Unless You Bless Me

This left Jacob all alone in the camp, and a man came and wrestled with him until the dawn began to break. When the man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob’s hip and wrenched it out of its socket. Then the man said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking!” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Genesis 32:24-26

JACOB HAD BEEN WRESTLING all his life. He had wrestled the birthright from his brother, words of affirmation from his father, and a wife from his father-in-law. But something had clearly shifted in Jacob that made the wrestling match on this dark night different. Jacob had come to the place where God’s blessing meant more to him than life itself. He wanted to do whatever it took to experience the singular blessing that comes from knowing and being known by God himself. Less concerned about getting all he wanted from God, Jacob wanted God to have all of him.

Jacob would forever bear on his body the marks of this painful yet grace-filled encounter with God in which to survive and cling was to triumph. For the rest of his life, Jacob would walk with a limp. And yet we also read that God “blessed Jacob there” (verse 29). To be truly blessed by God is not to emerge from the struggles of life unscathed, but to emerge from them having been pressed more deeply into him. To be truly blessed is to become more desperate for him. It is to be convinced that having our identity flow from his victory in our lives is worth more than walking away from the struggle with our health, position, and lifestyle perfectly intact.

None of us relish the idea of our kids having to struggle either. And we certainly don’t want them to be marked for life from the struggle. Yet we’ve lived long enough to know that when the hard and dark places of life force us to become desperate for God, we’re changed by it and marked by it in the best of ways.

Lord, I don’t want ________ to have to go through this life with a limp, but I do want ________ to know you in the intimate way that only comes through intense desire, determination, struggle, and sometimes suffering. So, Lord, please do what you must do to bring ________ to the end of herself so that she can see that having your blessing in her life is worth everything it may cost her. And in the process, give ________ a new sense of identity that is defined by her life-altering encounter with you.