Rescuer
“So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the landscape from Adam to Moses. Even those who didn’t sin precisely as Adam did by disobeying a specific command of God still had to experience this termination of life, this separation from God. But Adam, who got us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.
Yet the rescuing gift is not exactly parallel to the death-dealing sin. If one man’s sin put crowds of people at the dead-end abyss of separation from God, just think what God’s gift poured through one man, Jesus Christ, will do! There’s no comparison between that death-dealing sin and this generous, life-giving gift. The verdict on that one sin was the death sentence; the verdict on the many sins that followed was this wonderful life sentence.”
Paul to the church in Rome
Is it any wonder why every great book, movie, or story involves a rescue? It is the story line of every great one because it is evocative of our story. And is there anything that tears at the heart more than a lost or separated child being reconciled to their parent?
The entire history of mankind can be summed up very simply as…
A father’s desperate desire to be reconciled to his children.
With all that Hollywood gets wrong, they really get one thing right: Inexplicably, almost with no knowledge or foresight, they love to tell our story. They rest, almost exclusively, in the meta-narrative of the gospel. An author I love says, “God has commissioned the giants of our culture (movie directors) to tell our story.”
One of the things we speak about at the boot camps I help lead and that we aggressively excavate at the Lifeplan retreats we offer, is the idea of “calling” or a “new name”. The momentum and clarity of understanding how you uniquely bear the image of the divine…
is simply staggering.
I was meeting with a man following one of those retreats. He said he was wrestling with what his calling or new name was…then he told me about a dozen or stories about all these people and various ways he was attempting to rescue them. It is written all over his story and clearly confirmed in the chapters of his life. He was a little surprised by what was so completely obvious to me.
Further confirmation came when he walked in his house and saw this print hanging on his wall. He was captivated by it and bought it years ago, but couldn’t have really told you what he liked about it…now he knows. It is a cowboy rescuing a helpless animal in a storm.
Living into the powerful reality of “rescuer” in his story will change his life and the lives of many others. When what you are simply gifted and inspired to do gets identified as the clear intention of the Father…the specific and unique way that you bear His image…you become formidable and dangerous, dangerous for good.
He is a very good man. He is an ever more glorious man as he rises to his unique identity. It is beautiful to behold.
- Did you know that your story was essentially a story of the Father desperately desiring to be reconciled to you?
- Are you able to interpret that story in almost every great story?
- Are you clear on the unique and powerful way that you bear the image of the Divine?