Relationship - Chris Badenhorst & The Lord: December 2020

Monday, December 21, 2020

Trusting the Father (Lessons 001 - 020)

My gift to you.

Please download this PDF booklet and enjoy the messages in it:

Kelly and I have been blessed having hosted a weekly Bible Study lesson from our home (via video) over the course of several months. Though this, we've had the chance to share with others our relationship with the Lord (God as a trusting Father).

We want to share with you now the culmination of this in the creation of this Bible Study Booklet that has all our 20 lessons up to this point.

As we have let go of the notion of a religious Christianity and desire that you too can be set free from much of the guilt and condemnation that comes from religion.

God Bless (as He always does)!

My Synopsis

Born in Somerset West, South Africa, our family immigrated to the United States right before I turned three. Except for one brief move back to the Joburg area in 1989-1990, I have lived in the Dallas, Texas Metroplex.

This is where I met my now wife, Kelly who came to Dallas, Texas from Cleveland Ohio. We have known each other since 2012 & got married in Dallas in December 2015. Now having our first child, Joshua, born in 2018.

The Lord placed on both of our hearts (separately) to come to South Africa for ministry & mission work under Provisions of Grace. This is where we are now: the Cape Town area of South Africa. For me, this has been a long road to get here—one that the Lord helped guide since before Creation.

My family grew up in a religious Christian environment, one that was very legalistic. This led to a life of self-condemnation, guilt, shame, and low self-esteem. And I believed God was always looking at my faults, judging me, and was ready at any point to punish me for any mistake (sin) I made. If something bad happened to me (like rolls of original negatives being lost), it was because He was punishing me for a sin. But I was always trying to appease His wrath & anger by sack cloth & ashes “humility”, and even pre-punishing myself before He had a chance to: yes Lord, I will sleep on the discomfort of the floor for a week to make You “happy” with me again.

Yup, that’s the life I lived—and I lived it in my head. But it was all in my head, and not in reality that God was angry with me:

And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight.

Colossians 1:21-22

He had already reconciled me at the Cross. And in more than “some words that I read in the Bible”. No! Now they were real to me. But this reality didn’t find me, God my Father came knocking in only a way He could—He sent a messenger of Grace into my life in 2013. The Gospel was now my reality. And it took some tough renewing of my mind for me to embrace His True Good News Gospel! Hallelujah!!!

And from there, His Holy Spirit into my life and the life of my most amazing wife!

This is why I am writing. This is why I am in South Africa with Kelly. This is why I cannot keep quiet. For God is now my Father. And His Life is in me. And His Life is to all people who will believe on Him. I’ve experienced a personal Father like I never have. And I want to share our relationship with you.

Thank You,

Chris Badenhorst

God Bless!