Ge 32:26-29
26 Then He said to Jacob, “Let Me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob said, “I will not let You go unless You bless me.” 27 “What is your name?” the man asked. “Jacob!” he replied. 28 “Your name will no longer be Jacob,” He said. “It will be Israel because you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.” 29 Then Jacob asked Him, “Please tell me Your name.” But He answered, “Why do you ask My name?” And He blessed him there.
Yesterday I threw out the following series of questions; do you think that God forgot about the covenant, do you think HE forgot about the promises? OR do you think HE orchestrated these events so that Jacob would wrestle with God, pursue God, go hard after God? I believe that God planned these events so that Jacob would pursue HIM, cry out to HIM, be desperate for HIM and finally wrestle with HIM all night.
You and I, like Jacob, were created for relationships. The most precious relationship is designed by our creator to be our relationship with God the Father through Jesus Christ, empowered by the indwelling gift of the Holy Spirit. Second, is our relationship to our fellow image bearers. Do this sound vaguely familiar? Have you heard something like this before? Oh yea, the greatest commandment!
Mt 22:37-39 He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the greatest and most important commandment. 39 The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.
Now prayerfully consider this with me for a moment...Jacob cries out to God in prayer, reminding God of HIS goodness, faithfulness and HIS PROMISES then Jacob wrestles with God all night. (I believe this is the pre-incarnate Christ) Not only does he wrestle with God all night, he prevails and is therefore blessed by God.
If every promise in Christ is yes and amen (2 Cor. 1:20)...I am under heavy conviction from the Holy Spirit that I have not wrestled with God in this manner, I have cried out, but not like this, not like Jacob. I pray a lot, but not like this. This is scary...the Pharisees prayed a lot too, but not like Jacob...there was no life transforming power in their prayers...I long to experience HIM like Jacob! Do you see it, can you smell it, can you taste it...it is intimacy with God through Jesus Christ.
Consider the invitation from Jesus, consider who it is from, King of kings and Lord of lords, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah and then pay close attention who HE is inviting to come...this is awesome and it is very encouraging.
Mt 11:25-30 At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to infants. 26 Yes, Father, because this was Your good pleasure. 27 All things have been entrusted to Me by My Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son desires to reveal Him.
28 “Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 All of you, take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Does your heart ache for rest are you tired, weary, worn out...DESPERATE? Then come, come to Jesus...come to Jesus and live!
I want to end with thoughts from a man who died in 1758, he was the president of Princeton University...Jonathan Edwards. I believe that the most profound way that we, God's children, may wrestle with our Heavenly Father (as I was writing that the image came to mind of me wrestling with my kids...how cool, God invites HIS children to wrestle with HIM! WOW! Can you tell, I'm getting excited about that!) is through memorizing a promise of God, meditating on a promise of God and then wrestling with God over that promise until it becomes part of who we are...could that be part of transformation, life change, being conformed to HIS image?
Read and reread and reread Jonathan Edwards experience in meditation and meet me at the end.
"The first instance, that I remember, of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things, that I have lived much in since, was on reading those words, I Timothy 1:17. Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever, Amen. As I read the words, there came into my soul, and was as it were diffused through it, a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new sense, quite different from any thing I ever experienced before. Never any words of Scripture seemed to me as these words did. I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was, and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be rapt up to him in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him for ever! I kept saying, and as it were singing, over these words of scripture to myself; and went to pray to God that I might enjoy Him, and prayed in a manner quite different from what I used to do; with a new sort of affection. But it never came into my thought, that there was any thing spiritual, or of a saving nature in this.
From about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by Him. An inward, sweet sense of these things, at times, came into my heart; and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them. And my mind was greatly engaged to spend my time in readings and mediating on Christ, on the beauty and excellency of His person, and the lovely way of salvation by free grace in Him...
"I feel an ardency of soul to be . . . emptied and annihilated, to lie in the dust and be full of Christ alone, to love Him with a holy and pure love, to trust in Him, to live on Him, and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure with a divine and heavenly purity."
I think I know what you are thinking...something like, Oh my...how awesome, how wonderful to be able to walk with the Lord and be fed from HIS precious Word like Jonathan Edwards, to experience God like this, Oh my, how awesome it would be, but I'm not Jonathan Edwards I could never be like that...and then flow the feelings of desperation and hopelessness.
Desperation is good, remember! THIS IS HUGE...THE KEY IS YOU ARE RIGHT IN ONE SENSE, YOU AND I WILL PROBABLY NEVER BE ABLE TO EXPRESS OURSELVES LIKE JONATHAN EDWARDS, BUT HIS EXPERIENCE WITH GOD THROUGH JESUS CHRIST IS OPEN TO EVERY CHILD OF GOD! IT IS OPEN TO EVERYONE WHO WILL CRY OUT IN PRYAER, WHO WILL WRESTLE WITH GOD THROUGH MEDITATION IN AND THROUGH HIS WORD.
Remember Jesus Words in Matt 11:25...“I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to infants.
Jesus longs for you and I to experience HIM intimately like this...come to Jesus, come and wrestle with your Heavenly Father...come!
OH God burn YOUR holy Word into my heart, our hearts and move us to pursue YOU with a white hot passion for YOUR glory and our JOY!
Love,
m