Scandalous Love: Discover the Love that paid the highest price to save the world

By Wade Engelbrecht

Discover the Love that paid the highest price to save the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9780620786263

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The world that we live in is characterized by broken families. Our families are certainly not perfect. Many have been raised and are being raised by single parents, and those that have both parents, still have a common denominator of parents that generally are doing their best but yet still fail. The hustle and bustle of the world is so very busy, and there is less time invested in building strong family foundations. This has led to people struggling to see God as our good Father, our perfect Father, because quite simply we have been exposed to a faulty earthly father. Our general idea of fatherhood has been reduced and tainted based of our daily observation, as we watch our earthly fathers fail to express the unconditional love of a father. God desires that we acknowledge and receive Him as our Abba Father, who is perfect in all of His ways. He wants to extend His, love, mercy and great grace upon our lives. He has rendered this beautiful gift on the believer, so that we might receive this extravagant exchange and live in His grace through the revelation of His Scandalous Love.

CHAPTER ONE

GOD OUR FATHER OUR DADDY

Igrew up in Durban - South Africa in a normal loving middle class family, with an amazing mom and a rockstar dad, I say a rockstar dad, because he was literally a rock singer musician and had a couple of rockstar habits too. We had our ups and downs like most other families, mom worked hard and dad worked like crazy in order to pay the bills. Mom and dad did their best always to be good parents, leaving my sister and I with mostly happy child hood memories. I grew up going to church from an early age and had an encounter with God at around the age of 4 years old. Like my dad, God gave me the gift of music, and I grew up singing in church. As time went on, music became my focus. Growing up, I started singing in the secular world at around the age of 15 and by 19 years old I was the front man for one of the biggest bands in South Africa at that time called Equinox. I worked in clubs, pubs and bars 4 to 5 nights a week. I was also into bodybuilding, powerlifting and judo, and got very connected to night life and the world of clubs, only to find myself in my early 20s working now not only as a musician in clubs but also as a bouncer. I was making some seriously hectic friends and mixing in circles of musicians, bouncers, gangsters and club owners. I had grown up in church my whole life, but I found myself being led away by the world and all it had to offer me.

Without going into dreary details I can truly say that there is nothing in this world that I have not seen or experienced firsthand. Here I was, this young man who had grown up in church and experienced God at the age of 4 years old, knowing my whole life that I had a call on my life for full-time ministry, but I found myself running from the call and chasing a dream of becoming famous, and living in a world that was the complete opposite of everything that Jesus was calling me to. There will be those of you reading this, that know what I am talking about, and those that won’t. But without giving you all the gory details, I found myself coming to the place of wondering why God would call me. I was rubbish, involved in so much ungodliness, why me? What would He want with me, how could He love a man like me? I found myself in the clubs all week long, but I never missed church every Sunday, crying out to God to forgive me for all the nonsense that I had gotten up to. I remember the night very clearly when God gave me an epiphany. I was bouncing at a club in Johannesburg; it was the middle of winter, standing at the door of a night club near Bruma Lake, freezing as the wind blew off the lake. A bunch of bikers pulled into the club, and I had to ask them to hand their weapons in at the door before they were allowed in. These guys were high and drunk and angry, there was no way they were handing in their weapons. So in doing my job I told them that they couldn’t come in, next thing I knew one guy pulled an axe of his bike and they forced their way in and began chopping the club up with his axe while another biker pulled out his gun and was firing off rounds into the ceiling. I remember lying on the floor behind a counter shouting to the manager keep your money I’m not dying for R80 tonight, while I proceeded to leopard crawl out of the club and never ever went back to bouncing. That night I grew some brain cells as I questioned my existence and purpose, and cried out to God after this traumatic experience.

The following Sunday in church, a friend of mine who was the youth leader had informed the Pastor that I was a professional singer, and they asked me to sing a song as an item. I still remember replying, you don’t want me to sing in church, I’m not a good guy. Anyways, I sang in church the following week, and the pastor called me after the service and asked me if I would be interested in joining the worship team, and this is where my journey began into full time ministry. This amazing God had heard my cry, and opened an amazing door for a sinner like me. How could God choose me and love me? Did He know where I had been, what I had seen and what I had done? This was the beginning of my now 23year adventure of discovering this amazing God, this loving God, and this forgiving God that I write about in this book.

This is not just a book of what I have learned theologically, but it is a book sharing what I’ve lived. I long to share this testimony with you so that you too, can know this amazing Father God’s love the way that I have come to know Him.

But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, Abba, Father!" Therefore