Title: Wrestling With God
Series: Summer Speakers 2025
Author: Heather Smith
Date:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:41 — 36.3MB)
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Is your relationship with Jesus a walk in the park or a wrestling match?
An honest pursuit of God should involve a fair amount of struggle as we grapple with the complexities of life and what His Word teaches us about them.
And in the struggle and grappling, like Jacob, we are marked and changed. And maybe even acquire a limp that forever reminds us of His work in our lives…
24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.25 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. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,[a]because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.
30 So Jacob called the place Peniel,[b] saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”
31 The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel,[c] and he was limping because of his hip.
Genesis 32:24-31 (NIV)
