A guy stood looking into a sunset across a field

 

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Wrestling with God

27 August 2019
‘Jacob was alone, and a man came and wrestled with him until the sun came up.’

In Genesis 32, we find the story of Jacob wrestling with God. We’re told: ‘Jacob was alone, and a man came and wrestled with him until the sun came up.’ This man was in fact an angel, or actually God Himself. Hosea wrote: ‘When Jacob wrestled with the angel and won, he cried and asked for his blessing’ (Hosea 12:4 NCV). God did bless Jacob, but before that blessing, God dislocated his hip. This probably wasn’t what Jacob was wanting. The dislocated hip meant that Jacob would have to be reliant on God. He could no longer depend only on his own strength. When we think about wrestling with God, we can think it means trying to make God do things our way, to bless us the way we want to be blessed, and to give us the things we think would make our lives better. But wrestling with God is a process of laying down our plans and desires, and learning to trust God to provide and fulfil His promises for our lives. There’s a ‘Jacob nature’ in each of us that resists the will of God, and it has to be dealt with. Here are a few questions we need to ask ourselves: 1) Am I willing to let go of what I want if it’s not God’s will for me? 2) Do I want what others have instead of waiting for God’s provision for me? 3) Do I keep talking about my rights because I haven’t fully surrendered to God? God longs to bless us, but that blessing won’t always look like we thought it would. Sometimes we need to lay things down before the blessing comes. We need to surrender all of ourselves to Him. 

 

What Now?

Ask yourself the questions in today’s reading. If you need to surrender yourself to God, take some time to do that today.

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