There are lives that move in straight lines, and then there are lives that must be broken open before they can become whole. Mine has been the second kind.
There was a time when I thought certain things only became possible after you had finally made it. For example – after the business works out or after the money comes or after life is stable enough to manage or a myriad of other afters. I do not believe that anymore… we’ll come back to this.
My name is Tsholofelo. In Setswana, it carries meanings like hope, expectation, trust, anticipation, and faith. And there is an African maxim that says, “Leina lebe ke seromo” – the meaning of a name tends to follow, or attract, the one who carries it. I have been thinking about that deeply; my name. And lately, I have been reflecting a lot. Trying, in particular, to pinpoint the exact moment when I became who I am now.
Because when I look at my life honestly, and especially at the work I now carry, I can see the truth of this maxim. Not in a romantic or mystical way detached from reality, but in a way that feels humbling. Hope has followed me. Expectation has followed me. Trust has followed me. Even in seasons when life looked broken, when I did not deserve to be trusted, and even in seasons when I, myself, did not feel like I could trust myself… something in me kept reaching forward. And now, more than ever, I can see that this hope was never meant to stand alone. It had to meet grace.
Okay, let’s get back to it…
Grace before strategy
The stewardship I write about today did not enter my life through success. It entered my life through surrender. It came when life stripped me of the illusion that I owned anything, myself included.
It came when some of the things I had built died. When plans collapsed. When relationships changed. When certainty disappeared. When I could no longer protect my identity with activity, ambition, or titles. It came when I had to face a version of myself that had spent years trying to prove worth through building, solving, starting, carrying, and surviving. And somewhere in that unmaking, grace found me more clearly than success ever had.
That is why it matters so deeply to me now. Because when I speak about stewardship, I am not speaking about optimisation. I am not speaking about image management. I am not speaking about becoming more impressive in the eyes of the world.
I am speaking about what happens when a person realises that life is not self-generated, that breath is not self-issued, that purpose is not self-authored, and that everything we call ‘mine’ is, in truth, entrusted.
That realisation changes a person. Or at least, it is changing me.
And perhaps that is part of the story I am living now: Tsholofelo meeting grace. Hope meeting grace. Expectation meeting mercy. Trust meeting the God who was already holding what I was still learning to carry.
For many years, I carried titles that helped me make sense of myself: Founder, Entrepreneur, Strategist, Consultant, Mentor, Managing Director…
Some of those titles reflected real responsibility. Some helped me navigate rooms, opportunities, and seasons of life. But titles have a quiet danger in them. If you are not careful, you start to confuse the role with the person. You start to think the title is your identity. You start to believe that if the title weakens, you weaken. If the venture fails, you fail. If the room no longer calls you by the name you once carried, then somehow your value has gone missing too. But life has a way of testing those assumptions.
Through delay. Through disappointment. Through grief. Through loss. Through breakups. Through betrayal. Through failure. Through silence! And if you stay long enough in that kind of silence, you may discover that what remains after the titles, achievements, relationships, ambition, etc. fall away is not emptiness, but truth.
What grace taught me
That was one of the deepest gifts grace gave me. Grace made me face the fact that before the names I have worn or the things I have possessed say anything about me, there is a deeper truth: I am a child of the Most High. That is it. Before anything else, God. And from there, grace continues to teach me other things:
That I matter, but I am not ultimate.
That my life is meaningful, but not self-originating.
That I have purpose, but not ownership.
That I can build boldly without pretending I am the source of the life doing the building.
These and many other small and major things are where humility has become more than a virtue to admire from a distance. It has become a necessity.
Not false humility. Not performance humility. Not the kind that talks small while still craving significance in secret. I mean the kind of humility that comes when you realise grace has preserved you through things your own strength could not have carried. The kind that says: I am here by mercy. I am learning by mercy. I am rebuilding by mercy. I am not self-made. The kind of humility that does not weaken excellence but purifies it.
Why Audacious Humility matters
That is one of the reasons the phrase Audacious Humility matters so much to me. Because I do not believe humility should make us timid. I do not believe faith should make us passive. I do not believe grace should make us careless. I do not believe surrender means shrinking. I believe it means standing in the right order.
Audacious Humility is what happens when a person knows they must build, serve, create, lead, work, and carry responsibility in the world – but refuses to do it from ego. It is boldness without self-worship. It is excellence without vanity. It is conviction without arrogance. It is movement without losing alignment. It is strength that still bows. And for me, that posture has become essential because I have seen what happens when audacity is not humbled.
- It becomes restlessness.
- It becomes control.
- It becomes performance.
- It becomes identity addiction.
- It becomes the need to prove, dominate, and secure self-worth through outcomes or worse.
I have also seen what happens when humility is disconnected from responsibility.
- It becomes passivity.
- It becomes fear disguised as modesty.
- It becomes a withdrawal from calling.
- It becomes a refusal to carry what has actually been placed in your hands.
But when grace begins to shape a person, something better becomes possible. You begin to understand that humility is not the opposite of audacity. It is what redeems it.
Stewardship in the marketplace
You can build without pretending you are God. You can lead without making yourself the centre. You can pursue excellence without becoming corrosive. You can work in the marketplace without losing your soul to the marketplace. You can carry vision and still kneel. That is the life I am trying to live today. This is the point I said we’ll come back to. I do not believe that conditions or we have to be perfect for certain things to be possible. I believe you can work in the very highly competitive world without losing your soul or compromising the teachings from scripture. That’s the life I am trying to live. Not perfectly. Not finally. But truthfully.
And that is part of why Omosa exists. Not as a church. Not as a secular self-help movement dressed in spiritual language. But as a faith-anchored call to live truthfully, work excellently, and remain aligned in the demands of ordinary life.
Omosa, for me, is not an escape from life’s demands. It is a way of engaging those demands as a steward. And that distinction is everything.
Because the marketplace is not separate from stewardship. It is one of the places stewardship is tested most visibly.
- How do you work when no one is clapping?
- How do you respond to God’s will when it’s inconvenient?
- How do you carry responsibility without turning responsibility into self-importance?
- How do you pursue excellence without becoming enslaved to image?
- How do you build in the world without letting the world tell you who you are?
- How do you succeed without losing reverence?
- How do you fail without losing identity?
Those are not abstract questions to me. They are lived questions. And the answer I keep coming back to is this: I do not steward because I own life. I steward because life has been entrusted to me.
A steward knows that he is entrusted
My time is entrusted. My energy is entrusted. My mind is entrusted. My relationships are entrusted. My gifts are entrusted. My opportunities are entrusted. My work is entrusted.
Even my wounds, once submitted to God, become entrusted material for service, wisdom, and light. That does not make life lighter in the shallow sense. In some ways, it makes it heavier. But it is a holy kind of weight. The kind that restores seriousness without stealing peace. The kind that makes a person stop asking only, “What do I want?” and begin asking, “What has been placed in my hands, and how should I carry it?”
That is a stewardship question. And I think more of life becomes clear when we start there. The point is not control. Grace has been teaching me the opposite.
Stewardship is not control.
- It is faithfulness.
- It is not possession. It is response.
- It is not ego trying to manage outcomes.
- It is reverence trying to honour what has been given.
That means I cannot treat my life casually. It also means I cannot treat it as an idol.
I cannot worship ambition.
I cannot romanticise exhaustion.
I cannot confuse output with obedience.
I cannot keep baptising misalignment just because it looks productive.
I cannot keep using titles to avoid truth.
The peg in the ground
Grace is stewarding me, and that means grace is also confronting me.
- Confronting what is out of order.
- Confronting what is wasteful.
- Confronting what is proud.
- Confronting what is hidden.
- Confronting what still wants applause more than alignment.
This is why I no longer think of grace as soft in the shallow sense. Grace is kind. Grace is merciful. Grace is patient. But grace is also exacting. It will not let a person remain comfortably false forever. It loves too deeply for that. And perhaps that is one of the greatest mercies of all: grace does not merely comfort us where we are broken, it also calls us upward where we are misaligned.
It says:
You are loved. And you must grow.
You are accepted. And you must become more truthful.
You are not condemned. But neither are you excused from stewardship.
That is the tension I want to hold. That is the ground I want to stand on. Not self-made ambition. Not passive spirituality. Not marketplace excellence without soul. Not private faith without public integrity.
But a life where grace is teaching me how to carry what has been entrusted to me – with reverence, with courage, and with order. That is what I mean when I say Audacious Humility is helping me to steward. It is helping me to build without swelling. To repent without collapsing. To lead without pretending. To speak without performing. To labour without worshipping labour. To keep showing up without making myself the centre of the story. And as I step into this week, that is the peg I want in the ground. Not that I have arrived. Not that I have mastered stewardship. Not that I now live above the tensions I write about. But that I know where I come from. I come from grace. Unmerited grace for that matter. I come from being stripped of illusion. I come from the discovery that what remains after collapse can still be holy. I come from the mercy of learning that I am not my titles, not my failures, not my momentum, and not my worst or best season. I come from the humbling realisation that my life is entrusted.
And perhaps I can now say something more: I come from a name that carried hope. And I am living long enough to see that hope meet grace.
Let me conclude.
There are lives that move in straight lines, and then there are lives that must be broken open before they can become whole. Mine has been the second kind. I say that now with reverence, not drama.
I have watched things die that I once believed would define my future. I have known what it is to build and lose, to hope and grieve, to carry titles and then watch them fall away. I have known what it is to lose people I loved, to sit under the weight of debt, separation, depression, and uncertainty, and to discover that when life strips a man down far enough, what remains is either performance or truth.
By grace, I was not left with performance. I was left with truth.
I was left with the humbling realisation that I am not the source of my life. I am not self-made. I am not held together by my own brilliance, strength, or discipline. I am held by mercy. And somewhere in all of that breaking, the version of me that thought it had to keep proving itself began to die, and a quieter, truer life began to emerge.
That is why I write the way I do now. That is why I speak about stewardship the way I do now. Because once you have seen grace meet you in collapse, you can no longer speak about life as though it belongs to you. You begin to understand that life is entrusted.
Your breath is entrusted.
Your mind is entrusted.
Your work is entrusted.
Your pain is entrusted.
Your influence is entrusted.
Your becoming is entrusted.
And perhaps I can now repeat something with deeper gratitude than I could have said before: I come from a name that carried hope. And I am living long enough to see that hope meet grace.
So, in all your walking this week, do not move like an owner. Move like a steward.
- Pray like a steward.
- Work like a steward.
- Think like a steward.
- Build like a steward.
- Sharpen like a steward.
- Fast like a steward.
- Rest like a steward.
Not because you are trying to become impressive. But because grace is making you responsible. And because being alive is already too sacred a gift to live carelessly.
One, Perfect Love.