How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting
Post 19: Wrestling with God
Jacob’s wrestling match with God certainly illustrates it. Recall the context. Jacob is terrified that his brother Esau will kill him. In self-sufficiency, Jacob plans and plots ways to manipulate Esau into forgiving him.
Then, at night Jacob encounters God. He wrestles God throughout the night until God overpowers him by dislocating Jacob’s hip. In response, “Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘It is because I saw God face-to-face, and yet my life was spared’” (Genesis 32:30). Tenacious wrestling with God, Jacob shows us, results in painful yet profitable comfort through communion.
Interestingly, as the sun rose, Jacob was limping. He looks up and there’s Esau. Jacob limps up to Esau and, with the pain of his dislocated hip, bows down seven times. Imagine the pain. Then he receives from Esau an embrace instead of a dagger. He faced his fear, still wounded and scarred, but surviving. God humbled Jacob, weakened him, and in the process strengthened him.
God Shares Our Sorrow
What’s illustrated in Jacob’s life is taught in Asaph’s story. According to Psalm 73:21-28, suffering is an opportunity for God to divulge more of Himself and to release more of His strength. When Asaph’s heart was grieved, and his spirit embittered, God brought him to his senses. Listen to his prayer.
“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26).
My flesh may be scarred, my heart may be scared, but with God I can survive—forever.
Thus faith perceives that God feels our pain, joins us in our pain, even shares our pain. In fact, faith believes that, “in all my distress he too was distressed” (Isaiah 63:9). His sharing of our sorrow makes our sorrow endurable.
Faith does not demand the removal of suffering, but desires endurance in suffering, temptation, and persecution (1 Corinthians 10:13). Faith understands that what can’t be cured, can be endured.
Faith delights in weakness, because when we are weak, then God is strong, and we are strong in Him (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).
Finding Comfort
Join us the next two days as we explore how to help others to wrestle with God to find His comfort. And as we journey together to find our own comfort in God.
