Redeeming Love

I’ve found that I need to keep busy to keep my head and heart from lingering on things that make me sad. Weekends make this hard because I’m used to taking it easy Saturday and Sunday; laying around the house is the perfect breeding ground for depression. So besides cleaning my room and sewing some birds for the bird mobile I’m helping Jennifer make for their next addition, I picked up a book. It’s a book I thought I’d never read because so many girls tried pushing it on me over the years, and if there is something you should know about me it’s that I usually make my mind up beforehand that I won’t like something when others are so adamant that I will. [A rather dumb line of thinking, I'm aware, but it happens nonetheless].

The book is Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, and while I’m only half way through, it has spoken to me on so many levels. Sunday night, I flipped to the back, not to read the end, but to read the Letter from the Author. The following excerpt is just part of it [it's long, but it was all so.....good].

I believe we all serve someone in this life. For the first thirty-eight years of mine, I served myself. My conversion was not a highly emotional experience. It was a conscious, thought-out decision that changed my focus, my direction, my heart, my life. But I don’t want to mislead anyone. It was not all peace and light afterward. The first thing that happened was that I couldn’t write. Oh, I tried, but it didn’t feel right. Writing just didn’t work for me anymore. I couldn’t escape into it. I had given myself to the Lord, and He had something else in mind. I finally accepted that it might not even be in His plan that I ever write again. And I surrendered. What I came to understand was the He wanted me to get to know Him first. He wanted no other gods in my life-not my family, not my writing. Nothing.

I started craving the Word of God. I read page by page, cover to cover and cover to cover and cover to cover. I started to pray. I started to listen and learn. God’s Word is like food and clean, clear water. It filled the emptiness inside me. It renewed me. It opened my eyes and ears and mind and heart and filled me with joy.

We opened our house for a home Bible study, and our pastor began a study on the gospels. Then we did a study on materialism. The we began a study on minor prophets. We eventually came to the Book of Hosea. That portion of God’s Word hit me so profoundly that I knew this was the love story the Lord wanted me to write! His story, a deeply moving story of His passionate love for each of us–unconditional, forgiving, unchanging, everlasting, self-sacrificing–the kind of love for which most people hunger their entire lives, yet never find.

Writing Redeeming Love was a form of worship for me. Through it, I was able to thank God for loving me even when I was defiant, rebellious, contemptuous of what I thought being a Christian meant, and afraid to give my heart away. I had wanted to be my own god and have control of my life the way Eve did in the Garden of Eden. Now I know to be loved by Christ is the ultimate joy and fulfillment. Everything in Redeeming Love was a gift from the Lord: plot, characters, theme. None of it is mine to claim.

There are many who struggle to survive in life, many who have been used and abused in the name of love, many who been sacrificed on the altars of pleasure and “freedom.” But the freedom the world offers is, in reality, false. Too many have awakened one day to discover they are in bondage, and they have no idea how to escape. It is for people such as these that I wrote Redeeming Love–people who fight, as I did, to be their own gods, only to find in the end that they are lost, desperate, and terribly alone. I want to bring the truth to those trapped in lies and darkness, to tell them that God is there, He is real, and He loves them–no matter what.

I used to believe the purpose in life is to find happiness. I don’t believe that anymore. I believe we are all given gifts from our Father, and that our purpose is to offer them to Him. He knows how He wants us to use them. I used to struggle to find happiness. I used to work hard to attain it. By the world’s standards, I was successful. But it was all meaningless vanity. Now, I have joy. I have everything I ever wanted or dreamed of having: a love that is so precious I can find no words to describe it. I haven’t achieved this through my own efforts. I certainly have done nothing worthy to earn it or even deserve it. I have received it as a free gift from the Lord, the everlasting God. It is the same gift He offers you, every minute, every hour, every day of your life.

Right now, I feel that heavy struggle of survival in life. Some days I feel used, and I know I am constantly trying to cram anything I can into my heart to try and fill the deep void there. So much easier said than done, but I know I can find full satisfaction and rest in God’s unconditional, redemptive love.