The Blessings Received from Struggling with God

There is a very strange story in Genesis (32:22-32) which tells of Jacob spending the whole night alone physically wrestling with a man who turns out to be God. However, this night-long struggle leads to God mysteriously admitting that Jacob has overcome God, but then also to God incapacitating Jacob by dislocating his hip by touching him. Jacob’s incapacitation results in his blessing at daybreak and Jacob being re-named ‘Israel’ (meaning: ‘he struggles with God’).

My main starting point in my faith (and as I have often explored on this blog) is that, like Jacob, we too should participate in struggling with the Creator in all areas of our lives. Too often, wrestling with God is seen, in Christian circles at least, as indicating spiritual weakness and a lack of faith, when more often than not, the opposite is true. This struggle, I believe, can show the committed engagement of us critically reflecting and self-consciously questioning our relationship with God, albeit leading to a temporary disconnection from God. When participating in this struggle we show ourselves as not being prepared to submit to quick ‘solutions’ to faith based conflict which merely imitate submission to God. Rather, by struggling and wrestling with our Creator through our questioning and sense of disconnection from God, we, because of God’s love, can encounter the Creator in new and liberating ways. Therefore, as our questioning journey with God continues, we discover, against what we would expect, that this struggle and disconnection ultimately brings us into closer contact with God and how God wants us to rest more deeply in an everlasting love, peace, joy, and stillness.

If you like this post then go to Steve Smith's blog site disconnectedchristians.blogpost.co.uk for more blog posts and details of his book Nine Steps to Well-Being: A Spiritual Guide for Disconnected Christians and Other Questionining Journeyers