The Crippling Touch of God
April 7th, 2006 | by Ed |“Jacob was left alone…” (Gen. 32:24).
There are times when, like Jacob, you are “left alone” to wrestle with God–in the darkness, it’s just you and God.
Jacob had never faced a situation before that he could not talk his way out of, or figure a way out of. But he had come to the end of his resources and ingenuity. “Jacob was left alone…”
Like Jacob, many times we think we’re wrestling with people (”a man wrestled with him”), but we’re really wrestling with God (”I saw God face to face,” v. 30). An unbroken spirit will be manifest most clearly in our relationships with people, but our real struggle is with God.
In our wrestling with God, He will never “overpower” us, i.e. overrule our will, but he will break our natural strength so that we cry out to Him in our need. We go from wrestling with God in our independence, to hanging on to God as our only hope of blessing (v. 26).
Jacob walked with a strut; Israel walked with a limp.
“Overcoming” (v. 28) results from coming face to face with God, being broken of our natural strength (the hip joint is the strongest point in the human body), and walking with a limp after encountering God.
The true mark of someone who has wrestled with God and “overcome” is a limp that comes from the crippling touch of God. May God “bless” all of us with His touch.