strength to persevere

Can you imagine what that night must have been like for Jacob? He had traveled all day and then trip by trip orchestrated his entire family and all their possessions' trek across the Jabbok. As night fell, he must have been exhausted, ready to get his butt to the other side and rest for a little while. Instead, however, a man appears. A man who will wrestle with him all night long. A man who push Jacob to his limit: physically, emotionally, spiritually. A man who will change his life forever.

It is usually in those moments when I am spent, exhausted to the core, that God shows up on my door ready to wrestle. He comes in many forms: a phone call, a fussy baby, one of those "state of our family" discussions that husbands and wives have, and sometimes it is just in the form of a racing mind. Sometimes, it isn't God at all who I am wrestling. Sometimes it is myself. Sometimes it is the devil. But sometimes it is God.

And those times when it is God, I can tell the difference because, like Jacob, I have the strength to persevere. God doesn't wrestle with us to beat us down, he wrestles with us to show us our strength, our ability to handle difficult situations, that in as much as we are wrestling with God, so too is he holding us up.

I lift my eyes to the hills. From where is my help to come? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth, even when the LORD and I are wrestling to the wee-hours of the morning.