wrestling is exhausting - pt. 2 |a study on Jacob in Genesis
Don't quit the fight… don't let the days where life has been knocked out of your lungs and the worries have choked out your hope be the whole story. May your story be one of wrestling and restraining amidst the wonder and realness of meeting God in it.
Life may knock you down and the struggle may leave a limp but you'll get back up and breathe in hope once again.
Seeing God face to face is what I'm after, even if it takes the winds of life and the hands of my Savior to shift my eyes towards the Heavens over and over again.
Friction and irritation will come with people and with God. That's normal. Struggling will shift our hearts in ways we never suspected. That's inevitable. Let it be the very shift that causes you to fall on your knees once again to experience perfect love. Let His love fall upon the whims of your worries and wash away the notion that you're alone in your pain.
Know you're created to win in the hands of Almighty God. He'll let you win because he wants you to see Him. Afterwards, you won't be who you used to be as a result. You'll be given a fresh sense of your identity, just as Jacob was.
His name, Jacob, means "deceiver" and God changed it to "Israel" which means God's chosen people.
Went from being named by his flaws to being identified as God's chosen one.
Went from being called a deceiver to being embraced by a love that knows no bounds.
Look at how God sees him, versus how the world sees him.
His own parents named him by his actions and what he did, yet God saw more, and named him by the truth of what He saw in Jacob.
Rest assured, Jesus always sees us so much better than we see ourselves. If we saw how bad we kicked ourselves down and how bad Jesus just wants to lift us up, we'd probably stop the kicking and start the kneeling that leaves us undone by a love that wants to heal the bruises we so often run from.
You'll know who you really are after the words of God meet your heart. You'll walk away humbly and confidently as the God who gave it all for you, mighty and huge, with the winds in His hands and fire in his eyes, shows you a love that burns for you.
The narrative of Jacob's transformation invites reflection on our own wrestling matches with life, identity, and who God is to us.
Just as Jacob wanted to know God, maybe you find yourself yearning for a deeper understanding of what that means to you.
Whether we are familiar with God's name or we struggle with the idea of a God who became flesh and blood to change our names, the invitation remains—to wrestle, to prevail, and to be blessed by a love that sees us beyond our flaws.
In the echoes of Jacob's journey, may we hold fast to the confidence that in the hands of Almighty God, our identities are reshaped, our struggles are redeemed, and our stories are transformed into a testament where the prevailing, not the pain, defines our story.