An Argument Worth Losing

As followers of Jesus Christ, we live in a state of tension between what actually is and what is possible. We know that in Jesus the power of death, destruction and evil has been rendered impotent and replaced with life. At the same time we see and feel darkness at work around us all the time. We know God empowers us to be light and bring light to the darkness, but in our humanness, we often fear the worst-case scenario. It is the tension between what God says can be and what we fear will be. Jacob knew this tension well.

God told Jacob to return home, and so Jacob set out toward home. However, he faced a big problem. Years earlier, he tricked his dying father into giving him the blessing that his Father intended to give Esau, his older brother, and then fled for his life to keep Esau from killing him.  And now, both fearfully and faithfully, Jacob was on his way home for what would include an inevitable reunion with Esau.

Just before coming face-to-face with Esau, he spent a night alone wrestling with a “man.” Even though this “man” wanted to be released from the contest, Jacob would not give up the struggle. As the story develops we learn he was wrestling with God and would not give up until he had his blessing.  It was at this point Jacob receive a new name that his descendants carry to this day, Israel.

So what was the wrestling about? Jacob was wrestling with what he thought was probable and what God had promised, what he saw from a human assessment and what God said would be. Jacob prays, “I am afraid…, but you have said.”

Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children. But you have said, "I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.” (Genesis 32:11–12, NIV84)

“I am afraid, but you have said,” is the argument we all have with ourselves as we follow God.  Details aside, God calls us each into an expansive life filled with love and power that changes the world. From our human perspective we have our reasons for being fearful. We’re afraid of we’ll fail, afraid we’re look silly, afraid we’re wrong, afraid of what might happen to us, etc. The other side of the equation is what God has said.

Living into what God has said always requires us to win the argument with ourselves between what God has promised and what we fear. When we win that argument and live into being the people God created us to be, it’s called faith. Faith is not the absence of fear. Faith is acting according to what God promises instead of what I fear. Everyone who has ever sought to make a godly difference in their own lives and in the lives of others continually engages in that argument. It's an argument we can't avoid, but it's an argument worth losing!

(See Genesis 32)