Not until you bless me

And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. 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. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. – Genesis 32.24-28

My view of Jacob is changing. I realise that he had plenty of problems, but he also has a lot of things I can learn from. For one thing is took his relationship with God very seriously. It was not a light and trivial relationship. We have kind of become of used to God and we can even take Him for for granted – but not Jacob.

This man had a wresting match with God. Imagine that, Jacob wrestled with God. I don’t fully understand it, but JACOB WRESTLED WITH GOD!

And they wrestled to the point where the human representation of God asked Jacob to let him go and he said ‘not until you bless me.’

Once again, like so much from these early days, I don’t totally get. But it happened.

And I think there is a lesson for us no matter how we explain it.

God wants us to take our dealings with Him seriously. I think we too often just kind of keep God by our side like a genie in a bottle. We may talk to Him and reference Him and ask Him, but if it doesn’t work out we just move on.

But we know God blesses persistence. I think of woman begging scraps at the king’s table was first denied, but kept asking until she got it.

We can’t presume on God. We can’t demand from God.

But we also just can’t be flipping out prayers and then really expecting God to answers. I can remember of couple of ‘wrestling with God’ prayer times and the amazing way God worked.

So let’s not give up on that issue we are praying about. Learn this lesson from Jacob’s prayer and keep on keeping on.