Wrestling victory from the Jaws of defeat.
My High school sports stories
• Tried sports- Kicked off C-Team bball
• Tried track, but couldn’t run very well
• End up doing Wrestling.
• Loved it
• Physical contact, high energy, high drama
• Last home match of the year, pinned a guy on varsity
24-25 But Jacob stayed behind by himself, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he couldn't get the best of Jacob as they wrestled, he deliberately threw Jacob's hip out of joint.
There are some things that we are dealing with emotionally, or otherwise, that are strong, tough adversaries. How then, when we are right in the middle of it, do we wrestle victory from the Jaws of defeat?
1. Understand that we are in a fight and fight the enemy.
In this case, Jacob was actually fighting the good guys. It strikes me now how many times we as the BODY of Christ fight each other. This denomination says that this one is bad, the bad one says “we’re not as bad as these guys over here.”
My worship pastor said something that just stuck in my craw. “IF you can see them, they are not your enemy.”
2 Corinthians 10:3-6
The world is unprincipled. It's dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn't fight fair. But we don't live or fight our battles that way—never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren't for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity.
We do not fight the world, we fight the systems of the world. We fight corruption and injustice.
Jude 22-23
Go easy on those who hesitate in the faith. Go after those who take the wrong way. Be tender with sinners, but not soft on sin. The sin itself stinks to high heaven.
I love the way Peterson puts it here… Go after them, but be tender. It’s like a lioness picking up her cub with her sharp teeth. She picks them up, but doesn’t puncture the skin.
2. Pick a fight with yourself.
So I was listening to our pastor the other day and he was talking about being bonded to God… It was a very good sermon. In the end, he shared about how if we have any unfavorable character issues, we should pick a fight with them.
Just like Jacob wrestles, we need to wrestle with ourselves from time to time. We need to look inwardly, deep and hard, and find out what is there that we have not allowed the light to shine into and expose it to the light!
John 1:3-5
3-5Everything was created through him;
nothing—not one thing!—
came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life,
and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
the darkness couldn't put it out.
Shine a light into those areas. If you are having trouble finding areas of darkness, pray the prayer David prayed in Psalm 139:23-24
Investigate my life, O God,
find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
get a clear picture of what I'm about;
See for yourself whether I've done anything wrong—
then guide me on the road to eternal life.
3. Understand that wrestling will cause change.
At the end of this story, Jacob, limping and forever changed walks away. He builds an altar and calls the place Penial which means “God’s face” because Jacob saw God face to face and lived.
He may have had his life, but he carried a limp for the rest of his life.
We all have to understand that when we wrestle, we won’t walk away from it unscathed. With the work we do, we see a clear picture of this. We walk into a community and we wrestle with thousands of years of mindsets, we wrestle with lack of resource, with lack of hope. Then we bring the information to donors and we wrestle here with a bad economy, donors not wanting to give. But if you look at what we are doing, we most certainly are changing lives. We are providing those who don’t have with what they need to survive. We are carrying out the pure and faultless religion: Caring for the widows and orphans. More importantly, as we learned yesterday, the impact of our match will cause such a deep change that it alters the way we walk our Christian lives.
Pray:
Maybe that’s what God intended all along. Today I want you to think about what you wrestle with, and repeat after me. “You are doing down. God said I win!”
• Tried sports- Kicked off C-Team bball
• Tried track, but couldn’t run very well
• End up doing Wrestling.
• Loved it
• Physical contact, high energy, high drama
• Last home match of the year, pinned a guy on varsity
24-25 But Jacob stayed behind by himself, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he couldn't get the best of Jacob as they wrestled, he deliberately threw Jacob's hip out of joint.
There are some things that we are dealing with emotionally, or otherwise, that are strong, tough adversaries. How then, when we are right in the middle of it, do we wrestle victory from the Jaws of defeat?
1. Understand that we are in a fight and fight the enemy.
In this case, Jacob was actually fighting the good guys. It strikes me now how many times we as the BODY of Christ fight each other. This denomination says that this one is bad, the bad one says “we’re not as bad as these guys over here.”
My worship pastor said something that just stuck in my craw. “IF you can see them, they are not your enemy.”
2 Corinthians 10:3-6
The world is unprincipled. It's dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn't fight fair. But we don't live or fight our battles that way—never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren't for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity.
We do not fight the world, we fight the systems of the world. We fight corruption and injustice.
Jude 22-23
Go easy on those who hesitate in the faith. Go after those who take the wrong way. Be tender with sinners, but not soft on sin. The sin itself stinks to high heaven.
I love the way Peterson puts it here… Go after them, but be tender. It’s like a lioness picking up her cub with her sharp teeth. She picks them up, but doesn’t puncture the skin.
2. Pick a fight with yourself.
So I was listening to our pastor the other day and he was talking about being bonded to God… It was a very good sermon. In the end, he shared about how if we have any unfavorable character issues, we should pick a fight with them.
Just like Jacob wrestles, we need to wrestle with ourselves from time to time. We need to look inwardly, deep and hard, and find out what is there that we have not allowed the light to shine into and expose it to the light!
John 1:3-5
3-5Everything was created through him;
nothing—not one thing!—
came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life,
and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
the darkness couldn't put it out.
Shine a light into those areas. If you are having trouble finding areas of darkness, pray the prayer David prayed in Psalm 139:23-24
Investigate my life, O God,
find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
get a clear picture of what I'm about;
See for yourself whether I've done anything wrong—
then guide me on the road to eternal life.
3. Understand that wrestling will cause change.
At the end of this story, Jacob, limping and forever changed walks away. He builds an altar and calls the place Penial which means “God’s face” because Jacob saw God face to face and lived.
He may have had his life, but he carried a limp for the rest of his life.
We all have to understand that when we wrestle, we won’t walk away from it unscathed. With the work we do, we see a clear picture of this. We walk into a community and we wrestle with thousands of years of mindsets, we wrestle with lack of resource, with lack of hope. Then we bring the information to donors and we wrestle here with a bad economy, donors not wanting to give. But if you look at what we are doing, we most certainly are changing lives. We are providing those who don’t have with what they need to survive. We are carrying out the pure and faultless religion: Caring for the widows and orphans. More importantly, as we learned yesterday, the impact of our match will cause such a deep change that it alters the way we walk our Christian lives.
Pray:
Maybe that’s what God intended all along. Today I want you to think about what you wrestle with, and repeat after me. “You are doing down. God said I win!”
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