there are two ways
redeeming love
may be perceived.
either we perceive
love as in need of redemption
(redeeming love).
or we perceive
love as what offers us redemption
(redeeming love).
on one side, we may perceive love
as broken and flawed:
love that has gone astray,
skewed by false notions of love.
on the other side, we may
perceive love to be
healing, restorative:
love that redeems the soul,
fills the heart with hope.
both are true of the love we
will explore together today.
…
some of you may recognise
redeeming love as the name
of the book by Francine Rivers,
(also now released as a film).
the book has always been one of
my favourites, a fictional expression
(with creative license) on the book
of Hosea in the Old Testament.
in the book, River paints a story of
hidden pain, suffering, abandonment,
love, grace, redemption and hope.
…
when i first read the novel as teenager,
i was too naive to understand why the
main female character, ‘Angel’ was so
resistant to the respectful pursuit of
the main male character, ‘Michael’.
i was protected through ignorance from the evil
and gravity of brokenness in the story and world,
missing the significance of how Angel’s past would
have wounded her identity, trust and self-worth.
at that age, i did not have the appreciation
that i have now of the complexities of childhood
upbringings, the damage of trauma, and how
someone’s life experiences can drastically shape,
and change their ability to love and to be loved.
all other love stories i had been exposed to
(chick flicks) had portrayed this worldly love
where the advances of a man were promoted
as both desirable and acceptable to a woman.
this love story wasn’t like any other love story i had
encountered at that younger age, and that intrigued me.
River’s presents an alternative to modern-day romance, where
she acknowledges the darkness of the male gaze, while also inserting
a narrative of hope, turning us to how God’s love changes things.
in a culture that promotes desire, it
is very counter-cultural to present
the complexity of desire and pursuit.
there was rejection, betrayal, hurt. Rivers did not shy away
from the brokenness of human experiences, the scars of
corrupt systems, sickness and sexual exploitation in the world.
but the love story was all the more powerful, because a
‘happily ever after’ did not diminish the power of redemption,
the role of forgiveness, and the need for relational healing.
the dynamics at play were real, were broken,
and this rings truer than other love stories,
because we live in a broken world, a world
that very much needs love to be redeemed.
the world’s version of love
prefers a narrative of happiness,
but God’s version of love
draws us into a narrative of healing.
the invitation is not to
‘live happily ever after’
but to enter into a journey
of healing, refinement.
love that only touches the surface will
only lead to circumstantial happiness.
love that penetrates the soul will lead
us on a journey of wholeness and joy.
i am thankful there are love stories
that exist that portray redeeming love.
for the love of the world leads to acts
that entice secrecy and shame;
but the love of God leads to acts
that radiate forgiveness and hope.
…
for those unfamiliar with the story,
we meet Angel, who believes herself
to be broken beyond redemption.
Angel was sold into prostitution as a child and
has a very distorted view of her self, body and worth.
but we also meet Michael, who was honourable
and the portrait of a man running after God’s heart.
when God asks him to pursue Angel, a broken woman,
filled with sexual shame and pain,
we are introduced to a new perspective on love.
for the parallels to the book of Hosea,
‘Angel’ represents ‘Gomer’ and
‘Michael’ represents ‘Hosea’.
both the book of Hosea and redeeming love
confront our own tendency to condemnation.
Angel is not esteemed, but exploited by society;
someone it would be very easy to deem ‘undeserving’ of love.
yet we see God’s heart for the broken, no matter their state,
as Michael pursues Angel with patience and a depth of love
that is a mirror of the love that only God can provide us.
the love Micheal ‘Hosea’ shows Angel slowly chips
away at her stone-wall heart, and eventually breaks
through her barriers. but not without betrayal, hurt
and Hosea’s relentless pursuit of forgiveness, grace,
and the purest form of love. a love without condemnation.
the story is ultimately an analogy of God’s love toward us,
his overwhelming, never-ending reckless love that
chases us, draws us, calls us, fights for us, and seeks us
even in our darkest hour, even in our brokenness.
…
i apologise in advance
if those were spoilers…
but i hope it has inspired
or compelled you to either
read the book of Hosea or
the redeeming love novel!
…
the prompting for today’s musings,
however, is not the biblical or fictional story,
but the screen version of this story.
while the film has been released
for a few years now;
for a long time i have avoided
watching the film.
i was scared.
afraid the film may destroy
one of my favourite novels.
but also afraid of confronting
the emotions associated
to such a powerful story.
but i finally did it.
and.
i was met with an overwhelming heaviness.
the story holds a lot of weight and emotions.
and the last scene of the film
……. absolutely wrecked me.
afterwards i tried to process
the heaviness,
the weight,
the emotions.
this is my favourite book, so why did it leave me feeling this way?
some deep soul-searching was required
to try and unpack
what was really at the root of the heaviness.
the movie was confronting,
not only because of the themes
but moreso because of the significance
of this analogy to God’s love story.
when i tried to explain to my husband
why i felt this heaviness,
my heart could not find words to describe it.
the answer was in the soul-searching
question of: why is this my favourite story?
why had this book spoken to me,
from such a young age?
why was this book still to this day,
a book i deem my favourite?
why did this movie, in the final scene,
even though i knew the ending,
absolutely wreck me?
the answer was revealing.
while my story was (and is) not Angel’s story, my
heart had formed the same stone wall towards love.
this story of redeeming love
deeply impacts me, because:
i too need this transformative kind of love.
i too feel unworthy of this type of love.
i too was avoiding, rejecting of love.
i did not understand as a young adult:
why Angel was so distrusting and cold.
why Angel did not go with the good man.
why Angel was so hesitant to be vulnerable.
why Angel was so afraid of ownership.
why Angel was so resistant to kindness.
but as an adult, i now see myself in Angel.
somewhere along the way,
i chose to believe the lie that
love hurts, instead of heals.
i was (am) afraid of love.
i was (am) resistant to love.
i was (am) afraid of vulnerability.
i was (am) slow to trust.
at the root of this lie,
is really a truth about self:
one who does not trust in love
does not believe they are to be
trusted with love or worthy of love.
…
Angel’s self worth was so distorted,
that she allowed her body to be treated
as an object, sold into sexual slavery.
she could not escape that slavery
until she had a revelation of freedom,
and until she could see herself as
worthy of being loved and free.
…
how we see ourselves
is very revealing
of what enslaves us.
how we see ourselves
informs how we allow
others to treat us.
how we see ourselves
translates to how
we see love.
…
because my view of self, like Angel,
was so broken,
my view of love was also broken.
until i had a revelation of my worth
(born in an identity found in Christ),
i was unable to receive love that frees.
…
the reason this particular love story
has always captivated me is
because it speaks to the same
place of captivity in my heart.
the fear that enslaves me,
that holds me back from love.
…
in my attempts to articulate to my husband
why the story impacted me so strongly,
all i could identify in myself was the disconnect
between a head and heart knowledge of love.
by head knowledge,
i can articulate God’s love for me.
but by heart knowledge,
i struggle to experience God’s love.
…
from a young age,
i did not believe anyone
when they told me
i was beautiful.
it does not matter
if they were identifying
beauty on the inside
or the outside,
regardless, i did not
believe it to be true.
i rejected and dismissed
any comments about beauty.
and similarly, without realising,
i also rejected and dismissed
any declarations of love.
i did not accept or receive
love or beauty into my life.
i denied myself the experience
of love and beauty
in those deeper places.
i did not receive freedom
from the heart of stone
that had enslaved me.
my worth was something i buried,
it was to be suffocated at all costs.
i was captive to the lie
that my light was to be hidden,
my brokenness covered,
my right to love a mistake.
how i treated my self, and
how i let others speak to me and treat me,
was an extension of this self-degradation.
the result?
a very downtrodden soul,
battling many lies.
i’ve spoken about the stone wall
that i built around my heart before
(read more: the bamboo cave)
but for those who know me,
will know that now i very much
pursue beauty and love.
for a long time i have been
learning to fight those lies
from a heart of flesh,
not a heart of stone.
only by the transformational
power of the Spirit am i slowly
learning to see myself
the way God sees me.
i know it will be a life-long journey
of discovering God’s love for me.
and his Love is an invitation
to this never-ending love story.
this love is so beautiful,
but it’s also confronting.
i could not stop crying
after the film had finished.
i could not emotionally
grasp or fathom God’s love.
sitting with the strength,
the steadfastness of his love
was too overwhelming.
even humming these lyrics sent me to tears:
‘oh, how he loves us, oh, oh, how he loves us…”
read that again, with emphasis on the “oh”
an “oh” from deep in the depths of the earth.
read that again, with emphasis on the “how” with
the full measure and knowledge you can muster
in your mind of all history and time continuum,
wrapped up in His purpose and plans and will.
my tiny, finite mind, with broken distorted views
of self, overlaid with head-knowledge arguments
and understanding of theological love, was met
with the gravity of love that cannot be grasped.
love that overwhelms the soul.
love that does not make sense.
my tears were my heart leaking,
finally realising, that this love
is something so many of us
are reluctant to receive,
but so desperately need.
we can’t earn this kind of love
by intellectually understanding it.
we can’t earn this kind of love
with a reciprocation of devotion.
we don’t deserve this love.
and we don’t even
choose this love;
but Love chooses us.
it is a love that we don’t have to
fully grasp in order to receive.
this love romances us, because
the story is so much bigger than us.
this Love meets us wherever we are,
and sweeps us into a Love that is far
greater than any physical construct of love.
this Love is a spiritual stronghold of hope,
a force of true freedom for the soul.
Love frees.
Love heals.
oh, how my heart needs rescue and redemption
oh, how all of our hearts are in need of this love.
redeeming love is twofold:
God enters into our brokenness,
both to redeem love to himself,
and to redeem us by his Love.
Love frees when we are
in relationship with God.
Love sustains when we
are found abiding in God.
wholeness and hope is only found
in the healing that comes from this kind of love.
nothing else can soften the stone-walled heart.
only this transformational love.
one way that the enemy
loves to keep us enslaved,
in captivity from redeeming love,
is by keeping us in shame.
Shame binds us
and
blinds us to Love.
we are unable to receive Grace,
if we are receiving the lies of Shame.
we need to reject Shame,
and to speak truth to brokenness,
to truly embrace Grace.
too many are unable to receive
the freedom of God’s love and grace
because of the stronghold of Shame.
one of the best fictional explorations
of the enemy’s tactics is in C.S. Lewis’s
‘Screwtape Letter’s. in this novel, Lewis
explores letters between two devils,
who are on a mission to win souls for Hell.
eventually, one of the two devils ends up
reporting the other devil to Hell’s secret police
because the devil writes that the Enemy (“God”)
really loves humans. imagine that. the devil,
with a mission to win souls for Hell, has a
revelation of the force they are up against,
and the power of God’s love in saving the soul.
of course, the devil’s revelation is not received.
in hell, the notion of the Enemy (God) loving humans
is a heresy and in complete contradiction to Hell’s agenda,
which is to preach the Enemy’s (God’s) love is a lie
that the Enemy (God) uses to mask self-interest.
the fascinating element of the entire letter exchange
is to read between the lines, as Lewis intends, to
how clearly the devils and true enemy (which i choose
not to capitalise in this blog for distinction), are
attempting to thwart the truth of their Enemy (God).
…
in the example above, you see that the enemy is
on a mission to convince us God’s love is a lie.
why?
the enemy knows that God’s love
has to power to transform.
when the subject the devil’s are taunting
has a re-awakening of faith,
he is said to be covered in a ‘barrier of grace’.
God’s Love not only frees us,
but it protects us, shields us.
Grace is a boundary, a barrier that says to any enemy force
that God is relentless in his pursuit and protection of his redeemed.
his Love for us compels him
to fight for us
to redeem us
to save us.
his Love rescues not only
our hearts from worldly love
but our souls into eternal life.
…
when River’s describes why she felt
compelled to write redeeming love,
she was coming from a history of
writing romance novels for a decade.
redeeming love was her prayer for
readers to see the difference between
the ‘eros’ sensual love she had been
writing about for years compared to
what real love looks like – passionate,
sacrificial, unchanging, and eternal.
the book has been a huge blessing
to me on my journey of embracing
God’s redeeming love and seeing
how he romances us, how he invites
us into a never-ending love story.
the book of Hosea has so many powerful
concepts to dwell on: betrothal to God (2:19),
God as our husband (2:16), steadfast love (6:6).
i encourage you
to be overwhelmed
by this love, and
to find yourselves
wrapped up:
in his love story.
in his Word.
in his Presence.
xx
“And I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice,
in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord”
– Hosea 2:19-20
