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| Photo source: 20th Century Fox |
Several years ago, my husband and I watched a very rivoting action-thriller staring Liam Neeson called Taken. In this movie, Neeson plays an ex-government operative whose teenage daughter, Kim, travels overseas and gets abducted by sex-traffickers who plan to sell her into slavery in a few short days. Kim calls her father in a panic but is cut short, and Neeson is able to talk briefly with one of the kidnappers, providing him with the only lead to finding her in Paris. Neeson threatens to kill the kidnapper and his gang if he does not release his daughter, to which the kidnapper chillingly replies, "Good luck." Thus begins the ninety-six-hour chase to finding and successfully rescuing his daughter (and may I mention that he does all of this with a flip-phone!?! Yeah, he's cool like that.).
Now, this movie was great on several levels, although, it obviously involves a mature and serious subject matter, making it difficult for me to heartily recommend. However, something was particularly impactful about this movie (besides raising awareness about the sex-trafficking industry, of which I was woefully unaware at the time). You see, in my mind, it illustrated a powerful truth about our relationship to God.
Whether we take the time to realize it or not, you and I serve a God who also relentlessly pursues us and rescues us from the hands of the Enemy. However, He has gone to much greater lengths than boarding a trans-continental flight to pursue us; He has sent His one and only Son who humbled himself to be a man on this Earth and suffered the shame and humiliation of death on a cross.
Like Neeson's character, God will stop at nothing to rescue and redeem us. However, unlike Kim, we never called out to be saved--we were completely lost in our sin and ignorant of our fallen and hopeless state. Without the Spirit's aid to regenerate our hearts, we would never even realize our need for Him, and never bow our knee in submission to Him.
Now, there was one particular scene in the movie Taken that truly amazed me. Neeson's character stumbles upon a make-shift brothel to find his daughter. He is looking for her, or any sign of her, and comes upon a room with a chair that has Kim's jean jacket thrown across the back of it. He looks over at the mattress in this room and sees a girl--who is not his daughter--drugged and semi-conscious, and he tries to ask her about the jacket, but she is in such poor shape that he gets nowhere. Quickly, he scoops her up and runs her out of this horrible place. He drives her to a hotel, gives her fluids and, when she is feeling better, she tells him that she got the jacket from a girl and proceeds to give him another clue as to Kim's whereabouts.
Now, this girl was not Kim and yet she was rescued from evil and danger. Why? What did she do to "deserve" this rescue when all the other girls in that brothel were not? She was no different than all those other innocent girls, except for the fact that she had Kim's jacket. You see, this reminds me of us as Christians!! We, as sinners, do not deserve salvation any more than anyone else, and yet, by God's grace, He has given us His Spirit. We have the covering of Christ, which makes us acceptable in the sight of a holy God. This truth reminds me of Rahab's scarlet cord. It reminds me of the lamb's blood on the doorposts during the Passover in Egypt. We don't deserve it, yet we are covered, passed over, saved, rescued.
How about you, dear one? Have you pondered the tenaciousness and relentlessness with which God pursues you? If not, will you take the time to think about it today? Will you open the pages of Jonah and see how God relentlessly pursued this wayward prophet so that he would turn and repent and follow hard after God's will? Will you pour over Psalm 139 as it describes a God who knows your every thought, action, motive, and every detail of your body and soul? We serve a holy God who pursues sinners. Let this astounding truth soak down into your marrow this week. And let us give Him all the praise for His wondrous and undeserved grace!
"Your beauty and love chase after me
every day of my life."
--Psalm 23:6 (MSG)
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