Wrestling with God

August 1, 2020

I’ve often thought about what seems to me to be my rather anemic experience of the Presence of God. Listening to some Christians talk, they almost float a few inches above ground in unbroken reverie as they commune with the Divine. Some years ago, Henry Blackaby wrote a book entitled “Experiencing God.” I read it, worked at it, but still fell short of what he described. I often go days and weeks between what I could reasonably describe as experiencing God, and even these times don’t seem to measure up to what I read of the saints and scholars of the faith.

For the past couple days, I’ve been fixated on the story of Jacob in Genesis 32. The chapter begins with “So Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him.” It sounds straightforward enough, but I wonder what exactly Jacob experienced that made Moses describe the encounter that way. What was different about these beings? Earlier in Genesis, three men approached Abraham. As we read the story, we learn that these are no ordinary men; they’re angels sent to destroy Sodom. One of them is even described as the LORD himself, ie. Yahweh. Did he look different? We don’t know.

Here in chapter 32, Jacob meets an angel at the front end of the story, and wrestles with a mysterious man at the end, of whom he says, “I have wrestled with God.” I wonder how long it took him to realize who his adversary was. I know there have been times I thought I was wrestling with demons, only to find I was fighting God himself. This match went on all night long, neither gaining the upper hand until daybreak when the man begs Jacob to release him. Jacob refuses. “Not unless you bless me,” he cries out. The man does so, changing his name from Jacob (“the Cheater”) to Israel (a Prince). Jacob asks the name of his adversary, but is refused. The point is made—to be able to name something means you can control it. God is in charge here, and will not be manipulated by the likes of Jacob. As the dawn breaks, Jacob is alone once more, but limping on a dislocated hip.

This text is full of mystery. I don’t know anyone who has had an experience like that; I know I haven’t. So what do we do with it? To simply spiritualize to draw a lesson from it seems to me to be somewhat cowardly. Christian faith is not merely psychological or philosophical lessons to be learned from ancient writings. These things actually happened, and the question refuses to be silenced: Where are such things happening today? If they are not, why not?

In the story, Jacob continues to wrestle even after his hip is dislocated. Though in great pain, he holds on—perhaps that’s all he can do at that point. He clings to his adversary so tightly that God himself begs to be released. Can you imagine? I’ve never wrestled nor held on with such intensity. I wonder how many blessings I’ve forfeited by letting go too soon?

We often imagine relationship with God to be a peaceable, comforting thing. We love to quote the 23rd Psalm where we lie down in green pastures, but we balk when it comes to walking through the valley of the shadow of death. We like to think we can walk hand in hand with God along sunlit paths strewn with flowers, but shrink from a wrestling match that wears us down, causes us pain, and makes us walk with a limp for the rest of our lives. Aren’t we supposed to go from glory to glory, to have great success in life?

Why Jacob’s hip? He would never take another step without pain. He would never be able to forget that night when he refused to quit, fighting through the agony till he received the blessing. We aren’t told what that blessing was, except he received that new name. No longer a cheater in God’s eyes, he was a prince. As his story continues, we learn it took the rest of his life to live into that new name, just as it does for me to live into the new name of Christian.