What Does it Look Like to Wrestle with God?

I wrote an article last week (Tuesday, November 20) about Jacob wrestling with the Lord. During that event, Jacob wouldn’t let go of God until he was blessed. God then proceeded to break his hip–quite the blessing! Then, in due time, God did bless Jacob in a real, genuine way. Jacob walked away a changed man, with a new name, and with a physical disability. The story is quite nice, isn’t it? A man wrestles with God, doesn’t give up, and walks a way with a blessing and a new perspective on life. If only it was that easy.

Someone who read what I wrote asked, “What does it look like for us to wrestle with God?” So, in this post, I’m going to try and elaborate a bit more on what it looks like for us to do that. I made the point in the first post that wrestling with God consists of being humble, being prayerful, and being repentant (thanks to Pastor Mark Driscoll for those aspects on preaching–I simply adapted them to fit into a relationship with God). This past Sunday, while I was in Omaha for the Thanksgiving holiday, I heard a sermon on petitioning God in prayer and lo and behold, one passage used was Genesis 32 and Jacob wrestling with God. The key, the preacher said, was when God said, “Let me go.” What God means when he says that is not “Let me go.” Rather, he means, “Strive with me. Don’t give up. Pray hard with faith and maybe I will be gracious enough to grant your request.” As I sat and listened to the sermon, I was challenged even more than by what I wrote five days prior.

What can we glean from this passage for our practical application? I think the most important thing is to not give up in prayer. Strive with God (that is what the name Israel means). In the Christian life, we must have a satisfied discontentment. We could argue phraseology all day long, but for the sake of this issue, let us put it this way:

1) Are we satisfied with who Jesus is and who we are in him and the relationship we have with him? I’m sure most would say, “Definitely”. 2) Are we content to stay in the same spot we are today in this faith journey? I hope your answer would be no.

Jacob was satisfied with God enough to not leave him, to be physically close enough to him and wrestle him. Yet, he wasn’t content with just that–he wanted a blessing. He wanted God to touch him in a way that only God could. I think a satisfied discontentment would be a key point to the way we approach our relationship with God. To wrestle with him is to ask him for big things–to not be content with the status quo of American Christianity and just go about our daily lives the way they are. Yet, at the same time, we must become subject to his will and be satisfied with his sovereign purpose.

To summarize, I’ll elaborate on the three keys I made in the previous post:

1) Humility: Wrestle with God as you try to put to death your pride, arrogance, and selfish attitudes. Trust the Lord for blessing when you seek him and fully put your trust in him. Your worth is found in Christ, not in looking good. This is not where our disposition lies as humans. Naturally, we seek out the good for ourselves. Be radically Christ-centered and others-oriented. Peter says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Wrestle with the fact that your flesh says, “Me first” and your spirit says, “Christ first.” It’s not an easy thing. It is a battle. Seek the Lord for humility. It is the foundation for quality in prayer, study, work, and relationships.

2) Prayer: Wrestle with God as you commit your requests to him. During the sermon I heard this past weekend, the pastor used examples from the gospels when someone asked for a healing and Jesus said something to the effect of “Your great faith has made you well.” Now, this pastor is a Reformed Baptist. He is not, nor am I, talking about faith healings or things of a Charismatic nature. Simply, Jesus said, “Have great faith!” We must wrestle with God and say, “Help my unbelief! Help me to have greater faith! I don’t believe you can bring my family to you, Lord! I want you to change that in my heart.” We cannot manufacture great faith. We must ask for it. When the disciples thought they were going to be destroyed at sea, Jesus said to them, “O, you of little faith.” There are degrees of faith. We must wrestle with God in our requests. Ask him for great things with great faith that he has the ability to do them. Don’t have great faith? Ask God for it–that even demonstrates faith that God can give it. Another facet of this is persevering in your prayers. Trust the Lord to change your life, a friend’s life, or do a mighty work in your school or workplace. In 1 Kings 18, Elijah was praying for rain after a three and a half year drought. He told a servant to go up on a mountain to check for rain. Every time he went up there was nothing and each time Elijah told him to come back. Elijah went back to prayer “with his head between his knees.” This happened seven times! Elijah was persevering in prayer. Eventually, God granted the request. We cannot treat God like a servant of ours. We cannot expect him to do things based on our desires or needs, but we can ask him to do things based on his infinite goodness and perfect character.

3) Repentance: Wrestle with God and seek him to find the sins that are prevalent in your life and repent of them. Turn away from the wickedness! There are so many sins we know about and don’t know about. We must wrestle with him over Scripture texts that are uncomfortable to us. Labor in prayer so we can trust the Holy Spirit to put to death the evil thoughts and deeds we do. Labor in prayer and ask God where we are falling short if we do not realize it–not so we can have a quick fix and stop sinning–but so we can fall more in love with Jesus and be more sanctified. When we repent, essentially, we are saying, “God, I hate what I am doing and I want you do a great work in me to change me. I confess my sin. Bless me, Lord, though I don’t deserve it. Help me treasure your Son, Jesus, more than this sin. The great wrestlers of the Christian faith are those who continually run back to the Lord and have faith that he is there for them and that he rewards those who seek him (Heb. 11:6).

I hope that is insightful as to how we can wrestle with God on a daily basis.

Wrestling God with You,
james

Thanksgiving Meditation

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!
     Serve the Lord with gladness!
     Come into his presence with singing!
Know that the Lord, he is God!
     It is he who made us, and we are his;
     we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
     and his courts with praise!
     Give thanks to him; bless his name!
For the Lord is good;
     his steadfast love endures forever,
     and his faithfulness to all generations.

- Psalm 100

It is interesting to me that the holiday of Thanksgiving began in America and it continues strong today. Still, it seems to be more about turkey, pies, family, good shopping, and football than actual thankfulness. Americans, at least it appears to me, are the most unthankful people on the planet. Now, I haven’t been all over the world, but we have more than any nation in the world and we are, at large, a very ungrateful nation. How ironic is it then, that we make a great deal out of this holiday, yet there possibly may be a family today that sits down at the table this afternoon and doesn’t say a prayer of thanks to the God who gave them all they have.

Abraham Lincoln instituted Thanksgiving in 1863. He listed off so many blessings that the United States had enjoyed, despite a civil war. Then, after telling of the great blessings, he said:

They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In the Psalm above, it says to come to the Lord with thanksgiving and praise and then in verse 5 says, “For the Lord is good.” Why do we thank the Lord? Because he is good. That is not just a description of God’s character. Goodness is God’s essence. God cannot cease to be good. Matthew 7:11 speaks about this, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” Good things are so much more than a house, food, clothes, a TV, and a nice job. It’s being satisfied with who Jesus is. It’s glorying in God because he is, at his very core, good. It’s loving him more because he loved us first and loves us perfectly.

Today, on this Thanksgiving day, may we, like the psalmist and Abraham Lincoln, make a joyful noise to the Lord. May we enter his courts with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. He created us. He owns us. His steadfast love will never fade. His faithfulness will outlast the world. May we fall on our faces in repentance of our disobedience and thank God for his matchless mercy. May we pray for our nation to seek redemption from Almighty God. Let not this day go by without going before the Lord in deep thanksgiving and praise. For our God is good and he is worthy.

Longing to thank God with you,
james

A Treasure in a Jar of Clay

On November 14 and 15, three friends and I went to Chadron, Nebraska, to minister to college students at Chadron State College. The trip itself was unforgettable. Random stops in the middle of nowhere, at the Nebraska National Forest, small towns with no post office, and bathroom breaks at places where animals might not stop to relieve themselves. It was so refreshing and glorious to spend so many hours in a vehicle with people that I love so much, people I work with, and people who share the same vision of reaching students for Jesus. Needless to say, we had fun–probably too much fun. We almost hit a deer (or two) we almost had our car destroyed by an ancient tractor, and we sat on a roof of an old stable, relishing the stillness of the Nebraska Sandhills and praising the Lord for his awesome creation.

Despite all the fun, we still had a job to do–a job that is, by definition, fun and exciting. My job as a Campus Crusade worker is the most amazing, yet weird job in the world. I got to drive to Chadron to reach students for Christ. During the weekly meeting on Wednesday night–after 8 hours in a vehicle–I spoke to 80 students about receiving Jesus as a Treasure, not just a Savior.

It is very difficult to speak passionately and with conviction to people whom I do not know. God was merciful and gracious, however, to ignite in me a desire to see students love Jesus, not just because he saves them from sin and death and hell, but because he will satisfy their deepest longings for love, peace, and hope.

The core of the message was from Matthew 13:44 and how a man found a glorious treasure in a field and sold all he had, simply to buy the field that contained the treasure. I challenged the students–with a dozen or so present who were non-Christian–to treasure Jesus enough to be willing to sell it all to follow him. Later in the message, I talked about Paul’s description of himself in Philippians 3, when he wrote that he counts everything as loss because of Christ and it is by faith alone that he is saved–not by works of righteousness. I said something that I didn’t plan on saying while in preparation. Regarding works and good deeds, I said, “Trying to be good enough, trying to get out of hell is a good way to get yourself into hell.” By that, I mean that if people try to be legalistic and Pharisaic, we will never see the real Jesus and treasure him like he deserves to be. I saw the faces of a few people when I said that. I don’t regret it. I don’t care if people were offended. We need to know that we cannot be righteous. We are incapable of doing anything good on our own. We need to know that so we count everything as loss. We need to count all things as rubbish for the sake of treasuring Jesus.

In the days leading up to speaking at Chadron, I was over the railing with the Lord, getting walloped for the times I do not treasure him. I love that about teaching and preaching. I am convicted of my own sins and because of that, I can be vulnerable and not be a “Holy Joe” as I share my heart with people. I hope the students saw my sorrow and grief over the cheap substitutes that steal my attention away from Jesus and that it brought them to their knees to confess and repent before him.

I found this morning, two days after the meeting that three students received Christ–not just as their Savior–but as their Treasure on Wednesday night. Praise the Lord for the fruit that he alone bore! God alone prepared their hearts and used his effectual call and beautiful love to draw them to himself. I never ceased to be amazed at how God uses me for his glory. I am such a sinner, such a broken, jar of frail clay that cannot hold any kind of weight without crumbling. Yet, 2 Corinthians 4:7 says, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not us.” How glorious is it that I am weak and needy and worthless, and Christ uses me to communicate his word to other jars of clay! How splendid is it that the love of God lets me keep the treasure of Jesus in a vessel that so often cheats on him and runs away from his grace! That is what I love about speaking and preaching the word of God. Toward the end of his life, John Newton said: “I remember two things, that I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.” In Philippians 3, after Paul talked about losing everything to know Jesus, he said, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Phil. 3:12). He was vulnerable with the people he was writing to. “I don’t have it all figured out yet! I still sin; I’m still crooked!” How incredible are those words from the world’s greatest preacher and evangelist.

Knowing that when I speak is comforting. I’m a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.