Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
The man asked him, “What is your name?” “Jacob,” he answered.
Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.”
Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.
So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.” Genesis 32:24-30
It took Jacob a long time to get his act together. From his youth he was a sleazy trickster. He tricked his brother out of his inheritance for a bowl of soup, and completed the deed by lying to his dying father. Rather than sticking around and facing up to his actions he fled the country. He managed to get himself two wives and only loved one of them. Even after his wrestling match with God he still placed his children and his wives between him and Esau, who jacob expected to be in a murderous mood still, effectively using them as a barrier to allow his escape.
Despite his less than noble life, Jacob frequently pursued and was pursued by God. Frequently Jacob’s reaction to God is as a deal-broker, when God appears to him at Bethel, “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s house, then the LORD will be my God and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth” Gen 28:20-22. If God gives me the hookup, i’ll give him back a tenth of my stuff. Even if it was a less than perfect response it was still a response. As time went on Jacob became Israel because of an increasing openness to the will of God.
Following God has a price, and for Jacob the price was a very tangible hip injury. The ‘man’ that Jacob was wrestling was unable to overcome Jacob without injuring him, Jacob was too stubborn to realize that he ought to submit, and so his submission was forced. For some, it’s not until ‘rock bottom’ is reached before they can see Truth, whether because it’s too hard to give up pride, or idleness, or intellectualism or any of the other myriad barriers between us and God. Jacob was able to begin to overcome his barriers because he was at least participating in the wrestling match. Jacob wanted to be the master of God, but at least he wanted God.
God has a way of finally bringing people around who deny him, people who are serious about their beliefs occassionally bump into realities that are simply incompatible with non-Christian beliefs. I can picture God chuckling in heaven at a serious atheist setting out to disprove the existance of God, knowing that CS Lewis started on that path. But for many religion has been rendered “irrelevant” by modern life, and i think that’s a great tragedy that is harder to overcome than any of the major world religions, atheism or new age pseudo-spirituality. Just as bad as passive agnosticism “i don’t care or not if there is a God” is passive theism “i don’t care that there is a God”. And for much the same reason, there can’t be any growth where there isn’t any time spent. For Jacob, God was a reality because he wrestled with him and demanded a blessing, for us God is irrelevant because we’d rather wrestle with science or a career or the lottery before wrestling with God.
Brad Cauley preached about a courageous faith, where we’re not afraid to sacrifice for our faith. And he talks about how the two ways to be encouraged in authentic faith is pursuit of God until you get it and being encouraged be fellow believers. We spend so much time insulated from anything that might cause us to re-evaluate what we think that we’re never getting the first. Movies, sit-coms, radio, the internet, all are perfectly tailored to us so that we can spend a maximum amount of time in a comforting coccoon where we’re never exposed to anything that might make us think. As a side effect we spend less and less time together, i’m tired of needing an excuse to hang out. Some of the best nights i’ve had are the ones where a group of friends got together with some semblance of a plan and it completely fell through and so we ended up just spending time together. And of the best nights, the best of the best were the ones where we actually talked about God. In a polite conversation the two subjects you’re canonically not supposed to talk about are politics and religion. That’s a load of crap, they ought to be at the top of the list because they’re the ones where conversation is the most likely to result in productive conclusions or at least interesting thought.
And that’s all i have to say about that