Keep wrestling

We drove six hours on Friday to see Bob’s mom, and six hours yesterday to get back home. All that driving made me stiff and sore (besides the fact of too many birthdays). After this trip I notice a certain distraction, a difficulty in praying. So when I sat down this morning before reading my devotional verses, I asked the Lord to speak to me very directly and get me back on track.

The devotional is from Genesis 32:26-28. Jacob is wrestling with God and God with Jacob. Finally God says to this man, “Let Me go, for the day breaks.”

Jacob replies, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!”

It does not say what Jacob wanted, but a verse or two prior says that God could not prevail against him so He touched Jacob’s hip and gave him a permanent limp. Perhaps that limp was to break this man’s stubborn will (for he was a stubborn and self-willed man). Yet stubbornness can become perseverance under God’s mighty hand. Every time I read this, I think that in this struggle, God changed Jacob from being ornery to being persistent, and that this wrestling match was an example of persistence in prayer.

Then God said to the man, “What is your name?”

He said, “Jacob.”

And He said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

Again I’m reminded to stay at my job. God has told me to pray, and pray persistently. I’ve three children who need to walk more closely with Him. I’ve grandchildren and others on my prayer list that need to know Jesus and identify themselves as His children.

The reading that accompanies this verse says, “It is encouraging to the Lord’s people as they are from time to time placed in similar circumstances of trial, exercise, perplexity, sorrow or distress with Jacob, to see the blessed results of his wrestling with the angel of the Lord. He crosses the ford of Jabbok all weakness; he re-crosses it all strength. He leaves his family, and wrestles alone, a fainting Jacob; he returns to them a prevailing Israel. He goes to the Lord in an agony of doubt and alarm, fearing every moment lest he and all that was dear to him should be swept off from the face of the earth; he returns with the Lord’s blessing in his soul, with the light of the Lord’s countenance lifted up upon him.”

He goes on to say that this instance is recorded for “the instruction and consolation of the Lord’s living family.” Certainly it is for me. I feel so weak and unable, sometimes spiritually, sometimes physically. I don’t feel any power to even pray, but God continually invites me to wrestle, not to persuade Him for He knows the good He is going to do, but to teach me that I am in partnership with Him in the answers to my prayers, and that He wants to bless me too.

The blessing this morning came as a promise in the cross reference at the bottom of the page, a verse not quoted or referred to in the reading, but a verse that God has often used to surprise me. Many times I have been praying for my three children, sometimes agonizing (wrestling), and God plops this verse into my hands. I have seldom looked for it; it just is in front of me, as it is this morning.

This verse from Isaiah 44:5 is out of context and really not about my three children, but can it be coincidence the many times that God juxtaposes it with my prayers for them? I don’t think so. The verse says, “One will say, ‘I am the Lord’s’; another will call himself by the name of Jacob; another will write with his hand, ‘The Lord’s,’ and name himself by the name of Israel.”

One, two, three. God can do it. This verse is His reassurance and His reminder. No matter how weak and tired I feel and how little I want to be involved in the hard work of intercessory prayer, He urges me to keep on. I might walk with a limp, but by persistence and hanging on to Him, He promises great rewards.