Once upon a time there was an ordinary man who was commissioned by God to be a great leader. As he was leading God's children to a future hope Jacob was left alone. A man came upon him and they began to wrestle, "So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak."
Random to say the least.
Even more interesting is the man that comes upon Jacob, is actually God.
Take a moment, and try to wrap your minds around the idea of the creator of the farthest reaches of the universe coming into human from to go a couple of rounds with ordinary Jacob. Craziness, I'd rather wrestle 10 Andre the Giants (see picture) than one God.
This is what I take from the story...
God is alive and real and tangible and wants you to engage with him in conflict. (conflict not in the negative violent connotation that we have of it, but conflict simply being to opposing forces colliding.) In this case God and Jacob literally and physically collide in a wrestling match.
This debunks a few perceptions of faith and God:
- That we are suppose to be robots, being dictated by God in everything we do. On the contrary, if you don't understand where God is taking you then wrestle him over it.
- It's a "sin", or wrong to be angry at God. On the contrary, every wrestling match I have ever been in has been a result of anger or has resulted in anger. God wants your whole heart, the good and the bad, the confused and the certain, and especially the joyous and the angry.
Heres the rub...
God wants to engage with you and wrestle with you over every aspect of your life. The more we do this we become closer to God physically and our ability to hear his voice is much more clear. I tend to leave God out of a lot of my life, and push him far way from me, definitely far enough away that we couldn't wrestle.
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