A friend asked me to write on the Peniel blog. I said, "It won't be about fluffy-just-love-God stuff. Following God isn't always going to be Peniel. You won't always see His face, sometimes He hides, sometimes He's distant, sometimes He breaks your heart. What then? "
But Going back to the Genesis 32 story, I realize that following God will always in fact be Peniel. It is when God ruins all our plans, when everything is taken away from us, when relationships are torn, when life sucks, that God is most present. My favorite quote says "God is with us most when things just can't get worse." You see, Peniel happens right in the middle of our mess.
But we don't like messes. We like to clean everything up, put on our Sunday best & act like everything is ok. When we do that, we miss God. We miss his greatness because we are so focused on putting on a show for everyone, we miss His comfort because we pretend like we don't need it. It is when we are the weakest & admit to it & confess it that God comes to our rescue.
Jac did not go to camp for a weekend to get away from it all. He did not have some grand epiphany moment & walk on roses after his meeting with God. No, he was actually going to meet his dome, his brother who wanted to kill him. This was messy. The moment of Jac's greatest fear is the moment that God shows up & meets him face-to-face. So many times we come from high places at camp or missions, experiencing something truly amazing & we think that is the face of God, but the more I walk with God the more I am convinced that it is in the dryness, the low times, the times when we are desperate that God meets us. He is wrestling with us.
Of all the things God could of chose to do, He wrestles? Hmm..weird. What is God's purpose in having us wrestle Him? Maybe God wants to show us who He is. We see His strength & His power. If Jac never wrestled with God, he wouldn't have experienced His grip, his tight hold. Losing with God makes us strong, Jac left broken, limping, he left humbled yet joyful, God could of crushed him. Although it was never God's intent to destroy him, maybe God was showing Jac who He was & who Jac was.
It's been said that men bond by wrestling, maybe in some weird way God & Jac were getting closer by working it out. That God would want to struggle with us, what grace!
Philip Yancey writes:
"God does not give in easily. He seems to welcome the persistence that keeps on fighting long after the match has been decided. We are all children of God, all of us God-wrestlers who cling to God in the dark, who declare "I will not let you go." To us belong the blessing, the birthright, the Kingdom. As the touch on Jacob's socket proved, God could have ended the match any point during that long night in the desert. Instead the elusive figure lingered, as eager to be held as Jacob was to hold."
Now that is intimacy. After Jac's rendezvous, his fear vanishes & he's left with a sense of gratitude for God's mercy & goodness because He has a deeper sense of who God is. The God who meets us when it all goes wrong, when we have nothing left. The God that is so strong to destroy us in one instant, is the gracious God who instead has us experience Him & walk away limping.
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