It was 23 years ago today I discovered I had a Father. A real, tangible Father that had never left me, always protected me and gently guided me, despite my determined rebellion. It made an instant, lasting difference.<\/p>\n
– My biological father left before I was born – leaving me insecure and chasing identity. I met him when I was in my 20s for the first time. After seeing him a few times I asked if he would want to come to my wedding. His reply is the last thing I heard him say:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAdam I never wanted children and I still don\u2019t. Please don\u2019t call me again\u201d<\/p>\n
– Father figures in the cult didn\u2019t offer much, having their own families & responsibilities, \u00a0some did far worse – leaving me with an intense hatred of authority.\u00a0<\/p>\n
– By the time I got a step dad at around 12, I was a real handful and in a mess. This man, having just become a Christian, tried His best to persist. He really did try and model what a good father looked like – but I reared up against him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHow dare you love me enough to set limits and discipline me?\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It wasn\u2019t until the Father in Heaven broke through my hard heart that I could connect to \u2018dad\u2019 – but boy what a difference! \u00a0<\/p>\n
Although difficult, He has enabled me to stick around for my children, to give up my own desires and be here for them. I am so grateful that God changed and empowered me – my old life and this one could not be further apart.\u00a0<\/p>\n
#thankYouJesus<\/p>\n
Praying you have an incredibly blessed Fathers Day – even if you *only* have the One above\u2026may you find tangible and complete peace in His care today. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Story\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
I will never forget the look on Frans\u2019 (not her real name) face: a Maori lady, who it turns out was actually very friendly. But here, she stood behind the door, using it to shield herself from me. Maybe she thought I was here to do wrong…\u00a0<\/p>\n
To be fair, I would have looked pretty rough. I had been in the bush (literally) or weeks, and just emerged due to about 300 \u2018coincidences\u2019. Long unkempt dreadlocks, likely covered in dirt, cuts and bruises, bare feet, I was asking: \u2018is there a church here\u2019?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYes\u201d was the uncertain reply, however the door wasn\u2019t opened to me. \u201cCan I come in then?\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n
Hesitantly, she slowly opened the door, keeping her eyes on me. A strange feeling as I had long hated \u2018Christians\u2019 and avoided anything religious.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But I had been on a trip to end my life. I ended up on a cliff North-East of Newman. I had been sober for between 2 and 6 weeks, when I had a unexpected encounter with God…<\/p>\n
Reading a book I hated with a passion (the Bible) I was suddenly confronted with the fact that I had done bad things and that these things were against a \u2018God\u2019 I was adamant did *not* exist.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a drug addict & dealer, I had done many things that were against other people. Sure I could justify them, (they had insurance, I didn\u2019t assault people, mostly businesses etc), but really I was deceived. Until this moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Immediately I was aware that my sin was actually against God, not humans. He actually existed(!!).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Deeply convicted for the first time, I understood that this God should have killed me. I was aware that I really did deserve<\/em> to go to hell. But instead, He showed me that He offered me life: He sent Jesus to die in my place *despite*<\/em> knowing that I would do all these bad things against Him and His people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although living a high energy life, being high on alcohol and drugs, chasing the next high or\u00a0being in high speed chases, *nothing*<\/em> compared to this. This was the most powerful, deep, emotional, confronting and healing thing by a huge gap.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anyway – a long story short, a week later here I was, trying to get in to a *church*!! (?). There was a huge number of things that happened during the week to \u2018guide\u2019 me here – and now she doesn\u2019t want to let me in?! ?\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was 23 years ago to the day *today*<\/em> that this happened. Fathers Days, the year 2000.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I had no idea about it being Fathers Day. I had no idea of who God was and I certainly didn\u2019t think He would be in \u2018church\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But now, I had been confronted with this real God and He actually cared. About me,\u00a0a nobody, a degenerate, an abuser. He was changing me so that I wanted to help people(!) and I didn\u2019t want to do bad any more (double !!). Crazy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As soon as this church service started, I could feel the presence of God. It was a large community hall, with only a small number of chairs up the front, maybe 4 or 5 adults & a handful of children. A tiny tape player up the front , yet I could feel the same presence of God I had become accustomed to in the \u2018bush\u2019 as I read the Bible for the first time.<\/p>\n
Alone with my faithful dog, I spoke only to him and this imaginary \u2018God\u2019. Imagine my surprise when He responded (God not the dog!).\u00a0<\/p>\n
I could talk for hours about my experiences that day, that week, that month – suffice to say, it was powerful that changed the whole trajectory of my life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My prayer is that you would have the same encounter, whether you are a son or a brother or a father. There is One who cares.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was 23 years ago today I discovered I had a Father. A real, tangible Father that had never left me, always protected me and gently guided me, despite my determined rebellion. It made an instant, lasting difference. – My biological father left before I was born – leaving me insecure and chasing identity. I met him when I was in my 20s for the first time. After seeing him a few times I asked if he would want to come to my wedding. His reply is the last thing I heard him say:\u00a0 \u201cAdam I never wanted children and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,48],"tags":[130,87],"class_list":["post-1771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-for-thought","category-parenting","tag-fatherless","tag-fathers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Fathers-are-Vital-Fathers-Day.jpg?fit=1292%2C1388&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pasDCW-sz","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1771"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1772,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions\/1772"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}