In our church small group meetings, we frequently engage in animated discussions about our struggles: with other people, with issues concerning material versus spiritual values and ideals. However, as a study of Jacob has shown me, I wonder if what we are really struggling with isn’t about the reality of God? Isn’t the real and underlying struggle to truly know God, His purpose and His ways? Isn’t it God Himself whom we are struggling with, to get Him see our point of view and to make Him impart to us His blessing?

We find Jacob in Genesis 32 preparing to come home, after 20 long years. He had cheated Esau out of his heritage and Jacob worries about the home coming reception. Then the news came. Messengers sent ahead reported that Esau was bringing 400 men with him. And you don’t expect 400 extra people to just come for a family reunion.

Jacob goes into his default mode of figuring how to get the most out of the situation. He divides his family into two groups, and his flock as well. If Esau comes and attacks one group, maybe the other can escape. There is a better chance for survival. As usual Jacob has planned and done everything as well as he knows how. But then, just like we would do when we’re in times of trouble worry and stress, Jacob seeks and cries out to God. He brings his family over to the other side of the river, and he is alone. Is this the first time he’d been alone and still? Most of the time he is busy, working on ways to achieve success. Finally, and seemingly out of context, we have the recount of a man wrestling with Jacob until daybreak.

Here, we can make the following observations:

(1) As the long hard night of struggle wears on, Jacob discovers that he is really wrestling with is God; and

(2) Jacob will not let God go unless He blesses him.

Jacob confronts and comes face to face with God. And realizing who he is wrestling with, he insists, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

Jacob longed for the blessing. Isn’t that what he wanted more than anything else in life? But previously the way in which he sought after the blessing had led to brokenness. He had schemed and used deception to win Isaac’s blessing. But the result was him fleeing for his life, living far away from home, and now the immediate prospect of Esau seeking revenge.

The moment of truth has arrived for Jacob. The man asks, “What is your name?” It’s a simple question, unless you are like Jacob who lied about his name in order to get ahead. When his father, Isaac, had said, “Who is it?” In order to get the blessing, Jacob had lied and said, “I am your son, your first born, Esau.” But now Jacob speaks the truth and says, “Jacob.” Admitting that he is a deceiver, because that’s what the name “Jacob” means.

And God replies, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel”. In the new name, Jacob is told that despite whom he was, what he had done, God will work through him. God is able to transform “Jacobs” into “Israels” (which in Hebrew means, “He struggles with God.”)

Still Jacob wanted to know the man’s name. Have you wondered why? Perhaps Jacob thought that if he knew the name of God somehow he could control God? But the man replies, “You have struggled with God and men, and have overcome. Why do you ask my name?” Jacob realizes that it is God whom he has really been wrestling with all his life.

At last Jacob receives the blessing of God. But he is injured in the exchange. Jacob’s experience begs the question, “Will everyone who wrestles and struggles with God be wounded in the process?”

I feel that the kind of struggle that Jacob was engaged in is a type or figure of the ones where we want to exert our will or our ways over God’s. God has given to you the freedom to choose and authority to exercise. He will not “overpower” you. Self will and self adequacy versus God’s purpose and our dependency on him will be a match played out in the physical as well as mental and spiritual realms. Such a struggle with God is going to be intense. Not surprisingly that like physical wrestling, tremendous strength and energy will be exerted. The outcome: You get the blessing you want. But like Jacob, as one who has contended with God, the struggle will change you, leave you weaker in some area yet stronger in another. Jacob limped after the encounter but he saw God face to face and came to really know Him.

How many times have you been alone in your struggle when everything seems so dark and takes so long? It may be illness, broken relationships, pressing finances, uncertainties at work, or about something you really care about. The night is long, and troubled. Sleep is elusive. Tomorrow will eventually come, but what will it bring?

In my own dark nights of the soul, I have cried out to God, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy! Won’t you come and deliver me out of this place of predicament that I have brought myself to. There is no other person that I would rather turn to or depend on than you. I have done all that I believe I can and should do in the circumstance. I won’t stop crying out to you until you bless me.”

In the moments that follow God blesses me. I experience hope and I am able to enter into His peace. Much later, I will discover that God did work in the situation to provide for me or to make a way for me. He enables me to carry on.

But there is also an impact on the inside. I am becoming less and less confident about my own abilities and it is very confusing. All of my professional working life was spent molding and presenting a confident competent can-do image: “You can depend on ME to solve all your problems”. However nowadays I am committed to doing all things His way, depending on His power, and hoping for results and successes that have no co-relation to what I can achieve with my own abilities. It is confusing because I have given up control over the kind of person that I am.

We wrestle with God because of our doubts and our fears. We struggle with Him for we have yet to come to really know Him, to know Him experientially, in our hearts as well as in our heads: that God is good, God is for us, and God has promised to give us a future, one of hope and blessing. But eventually like Jacob, we will come to realize that God personally knows us. He knows our name. He tangibly demonstrates His care and love for us in Christ Jesus. Finally, as we receive His blessing of the abundant life in this present age, and eternal life, we will gladly identify with Jesus Christ and become and more like Him: As one who chooses to do the Father’s will, dependent upon and empowered by the Holy Spirit.