He Blessed Him There

Scripture:  Genesis 32:29 - Then Jacob asked, saying, “Tell me Your name, I pray.” And He said, “Why is it that you ask about My name?” And He blessed him there.

As we anticipate a new day and even a new year it behooves us at times to encourage ourselves by reflecting on the past times and places that our God has blessed us.  The blessings of God are not always material, in fact, the true blessings of God are always designed to add to us spiritually.  They build our faith while drawing us closer to God in our walk with Him.
   
Sometimes the most unpleasant places and circumstances to us are often the places where the blessings are most impactful to us.  We want His blessings upon us, but we want them on our easy terms without much effort in seeking Him.  It very well may be that the challenging times to our faith are the times we are most open to God having His way in our lives.  Like Jacob we really don’t know what blessings we need, but we hold on and let the LORD do the blessing like He wants to in our lives.  Also, just like Jacob we are most open to be desirous of God’s hand of blessing when we have gotten ourselves in situations that only He can get us out.

Let us stop for a moment and reflect and capture a time in the last year when God’s moving in our lives changed us, grew us, and even provoked us to draw as near as we could in fellowship with Him.  A time when He added something to you that changed you so profoundly that it could be likened to leaving your Jacob ways of life and coming into the newness of being Israel for God.

For Jacob, like us, this place of blessing for him was a place of trial as to whether he would do the right thing or succumb to the fear of men over the right fear of the LORD.  In these times the blessing is often on the other side of wrestling with God through our hesitation, supplication and pleading before we come to complete submission to let the Jacob in us go so that we can embrace God’s blessing of newness in our lives.  

Israel was not only the name of newness, but it was also the name that revealed an awareness and brokenness that was essential before he could live in the freedom of God’s blessing upon him.  The wrestling match was not only a struggle with submission, but it became a need to hold on in dependence upon the LORD.  “I will not let You go until You bless me”, became the expression that he needed the blessing.  It is the revelation of our weakness and dependence that reveals our readiness to receive the blessing of God’s will for our lives.

The LORD is so patient with us and knows exactly what it takes to prepare us for what He wants to add to our lives, but because we tend to take and forget He does for us what He did for Israel.  He touched his hip and gave him a limp as a reminder that He was blessed and should live with a new awareness of who he is and who he belongs to.  He gave him a limp so that he would walk right.  Never again as Jacob, but as Israel.  Sometimes the scars that we receive in our struggle are left visibly upon us to serve as a reminder between us and God that He met us and blessed us in our hour of need.

Prayer:  Thank You Father for the many ways You have shown Yourself in my life when I did not deserve it.  I was Jacob in some form of sin or resistance to doing the right thing, and You met me and made me to know that it must be Your will and not mine.  I praise You for Your presence that checks me, in Jesus name, amen.

(by Pastor Wayne Cockrell)