Wrestling with God

Hi Everyone-

I pray you are doing well this Sunday and enjoying the blessings of God.  Another season of small groups at newlife started this week and I get to lead a group on studying the Bible, which I'm really excited about.  Two of the coolest/most useful things I've learned in the last long while about studying the Bible are that we should read like a lover (as opposed to a consumer, student, etc.), which would be a good blog topic ... but it's not today's.

You might be familiar with the story in Genesis where Jacob wrestles God (Genesis 32:22-32), it's a pretty weird and memorable story.  Can you imagine wrestling God?  I know that seems a pretty far out there concept to my mind.  That said, I think God wants us to, in a manner of speaking.  Follow my thinking here:

Jacob wrestles God in the middle of the night and there's several results.  First, God "touched Jacob’s hip and wrenched it out of its socket" (Genesis 32:25, NLT).  When Jacob walks away in verse 31 he does so with a limp.  This is just the first result though, the more important, and lasting, one comes later.  In v. 26 Jacob asks for a blessing, and in v. 29 God blesses him.  To put it bluntly, Jacob wrestles God and God blesses him for it.  Wrestling God = blessing.

Now, we could say that was just Jacob and doesn't apply to everyone.  However, at least two things indicate otherwise, in my mind.  First, it's the Bible, the Word of God, and as such is meant to affect and apply to our lives in various ways, although not always directly/literally.  More importantly, in v. 28 God renames Jacob.  Jacob becomes Israel, the forefather of God's nation of people.  Like many Hebrew words there are a multiplicity of meanings for "Israel", but the one that sticks out to me is incredibly relevant to this passage.

Israel means "one who wrestles with God."

Jacob wrestles God, is blessed, and God changes his name to "one who wrestles with God."  AND God's chosen people are therefore named as people who wrestle with God.

Now the Bible is the Living Word of God, in many ways our most direct encounter with God.  Other passages in the Bible indicate the same thing, but this one pretty literally shows God wants us to wrestle with him.  Therefore, we should wrestle with God through our reading, grappling with, and striving to understand the Bible.  In my mind, this means reading the Bible and wrestling with what it means to us until it blesses us.  I think this applies in particular to the hard passages, like where God tells Israel to kill women and children or Paul says women shouldn't talk in church or Elijah has bears maul kids for making fun of him.  We grapple with them, think about them, pray about them, and seek to comprehend them until they bless us.  We many limp for a while, but God will bless us, and I think that's worth anything.

What do you think?

Grace and peace,
Lang

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