We occasionally - or at least I hope for your sake it is only occasionally - come into situations in our lives where we feel desperate.
Have you ever known these times?
You may have known that you were desperate in your need for God to help you, or you may have just felt desperate. Where do you go and what do you do when you feel like this?
These words, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me" were spoken by a man, Jacob, who was desperate for God to help him.
Jacob was on a journey back to his parental homeland from which he had fled many years earlier. He had upset his twin brother, Esau, so badly at that time that Esau had planned to murder him.
Jacob had settled down many miles away in safety, living with his Uncle, got married, had children and been blessed by God in business (pastoral farming). God had told him it was time for him to return home and so now here he was at a tributary of the River Jordan, Jabbok, in the ancient land of Canaan with his two wives, children, servants and flocks and herds of animals.
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But Jacob was 'greatly afraid and distressed' (Genesis 32:7).
He had sent messengers to let his brother, Esau, know he was coming home - maybe to work out what sort of a welcome he was likely to get, to see whether his brother was still furious with him - and the messengers had returned to say Esau was coming to meet him with 400 men.
Esau, skilled in hunting, was coming with a small army to meet his brother who had been the mild, home loving, favourite of his mother. Jacob was no warrior, and here he was, vulnerable, with all his dependant family and possessions, conscious that Esau had every right to be angry with him - Jacob having twice connivingly obtained Esau's inheritance and blessing.
Jacob tries to placate Esau's anger by sending on ahead of him 'presents' of animals, hoping they would 'appease him' and that Esau would be more welcoming, but the situation was extremely serious.
Perhaps this has been your experience - maybe you are even there today, with an urgent need because of the seriousness or difficulty of your situation and because time is running out. As with Jacob very soon it will be too late - you will be face to face with this desperate problem, and then what?
These are times when being with other people doesn't help. We know they cannot help us. We may appreciate the loving support of prayer from those we confide in, but as with Jacob, who sent his family and possessions over the brook Jabok, we need to be 'left alone' so that we we can give free expression to our agony. We need to be able to cry, to literally groan and kneel or lie before God in our need of Him.
In this experience of Jacob we then read of him literally wrestling with a man - an angel - believed to be Jesus in pre-incarnate form. When we 'wrestle with God' it is not generally a literal, physical wrestling. It is like a heart wrestling, or spiritual wrestling. We wrestle in our feelings, which can be expressed verbally in prayer to God, coherently or less so.
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As Jacob wrestled and struggled and 'prevailed' we read that the angel put Jacob at a greater disadvantage and increased his pain by touching or striking 'the hollow of his thigh' putting it 'out of joint'. In my days as a nurse I have seen the pain of patients with a hip replacement out of joint, and yet here was Jacob still wrestling and struggling and prevailing with the angel despite his pain.
Why? Because the pain in his heart, the pain of the situation, was greater than the pain of his hip. His need was so great, that when the angel told him to let him go because daylight was coming, Jacob says, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me".
Have you known this dear reader? Despite the pain of your situation, your need for God's blessing becomes greater.
You wrestle and struggle.
You are in effect saying you cannot let God go - you cannot stop your prayers, your cries, your groans - until you hear that He loves you, until you have His comfort, His help, His assurance that He is with you. If you know that then you know that whatever the terribleness of your situation, all will be well, because God loves you - whether that means He will take you to glory to Him or whether He will miraculously save and help you in your situation.
So wrestling with God is persisting in prayer and crying to Him. It is a refusal to give up because of your need. It is an expression of the deepest feelings of your heart recognising your own inability to resolve a situation but going to God as the only One who can help.
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To be completed next week God Willing when we consider what we individually learn and what encouragements and comfort we can take from Jacob's experience of wrestling with God.
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