Genesis 32:22 – 32 is the story on why Israel got its name.
Jacob, who stole his brothers blessing and birthright, is about to meet him and
has an encounter with God himself. Knowing Jacob’s story we see how God took
this selfish and power hungry kid wrestled with him for years to humble his
spirit. He was swindled into indentured servitude for his true love and from
there traveled to meet his brother.
The encounter with God is an interesting one since they
wrestled all night and even after disabling Jacob, he held on and demanded a
blessing. God eventually relents and changes Jacob’s name to Israel, which
means “wrestling with God” or “struggling with God”.
This demonstrates two things, first how persistence sometimes
is necessary to change God’s mind on a matter. Second, is how we often have to
fight for what we want, even with God. Sure it’s easy to accept God’s will as
Jesus did, but often God’s will has shown to change. We need to understand that
a good debate is what God is looking for … now with Jesus, what happened had to
happen since a sacrifice was needed for redemption of our sins.
I often look at my life and wonder how many times I freaked
out and yelled at God that changed God’s will for my life. Was God looking for
a wrestling match or does He like a good debate? I don’t know but throughout
the Bible we see time and time again the “heroes” questioning God, sometimes
they win and sometimes God does.
The point we need to learn in looking at these instances is
we need to fight for what we want, but understand when God does make a stand
often there is a reason. Like with Jesus, His death on the cross was inevitable
and no matter how much He asked, what had to happen would. With Jacob I wonder
if God wanted to wrestle the remaining fight out of him or if he wanted to see
his gumption? Either way, God relented in this case and gave into Jacob’s
desires.
NOTE – it did cost Jacob his comfort since he lived
with the hip pain for the rest of his life. So as he did get what he wanted,
God extracted a small price for changing his will.