30 Apr Wrestling with God
If there is one thing that is certain about life, and it is not a particularly happy thought, is that suffering, pain, and chaos are constant companions. Even when we think things have leveled off and we will live in a long season of calm and triumph, deep down we know that it is just a matter of time before chaos reappears in our lives. This may sound a bit pessimistic, and perhaps it is, but I think it is simply embracing reality and Jesus’ words in John 16:33, “in this world you have trouble.” Nevertheless, simply knowing that chaos is certain is not our greatest issue. Our greatest issue is deciding what we will do with it and how we will respond to it. Will we let the suffering, pain, and chaos take us out or will we find meaning, purpose, and transcend it?
This tension becomes a life-long wrestling match and many times it feels like we are wrestling with God. The questions come: What do we do with this? How do we make sense of it? Where are you loving Heavenly Father? How could these things possibly be for my good? For many followers of Jesus and even many unbelievers, whether we are fully aware of it or not, wrestling with God is a major part of the journey. Some people may not even know they are wrestling with God. But at the core of their tension, they are wrestling with existential, philosophical, relational, and spiritual issues which cannot be addressed without God in the conversation. Even if you are an atheist you are addressing God in the sense that you are declaring you don’t believe in him.
There are people who are more predisposed to this contemplative striving. Some would give anything to have a Sabbath from their thoughts and internal voice. And it is true that some people experience more intense suffering, pain, and chaos than others. At times there appears to be no resolution. The child who continues to break his/her parents’ hearts. The spouse who finally realizes this is my marriage and it is not going to change. The person in constant physical pain. The loneliness after the death of a loved one. The shame after giving into that sin again.
Throughout Scripture we have many examples of biblical characters wrestling with God. Job wrestles as he tries to navigate his personal catastrophe. Abraham receives a promise that he is going to have a child then the 25 years of wrestling with God begins. David is anointed King of Israel as a teenager but runs for his life for the next several years as the current King, Saul, tries to kill him. Perhaps God’s most famous wrestling match was with Jacob, Abraham’s grandson. He literally wrestled with God and dislocated his hip. It caused him to limp the rest of his life. During this wrestling encounter with God, Jacob’s name was changed to Israel. The name Israel means one who is striving, struggling, wrestling with God. It seems the name Israel was the hint there would be no other way in this life.
We see this wrestling going on in America today and around the world. Even those who are followers of Jesus cannot reconcile and come to the same conclusion on certain issues. The Bible is so clear on many issues. But then there are also areas of gray and that requires walking with God, being filled with the Spirit, and wrestling with God. Maybe that’s what life is or should be about. As we are trying to figure all of this out and trying to reconcile what we see and feel with biblical clarity, pursuing God may look more like wrestling.
As one of those people who asks a lot of questions, I have always been turned off by the simple, safe, religious bumper sticker answers to complex issues of life. Because of that, much of my life has involved wrestling with God and other people. I don’t simply want to know the answer. I want to know how you get to the answer. It’s like the student who is grappling with a complex algebraic problem and someone walks up to them and says the answer is Y = 7. The student knows the answer but has no idea on how she got there. And certainly, cannot say just because she knows the answer that she knows Algebra. I see this in some professing Christians who know the answer to the problem, but don’t know how they got there, and ultimately don’t truly know God.
These past two years may have been the most intense times of wrestling with God of my entire life. Even things I thought I knew became points of wrestling and struggle. And that reality, in itself, created an internal wrestling because I realized that I keep living in the allusion that the older you get, the less intense these internal wrestling matches will be. Living this past year and a half in Zambia has only intensified my wrestling with God. Staring in the face of extreme poverty every day is something I cannot get used to. Feeling the desperation of people and seeing no sustainable way out. Wondering why some people have so little or nothing, while others have so much. Questioning why so much of the resources in the world are concentrated in specific areas. Watching people die when I know a simple antibiotic, that I have had access to my entire life, would save them.
Then there is the personal wrestling within my own soul. Living in another country and culture, away from everything and everyone I know has exposed the deepest places of my heart. Every unresolved issue of my heart, every weakness, every unredeemed part of my flesh, and every unhealthy part of my marriage feels like a heavenly spotlight has broadcast the truth of what is going on inside of me. As the heat has been turned up on my impure gold, the dross has floated to the top and it is ugly.
With friends, family, church home, and previous support systems gone, I find myself again wrestling with God. Wrestling about life, perspective, worldviews, freedom, culture, wholeness, needs, justice, and asking the familiar question again, WHY…? Ultimately, I’m just wrestling about being tired of wrestling.
The Apostle Paul uses wrestling language in Ephesians 6:12, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but…” He goes on to say in 1 Tim. 6:12, “Fight the good fight of the faith…” and in 2 Tim. 4:7, “I have fought the good fight… .” We see Jesus agonizing as he prays to the Father in Gethsemane asking him to remove the painful cup he is asked to drink. Then on the cross crying out to the Father, “why have you forsaken me?”
I believe that is simply the journey for humans, especially followers of Jesus. Wrestling with God, the world, the devil, the flesh is simply living. And rather than trying to get out of the wrestling match so we can have peace, we embrace it and try to find peace in the middle of it. We may know the right answers to say and think, but it seems more like a tension to manage and not a problem to solve. And that drives some people crazy because they cannot live in the ambiguity and uncertainty. They would rather live in the allusion that they have some level of control.
I believe and hope there is redeeming value in the wrestling. One, it keeps us from being intoxicated by the superficiality and comfort of this world. Second, it keeps us from being seduced into thinking this world is our home. Third, it increases our faith as we cling to and believe promises that do not seem a reality in the midst of the wrestling. Fourth, it takes us deeper in our relationship with God, creating an intimacy that cannot exist without a few tussles. Even if we walk with a limp afterwards.
There is something beyond the pain, suffering, chaos, and wrestling. It is something transcendent, something other than, something beyond what we can fully see and fully understand in this life. We are currently looking through a glass dimly. I hope and believe that the wrestling brings greater clarity and removes the fog so we can navigate more clearly on our journey. Ultimately, it reminds us that we are not created for this world but for another world.
One final thought about our journey of wrestling with God, the world, the devil, and the flesh. Not only do we need a gracious community to love us and be patient with us, we need to be gracious and patient with others as they muck it up on their journey. The church world has its own cancel culture tendencies. When people lose a wrestling match or two, we can dismiss them and cancel them. I wonder what it would be like if Abraham, David, Peter, and Paul were living their journey today. Abraham had sex with a woman who was not his wife and got her pregnant. David had sex with a woman who was not his wife and got her pregnant. Peter denied knowing Jesus and left him at a crucial moment. Paul, even though he was not a believer, directly or indirectly, killed Christians, including Stephen, one of the most beloved brothers. After their repentance, would the church today let them come back and be members, but in no way allow them to lead? These men are perhaps the four greatest leaders in the entire Bible. Not in spite of their moments of wrestling, but because of them.
The older I get the more I find myself drawn to the people who have a story that involves wrestling. Maybe they won some matches, but they also lost a few. Perhaps they even walk with a limp now. I like that. They are usually transparent, authentic, and more humble than the average person. And their stories are usually fascinating.
The other day a couple in their sixties was staying at our Guesthouse in Zambia that Kristi manages. They were telling their story of how the wife was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. They engaged an army of people to pray that God would heal her, and He did. She was cancer free. The husband’s eyes teared up with overwhelming joy and gratitude for God’s mercy. My mouth immediately said, “we praise God for that.” But as my mouth was saying “praise God” my heart was thinking something different. My mom was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and we mobilized an army of people to pray for God to heal her. But God chose not to heal her in this world, and she died. And there I go crawling back onto the wrestling mat again.
My favorite poem is by Robert Frost:
“And were an epitaph to be my story.
I’d have a short one ready for my own.
I would have written of me on my stone:
‘I had a lovers quarrel with the world.’”
Me too Robert. Me too.
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