I’m a Jacob.

I’d love to be an Esther, or a Joshua, or a Hannah, or a David. I want to see a stronger reflection of Paul or Timothy or Mary or Zipporah or Deborah in my life.

But, in truth, more often than not, I’m a Jacob.

Why Jacob?

Because I’m not very good at waiting for what God has said He will do.
Because I’m prone to reach for what God has not given to me. Because I want God to bless my plan more often than I want His plan.

Because I wrestle with the Lord. A lot.

Jacob is not my favorite person in history. It’s fair, I think, to say that for a big part of his life, he was a scoundrel, a schemer, a liar, and a cheat.

But God…

Oh how I love those words, friend!

God permitted Jacob to wrestle with Him at the ford of Jabbok (Genesis 32:22-32). And in God’s goodness and grace and unfathomable mercy, He spared Jacob’s life. Then, He gave Jacob a new name: Israel.

I heard it said once that if we truly understood who God is, we would not wrestle Him at all, and at the time I heard it, I felt guilty and ashamed because I do so often wrestle with God.

For example, when God told me it was time to stop climbing the career ladder I was on, I did exactly what Jacob would have done. I tried moving the ladder to another wall in the same building. I tried to set the same ladder against a wall in a different building. I tried one way after another to get God to move His hand of blessing from His way to my way. Doors I wanted opened, closed. Again, and again, and again.

Even when it looked like I had submitted to His way, resigned my position, left my career, I still spent a year or so trying to get God to go with my plan of what I thought should happen next rather than listening and waiting for His direction.

And then, somewhere in the dead of this past winter, I stopped reaching for what I wanted or how I wanted it. I’d wrestled with God for three or four years before I submitted in full, and friend, much like Jacob, God used those closed doors to give me a limp, to hamper my confidence in my way just enough to get me to focus on the possibility that His way is better.

Today, I accept the statement I’d heard about wrestling with God as true – if I truly understood the fullness of our Almighty God, I would submit, immediately to His word, His will, and His way. But I also recognize, that, in the wonderful way that God’s ways are higher than our ways, it is in the wrestling that I come to understand more and more who God is, how infinite His power is, how perfect His will is, how loving His nature is…and so much more.

The fact is, when we wrestle God, He always wins. Some matches take longer than others; God and I have been wrestling one topic for over 20 years, but God never gets tired, and He never taps out. He lets us wrestle, revealing more of who He is through every move. You see, when we wrestle God, He has us right where He wants us the whole time – close to Him, holding onto Him, and when the time is right, with just one touch, He changes our lives, our very name becomes different.

Lost becomes Found.

Guilty becomes Righteous.

Shameful becomes Redeemed.

Captive becomes Free.

Arrogant becomes Humble.

And on and on and on…

Friend, we should submit instantly to the will of the Lord our God. We should not wrestle, not for a second, not once, and yet our good and gracious God uses our stubbornness and our willfulness to draw us closer to Him, to reveal to us who He is and what He’s about.

And over time, we find that the more often we wrestle with God, the more we come to trust Him, the more we come to understand that He is mighty to save, that His power is undeniable, that His way far superior to our way.

The more we have wrestled with God in our lives, the less we feel the need to do so.

Maybe Jacob isn’t my favorite person in history, but maybe it’s not so bad to be a Jacob after all. God certainly changed Jacob from who he was, a liar, a cheat, a schemer and a scoundrel, to the namesake of God’s most beloved nation: Israel.

And friend, God will do the same for us. In the wrestling, He will scrub away all that we should not be and replace it with all that He wills for us.

And His will is always for our good and ultimately, for His glory.

So, until the day comes when you and I are mature enough to submit to God’s word, will, and way instantly, every time, let’s keep wrestling, let’s keep holding on to God as tightly we can, and let’s keep praising His name for He never, ever lets us out of the security of His loving grip.

Thank You, Lord!