A Father and his Son

Hey!! I hope you enjoy this post and I would actually like some feedback or revelation on this which you may get, my e-mail address is: ryanodendaal@gmail.com – I am yet to be a father myself but am just enjoying growing as a son for now :-)

I was at gym yesterday morning just rocking out on a treadmill and to my left were the squash courts. I often notice fathers and their sons playing squash and it always intrigues me - I have a real heart for family - and seeing fathers and sons sharing each other’s space are quite unique nowadays!!

Anyway, so there was a father and son having a great time playing squash but I noticed the son wasn’t quite the strongest player and returned quite weak shots, yet it didn’t seem to throw the game off or anything. Big ups to the father for his patience and love on display!!

After some time, the father and son swapped racquets and all of a sudden the son’s game improved...huh!! Cause now the dad was playing with the son’s original racquet but his game didn’t all of a sudden drop...

Something was up here and I felt God speak some simple truths to me:

1. “Opponents playing with each other” – usually a sporting activity has a competitive aspect to it, one wins and the other looses or maybe even a draw. In this case the pair would be said to be playing against each other, yet I felt and saw how they were playing ‘with’ each other. Obviously now, the father had way more skill and know-how of this game and he was teaching his son as they were going along. Yes they were playing against each other...but where else would you enter an environment where a game was taking place and your ‘opponent’ stopped to teach, motivate and encourage you, especially if a result is expected at the end?

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4)

I think somewhere in the back of my mind, I was expecting the father to get upset and frustrated with his son – yet this was never the case. The two of them just played on and the dad’s body language never gave any hint of anything but love and honour. I was reminded of the above scripture and it spoke to me of how a father just by being gentle and kind can draw such amazingness out of his children.

2. “The Father is always routing for us to win” – wow, Daddy was showing me how He is always routing for you and I. When we get onto that court with Him, He is our biggest encourager and He celebrates us always!! It doesn’t matter what the ‘court’ platform is in your personal scenario...Father God is always routing for you and He loves to see you and I win!!

As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Who ever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father? If God doesn’t discipline you as he does all of his children, it means that you are illegitimate and are not really his children at all. Since we respected our earthly fathers who disciplined us, shouldn’t we submit even more to the discipline of the Father of our spirits, and live forever? (Hebrews 12:7-9) 

God was reminding me that in our childish rebellion, sometimes we want to retaliate – ‘throwing our toys out of the cot’ and just getting plain angry that we can’t do whatever it is that is before us. That son could have given up, thrown down his racquet, hung his head and thrown a tantrum!! But you know what...there was a relationship between the two. A relationship that is built on trust, grounded in vulnerability – one of loving commitment. Man, I wish you could see this; I was actually quite blown away. I think the truest or simplest definition of a son would be one that always allows the Father’s discipline and then within that relationship everything is dealt with – fears, faults, failures, triumphs, victories...you name it.

Lastly, the issue of how when the father and son exchanged racquets all of a sudden the son’s game improved. Yoh...how we long to mimic our dads. As a son growing up you look up towards your father and want to be a man just like him – I am reminded of those images of the father shaving and the son looking at the father with great intrigue or maybe a young preschooler wearing a collared shirt and tie to school on one of those ‘what do you want to be one day when you grew up’ vibes...all with a longing to grow up like dad.

So what was the deal with the racquet exchange, well I am not to clear on that but the simplest imagery to me was that the father was passing onto the son, his (the father’s) tools and somehow the son was able to do better...to go further.

And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. (Romans 8:28)

So, whatever your idea is of a father or even God our Father – know that Pappa God is a God of love of grace and mercy – One that is always routing for us and preparing great victories for the obstacles hindering you and I.

His goodness knows no bounds and His heart for you and I is massive. He loves you with a great and eternal love – a love which will never run dry, die out, become flat, cold or dead but His love is fiery and hot. It motivates and causes us to achieve great victories!!

God loves you and just as this simple father and son squash story was unpacked to me, so the Father is keen to reveal Himself to you in ordinary ways. Yes your hurts and pains are real but dare to believe that He is also real and He is alive and wants to encounter you with His presence – it’s in that presence that wholeness comes!!

Awesome, till the next post...love you guys!!

Ryan

Family

God loves family.

In my city, Port Elizabeth, there are many churches – many different spiritual homes made up of families – spiritual families and God loves us all!!

No matter your denomination...God desires to inhabit us and be in our midst!!

This was now so evident in my life as my phone just rang and I got to speak to my own dad, just a short nonsense conversation of how are you and some other random babble but how good it is to hear the voice of a father and wow, how amazing to hear the voice of our Heavenly Father.

So with all of this laid out – my heart is just to say, honour the spiritual home that God has placed you in and realise that there is family in your midst. Seek out your leaders and the rest of your family (congregants) in your church. When you start going astray, realise that leaders and our family members are gonna get stuck in...why...well who in their right minds wakes up one morning to discover missing family members and then does not go after them!!

This process of walking out a relationship with Jesus can sometimes be a tricky one – and I had to chuckle a while back when I just felt in me that usually we ‘warn’ people about Jesus, in the sense of really just His life story spent here on earth and then eventually having to depart earth; but Jesus, far above anyone else was totes excited as He knew that we would receive the Holy Spirit and sometimes we treat Holy Spirit with much clever euphemisms and lotsa nervousness – when I actually felt it’s more that we need to ‘warn’ people about church...now with beads of sweat running down your face, let me unpack this rather quickly, cause I dig local church.

Church 101

“...cause I dig local church.” Because this is my blog, inevitably you’re gonna get some of my personal insights and thoughts. My statement about loving local church is rooted in a deep desire and faith that I would love to see the whole of my city, Port Elizabeth come to faith in Jesus Christ – tomorrow hopefully or as soon as possible!! So with this kinda miraculous expectancy comes a logistical effort of desiring strong Spirit ravaged (or filled) church families in and around my city – cause when all of us are now serving Jesus it would be lekka to have some places to fellowship. With that said, how gnarly would it be to worship Jesus in a mosque perhaps...just saying or whatever else.

But church is, yes – you and me – everyday life as we are temples of Holy Spirit and how awesome that is that God’s presence is no longer restricted to a building etc. but yet we have church buildings and praise God for that. Now it’s just up to you to define your church building or where you and your ‘family’ come together and fellowship.

But how do you define your natural family? Your house...no, cause you and your mom, dad & siblings are still a family wherever you might come together or even when you are apart. But most families do have a home and it’s in this place that a lot gets dealt with.

Coming back to that earlier illustration of waking up one morning and finding ou-boet is nowhere to be found, one becomes suspicious and will go after him or her etc.

The case may be that your family member is hacking in some areas and just needed to get out or has become rebellious and so decided to abandon the family and casually strolls along to go find another family...YOH!!

Serious kinda stuff – is this the love of Christ??!! Pack up and off you go when life gets tough...

You see readers :-) Christ is not confined to a building but He is very present when we meet. So yes, you will find Him in a building and at the same time on the street, homes, cars, work places...you name it. So that’s not the issue here – the simple yet catastrophic issue is the one of family and as mentioned before we form part of spiritual family’s fellowshipping in churches.

So what’s the big deal then...

...God has created you for fellowship. He has made you so awesome that He wants to share you with others. All that awesomeness deposited inside of you needs to come out and reach out to others, whom at the same time are probably just as nervous and sometimes insecure as you are – but why should that stop you? Your life is not a performance; you are not being weighed up daily and then given a pass or fail. At the same time stop looking at others and thinking yeah, he gets it right all the time...he probably gets a ‘pass’ everyday – don’t put peeps on pedestals from which they will topple off of.

You are uniquely you and designed for intimacy and fellowship with God – for His great pleasure and then He was so excited to show off, He somma knitted you together in your mother’s womb and something like 9 or so months later you got released into a world that God wants you to change and rip it up for His Kingdom.

You have a purpose!! To fulfil that purpose God placed people around you and you will find a lot of them in your local church, your spiritual family in your spiritual home!!

Don’t resent them, love your leaders and honour them. Grow up as a son, adopted into Christ’s family and watch how Pappa draws the leader out of you. Enjoy the ‘organic’ process – it takes time and is well worth it. So when the paw-paw hits the fan and you are feeling stretched, you will stick around because it’s family you have around you and not some religious organisation.

Also when you have had it!! and you pack your things and wanna go and okes call you back and try and instil discipline that you don’t dig your heels, but rather let go and watch how when you empty yourself and rid yourself of all the junk...that God restores you to wholeness and surprise-surprise, He reached out with His long Daddy arms and uses other sons and daughters to be His hands and feet – this is the love of Christ, found in spiritual families and homes all around the world...so please don’t take church lightly or an optional extra, it’s God’s very expression of family on this earth.

If it’s still hard for you to comprehend, just start calling it HOME. That’s what I did and something happened in just that simple acknowledgement for me. My home is Harvest Christian Church (PE), but I just simply call it home!!

Wherever God has called you too...make sure it’s home :-)