Wrestling Isn't For Cowards

Every teacher knows that one kid who sits in the back of the classroom and stares into space, a catatonic reminder that no matter the teacher's best efforts, there are no brain synapses firing in response to instruction.

As a teacher-in-training, I love questions, even ones that are difficult to answer. When a student truly wants to know, it lights up my world in fireworks. The river is moving; the stagnancy has dissipated! 

I always look for the lightbulbs. It's that decisive moment when the student goes from the blank confused stare to... "Aha!" Or, "Oh!" Or, "Mrs. Shoemaker, I get it!" 

Or sometimes, the understanding isn't complete, but the engagement is there. "But what about...?"

It's all about the transition from still waters... to rapids.

Genesis 32 is where Jacob makes such a transition. The man fascinates me, possibly because I identify with his stubborn struggle to cling to his own way until the futility of his devices drives him on his knees before God. And God's faithfulness to walk with Jacob through the years and years of defiance and deception until he finally makes that transition speaks to me.

Jacob is preparing to meet his brother Esau. The entire chapter is dedicated to the ramping up of suspense. Will the lapse of twenty years have cooled Esau's wrath? Jacob's offense was enormous! The thief of the inheritance returns, in essence, to make good on his claim to that inheritance. It seems quite likely that twenty years might have served to fester that wound instead of heal it. 

The chapter begins with God allowing Jacob to see His angels, a sort of bookend on Jacob's journeys. When he left his inheritance behind and made camp, God showed him a vision of angels ascending and descending a stairway to heaven. Jacob named that campsite Bethel, which means: "House of God." Now, when Jacob returns to his inheritance, God shows him another vision of angels where he makes camp, and Jacob names the place Mahanaim, which means: "Two camps." Jacob's camp/God's encampment of angels.

And then... on the heels of this amazing experience where Jacob sees angels and God reminds him that He is with him... Jacob falls back into plotting. Device-planning. Meeting his own ends.

Ay. Jacob.

Jacob, to put it starkly, is scared spitless of his brother Esau. He's sent messengers to his brother, who lives waaay south of where Jacob is actually intending to go, just so he can "watch his six," so to speak. He doesn't want an angry brother racing up from the south like a mother bear stripped of her cubs. So he diplomatically lets Esau know that he's moving back home.

The messengers return with the news that Esau is coming to meet Jacob with four hundred men in tow. 

And Jacob panics. He's just had this awesome angelic experience... and he panics. He goes from naming the place "Two camps" after his camp and the angelic camp... to dividing his own camp into two camps for the purpose of safety. Instead of relying on God's protection, he tries to sort out his own protection.

How easy it is to forget! Moment by moment, sometimes. God speaks, we listen in holy amazement to the voice of our Creator, and then... fear attacks, and we duck behind our shields.

Jacob sends a massive amount of his flocks and herds to Esau with the idea of pacifying him, buttering him up, softening his heart in case it happens to still be hard. The plotter plots what could be a decent pacifying strategy. He sends the enormous herds in waves with his servants, so that as each wave reaches the approaching Esau, Esau is told: "This is a gift for you. And Jacob is coming behind."

I have no idea what Esau is thinking as he initially leaves his home and goes to meet his brother. Maybe Jacob's fears have some substance; maybe they don't. Either way, Jacob is terrified of Esau's wrath. So during the night, he sends his entire family over the Jabbok River to the other side, and he stays by himself on the shore.

I've talked before about the big picture of Jacob's life. Here is the title sequence that overlays the entire panorama. It's the red letter point of his whole existence.

Genesis 32:24-28: "So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 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. 

"Then the man said, 'Let me go, for it is daybreak.' 

"But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me.' 

"The man asked him, 'What is your name?' 

"'Jacob,' he answered. 

"Then the man said, 'Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.'"

In case it's not clear, the "man" who wrestles with Jacob is God Himself. Could He have won that wrestling match without a struggle? Sure. Of course. But He wrestles with Jacob for a purpose. 

He is interested in that transition. He is interested in that engagement, in that gripping of each other, and in that struggle to find an outcome. And there is an outcome.

When the dust clears and the battle is over, Jacob, the One Who Deceives, no longer carries the same name. Now, Jacob, the One Who Deceives -- has a new name: 

Israel: He Struggles with God.

Don't be intimidated by struggle. Struggle means growth. 

In the far distant past, I used to run for my school's track team. Don't laugh. I wasn't very good; speed has never been my thing. But I did learn a few things, mainly that if my body stopped struggling against the resistance, if I no longer resisted the effort I put into the run, it meant that I'd found a leveled-out condition. If I wanted to increase my fitness level, I always had to push against the resistance. That's how muscles are built, that's how lungs grow, that's how calories die horrific, agonized deaths. 

The struggle is where the growth happens.

In 2 Corinthians 12:7, Paul talks about this same type of struggle, the struggle that brings fitness, growth, endurance. He says: "To keep me from becoming conceited (leveled out) because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh (resistance), a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times, I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me (the struggle). But He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness."

God wins the wrestling match, in Jacob's case, in Paul's case, in our cases. When we are weak, He is strong. When we ask questions, He answers. We engage, and He meets us in that space and wrestles it out, works out the rough spots, pushes through the struggle with us. 

Wrestling is a contact-sport. In the struggle, we're fully engaged, intertwined, locking our holds. There's no sitting back and tunneling through the mud separately. God gets right down there in the trenches next to us and pulls us through.

My power is made perfect in weakness. 

When we slog out of the mud at the end of the wrestling match, He gives us a new name. Israel: "He Struggles with God."

"Him who overcomes (after the struggle)... I will write on him the Name of my God and the Name of the city of my God" (Revelation 3:12). 

Do we have courage to wear our new name? It's hard, you know. We could run away, settle in complacency, duck behind our fortresses, refuse to engage. We could sit in our catatonic state and stare into space as God gives us instruction.

Or we could have the courage to engage, step out, wrestle, and overcome. Oh Lord, give us courage, give us endurance, give us victory!