Wrestling with God… Touched and Changed Forever!

Genesis 32:24-31 Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25 When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.” But he said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” 27 So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28 He said, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.” 29 Then Jacob asked him and said, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And he blessed him there. 30 So Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved.” 31 Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over Penuel, and he was limping on his thigh.

When we use the term wrestling, we define it in our heads as fighting with intent to harm and/or destroy. We do not think of the times we “wrestle” with friends, family or lovers, or the times we “wrestle” with ourselves to do the right thing – wrestling to SEIZE the day!

Strong’s Concordance uses the word grapple (get dusty) when defining this word in Genesis.

Ive always thought of it as “fighting”. When wrestling with my siblings or others, we were always told to STOP FIGHTING!  I used to be one of those people who would GASP at the idea of FIGHTING WITH GOD. I would never admit to any such aggressive feelings or actions toward someone so HOLY… that would be desecration and cause me to be put on the permanent path to hell! If anyone suggested that one could actually RELATE to God as a REAL PERSON who does not mind “getting it on” with one of His own, I would clutch my pearls in horror and run to the nearest church person who could possibly remove that visual from my brain.

For the purpose of truth-telling, there was also a phase in my life where I loved to passively “poke” God just to dare Him to discipline me for my un-Christian like behavior – with a smile on my face no doubt. Fortunately for me, He didn’t poke me back! But He did “wrestle” with me until I knew, like Jacob, I had seen God face to face.

A life-changing book my sisterhood people and I read and digested as we met for dinner and fellowship, “The Gospel According to Moses” by Athol Dickson, will forever be in my “Favorite – You Must Read” library.

Along with, as he says on the front cover, teaching me “what his Jewish friends taught him about Jesus”, I too learned and was changed by what Israel was trained in by God… trained to wrestle with Him (God) until daybreak.

Athol admits that he “became convinced that the Bible was filled with mistakes and half-baked truisms”. He reacted to the things he found that he could not tolerate in the Bible “by abandoning the faith of his childhood for a time, descending to a life of hedonism and destructive behavior.” Comparing his reaction to a medieval French rabbi’s reaction to finding similar if not the same “difficulties” to believing in the inerrancy of the Torah, Athol says, “Whereas I…, Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac) was trained to wrestle with God like Jacob at Bethel, to bargain with him like Abraham at the trees of Mamre, to argue with him like Moses at Mt. Sinai. Rashi’s people have an ancient tradition of questioning God “face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.”

Trained to wrestle… by whom? None other than God Himself!

Seems God loves a good wrestling match…

I HIGHLY recommend the WHOLE book because it does bring us back to our roots (we are GRAFTED IN) and encourages us to hear and feast on God’s Word across the ages, in content and context that we can’t even begin to imagine and understand, the voice and person of God unfettered by technology and immediate gratification, which temps us to believe we have actually accomplished what was tried with the Tower of Babel… “let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven (i.e. God’s throne), and let us make for ourselves a name (i.e. equal to/or above God’s name), otherwise we will be scattered abroad (i.e. against our wishes) over the far of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:4)

Perfect story to bring me back to… wrestling with God… mankind trying to overthrow God and ascend the throne of ultimate power.

Before reading this book I envisioned God as the ultimate competitor for my allegiance and recipient of my sacrificial service. The obvious WINNER and HOLDER of our loosing debt – Slaves to The Higher Power!

The picture presented from the Jewish perspective, was a picture of a father/child, completely given over to training and practicing and planning EVERY play in this playbook called life on earth, with the future goal of preparing to receive and receiving the crown of inheritance of eternal life with Abba – Daddy God.

I saw Him on the sidelines of my biggest game, running down the sidelines, cheering me on with, “Well Done!” or “Remember To…!”

I felt Him lifting and carrying me and healing me when I fell or was hit with a fiery arrow from our enemy’s arrows.

I knew Him as the only One who never wanted me to fail but would always identify me as His, perfect in His eyes, child!

No matter how many times I read of Jacob and his dream of wrestling with God, I would read it as FIGHTING with God. Violently having to pursue God’s blessings and paying the high cost of His wounds to me, up to and including potential disability if He so chose.

No, no, not me, I REFUSE to wrestle! I will keep God FAR AWAY from any REAL ACTIVITY in my life!

But God… by using “The Gospel According to Moses”… opened my heart and my mind to a real life (with real words and the real voice of the Holy Spirit) conversation with my Abba.

Jacob… wrestled with him until daybreak… he (God) had not prevailed against him… he(God) said… “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking”… But he(Jacob) said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” 

It is possible to wrestle and quite frankly God likes it so much He initiates it. Jacob must not have minded too much either because he didn’t run away (or wake himself up to avoid it). And, what fearlessness to “demand” a blessing even after the hip thing which does not seem to make Jacob hate God.

So he(God) said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” …“Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.”  

God was so proud of His boy, He gave Him the name of His most prized possession – a nation He would create, build and protect, simply because He chose to.

Then Jacob asked him and said, “Please tell me your name.” But he(God) said, “Why is it that you ask my name?”

You KNOW Me, Jacob! And he blessed him there.

“I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved.”  And changed…

With this one conversation with God, seeing it through the eyes of people He has personally took possession of and trained up before me, changed my VISION of God, forever changed my RELATIONSHIP with Him, and therefore, changed MY LIFE forever.

Unlike Jacob, God didn’t touch my hip socket, but He did touch my heart. My name was changed from Mary, enemy of a REAL RELATIONSHIP with the Most High God, to Mary, child of the Most High God, because, like Jacob, I had striven with God and had prevailed… NOT because I was so great at wrestling, but because God loved me enough to GRAPPLE and WIN!

I now wrestle with Abba EVERY CHANCE I GET (including Wednesdays when I write this blog)! I see God face to face!

Who knew? Just all of the Jewish branches of God’s vine, which I was grafted into AND of course our God, the Vinedresser! (John 15:1, Romans 11:17)

How about you? Are you grafted in to our Jewish heritage? Do you wrestle with God?

God always WINS but WE NEVER LOOSE! We are Touched and Changed Forever!

**All Scripture quoted comes from the “Bible Gateway” app and is the NASB version of the Bible