Wrestling with God

If you know me very well, I am a big fan of professional wrestling and have been all my life now. There comes a time once a year when I am really excited about watching professional wrestling and that is WrestleMania weekend, which happens to be this weekend. Four years ago, I had the privilege to go to WrestleMania in Orlando, Florida. It was a great experience and I am hoping that my kids can experience that soon as well. Anyways, this weekend is WrestleMania weekend, which is basically the Super Bowl of wrestling and I cannot help but think of how professional wrestling is the same as our wrestles with God. A lot of people like to say that professional wrestling is fake but what I try to tell those people is that the end result may be planned out on who wins or loses but in reality, there is nothing fake about jumping off a 30–50-foot cage onto a table. Professional wrestlers have trained their bodies in extreme ways in order to handle the amount of wear and tear they may go through in order to entertain the viewers. we tend to wrestle with God sometimes. See, we train ourselves to follow God everyday and still wrestle with Him knowing the end result is already preplanned out that He is going to win every time. In wrestling though it doesn’t just take one person it takes two.

When we wrestle with God, he is also in the middle of the match going toe to toe with us until we finally see the reality of knowing that he is victorious always and that we need to let Him show us the right moves to be able to get through the crisis we are in. Again, it takes two to wrestle so God is wrestling with us just as much as we are with Him and if we truly are allowing Him to lead our lives, He will be with us in the struggles, down in the dirt, throwing us off our comfort zone into somewhere we don’t want to land to benefit us. A lot of times an older wrestler is able to show a new and upcoming young wrestler the way and bring them up in order for the fans to have more respect for them, basically passing the torch to the younger generation. God is that special wrestler that knows what is best for you to show others how far you can go to help benefit others that may not know Him and he has you to guide them into the right direction. God has already passed the torch to you when He sent His son Jesus to die on a cross but that doesn’t mean He left. He is still in our fights with worldly things that we wrestle with on a daily basis and He always will be.

In Genesis Chapter 32 we learn about how Jacob wrestled with God and humans but was ultimately blessed by God and strengthened his faith in God. What I love about this is that Jacob walks away a winner and so does God because Jacob is changed, and with a new name and more strength in his faith than ever while left with a reminder that God wins always with a new limp and because of it God has a stronger servant. God caused this injury to remind him that God is all knowing and Jacob isn’t and it was kind of a wake-up call. God walks away changed too, not him physically but emotionally of understanding now how stubborn we can be through Jacob’s interaction with Him. God realizes that we will stop at nothing to encounter and experience the presence of God because the alternative is not acceptable. God goes to fight with us in our struggles because He doesn’t want us to be left with nothing, see God wants us to realize that with Him in the fight we always have something, Him.

The hope we cling to even when the darkest night seems too long is that of the unique message of Christianity in itself that God is not an impersonal force, or a terrifying presence to whom we cannot relate in any meaningful way. God is not a person that expects only praise and sacrifices and has no use for us. God is ready to get in the ring with us and fight with us and will never let go of us even when we try to tap out. We are too important to Him and for His purpose for His Kingdom. God doesn’t need us though, but He wants us and I’m grateful for that. We obviously aren’t better than God or the most important creation of God and I am not saying that at all but I am saying that we need to stay connected with God and each other, even if we are wrestling with struggles. No longer as a believer and a person that wrestles with God can we say that we are done with this world and the people that will not listen to us after we think we have tried everything. If God is willing to wrestle with us, we should be willing to fight always for anyone for the better of His purpose for our lives. Being a child of God means that we have to do the same as He would for us, don’t let go. Too much is at stake to let go of the promises of love and grace brings to help heal this land and those in it (which is all God’s creation).

We are called to wrestle with this world, struggle with this world, struggle with God to understand why this world is corrupt and evil, but most of all in this we understand the promise that we are always going to be face to face with God to help us wrestle it with us. That is a promise available to all who trust in Him always. When we wrestle with this world we begin to hope in that love and grace will take control and that we can only have this result if we have a true encounter with God. It is an exhausting match with the world but the end result has already been pre planned out. You just have to endure the struggle and not give up, because if we don’t wrestle with the world as believers, we fail to give this world hope, love and no grace. The world will also never be challenged face to face with God through us as believers if we give up.

So, are you up for the challenge of wrestling with God? Are you willing to face this world face to face for Him? Are you ready to be transformed in to the fighter that He expects you to be? Believe it or not, just like Jacob, God admired him for wrestling with Him because that meant that through everything that he went through, He still acknowledged His presence. So, what do you say, Are you ready for the fight of your life?

May God strengthen you to be able to wrestle with Him and this crazy world in order to transform you to who He has called you to be. Amen.