Focus: Divine Struggle

Text: Isa.30:18

"He will conquer you to bless you, just as he said."

We are used to struggling for virtually everything in life that even God sees Himself struggling to get to us with His blessings. We keep standing in God's way, making it difficult for Him to have His way with us. The psalmist says, "Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth" (Ps.46:10). We need to form the habit of learning to be still before God. We need to stop fussing about, fuming over, or forcing things. 

Moses says, "Fear ye not, STAND STILL, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever" (Ex.14:13). Fear is the reason we find it extremely hard to stand still in order to see the salvation of God. 

Faith in God enables us to stand still in order to experience the reality of God's salvation. We never get saved by struggling for it out of fear. Faith puts us in the state of rest and in the atmosphere of stillness.

This fleshly struggle of ours must stop! Our fight should be by faith, not in the flesh. Rachel said, "With great wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister, and I have prevailed: and she called his name Naphtali" (Gen.30:8). Rachel vehemently fought her sister to get children. In her thinking, every good thing in life must be gotten by war, including children. The idea that children are God's gifts is foreign to her. She had to fight for everything, including fighting her own sister. At the very beginning she held her husband, and demanded for him to give her children. Everything, for Rachel, required struggle. She was even proud to say that she prevailed against her sister.

We also read of Jacob, "And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a MAN with him until the breaking of the day" (Gen.32:24). In a bid to get everything we want through struggle, we don't even know when we get involved in loggerheads with God. We wrestle God without even knowing it.

For many of us, it appears that what we have known all our lives is struggling, and for that, we now think that everything worth getting in this life must be by struggle.

In fact it is even said that the world will never give us the things we deserve, but only the things we fight for. I have often heard people say that everything they have gotten so far in life had always been by struggle. But the truth we need to know is that not everything is worth fighting for. Certain battles are better left in God's hands. Certain battles belong to the Lord, not us.

We often engage our fellow men in battle without knowing that we are actually fighting God. Jacob wrestled with a man who happened to be God Himself. We read that "Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved" (Gen.32:30). The man who wrestled with him turned out to be God Himself, and no one can win a battle against the Lord. The Scripture says, "And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him" (Gen.32:25). 

God was not having His way with Jacob, and so God decided to give him a knockout. Jacob lost the use of his leg for fighting an unnecessary battle with God. His thigh went out of joint. God gave him a permanent injury. We read in the following verse, "And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh" (Gen.32:31). Jacob limped for the rest of his life. 

No fight with God ends well. There must be scars to show for it.

The Scripture has it that the children of Israel did not eat the thigh of an animal because of Jacob's experience. Moses wrote, "Therefore the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh in the sinew that shrank" (Gen.32:32). The Message Bible says, "This is why Israelites to this day don't eat the hip muscle; because Jacob's hip was thrown out of joint."

Jacob wrestled with God all through the night. In this battle that lasted till dawn, God was not prevailing. God was not having His way with and sway over Jacob. Jacob's way was the way of struggling. He struggled and failed to come out first from his mother's womb. He bargained with his brother for his birthright. He deceived and manipulated his father to get his brother's blessing. He labored for fourteen years to get his two wives. Everything had always been about struggling. He lived a hard life, and as he stood before Pharaoh, he said, "The years of my sojourning are 130 - a short and hard life and not nearly as long as my ancestors were given" (Gen.47:9 Message). 

Short life but full of struggles and troubles. Nothing was ordained by God to come our way through struggles, meandering, maneuvering, or manipulating. Martin Luther once said, "If God had all the answers in his right hand, and the struggle to reach those answers in his left, I would choose God's left hand." The question is: which hand would you choose? 

God has all the answers we are looking for in His hand, but through our carnality, fears, doubts and unbelief we make God struggle to reach us with His answers.

For many of us, God is constantly having a hard time bringing His answers to us, because we are constantly struggling to have our own man-made answers. One thing we find extremely difficult to do is relinquishing control to God, and we fail to understand that faith begins exactly where and when we have come to the end of ourselves. Faith surrenders control to God. It is hard to exercise faith when we are very much in control of things. 

Does it make sense that God has come to bless us in His own way, and we are struggling to have it our own way? Salvation is by faith, but too many of us want to achieve it by works. We keep looking for answers in the wrong places. Christ offers His answer of rest only to those who have exhausted themselves from endless labor and toil.

Let God conquer you to bless you! Quit struggling with God! Make it easy for God to reach you and to pass through you to reach others! Minimize divine struggle! Make effort to stand still! Make effort at being still in God's presence! Trusting God is your best effort. Struggling to do what God alone can do is waste of energy. Rest in Christ!

by Bishop Moses E. Peter