L7】. The MK Party, led by a man many thought was politically dead, surprised everyone by winning nearly 15% of the vote【19†L18-L21】. The system is broken.
But listen to me: Broken systems do not excuse broken choices. You may not be able to change the country overnight, but you can change your decisions today. You may not be able to get a job tomorrow, but you can decide to learn a skill today. You may not be able to fix Eskom, but you can fix your attitude.
The Practical Application: Harold Mawela's Actionable Laws
Let me give you three laws. Write them down. Stick them on your fridge. Put them on your phone wallpaper.
First Law of Resurrection Choices: What you repeat becomes permanent. What you neglect becomes forfeit.
If you want to stop being defined by your past, you must daily, hourly, minutely choose differently. The man who wants to stop being an adulterer must choose, sixty times a day, to look away. The woman who wants to stop being defined by abortion must choose, every time she sees a baby, to speak life instead of shame. Your destiny is decoded in your daily habits.
Second Law of the Open Gate: You cannot stop birds from flying over your head, but you can stop them from building a nest in your hair.
The thought will come: "You failed." That is a bird flying overhead. You cannot control that. But if you sit with that thought, feed it, water it, invite it to stay, that is a nest. That is a choice. Let the thought fly by. Do not build it a home.
Third Law of the Walking Dead: The only people who cannot rise are those who refuse to see that they are already standing.
Jesus said to the paralyzed man, "Rise, take up your bed, and walk" (Mark 2:11). That man had not walked in thirty-eight years. His muscles were gone. His hope was gone. But Jesus said, "Rise," and the man rose. Why? Because the command of Jesus carries the power to perform what it commands. When God says, "You are a new creation," you are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). The only question is whether you will believe it enough to stand up.
Walking Out of Our National Tombs
Let me speak to South Africa as a nation. We have been crying about apartheid for thirty years. I am not saying forget it. I am not saying it didn't happen. I am saying: At what point does your explanation become your excuse?
Imagine a man who was hit by a car when he was ten years old. He is now forty. For thirty years, he has sat by the side of the road, moaning, "I was hit by a car. I was hit by a car." Meanwhile, new cars are driving past. New opportunities. New jobs. New businesses. New technologies. But he cannot see them because he is still looking at the tire marks on his leg.
South Africa, at what point do we stand up?
We have the most progressive Constitution in the world. We have a Bill of Rights that would make America blush. We have freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of movement. And yet we behave like prisoners. We behave like people who are still in chains — not because chains exist, but because we have memorised the feeling of them.
The young man in the taxi that morning — I saw him again three months later. He was sweeping floors at a garage near the Mabopane highway. He recognised me. He smiled — a real smile, not the ghost of one. "Umnumzana," he said, "I remembered what you told me. I choose after."
He was not a prisoner anymore. He was a sweeper of floors, yes. But he was a sweeper of floors who knew that God had not finished with him
The Intellectual Defense: Why This Works
Let me anticipate a sophisticated objection. Some will say, "Harold, you are minimising the reality of trauma. Neuroscience tells us that trauma changes the brain. You cannot just 'choose' your way out of PTSD."
I respect the science. I do not deny that trauma leaves marks. But let us be precise: Trauma changes the brain, but it does not negate the will. The brain is a physical organ. The will is a spiritual faculty. They are not enemies, but the will is not enslaved to the brain any more than a driver is enslaved to the car.
Furthermore, I am not advocating for thoughtless positivity. I am advocating for Spirit-empowered choice. The same Holy Spirit who raised Christ from the dead is powerful enough to rewire neural pathways. If God can create a universe out of nothing, He can create a new mind out of a traumatised one. The question is not whether He can. The question is whether you submit.
The Call to Action: Today, You Decide
Today, 12 May 2026, as you sit wherever you are — in a taxi, in an office, in a cell, in a hospital bed, in your mother's lounge — you have a decision to make.
You can continue to decorate your prison with old memories. You can polish the bars of your cell with the tears of yesterday. You can invite visitors in to admire how real your pain is. You can be the most authentic victim on your street.
Or you can walk out.
The gate is not locked. The stone is already rolled away. Jesus is not in the tomb, and neither should you be.
Declare this aloud, right now, wherever you are:
I am not what happened to me.
I am what I choose after.
I choose after the cross.
I choose after the empty tomb.
I choose after forgiveness.
I choose after purpose.
I arise today, in the name of Jesus Christ, the Risen King.
Prayer of the Resurrected
Lord God Almighty, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, break the gate of my past. I have been a prisoner long enough. I have memorised the walls of my cell. I have made friends with my shackles. Today, I release them. Today, I accept that You have already set me free.
Lord, let me rise as You rose from that empty tomb not free from scars, but free from shame. Not untouched by suffering, but untouchable by defeat. Give me the grace to choose after every failure, after every betrayal, after every disappointment. Let me become what I choose after, in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Remember: You are not what happened to you. You are what you choose after. Choose well. Choose daily. Choose Jesus.
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