Struggling With God

To those who read my blog,

Here is what I preached at Chapel when it was the Student Council Chapel. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed preaching it!


Genesis 32:22-32 [NASB]

The theme for Chapel this year has already been repeated many times, but I will say it one more time: The light is everywhere. Jesus is the light. Jesus is everywhere. Light is a funny thing, though. It can be great for growth, but only because when we enter the light, we end up seeing the things that don’t sit quite right. We may see things that are holding us back from other people, or from doing our best, or most importantly from Jesus who we need to have remain at our center. And so we come to this passage in Genesis about a man who seems to actually wrestle with the One true God.
As people of the word, we probably all know the story of Jacob and Esau, but to give this verse a bit of context, let me remind you what is happening. Jacob is about to meet with his older brother Esau and he’s not feeling too sure of himself, and with good reason too!
Jacob was a jerk. His older brother, Esau, wanted some food, and Jacob made Esau give him his birthright for it. A birthright is the right of the older son. Instead of being a gracious brother, Jacob takes this right away from Esau. This means that Jacob, the younger son, will receive double the inheritance that his brother deserved to have.
Jacob also did another devious thing to his older brother and also to his father. Jacob stole the blessing from his father which was meant for his brother. He did this by disguising himself as his brother.
He is so scared of coming in contact with his brother that he prepares a huge gift that included 220 goats and a bunch of other animals. Jacob is seriously hoping to hopefully buy his brother out of seeking revenge.
So you’re in the wilderness and are about to face someone you have wronged so badly, what do you do? Well why not fight some random person? That seems pretty logical, right? It’s what Jacob does. When the man can’t prevail over Jacob, he strikes Jacob on the hip but Jacob would not let him go until the man blessed him. Perhaps Jacob thought, “If I can just get this one blessing, everything will be alright”.
The man responds and asks for Jacob’s name, but then renames him Israel which means, struggles with God.
If what this man was saying was true, it means that Jacob actually fought with God. Not only did Jacob fight with God, but Jacob walked out of his fight with God seeing His face. And so Jacob called the place Peniel because Peniel means face of God and that was what Jacob saw, and he lived.
Student Council this year has one central theme. Every time we make a decision in student council, we ask, “is this enriching the lives of students?” and if the answer is no, we decide to scrap it. So when it came to spirituality, the question Ryan had to ask when I brought this secondary theme to him was, “will struggling with God enrich the lives of students” and him and I agree that yes, struggling with God is good, but it is hard.
There are two ways I want you to struggle with God this year. The first is theologically. Here is what I mean. When I came to Ambrose five years ago, I was a seven day creationist. I was so much a seven day creationist that I even considered people who did not believe in a seven day creation were not real Christians. I pretty much had God figured out and I just needed to go to Bible college to polish things off. When I got to Ambrose, I encountered a certain teacher. A professor who is so amazing that he even got a floor named after him not just while he was still alive, but also while he was still a teacher. This man’s name is Gerry Hall (pause) and even people who once lived on that long abandoned floor are willing to yell out his name as you can tell.
The course that Gerry taught was called Bible and the Reader and it was eventually split up into two courses: Old Testament and New Testament. It is no exaggeration that I loved this class. It was an amazing experience. Well one day Gerry brought up the seven day creation account, and when he talked about it actually sounded as if he did not believe that the seven day account was accurate! But that makes no sense. Gerry Hall is an amazing person! He was passionate about the Bible and it showed in his teaching. How could he NOT believe in something so obviously true?
I did not know what to do, so I bugged him about this. Not just in class, either. I visited him at his office and even snagged him when he was walking back from Chapel one day. This man was more than willing to talk to me and he even was willing to listen to my views even though my views were that of a freshman who only knew what his home church taught him.
So I did my research paper on Genesis 1:1-2:4a and I got an A-. I put in a few solid nights into that paper and was close to not finishing it on time. I have never worked so hard on a paper as I did that one. I needed to know what I believed and I walked away from that paper with a good grade, but more importantly, I came away with an understanding of what it means to be willing to change your views when you are confronted with something different than you expected. I wrestled with God, and I came away seeing His face. And because I saw His face I understood that I knew very little about God and I also understood I would not just need a little polishing off, but I would need to be broken down over and over, and then built back up over and over.
Why do we fight so hard to try and be right all the time? We sometimes enter into debates and instead of trying to understand the other person, we end up just trying to be right. I am sometimes very guilty of this myself. I know the temptation to be right all the time. But it is not me I should be promoting, but Jesus and there are other people who know Jesus and a lot of them know Jesus a lot better than I do. When we wrestle with others over points of theology to be right, we are not wrestling with the right person, and we end up only seeing our own face. Our face is not who we are supposed to see.
This school is composed primarily on two denominations: The Christian and Missionary Alliance and the Church of the Nazarene. Right now I am in a class called Alliance History and Thought which I believe everyone at this school should take because it’s hard to leave that class without feeling inspired towards the things of God. Something interesting I found out about the Alliance was that it was formed around people who would have disagreed with each other in major ways. To give you an example: there was an Anglican who would have been quite familiar with the worshipful experience known as communion and also someone from the Salvation Army Church which does not celebrate communion. These people may have disagreed with each other, but they gathered around the most important person: Jesus Christ. It was out of love for Jesus that they formed that organization that would become a denomination.
So sometimes we struggle with God theologically, but there are times when we struggle with God in a much harder way. Instead of asking God, “do you do things this way?” we ask God, “why is this happening to me?” and it’s when we are asking God this, that our faith becomes so much more real and we find out what it means to follow God. Let me tell you about the end of my summer and the beginning of my school year.
I have a team to help me out with Ambrose spirituality. In a month I went from having four willing people on this team to two: myself and the Beggar’s Feast co-ordinator, Corey Garnett. At the end of the summer, I found out I would not really have enough money to take more than a couple courses, but I was also too poor to pay back student loans so I had to take at least 3 courses. Then there was an issue with how one ministry was going to be run, and then there was this huge problem between me and my best friends, and then in the first week of school I realized that my program was extremely messed up, and then my land-lord sent me an email saying that the rent cheques I sent were not signed and then I found out that the rent cheques I sent to my land lord which were signed were returned to me for no apparent reason, and then I found out that I was the victim of bank fraud, and finally, I stuck my foot in my mouth and offended one of my sisters in a huge way! During the leadership retreat a seminary student told our team that if our theme for the school year was struggling with God then we better be ready for struggle. I did not realize how right this guy would be.
I don’t know what God was trying to teach me through those struggles. Maybe patience, maybe more of a reliance in Him... I am not sure. But whatever it was, it needed to be taught and I needed to be ready and willing to struggle through this. I will walked out seeing the face of God and because I saw His face, and He was there. I just had to go along with God on this one and rely on His Spirit!
I recently fell in love with the band known as Metric. They have a song called Twilight Galaxy and in this the singer says, “go higher than high, go lower than deep, keep doing it wrong, keep singing along”. I like to insert some words there. I like to pretend she means, “If you go higher than high or if you go lower than deep, even if you keep doing it wrong, keep singing along.” Sometimes we just need to keep singing along even when the world is just beating the crap out of us!
Jacob wrestled with God, and then he had the guts to even ask for a blessing. When life is kicking you when you’re down, do you have what it takes to ask God for a blessing? I’ll be honest, sometimes I do have the guts but this past time I did not! Here’s the thing, though, Jesus always blesses. His blessing may not be something we understand, but it is always there for you. It does not matter how much life is giving you, Jesus will always be willing to bless if you are willing to go through the struggle with Him and even if you’re not! I used to think that God helps those who help themselves, but I heard Ray Aldred say something a bit different once: God helps us because we can’t help ourselves! He may not deliver us completely out of the time of trial, but He will always be there with us so that He can pick us back up once we have fallen down. He is always there when we are struggling!
Jacob wrestled with God and saw God’s face; are you willing to do the same? And so we come to the table, because that is where the brokenness of fallen humanity meets with the glory of the divine. We come to the table where Jesus is already sitting. He’s there and He’s willing to talk to you. He’s willing to go through this struggle with you because He loves you and wants you to know Him and understand Him better! At this table, God is waiting to wrestle with you. He’s waiting and He’s saying, “This is My body, it is broken for you. This is My blood, poured out for you. Come. Eat. Drink. Be with Me!” So if you’re ready, please come forward and receive communion. If you need it, there are two people here who would live to pray with you and I am here as well for the duration of communion. Come and partake! Jesus is waiting for you!