Wrestling With God
When Wrestling Was Fun
What do you do when you wrestle with faith?
When you find it hard to believe?
When I was a kid, Hulk Hogan was on TV and, I’ve never really been that into watching wrestling, but for whatever reason… I’ll confess… I liked watching Hulk Hogan, Rick Flair, and Andre the Giant.
Hulk Hogan had these huge muscles, and you know how this works, I wanted muscles like that, too. I had a set of Hulk Hogan weights, and according to the pictures on the box, if I used these Hulk Hogan weights, I would look just like him. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work.
But I tried.
I did the workouts to the best of my ability. And at night, me and my dad would wrestle. I always loved to wrestle with my dad and I think he liked it, too, until the day I jumped off the couch on top of him and nearly cracked his ribs. We didn’t wrestle much after that. 🙂
When we’re kids, it’s fun to wrestle. It’s fun to wrestle with each other, with your siblings, with your parents, and with your friends.
When Wrestling is Not So Fun
But the older we get the less we enjoy wrestling.
Maybe that’s because we’ve gotten older, or maybe it’s because what we’re wrestling with has changed.
Now the people we’re wrestling with aren’t laughing and rolling in the floor with us like what we did when we wrestled as kids. Now the people we’re wrestling with are unhappy, dissatisfied, upset, and have an axe to grind.
Now we find ourselves wrestling with issues we never had to wrestle with before. We’re wrestling with financial issues, work problems, and finding enough time to get it all done.
Not to mention, and we don’t like to talk about this, especially in church, but if we’re being honest sometimes we wrestle with faith. We struggle with fear and doubt and sometimes it’s hard to have faith.
What do we do when we wrestle with faith? When we find ourselves wrestling with God?
Jacob the Wrestler
If you’ve ever found yourself wrestling with God, here’s the Good News, you are not alone.
People of faith have often wrestled with God. And we see that over and over again in every story of every person of faith we read about in Scripture, but maybe one of the most famous, well known, and strangest stories of wrestling with God is found in Genesis 32 in the life of a man named Jacob.
At this point in his life, Jacob is probably in his mid to late 90s. (Working backward from Genesis 47:9 and 41:46).
Wrestling at Birth
What you may or may not know about Jacob is that he is a twin. And from the time he was born, he was wrestling with his brother Esau. Scripture says that Esau was born first but when Jacob was born he was literally grasping the heel of his brother Esau. (Genesis 25:24–26) That’s why they named him Jacob. The name Jacob sounds like the word for “heel” in the Hebrew language.
This struggle that started between Jacob and Esau at birth would continue for a long time.
Esau was the outdoorsman in the family. He loved to hunt, fish, and go to Bass Pro shop on the weekend. He would have loved living in Texas. Jacob liked to stay inside. With his mom. Scripture says that, at least early on, he had a quiet temperament.
Wreslting for Dinner & the Birthright
One day, when Esau came home from a long hunt empty handed, he was starving. Jacob may have been a homebody but he was also a little conniving. Jacob saw this as an opportunity. Jacob was making some stew and boy did it smell good. Esau really wanted some. So Jacob made him a deal. I’ll give you some stew if you give me your birthright. This was no small thing.
The birthright meant that as the firstborn, you got a double portion of the inheritance when your father died. It meant that when that happened, you became the head of the family. And, it meant that you and your name were now linked to God’s covenant promise regarding land, nationhood, and blessing. That God’s redemptive story would be working in and through your name and you descendants.
Esau was so consumed by his hunger, by his appetite, he agreed! Big mistake! But Esau wasn’t the first to give into the temptation of food and forfeit his birthright in the process (Adam & Eve!).
Wrestling for the Blessing
On a different day, when their father was getting older and was just about blind, Jacob tricked his father into thinking he was Esau. He did this because he wanted his father’s blessing, the blessing that belonged to the first born. Jacob prepared a meal, put on some of Esau’s clothes, then covered his arms in goat hair so his nearly blind father would think he was Esau. He smelled like him because he was wearing his clothes. And his arms felt like his because they were covered in goat hair. And Jacob stole his brother’s blessing.
If you haven’t picked up on it yet, from the day they were born these two have been wrestling with each other. And it seems like Jacob is winning. But when it comes to wrestling, especially with God, wrestling isn’t so much about winning as it is about becoming.
Coming Home
Fast forward 20 years and now Jacob has moved away, he’s got a wife and eleven sons, he’s become fairly wealthy, and then God has appeared to him in a vision and calls him to return home (Gen 31.3), to return to his homeland. But Jacob knows that could be a problem. His father has died. His mother had also likely died. But Esau is still there. And things have not been good between the two of them since he left. And now, God is calling him to go home.
So Jacob comes up with a plan. He sends wave after wave of gifts ahead of him of cows, goats, donkeys, camels, rams, and more. Each wave of gifts a display of his wealth and riches, but also a display of his desire to de-escalate any ill will Esau may have for him. Jacob thought to himself…
Jacob thought, “I will try to appease him by sending gifts ahead of me. When I see him in person, perhaps he will be friendly to me.” – Genesis 32.20
And that night, as the gifts were making their way ahead of him to his brother Esau, Jacob stayed behind and spent the night alone. Then, this happens in Genesis 32.22-32:
Wrestling Again
22 During the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two servant wives, and his eleven sons and crossed the Jabbok River with them. 23 After taking them to the other side, he sent over all his possessions.
24 This left Jacob all alone in the camp, and a man came and wrestled with him until the dawn began to break.
If you’re wondering, who is this man who is wrestling with Jacob, you are not alone. This unnamed man appears out of nowhere, wrestles with Jacob all through the night, until the sun begins to rise.
25 When the man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob’s hip and wrenched it out of its socket. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking!”
Whoever this man is, it appears that Jacob isn’t going to let him win the wrestling match, but with one touch he has the strength and the power to wrench Joseph’s hip out of socket, which could not have felt good. The man tells Jacob to let him go…
But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
So whoever this man is, Jacob believes he has the power and the ability to give him a blessing.
27 “What is your name?” the man asked.
He replied, “Jacob.”
28 “Your name will no longer be Jacob,” the man told him. “From now on you will be called Israel, because you have fought with God and with men and have won.”
So Jacob gets a new name. His name is no longer Jacob, which means “heel.” His name is now Israel, which means “you have fought with God and with men and have won.”
Wrestling with God
Could it be that Jacob has just spent the entire night wrestling with God? We know Jacob has wrestled with men all his life. That started at birth with his brother Esau and continued through his story with with his uncle Laban, his wives Leah and Rachel, and others. But his name has just been changed to Israel by a man he has wrestled with through the night, a name that means he has wrestled not just with men, but with God. And that he has won. What did Jacob win?
Jacob wants to know who he’s been wrestling with. And if it’s God, then what is His name?
So Jacob says…
29 “Please tell me your name,” Jacob said.
“Why do you want to know my name?” the man replied. Then he blessed Jacob there.
What did Jacob win? He won a new name, a new identity, a new story, a new testimony, and he won the blessing. The man didn’t reveal his name, but He did give him a blessing. And Jacob believed the one he wrestled with for an entire night was none other that God Himself. We will have to wait until we get to the story of Moses to learn His name, but Jacob was convinced he had wrestled with God and that God had given him a blessing.
30 Jacob named the place Peniel (which means “face of God”), for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.” 31 The sun was rising as Jacob left Peniel, and he was limping because of the injury to his hip. 32 (Even today the people of Israel don’t eat the tendon near the hip socket because of what happened that night when the man strained the tendon of Jacob’s hip.)
I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed that those who have wrestled with God tend to limp. Yet that limp is not a sign of weakness, its a sign of an experience with God that forever changed the person who wrestled with God.
The Struggle is Real
I don’t always do very well when it comes to keeping up on all the cool lingo our kids say these days. From time to time, my daughter will call me “bruh.” Not, “Bro.” “Bruh.”
I don’t know if this is still something they say, but at one time they would say, “The struggle is real.” They would say that anytime something got a little bit hard or difficult. And it could be something minor like being too tired to get up off the couch to get the remote or having to study for a huge test that was coming up.
No matter what it was, big or small, it was a reminder that truth be told, we don’t like to struggle.
We would rather not wrestle.
You can imagine my surprise as a kid, when I got just a little bit older, when I learned that everything I watched Hulk Hogan do on TV when he wrestled wasn’t real. It was all scripted. It was theater. They were professionally choreographed performances designed to entertain. It was make-believe. It wasn’t real.
But the stuff you’re going through today, whatever it is, big or small, it’s real. And the struggle is real.
I think about the friend who has lost a loved one and left to wrestle with all the grief and all the questions. Why God? Why did you let this happen? Where are you? Where were you when? Where are you now? Why them? Why me? Why now?
I think about the friend who’s relationship is broken with someone they care deeply about and is wrestling with what to do, how to fix it, change it, heal it, make it better.
I think about the friend who is suffering with sickness and wrestling with all the what ifs. Crying out to God for hope and healing and help. Wondering what will happen next and what the future holds.
I think about the one who is wrestling at work, trying to make ends meet, burning the candle at both ends, maybe the job isn’t going to well, but what’s next? There are more questions than answers and the wrestling is exhausting.
And I don’t know who in the room needs to hear this today, maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s the person sitting next to you. But I want to encourage you to do what Jacob did. To keep wrestling. To wrestle through the night. Refuse to give up. Refuse to give in. Keep wrestling.
The struggle is real. But so is God’s presence.
In the wrestling you are becoming who God wants you to be.
We Wrestle
Don’t forget, don’t ever forget, this is what the people of God do. We wrestle. Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, which literally means one who wrestles with God and with men, continued to wrestle even after this all-night wrestling match with God. And he wrestled with a limp.
And maybe you have a limp today, that’s ok. That limp is a part of your testimony. Don’t you think every time someone asked Jacob why he was limping, what happened, don’t you think Jacob said, “Sit down, boy do I have a story for you. I wrestled with God. And He blessed me.”
Every testimony has a story and everyone who wrestles with God walks away with a limp. That limp isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of someone who struggled with God and came away forever changed.
Israel wasn’t just Jacob’s new name, it became the name of a new nation born from his family. A nation known for their struggle with man and with God. For wrestling with men and with God.
Israel’s story is their testimony that you can keep wrestling with God and God will never walk away. You can turn away from God but He will never turn away from you. He will always be faithful to you, even when you are unfaithful to Him. Time and time again, Israel wrestled with God. And in their wrestling, they became the people of God. And through their wrestling, through Israel, the Son of God would come.
About 1900 years after Jacob wrestled with God, we see Jesus, face down on the ground in the Garden of Gethsemane, and what is He doing? He’s wrestling with God. He’s praying, “God, if there is any way possible, let this cup of suffering pass from me. Yet, not my will but Your’s be done.” (Matthew 26:36-46)
Jesus wrestled with God in Gethsemane, then He went to the cross for you and for me.
Why?
So that we, too, could wrestle with God and know that when we do, we never wrestle alone. And so we can know that…
On the other side of our wrestling with God is blessing from God.
If you want God to change you then God has to wrestle with you.
And you have to wrestle with God.
But here’s the promise: God will never leave you. He will wrestle with you all night long, and He will stay through the night. He won’t leave you. You may walk away with a limp, but you won’t walk away defeated.
Don’t you think that at any point, God could have defeated Jacob? God did not have to wrestle with Jacob all through the night. So why did He do it? Because Jacob needed to wrestle, he needed a blessing, and believe it or not, he needed a limp.
So today, if you’re wrestling with God, don’t give up. God isn’t giving up on you. He’s working in ways you can see and in ways you cannot see to change you and make you and transform you into who He wants you to be. You may end up with a limp, but that story will be your testimony of God’s blessing in and over your life.
Walking With God
Hulk Hogan may not be in the ring wrestling today, but there are people wrestling today. And if you’re someone who’s wrestling with God… remember, you are not alone.
We are here, your church family is here, and we want to pray with you, support you, and help you in any way we can. We want to encourage you.
There are a lot of people of faith who are walking with a limp as they walk with God. They’ve been there, they’ve wrestled with God, and they have a limp, a testimony, a story that will encourage you. You are not alone. Keep wrestling. God is faithful.
On the other side of our wrestling with God is blessing from God.
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