Wrestling with God

Gen 32:24-32 NLT - [24] This left Jacob all alone in the camp, and a man came and wrestled with him until the dawn began to break. [25] When the man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob's hip and wrenched it out of its socket. [26] Then the man said, "Let me go, for the dawn is breaking!" But Jacob said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." [27] "What is your name?" the man asked. He replied, "Jacob." [28] "Your name will no longer be Jacob," the man told him. "From now on you will be called Israel, because you have fought with God and with men and have won." [29] "Please tell me your name," Jacob said. "Why do you want to know my name?" the man replied. Then he blessed Jacob there. [30] Jacob named the place Peniel (which means "face of God"), for he said, "I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared." [31] The sun was rising as Jacob left Peniel, and he was limping because of the injury to his hip. [32] (Even today the people of Israel don't eat the tendon near the hip socket because of what happened that night when the man strained the tendon of Jacob's hip.)


The stories of Jacob display a constant struggle. Jacob's struggle is the struggle to receive the blessings of God. Not only does he deceive his father and brother in Genesis 27 to receive Isaac's blessing, in Genesis 32 we read of his nightly tussle with the mysterious man who carries an ordinance from God. In the midst of this conflict, Jacob's unwillingness to "let [the man] go unless [the man] blesses [Jacob]" demonstrates Jacob would fight to the death for the Lord's blessing. Why? Is it Jacob's internal struggle to find acceptance with God? Does he wish so desperately to do the will of God?

The Scriptures leave void many of the details of Jacob's life. Nevertheless, his struggles are our struggles. Not much has changed in the past few thousand years. Men still wrestle with God to find acceptance. For many Christians, it is the struggle to avoid returning to "the sin which so easily ensnares us" (Hebrews 12.1). For others, it is the guilt of being completely helpless to ever justify our faith through our own works. Still, with others, their daily lives are a constant burden of what plans God has for them in their lives.

You see, Jacob's struggle was not a physical struggle. Externally he wrestled a man, but internally he was wrestling with God, for the man he wrestles proclaims that Jacob "fought with God and with men and [has] won." Notice what Jacob's proclamation when he names Peniel: "I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared." In whatever fashion we cannot comprehend, our empathy extends to Jacob's circumstances. In our wrestling with God, we experience the trials of life(the physical wrestlings) in order to seek God's face(our spiritual wrestlings.)

What is the key to winning? How do we keep going when life presses against us so unbearingly at the weakest moments in our lives? Endurance. Jacob possessed endurance. We must possess it. As children of God we are called to "run with perseverance the race marked out for us" (Hebrews 12.1). We fight with God for different reasons, but the conflict is not for us to win--it is for us to realize why God wins. Only then can we understand His purposes. Only then can we, like Jacob, receive the blessings of God so that we might live out those blessings to glorify the Lord.