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Written by Therese Martin, volunteer with Iron Rose Sister Ministries in Washington
We use lots of different imagery to describe our relationship with God. Parent/ child, groom/bride, shepherd/sheep, potter/clay; these are all useful and true, but how often do we think about the one Jacob encountered one night…grappling partners?
In Genesis, chapter 32, we read about Jacob wrestling with “a man” who is usually assumed to be the Lord in some form. The passage certainly implies it. “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God, and with men, and have prevailed” (Gen. 32:28). The grappling match went on all night, leaving Jacob with a painful hip where his opponent touched him. It’s significant enough that, in the Jewish dietary laws, the sciatic nerve of meat animals and its surrounding tissues are not eaten, in remembrance of this famous grappling event. Aside from the prohibition against consuming blood, it’s the only dietary rule that predates the laws given to Moses.
I can relate to this in so many ways. First, I have chronic hip pain, from sciatica and femoral acetabular impingement. It gets bad enough that I sometimes can’t walk, and I often use a cane. Pain is a daily reminder of so many things! Time is passing, and I’m older every day. Bodies are frail, no matter how much we try to strengthen them. And I sometimes need a reminder that life isn’t easy, that for most of the world it’s a daily struggle against many kinds of adversity, from health problems and economic concerns to natural disasters, wars, and injustice.
I haven’t given up. I still practice karate, which brings me to the second point; the match itself. It’s late at night, and Jacob is camping in the wilderness. A man shows up, and what do they do? Do they sit by the fire and chat? No, they wrestle. There’s no mention of why. Did this stranger just walk up and say, “Hey there, let’s wrestle”? Apparently so, because they keep it up all night.
I can see that happening, at least with my family. All four of my sons have trained in martial arts; three black belts, one brown. My oldest has a second-degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He teaches law enforcement officers and military personnel how to subdue without damaging the subject. His teaching style is extremely gentle and encouraging, but relentless. They learn. And sometimes it’s painful.
This led me to the third point. Are we accepting our Lord’s invitation to grapple with Him? Sounds crazy, but sometimes that’s how He rolls. Literally. In Jiu Jitsu, they use the term “rolling” to describe the training they do on the mat. “I rolled for a couple of hours on Saturday” means the person grappled on the mat for two hours with instructors or fellow students. It’s challenging, to say the least. And I wonder if some of the challenges we face in life are God’s invitations to step on the mat and spar with Him. He teaches us through these challenges, and we learn things we could never learn otherwise.
And what about the times we challenge Him to a match? When we say, like Jacob, “I will not let you go until you bless me!” (Gen. 32:26) We know that we ought to do something, but we don’t want to. We struggle with it, even though it may be clear that it’s what God wants. We sail away from Nineveh, or put out a fleece to see if anything unusual happens to it. We wrestle with God, and it’s always a learning experience.
Maybe pain is a reminder that we learn from the process of grappling with the challenges of life, not from avoiding them. When I take that first step in the morning and pain shoots up my leg, should I just get back in bed? Or should I take it as an invitation to step on the mat, and to accept my sparring partner’s offer? “Let’s roll!”
Yes, Lord. May I always be willing to grapple with the gift of Your sparring lessons!
#IronRoseSister #HIStories #pain #grapplingwiththeLord #wrestlingwithGod #guestwriter #blog
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Written by Michelle J. Goff, founder and director of Iron Rose Sister Ministries
Every time I write a book, I wrestle. I wrestle over what to include and exclude. I wrestle with my thoughts, with finding enough time, with how to best express something, and so many other things. During at least one stage of the writing process, I also wrestle with God.
The writing of Bible study books are not the only times I have wrestled with God. We have wrestled over my health and the health of loved ones, especially spiritual health. We have wrestled over my longing for understanding of a certain passage of Scripture, over a prayer that His will be done coupled with an expression of the deepest desires of my heart.
Awake all night, conflicting thoughts and wordless prayers have robbed me of peaceful slumber. Grappling with uncertainty and a lack of clarity, I have wrestled day and night to understand where God was leading. Impatient with confusion, the tension of the wrestling squeezes and bends to the point of breaking. I am forced to keep fighting or to give up.
Yet imagine if I had never engaged in the wrestling to begin with… Would I have exercised my spiritual muscles, fortified my trust in God, or come to know and be known through the depth of relationship?
Wrestling is a form of conflict. I would venture to say that Genesis reveals that Jacob lived a life of conflict. He started in conflict with his twin brother, Esau, from the womb. When he stole the birthright from his older brother, the conflict it created forced him to leave the region, fearing retaliation.
His mother, Rebekah, sent him to her people, where he fell into immediate conflict again. Having experienced “love at first sight,” he worked for Laban for seven years, never losing sight of the goal of coming to know his bride, Rachel. Yet Leah was the older sister who greeted him the morning after the wedding. He worked another seven years, becoming one of the first men to have “sister wives.” Talk about conflict!
Conflict with his father-in-law. Conflict between his wives. Conflict amongst his children, especially after his favorite son Joseph received a colorful coat from him. Conflict regarding the decision to travel back to the region of his childhood home, fearful of stirring up more conflict with Esau who may or may not have forgiven him…
Through all of this conflict, he had seen the faithfulness of the God of his father and grandfather, the God of Abraham and Isaac. The majority of the time, the Almighty’s blessing was born out of conflict and wrestling.
To wrestle… to take part in a fight, or to struggle with a difficulty or problem.
Jacob knew both physical and metaphorical wrestling. Figuratively and literally, he had been wrestling through more than his share of struggles and victories his entire life. And by this point in the story, he was an old man.
22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” (Gen. 32:22-28)
Jacob was a well-practiced wrestler. He “had struggled with God and with humans and had overcome.” Instead of avoiding those conflicts, Jacob had learned how to persevere through them and come out on the other side a blessed child of God.
During my times of wrestling, a tension is created from which I sometimes think it would be easier to flee than to embrace. This tension is uncomfortable, exhausting, mentally draining, and most definitely frustrating. But it is also healthy. The more times God and I wrestle, the more growth comes on the other side of that tension.
Like Jacob, I have learned to embrace the tension, to lean into the fight, in order that God might bless me—personally or as a ministry. I don’t do this perfectly and please don’t hear me minimizing the struggle. It is a battle… but one that promises a blessing!
I will close with one very recent example. My current health hinders me from traveling internationally—a truth I am still struggling to accept. Yet, I still did not feel at peace releasing the plans for us to provide resources for Brazilian women and women’s ministries. I couldn’t go to Brazil, yet neither could I the let go the plans for our launch of these resources. Leaning into that tension, as Board President Katie Forbess and I served as iron sharpening iron in conversation and prayer, God revealed am amazing plan—a blessing that could’ve only come from Him.
To make a long story very short: At the beginning of September, we launched our Portuguese resources in partnership with a Brazilian church plant in South Florida. To God be the glory!
For more God stories that affirm the truth of the blessings of wrestling, turn to the story of Jacob in your Bibles or ask me for a few more stories of my own… Lean into the fight ladies, the blessing is worth it! And you are not in the struggle alone.
#IronRoseSister #HIStories #wrestlewithGod #Godsblessings #leanintothetension #MichelleJGoff #blog