Today on Geek Devotions, Celeste takes a look at 2022’s Redeeming Love film. In this movie one of the main character, Michael, finds himself in a terrible place. He wants to go save the woman he loves from a terrible situation and bring her home. But the Lord tells him to wait. What he didn’t realize is that the Lord had bigger plans in the waiting.
“Redeeming Love” is a book by Francine Rivers that takes the story of Hosea and fictionalizes to make the overall theme of scriptures more apparent to more modern audiences. Recently there was a live-action adaptation of this book released in theaters. So instead of Hosea and Gomer, you have Michael Hosea and Angel. Like in the book of Hosea, Angel leaves Michael multiple times, and the last time we see him praying to God, asking God to allow him to go after Angel and bring her home. God’s response and the events surrounding this moment is what we are talking about in today’s devotion.
Like we said in the intro, in both the book and movie, “Redeeming Love,” we see Michael Hosea praying that God would allow him to go after Angel and bring her home. But, spoiler alert, Michael is not told that he can go after her. Already he had gone after her 2 or 3 times, and she still had run away from him. Angel had her reasons, and every time Michael went to get her, he always asked, “Do you want to be here?”
But this time, he was instructed to wait.
As a result, Angel had to make the decision to seek him out and come home. Outside of the obvious parallel of how we as sinners have to choose to come to God even when He is actively pursuing us, there is another way we can look at this situation. If Michael had gone after Angel and brought her home, it would have been good. They would have had the life eventually that God had planned for them. Still, during her time away, Angel set up an organization for former prostitutes, women who did not want to be in that life, and young girls who had no business being in that life; she found God and formed her relationship with him outside of Michael.
Sometimes God tells us to wait for something, we are praying and wanting to move forward with things, but the timing is off. We could do what we want, and God would work around it, but in his wisdom… God is doing more things than we can see. You never know how many people your obedience and patients will touch simply by listening to God when he says, Wait on a situation.