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Jun 07, 2021 17:00pm

Wrestling with God

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Picture it: a group of girls, math class, seventh grade… There was a new teacher, who was the coolest. Every once in a while, on a Tuesday, if we were good, we’d get to watch a little bit of our favorite show at the end of her class.

We taped it the night before and we would excitedly pop in the VHS and wait for the music to start…

“Let’s get ready to rumbleeeeeeeeeee…”

That’s right, we weren’t your ordinary teens. We loved wrastlin’!

At that time, there was a huge war over who was the best – WCW or WWF.

If you asked my friend Kristin – it would be WCW because of Sting. She could put you in the Scorpion Death Lock in a second. Ashley and I both loved Macho Man, but she definitely had a thing for Shawn Michaels, the Heartbreak Kid.

We never hit anybody with a 2×4 or slammed someone with a chair, but we practiced moves on each other all the time.

Monday Night Raw was huge with us and we could watch those wrestling matches over and over.

Today, we look into a celebrity wrestling match that changed a man’s life completely.

“Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he could not defeat him, he struck Jacob’s hip socket as they wrestled and dislocated his hip. 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.’

‘What is your name?’ the man asked.

‘Jacob,’ he replied.

‘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.’

Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’

But he answered, ‘Why do you ask my name?’ And he blessed him there. Jacob then named the place Peniel, ‘For I have seen God face to face,’ he said, ‘yet my life has been spared.’” (Genesis 32:24-30)

Jacob wrestled with God.

Wait, what?

Yes! Jacob was persistent in asking for God’s blessing and he wrestled with the Lord, not giving up until God blesses him.

Haven’t you ever wrestled with God?

Perhaps it was a bad circumstance that you didn’t understand. Or an answer to a prayer but you didn’t like the outcome. Maybe it was something happening within you and you couldn’t figure out why.

Jacob had changed.

No longer was he a deceiver.

God even changed his name to represent what had occurred within him. Now he would be known as Israel.

You can’t have an encounter with God and NOT be changed.

In whatever issues you are wrestling with God about, seek His truth and blessing through it so he can change you.