How Do We Wrestle With God?

Well, good morning, everyone. David and I are glad to be back in the A.M. It's been a number of weeks since we were even here, much less than the A.M. Last week I spoke in the P.M. and after coming back from a month of traveling, but it's good to be back in what we consider our home congregation here in the A.M. with all of you and appreciated the special music here from the Clores.

I got the—this is the second week in a row I've been able to hear that. They gave that last week in the P.M. congregation, and I've forgotten how soothing that hymn is and how much I did enjoy it. It was good to hear it a second time. I mentioned last week that it used to be in the hymnal of the church, in probably the earliest iteration of the Church of God hymnal.

Some of you old-timers will remember singing that as one of their hymns. And I also mentioned last week—and I'll repeat this as well because that's about all I can do, just repeat—but there's a very good backstory to that song.

And if you ever want to, I think, be encouraged by some type of story that sometimes gives rise to a piece of music like that, you can look up the story behind that. Just wait till after services. Don't try to do it during services. But Google it as well with my soul or backstory of it, origins, and you'll find a very interesting story that is there. I'm going to apologize in advance for any hesitation in my presentation this morning.

I'm still recovering from things picked up along the way on this trip, I thank you, that or allergies back here in Ohio. I'm not quite sure what that—what it might be. Ephesians 6 was referenced as actually the anchor of the sermon at this morning, that we do not wrestle with—against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness in high places and the armor of God.

It does tie into what I wanted to talk about this morning with you. And I had to think as I was—as it was being mentioned that that was the theme, the armor of God was the theme for the teen camps this summer, and they adapted it in a seemingly appropriate way for the pre-teen camp. But the armor of God is a well-known topic to us. We've heard sermons and sermonettes and messages and articles and a great deal of exposition about that topic through the years. And it's never one that ceases to fascinate me when I think about it, but in recent times, I've had to think about it from a little bit different perspective, and that is from the word that Paul uses to get into it, and that is wrestling.

We don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness in high places. Now, the idea of wrestling and then dealing with the fight that is behind that is aided by these pieces of armor. I had the thought as I prepared the sermon that when it comes to the armor of God, we may trivialize that sometimes with just an image or an illustration and a very nice historical background to Roman armor and swords and breastplates and everything, which is an appropriate way to start. But when we look at the armor of God, a breastplate of righteousness, a sword of the spirit, a helmet of salvation, and all that is there, and realize that those are instruments of battle, spiritual battle that Paul is talking about.

And when you realize that a sword is something that is not easily made, that a shield is not just fabricated necessarily, it takes a lot of work to create, forge, implement, armor yourself up with any one of those pieces. And I wonder if the real meaning begins with that word wrestling, that we don't wrestle with flesh and blood, but the idea of a struggle that we are involved with and must understand and can therefore appreciate what God gives us as the ability and the tools to stand to stand, which is at the end of that whole piece there, Galatians 6, that above all things we are able to stand.

And wage a battle in the conflict, the spiritual conflict, that life is. And that's what Paul is talking about. I'd like for you to turn back to the book of Genesis, chapter 32, as we begin this morning. In Genesis 32, there's a well-known story that is a story about wrestling. It is the story of Jacob wrestling all night with a divine being that we understand to be the one who became Jesus Christ. Genesis, chapter 32. And I need to get beyond Genesis, or Exodus, to Genesis here. I didn't turn back far enough there. The story begins in verse 22 of Jacob wrestling. But we could also turn back, or notice just earlier, in verse 11, where Jacob began to pray, and to God, in the context of this story, is his return to his home and his impending reunion with his brother Esau.

And you know the story of how Jacob had defrauded Esau of the birthright. And that led to his fleeing the land, to that of the home of his uncle Laban, and the story that ensued there with his wives and handmaids, and the children that eventually now he's coming home with.

And he's in fear. He's in a bit of trepidation as he prepares to reunite with his brother Esau. And at verse 11, he makes a prayer. And he's praying to God, and he says, Deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, lest he come and attack me and the mother with the children. For you said I will surely treat you well and make your descendants as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.

Jacob's afraid, and he's praying. And this is a prayer of fear about what he's going to encounter with his brother. And when you stop and look at it carefully, it's in the context of Jacob already having had quite a life and relationship with God, in that he had come face to face with God, at least in vision and in a dream earlier. God had made a promise to him as he was on his way to the land of his uncle Laban, that he would be with him, passing on the, beginning to pass on the entities of the birthright. And so Jacob had a relationship with God in a very intimate way that you and I would love to have in one sense, to kind of give us a bit of a boost of faith, to have a vision, to have the voice of God speak to us and give us a promise.

Any of us would really like to have that, wouldn't we, at some point in our life. Jacob had, but now he still had the fear. And of course, then the scene is set up as we go to verse 22, because after he had put his family across the river, he comes back. Verse 22, he arose that night and took his two wives, his female servants and his 11 sons, and he crossed the ford of Jabach. And he took them and sent them over the brook and sent over what he had. Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of day.

Here's the story of the wrestling match that ensues with a man. Again, as the story will tell us, he is a divine being. We understand this with many other episodes of the Old Testament to be an appearance of the one who became Christ with one of the patriarchs. And he wrestled all night with him until the breaking of day. Now, it's hard for me to imagine that. When I was in high school, I did some high school wrestling for a couple of years on our wrestling team. And at that time, wrestling matches were about, I think, six minutes long, three two-minute periods. And by the time you got, if you lasted long enough, that is, if you got to six minutes, you were just totally exhausted.

You had to be in very, very good shape to do the type of wrestling required, even for six minutes. And that was some of the hardest, most exhausting sports activity, I think, that I have ever done in wrestling.

I cannot imagine the idea here in whatever way it took of wrestling all night here that is described with Jacob. Verse 25 says, though, when he saw that he did not prevail against him, he touched the socket of his hip, and the socket of Jacob's hip was out of joint as he wrestled with him. So, God, let's just call him the word here at this point, in a sense, handicapped Jacob.

He put him into a limp, as it will say. And he said, let me go, for the day breaks. But he said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. And he said to me, what is your name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, your name will no longer be called Jacob, but Israel. For you struggled with God and with men, and it prevailed. And Jacob asked, saying, tell me your name, I pray. And he said, why is it that you ask about my name?

And he blessed him there. And so Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. Just as he crossed over Peniel, the sun rose on him, and he limped on his hip. Therefore, to this day, the children of Israel do not eat the muscle that shrank, which is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob's hip in the muscle.

And so, coming off of this earlier prayer of doubt, Jacob wrestles all night with God and winds up with a name change. As he said, the name Jacob is a different name than what was given to him when he came out of his mother's womb.

He grabbed his brother's heel. He was a supplanter. And that certainly fit his character up until this point, as he had supplanted through deceit his brother in the birthright. But now, through this struggle with God, this wrestling with God, this striving with God, his name has changed to Israel. A couple of interesting things are said here, just to note regarding this. The statement in verse 32, that the children of Israel do not eat the muscle that shrank, which is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob's hip and the muscle.

Still to this day, kosher butchers will remove the sciatic nerve from meat that they are butchering for kosher purposes. And some commentators describe that as among the other laws and episodes of the prescriptions of the Old Testament. They are kind of laws of what they call national memory, even to this day. Of course, Judaism does retain certain other physical manifestations of things from the Old Testament or the Old Covenant as part of their rituals. And this one happens to be in the way that meat is prepared for kosher purposes.

Now, the other thing that is mentioned here is, of course, his socket being put out. And some commentators say that Jacob likely limped, walked with a limp the rest of his life. And if he did, then he remembered this night. He never forgot the lesson of his name being changed. And that in this physical infirmity which was put upon him, he now not only had a name change, but something that went with him the rest of his life that reminded him of what it took to come to the point of a blessing.

Because that's what he sought. He wanted a blessing, and he got it in the name of a change, but it came about as a result of the struggle or this wrestling that he went through with God all night in this episode. There's a lot that we would like filled into the details of this story, but I think we have enough to tell us what happened. But also, above all, I think we have here something to fit upon each of us as we look at our life and the struggle, the wrestling that we must do, should do with God.

With God. In Galatians 6 and verse 16, Paul tells us that we are part of what is called the Israel of God, the church. It's the Israel of God. And we know that the church is a spiritual entity. It is the body of Christ spiritually. Christ is the head. And the body of Christ is not bound to race or ethnicity.

We are all children of Abraham through Christ. And the name of the one who struggles with God, struggled with God, Israel, in a sense, is upon us collectively as the Israel of God. And in that, there is a lesson for us to remember that we are in a struggle. As Paul said, not with flesh and blood, and as we contend with the evil powers of this world, which are vast and prevalent, we'll come back to that. The overriding lesson that Paul, I think, is saying in Ephesians 6, and what we should gain from this story of Jacob wrestling all night with God, is that we are also, like Jacob, to struggle and to wrestle with God.

How do we do that? How do we do that? We don't get into some all-night affair necessarily like that with God, as Jacob did. But, you know, there are times when, in our prayers and in our thoughts, in our emotional struggle, as we are all a part of what we define as our walk with God, that in our thoughts, in our musings, in our inner dialogue with God, which should be a part of our life. You know, we all have an inner dialogue that goes on within ourselves all the time. And I think that for a Christian, understanding to being instant in prayer, we know that that can be and should be, through the day, a dialogue with God, that God is in our thoughts as He writes His law upon our hearts and our mind.

That dialogue is not something that's reserved for a prayer closet or 15 or 30 minutes on our knees in our bedroom, which is one part of it, but goes on continually, goes on throughout the day, goes on throughout the week. In other words, as we develop a relationship with God, He is in our thoughts, our hearts and our minds. And as we walk with God and we develop this daily, there is an engagement. And yes, there is a wrestling that goes on with God.

And I think that that's told very clearly from Scripture. Some years back, I mentioned this idea of wrestling with God, and I think I phrased it in the idea of even arguing with God. And as sometimes happens, as people hear a sermon given, they will comment back, and I did get a letter from someone who heard it, taking me to task that we would argue with God, that that was almost blasphemous.

And I wrote a conciliatory comment back. I did try to get into an extended engagement there. But when we look at Scripture, I think that there's ample things for us to see that indeed this is something God does want, for us to wrestle or to struggle with Him. And yes, sometimes that might be in the form of an extended dialogue that might be a bit heated, and be what we might even call an argument with God as we question God, as we challenge God, and what is happening to us, to someone that we love, what's going on in our life, as part of this idea of struggling or wrestling with God that is being described here.

Let's look at a few examples in the Scripture and see how this is done and what we might learn. One of the first ones that comes to mind is back in Genesis 18. Again, a well-known story in Genesis 18 of Abraham, having fixed a very fine lunch for God, who appeared to him. And then beginning in verse 16 is the story of how God reveals to Abraham what he's going to be doing, and that is, he's on his way to Sodom and Gomorrah to bring judgment upon those two cities.

And God says here that, you know, why should I hide, verse 17, from Abraham, going to do, since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have known him. And God did know him. And so, after lunch, on the way, perhaps, to a juncture or to a point, on or beyond Abraham's property there, they're walking, and this conversation ensues.

And you know what happens. In verse 22, the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham stood still before the Lord. And now enters one of the most interesting dialogues that we would have from Scripture, where Abraham came near, almost as if he got, you know, he stood before God.

Maybe he took a step toward God. Dare we say he got in God's face, to use a colloquialism, for being firm and being direct in our relations. Would you destroy the righteous with the wicked? A question, a challenge, a negotiation begins now. Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city, would you also destroy the place, and not spare for the fifty righteous that were in it?

For be it from you to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked, far be it from you, shall not the judge of all the earth do right. That's a remarkable phrase. I've thought about that quite often at times, and, you know, he puts it in a question. I don't think he's mocking God. I think it's a sincere statement that he's putting to God, here that you are the judge of all the earth. You must do right. Would you destroy the righteous with the wicked? And to his mind, he can't conceive of the need for all to be destroyed within this conflagration.

It's an interesting thing to consider, as Abraham, what knowledge did he have beyond his nephew Lot about Sodom and Gomorrah? Was it all second or third hand? Had he been into the streets of the city? We don't know. As Abraham had gone about his life in this particular area during this time, he certainly would have known of his reputation.

And he knew his nephew was there. And whether or not he knew that there were good people there or not, he enters into a negotiation. And as you know in this negotiation, he brings it down, because perhaps he knows in his mind that, no, there's not even 50, there's not 45, there's not 40. And he brings it down to 10. And we all know how the story ends. God goes along with him in every phase of the negotiation.

There's not a hint in the record of God being displeased with Abraham negotiating with God. Can we say wrestling with God over the fate of these two cities? God allows it to go on. Does God want it to go on? This is what God expects. He's praised Abraham to this point. And there's no hint here of God's displeasure. But it's a negotiation that stems from a mind that can't fully understand what God is about to do and why. There's a questioning in his mind. And that's entirely human for us to wonder why. About anything that pertains to life, and especially our life, are those that were close to us, trials that happened, illness, loss of job, prolonged difficulty, depression.

Things that just don't seem right to be among the righteous. And we wonder why. And we don't understand. And we ask God, and we talk to God in this way. Now, you know, in connection with this story of Abraham negotiating over Sodom and Gomorrah, there's another episode from one of the prophets that might fit here as well within this particular topic of wrestling with God, of talking and crying out to God. It's in the book of Ezekiel 9. Ezekiel 9. If you'll turn there, the prophet of the exile.

Again, it's a well-known verse. Ezekiel 9. But to look at the context and to frame it within this question of wrestling with God, and specifically wrestling with God over the conditions of time and place. Sodom and Gomorrah, for Abraham, here in Ezekiel 9, it is in the collapse of the city of Jerusalem. And the vision that the prophet has of the city of Jerusalem here in its final hours, verse 3, it says, And so the one with the inkhorn is to lick the literally do this and put a mark on the forehead of those who sigh and cry for the abominations of the city. Now, the prophets already described what those sins are, and it's led to the captivity of Judah, the impending collapse of the city of Jerusalem. And in verse 5 it says, We could make a lot, perhaps, over beginning at the sanctuary in the temple and what that might be telling us, but let's just say that here is something that we have often and I think correctly lifted into our admonition today as we look at our culture and our world, our country, and have been admonished to sigh and cry over the abominations that are done within. To sigh and to cry. Now, that's done in the context of prayer. That's done in the context of scriptural knowledge and understanding about the Word of God, the law of God, consequences for sin, the judgment of God. That's done within the context of prophecy. And for us today, that would be done in the context of understanding God's prophetic judgments upon the nations, upon Israel, modern Israel, and the world, and the judgments that are to come as prophesied in these scriptures. And in our world and in our life and in our country even today, we are confronted with a great deal of matters over which there is much to sigh and cry to God. And there is a component in that message out of Ezekiel to the church that, brethren, is very private in terms of what you and I are to do. To God. Apart from any proclamation effort, we might do as a body, but I'm talking—this is talking about a very personal matter between the people of God and God over the fate of their people to sigh and to cry. Do we wrestle with God from time to time? When we read a headline, when we read a story, take what was referenced in the sermonette. I don't have cable anymore, so I don't watch opening ceremonies. I rely on YouTube or whatever freevy channel that I might have to bring things to us. My wife's been watching some of the Olympic Games, and I said, when did that take place? And it's probably at least 24 hours old by the time we're watching it on our little free version because we just cut the cord years ago, and so we don't have all of that. But I read a lot about the opening Games and the atrocious boxing match between a man and a woman that took place, regardless of whatever you think about boxing as a sport. But I've never been able to reconcile in my mind the idea of female boxing. I'm sorry, I just can't get into that. But with what happened there, the only thing I could stand back in a gasp and horror in looking at that is to say that's the result of bad ideology that becomes public policy, that becomes accepted sport. That's sin. Played out in a public spectacle, and that's something to sigh and cry about. That is something to sigh and cry about to God.

Because that is the future of bad ideology and bad politics when it's come to that, and will come to even more of that. But those are the matters, and again, it's not a matter of public proclamation, brethren. It's a matter of you and I crying out to God, taking it to God and asking how long? Asking God to sort between those who are caught up in such a web and those who are resisting it. And asking God why? And wrestling there. I think that's probably something overlooked by us in the church.

It's upon those that Ezekiel here sees a mark being put. And that mark spares those from the judgment of God when it comes, in whatever way it comes, through the city. For you and I to sigh and cry, in a sense, to be like an Abraham and to take it to God, and to take a step toward God, puts it in a very personal level that regardless of how one feels about the church and what the church should be doing and the world and what we might say about it, there are some things we can't deny. And this puts it at the very personal level that you and I should be wrestling with God over. I'll leave it at that. Let's look at another example of a well-known individual in the Bible, Psalm 35. If you're going to talk about wrestling with God, you cannot leave out David. Psalm 35. And there are many Psalms that we could turn to. Many sermons would be taken to talk about that. But I love some of these Psalms of David, very intimate, very close to God. In Psalm 35, beginning in verse 1, he says, Now, if that's not the opening salvo of a wrestling match in prayer with God, as only David could do it, God, take care of those that fight against me. You deal with them. Take hold of shield and buckler and stand up for my help. Also draw out the spear and stop those who pursue me. Say to my soul, I am your salvation. Almost like run them through, God. This is David, the man after God's own heart, in prayer wrestling with God. Let those who be put to shame and brought to dishonor, who seek after my life. Let those be turned back and brought to confusion, who plot my hurt. Let them be like chaff before the wind and let the angel of the Lord chase them. Let their way be dark and slippery and let the angel of the Lord pursue them. Wow! I don't think I would want to be pursued by the angel of the Lord. To whatever that could mean. For without cause they've hidden their net for me in a pit, which they have dug without cause for my life. Let destruction come upon them as if he's not clear to this point. Now he puts a summation to it. Let destruction come upon him unexpectedly and let his net that he has hidden catch himself into that very destruction. Let him fall.

You almost think he's been rereading the story of Mordecai from Esther right there.

That's wrestling with God. You know, when it comes to the wrestling that we do among ourselves, if we might take a page out of, or just a few verses out of what David did, and do that ourselves, and just instead of taking it one to another, we take it to God.

And let him deal with it. It always reminds me of what Hezekiah did when he received that evil letter from the Assyrian basically saying, you're coming down. And he took it into the, and laid it before the altar of God, knelt down in prayer. That whole letter of attack. And he gave it to God. There are things that we can only do at that time, and taking it to God in our life, in our struggle. And I think David gives us a very good example here. Those who wrote these Psalms, like David and others, expressed deep and powerful emotions in what really are prayers and calls to God in all different kinds of circumstances, times of trial and difficulty. It's where God waits.

And He waits for His children to come to Him, to talk to Him, to wrestle with Him, seeking an answer. He may not immediately answer. But in waiting, God waits on us.

And He invites us to struggle with Him, wrestling with Him, because it's that struggle, that wrestling that makes faith real.

Faith doesn't come easily. Faith isn't free. That shield of faith that is part of the armor of salvation from Ephesians 6 isn't made without a great deal of effort and work. It might be years for us to create and construct and know how to wield a shield of faith.

It takes a lot of readings. It takes a lot of experience. It can take a lot of prayer to come to that. Faith isn't free. It's earned. It's developed. It's forged in a time of difficulty. Look at the struggles that we have among ourselves. We do wrestle, and we do. When we're children or teenagers especially, we wrestle with our parents. Question their rules. Question their guidelines, their restrictions. Question them as to who they are, what they are.

Go through those times where we wish we maybe had different parents.

And we dismiss their advice. We dismiss them, maybe. And it's a struggle. Sometimes it erupts into arguments. Sometimes marriages have to go through a period of struggle. Lightning might have to strike periodically between a couple in order for issues to have a focus and clarity and come to a solution. I don't know of any lasting friendship that can be held over decades that might not have to be forged in a struggle.

A struggle of difficulty, estrangement, separation, argument, love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Sometimes friendships that are the best and that endure the longest will have a bit of struggle there. What we do with God and where we come with God in this does come down to a matter of times wrestling through a season with God.

No discussion of this topic would be complete without going over to Luke 22 and looking at Jesus on the night of his arrest and his crucifixion. Luke 22, as Christ came to the Mount of Olives with His disciples beginning in verse 39 and at verse 40, when He came to the place in the garden, He said to them, Pray that you may not enter into temptation. And He was withdrawn from them about a stone's throw, and He dealt down, and He prayed, saying, Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me. Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done. Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthened Him, and being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. That's one of the more colorful scenes from this night that is depicted in the Gospels of Christ's death. He was in sweating blood. But notice what it says. He was in agony. The Greek word there means He was in sheer fear, utter fear. That's what He was experiencing at that moment. The agony was fear.

Of what lie ahead? Crucifixion. Christ had seen crucifixion as He walked around Jerusalem and would have been around that. Crucifixion, probably where He was crucified, was the common spot for crucifixion. They had probably walked by some of those in their time in and around Jerusalem. He had seen it. He knew that it was agonizing and excruciatingly painful. He knew that that's what lay ahead of them. He was human, as He was to experience all things and to be tempted at all things. To experience it fully, fear was now gripping Him. The earnest prayer to His Father is another wrestling with the will of the Father. This is what had been planned from before the foundation of the world. What was at stake was eternal life and salvation for all of mankind. This was on the line at this moment. It was not in the plan for Him to fail, but He was human and He was struggling with it, and He was dealing with it, and He was wrestling with God. How did He come to it? He came by ultimately saying, Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done.

And in that, perhaps, then, is the great lesson for all of us as we think about taking all of our life before God in prayer.

He finally came to a peace and courage because He submitted to God's will. Now, the timeline on that here is, you know, what, an hour, two hours? We're not told exactly at this moment, but it likely stretched deep, you know, weeks and months before as this evening came closer. How long does it take you and I to submit to God's will? To come to that as we wrestle with God. It's hard to accept what we cannot understand or see.

As we wrestle with the unseen God, it is always a challenge to accept and to submit our will. We don't always want to let go. But even Christ had to come to that point where He confronted with the moment and what was at stake, He knew what the will of the Father was. While humanly His will may have been to...it was one of fear that could have led to abandonment. It wasn't within the plan and He knew that it wasn't within the ability, it was not beyond the ability of the Father to give to Him the strength to submit to that will. And that is there waiting for each of us to come to as we wrestle with God, as we struggle with our fears, with our doubts about life and about things that are in front of us at any given moment, and we take it to God. It's not beyond God to give us that same amount of help. Let's look at one final episode of a struggle with God, and that is in 2 Corinthians 12. 2 Corinthians 12. The Apostle Paul.

The setting for the book of 2 Corinthians is a ruptured relationship. between Paul and the Church at Corinth.

There had been a faction of people that had rebelled against him, created a great deal of upset and division within the congregation, and that's the context of 2 Thessalonians here. And he comes to a moment where he talks about himself, and it's in the talking about something very close to him that he lays out to the people a pathway to restoration. In verse 7, 2 Corinthians 12, and verse 7, he said, He'd been talking about having a vision of the Third Heaven. But he said, A messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. I pleaded three times. We're not told how long a gap between each of those would have been. We might assume, you know, maybe periods of years. We don't know. But time. Every commentator that I've looked at on this, no commentator looks at this as something that Satan is allowed to do to Paul. It seems to be a physical ailment. There's everything from an eye malady to epilepsy.

And other malaria even is even mentioned as something that is a recurring ailment. Such a debilitating nature that it just puts him down. And he can't function. He's invalid for a period of time when it grips and when it comes upon him.

Is what is felt here. And Paul has gone to God multiple times. Three that he mentions here. Wrestling with God, pleading with God for healing, for it to be removed. And through it all, it's still there. Because he says, he said to me, verse 9, My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. This is the answer that he got from God. Therefore, most gladly, I will rather boast in my infirmity, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in my infirmities and reproaches in needs and persecutions and distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. So as he's relating this very personal matter to the Corinthians, in the midst of what has, there's been slander, attacks upon his reputation, a ruptured relationship with some, it allows Paul to deal with that disloyalty at such a level where he rises above the moment and he shows them a path to restoration and reconciliation. That in his suffering, he had to come to accept God's grace as being made perfect. And in this, he comes to see grace. In his own problem that God didn't remove from him physically, he came to understand the infinite grace of God, of a relationship that ultimately grace does develop. As we understand the relationship that we have through the grace of God, through the kindness, the mercy, the unmerited part, all of which grace teaches, which then leads to a relationship where we worship God, obey God, serve God out of love.

Regardless of even in this case, the physical ailment that God has chosen not to remove from Paul.

And there are physical circumstances that we learned to live with. It may be a debilitation, a physical matter. It might be a physical relationship that we are in by our own choosing, doing, or because of circumstances beyond our control. And we must learn to manage it, live within it, and work within it, and let God's grace be sufficient for us, even as we might periodically plead and wrestle with God to understand it, to have it removed, to bear up under it. That's what that wrestling does. It develops that relationship with God.

We can wrestle with God. We can wrestle with God and, in a sense, negotiate. Shall I use the term negotiate like Abraham? Abraham came to see the sovereignty of God through that negotiation. It didn't come... He didn't win the negotiation. It didn't change what God was going to do. God's purpose in that moment was going to stand. And Abraham came to see the sovereignty of God, that his purpose and plan wins. And at that level, at times, that's a lesson for us to learn as well. We can look around our world in our time and see the suffering and the confusion, as I mentioned, that is the end result of sin. It starts as an idea. It starts as somebody's philosophy or an ideology that gains ground. And as we have seen in such an unfortunate way in recent years, it becomes public policy. That can result in death, suffering and sin. And we can and we should sigh and cry to God over that. We can know God and His way is the only way that can work when we do that. We can let our fear bring us to God and submit, finding courage and conviction, like Jesus did in the garden. And we can't, like Paul, live years with pain, learn grace through suffering. And if we cry in that prayer, we can't do anything but cry. As a friend of ours recently said, dealing with a loss and begin to pray to God, all they can do is cry. Well, if that's the case, then they're crying on God's shoulder. And that's what it's there for. And that's okay.

And another friend of mine, suffering loss, said that they challenged God, Why my mate? What have they ever done?

That's not the question. But it's the question that has to be asked to get to the conclusion of God's will and God's purpose. We wrestle with God because He expects us to. We wrestle with God to come to submission of our will to His. We wrestle with God to show Him that we care. We care about that relationship. And we wrestle with God to be like Jacob, to come to a blessing.

We wrestle with God to be like Jacob, to come to a blessing.