Wrestling with God

“Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day.” Genesis 32:24

“And he said, "Who are you, Lord?" And he said, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Acts 9:5
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12

In the course of maturing we determine some questions that we know we should not ask others.  Examples may be: “Are you picking up weight?” (to a pregnant lady) or “Hey pastor! Do you want to go get a drink (alcoholic)?”  These questions are almost guaranteed that we will receive a negative answer, so we decide that it would be best not to ask them.  I would rate this as a sign of maturity when it comes to others, but when it comes to us, maturity brings the hard questions with it. 

You also know what these questions are for yourself.  These are questions that bring up unpleasant feelings of guilt, fear, and/or shame.  Ignoring the feelings only leaves behind a land mine which makes it easy to “blow up” when these feelings are approached again, usually by someone close to us.  Most of us have a couple of areas like this, our families and co-workers know these areas, and as long as everyone leaves the topics alone, we are fine and dandy.

However there is a resource that usually approaches these subjects with no regards to our feelings.  It is, of course, the Bible.  You may be happy reading a passage, or listening to a sermon, and then the topic changes and addresses that anger, greed, jealousy, envy, sexual desire, or the like that you thought was gone.  Often we will stop, shut the Bible, and remind God just how much that makes us mad.  After a few times it may make us hesitant to open the Bible, and possible run across another uncomfortable passage.  After all this is what worked with our families, we have our blowup, and they don’t go back down that road.

The Bible will not work that way, and also keeps us from finding our answers on getting rid of these areas.  God knows how to help us remove these feelings, but CAUTION: IT WILL STILL HURT!  It often involves what we could call spiritual surgery, done with a sharp two-edged sword (Heb 4:12) and a lot of effort on our part.  We must allow the Lord to probe in our souls and remove these cancers.  What is it that you are wrestling with the Lord and yourself about?  These questions hurt, but they are the path toward growth in the Lord.