Wrestling With God

The last 12 months have quite possibly been the hardest of my life. I have been rejected more in that time span then I ever have before (and I wasn’t very good at dealing with rejection to begin with if I’m being honest) from all different angles, whether that be friendships, relationships, or career wise. I have had to fight harder than I have ever had to fight and the person that I seemed to be fighting the most was God. In May a friend of mine came to me explaining that she had a vision about me wrestling with God just like Jacob wrestled with God in the book of Genesis. I took it as I was fighting for my blessing and fighting for the hand of God to touch my life but in all reality I was fighting and wrestling Him in an attempt to get my way. I believed that if I fought long enough and pushed hard enough then I could eventually obtain my will and still fulfill God’s call on my life… just in the image I had created and envisioned. Turns out that doesn’t work so well. I have been beaten to my knees multiple times this last year, and every time I begin to regain my strength and get back up I seem to refuse my lesson and again try to manipulate God in an attempt to gain my way and every time the rug is pulled out and I catch a haymaker to the face. My pride has been damaged and my emotional tank is running on empty. Today I came to the realization that I just don’t have any more fight in me. I don’t have the ability to stand anymore and I don’t have the strength to continue in this futile endeavor of wrestling with God. Jacob came away with a new name, yes, and yes, he may have been giving a blessing but he was also given a physical aliment that would plague him for the rest of his life. Had he just submitted would God have been gracious and granted the blessing anyway without the toil of physical altercation? I honestly don’t know the answer to that but I do know that here in this place, in this time of submission and defeat I sense God moving in ways I haven’t felt since I was in Rwanda. I get the feeling that He is beginning to work out things in me, hurts from my past, things people have said that I have held on to, even my dreams of the future, and is beginning to reshape me in His image. Does it hurt? You bet it does. You can’t have old scars opened up without going through pain. I can’t help but think of the analogy of when a bone has been broken but has healed incorrectly the doctors don’t just let it stay that way. They have to rebreak it so it can heal properly and in my life it seems that is what God is doing. I don’t know where you are at in your walk with Christ. You could be like me and be at the beginning stages of the healing process; maybe you have walked this road I am going down and can relate because you have been there or maybe you are still wrestling with God about whose will and dreams you want to shape your life: His or yours. If you are in the wrestling process I can’t tell you it’s all going to work out because honestly I don’t know how this next season is going to go. All I know is that I don’t have the strength to fight anymore and I am finally going to trust The Word and trust that His ways are better than mine and His will and dreams for my life are greater than anything I could ever dream for myself. I hope that you have found at least some encouragement in this or maybe even a challenge…. Or this could just be the ramblings of an aging man (26 seems to be older every day). Thank you for taking the time to read and God bless.