I made the critical error of asking God to reveal the depth
of His love for me. Never do this if you want to maintain control over your
perceived identity.
Love is always war- it
rages against your misconceptions and brings your counterfeit self to its
knees.
But He is prepared
for us to hate Him in certain arenas on the long journey to loving Him. He
knows that His hope poses a threat to the captive mind.
I
am here to talk about how
sometimes
holding onto God hurts,
but why we should do it anyways.
Why fight for a blessing that involves pain? Why trust in
something that requires our submission to weakness?
Who in the world wants to be blessed in such a violent way,
where the awakening hurts?
This week I am limping along with my brother Jacob through
Genesis 32. We are searching for healing. And we need help to claim
our authentic names.
I have begun to lift up this prayer:
God, help me to understand how much You love me.
And after I asked for this blessing, not much later I
started limping.
Why? He is touching the place deep inside that is curled
tight and hard, attached firmly to a false sense of complete control. He shows
me how much He loves me by touching the strained places. He points right at the
weakness and then something snaps- the
sudden severing of self from sufficiency.
This is the inopportune ripping away of denial and
suppression.
Also, I might be limping because I literally pulled a tendon in my hip this week. That, too, might
explain it.
The timing of my very real injury in conjunction with my
writing is funny, but it also really hurts, so I will smile but I will not
laugh.
And I don’t want to sit here and heal, I want to get up and
do all. the. things. that need to be
done. I want to control my environment, make things perfect, and execute my
self-worth through production. I am what I do- am I not? Contentment is buried far
beneath the laundry list of success. My counterfeit self finds validation in production
and performance - this is the essence of control.
Human
validation has become
the
fly in the ointment
of
all our hopes and dreams.
God, we have an agenda already. Can’t you just bless us quickly
while we run?
This is the kind of limp where you think, “Yeah I am broken,
but not THAT broken. Not me. I can still limp and keep up with the same pace as
always. I can heal on the go.”
We rage against rest.
We pull back from healing. Hope is an offensive
four letter word.
My brother Jacob and I are learning that no person on this
earth could ever fix what has been broken- human validation will always fall
short. If you need it to succeed, you are destined to fail.
Accepting our limp requires sitting still in the presence of
God, admitting weakness, asking for help, navigating emotions, and surrendering
our agenda. This is best learned the hard way.
But because we are stubborn and resist change, we will put
up a good fight first. He will have to drag us kicking and screaming out of the
hard place we are determined to serve.
The truth is, only God knows the true identity of our most
authentic self- we might think we know, but we really don’t.
Not
until we start to wrestle
in
the dark of night with our trust issues
does
the real pain begin.
God, reveal to us the depth of Your love.
Last week I followed Jacob through major relational
conflict- he stole his brother’s birthright and inheritance and then ran for
his life. He grabbed his blessing, flashed the peace sign and skipped town for
good. He left his community behind.
Time passed- twenty years, to be exact, and then he gets the
call that everyone dreads: it’s time to have that hard conversation- it’s time to
face the past, there is no getting around it this time. Things are going to
get heated and complicated.
So we straighten our spine, lift our head and enter the
arena.
We are prepared to
fight our brother. We are not prepared for what happens next.
Angels gather around to watch the fight.
32 [a]As Jacob started on his way again, angels of God
came to meet him. 2 When Jacob saw them, he exclaimed, “This is God’s camp!”
Right away we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses who
cheer for our victory. We must never forget this. It renews our hope to know that
we are all supported by angelic forces. This revelation will serve to prepare
us for the dark and lonely place, where the only companionship we will have is
our fearful thoughts and angel guides.
But there is still a great deal of doubt and fear. Oh so
much anxiety.
So we compose all the reasons that justify and explain our
position, trying to make up for a lifetime of offense with a persuasive
abundance of carefully crafted words:
3 Then Jacob sent messengers ahead to his brother, Esau, who
was living in the region of Seir in the land of Edom. 4 He told them, “Give this message to my master Esau: ‘Humble
greetings from your servant Jacob. Until now I have been living with Uncle
Laban, 5 and now I own cattle,
donkeys, flocks of sheep and goats, and many servants, both men and women. I have sent these messengers to inform my
lord of my coming, hoping that you will be friendly to me.’”
Fear is looming on the horizon- fear of the unknown, the
dark possibility of a fresh wave of accusation and offense. Even after so much
time has passed, anxiety is still firmly attached to memory. The past is
haunted with grief and regret. It threatens to overwhelm us now.
6 After delivering the message, the messengers returned to
Jacob and reported, “We met your brother, Esau, and he is already on his way to
meet you—with an army of 400 men!” 7 Jacob was terrified at the news.
Persuasive writing cannot save us here. The fear is that all the strife has accomplished nothing at all,
and an abundance of reckoning is about to be unleashed upon our finest hopes
and dreams.
What exactly are we fighting for here? The question looms.
We realize that this epic battle is going to require
a massive surrender of volition, and we will need to hold on tight
to Him through the pain. Anxiety is billowing; the kind that rolls in slowly
during the night and completely shrouds the future in mystery.
11 O Lord,
please rescue me from the hand of my brother, Esau. I am afraid that he is coming to attack me, along with my wives and
children.
We grapple with all the things that we want to understand,
so that we can secure our victory,
guaranteed.
“I am afraid”
We are afraid of facing our authentic identity. We shield
the places within us that are wounded and weak, preparing for the worst.
12 But you promised me, ‘I will
surely treat you kindly, and I will multiply your descendants until they become
as numerous as the sands along the seashore—too many to count.’”
We remind God he owes us, because of what we have lost. “You
promised me, God!” We rage at the sky. We shake our fist.
But I have learned the hard way to remember this when I demand
deliverance:
The
ones I feel opposed to
are
not really my enemies at all-
they
are just wounded prisoners of war.
The One I will wrestle with is much bigger and more
powerful, and He is on His way.
Keep this in mind the next time you find yourself pushing
hard against the limits of human brokenness:
Jacob thought, “I will try to appease him by sending gifts ahead
of me. When I see him in person, perhaps he will be friendly to me.” 21 So
the gifts were sent on ahead, while Jacob
himself spent that night in the camp.
We instinctually know we will have to face this fight alone,
away from all the distractions, so we can wrestle unhindered with our doubts
about our true identity.
We must meet our opponent in the midst of solitude and
silence, where we stand alone in the lonely place, separate from everything we had planned.
22 During
the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two servant wives, and his
eleven sons and crossed the Jabbok River with them.23 After taking them to the
other side, he sent over all his
possessions.
It is the dark of night and we stand alone, completely
exposed. We cannot control this reckoning. The creation of our hands has now
come to recreate us.
And then our Opponent enters the ring. And it’s not the
enemy we expected.
We stand before our Maker.
He loves us too much to allow us into the arena with anyone
less than Himself. And this is not what
we had planned.
24 This left Jacob all alone in the
camp, and a man came and wrestled with him until the dawn began to break.
Jesus.
What are You doing
here? I came to fight my enemy. Where is the brother who hates me?
Jesus??
I brought all my best defenses- anger, wrath, vengeance,
defense, excuse, a persuasive abundance of written words.
None of that will help me now.
God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.
We
have forgotten that
Love
is war.
He has come to rage against my pride. Because it is the heights of arrogance that reveal
the depths of depravity.
And I stand before God and I resist His name for me with all
I have. I don’t want to be rescued from myself, I want to be vindicated from my
hurts.
I refuse to be loved.
But His plans are imminent and divine, and they loom even
larger than my regret.
25 When the
man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob’s hip and wrenched it
out of its socket.
He points right at the anger and obsession, and with a
single touch the realization rocks our world, because He is dead right.
Oh my God, it’s
true.
I
am my own greatest enemy.
Those wounded prisoners of war who I was prepared to rage
against, they do not belong in this
arena. All the forces of my defensive anger are deflated by a single touch.
We are abruptly undone, pulled away without warning from our
assumptions about ourselves and our world.
Jacob and I thought we knew our authentic self, until
reality came and wrenched our self-perception completely out of alignment.
“Don’t fix my
identity it if it isn’t broken” has always been the subliminal mantra of
certainty. But counterfeit confidence is
the enemy of blessing.
There are wounds in our mind that we want Him to stay the
hell away from. But to be healed, this obsession and pride must be broken.
God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.
Oh, but not like this.
Jesus!
God, the reckoning hurts like hell. There is a painful breaking
of human arrogance in the divine revelation of God’s love.
He
asks us to let go of the weapons
we
think we need for victory.
He is going to reveal the depth of His love by commanding
our brave trust in His insensible intervention. And this is madness. But what
exactly are we fighting for?
26 Then the
man said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking!”
The morning comes to light the dark inside of us.
This is the triumph of the Son.
The dawn of our realization is approaching. We are beginning
to rouse from our offended slumber, and when numb things awaken they always
flood with pain before they fully come to life.
If He asks you to let
go of something in the dark of night, something you were positively certain you needed to win the fight, do you
trust Him to still bless you when you awaken with the sun?
But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
When we ask for blessing, what we are really asking for is
to be authentically loved. Jacob won’t release his grip on the physical nature
of God, because he isn’t convinced of the Spiritual presence.
We still don’t trust that He will guide us if we let go. We
were so certain of a particular type of victory- we had the outcome determined
on our own terms, before He interrupted.
How
can we win the battle against offense
if
we fight against the people who offended us?
God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.
The breaking of connection between our identity and our
grief will mean loosening our attachment to the regret of the past. The place
within you that you withhold from Him, that is the place of pain that needs to
be touched. And it will hurt like hell,
because your authentic self is wounded.
He sees this and steps into the arena to save us from
ourselves.
This is what it feels like to fight for a breakthrough- before facing your future you must be
broken and blessed in the weak place.
It is time for a renaming of who we are, a declaration of
our true identity.
What you call yourself is many names: hurt, broken, wounded,
ruined, desperate, angry, offended, wronged, afraid. These
are not the names He calls you. Can you cast down these crowns of
pride and claim the humble title of beloved?
God will ask us who we
are now that our weapons of defense have been broken and our false identity has
been found out.
27 “What is
your name?” the man asked.
Now our Opponent has pulled out the ultimate weapon, one
which ends the match in a single blow: a mirror. A question.
Who
are we becoming in this fight?
We stare ourselves in the reflection and realize that our persuasive
abundance of defenses have always been destined to become our undoing. We are
our own greatest enemy.
Jesus did not enter
this arena to replace our offender, He entered the arena to replace our pride.
God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.
The fight we expected is not the one we are in. To spar with your counterfeit self is to wrestle with the demons of your
past, present and future, all at once. So Jesus stepped in to take
their place.
What is our true name, anyhow? What are we becoming in this
fight?
We don’t know anymore.
He replied, “Jacob.”
As we stare into this mirror, standing here in the arena
with our Creator, breathing heavy and wiping sweat from our brow, straining and
striving against the healing, our reflection begins to look like that of a total
stranger.
What is my authentic self?
Why do we need to go to counselors and life-coaches and
therapists and pastors and friends and churches to understand the workings of
our own inner mind? Why do we need to write angry blogs, make broken
resignations, and pour out a persuasive abundance of painful words?
It has come to blows because I am too scared to admit- I
don’t understand His love for me. Not at all.
I have underestimated everything.
We want to choose our own identity- but our present dreams
are too small to give us the dignity we deserve as eternal spiritual beings. Now
that we are broken, here in the arena with our wounded pride, He wants us to
receive our authentic name.
It’s time to surrender to His blessing. It’s
time for a new identity.
28 “Your
name will no longer be Jacob,” the man told him. “From now on you will be
called Israel,[c] because you have
fought with God and with men and have won.”
We did not realize we were walking into this fight to
discover who we truly are in Him. We did not know we would receive a new destiny.
We did not ask for this blessing, but here it is.
Savor this breakthrough moment- it is the beginning of a
transformation that will continue on for all eternity.
But don’t get too hasty- our character is not developed here, only our curiosity. We realize
we were wrong about God all along, just as wrong as we were about ourselves. There
is much training to be done for the fight still to come.
For with the rising of the Son we will face those who we
intended to spar with on this night, and we will be asked to address them by
their own blessed names.
The battle will never be the same after this.
God, who are You, to know me better than I know myself? Who are You to wrench away my precious pride?
29 “Please
tell me your name,” Jacob said.
This unexpected opponent, He is going to exit the arena for
now, but our questions have only just begun.
We are afraid for Him to go, now that we are leaning on Him
for support from this pain.
Do we trust Him to bless us in this way, through a breaking
and renaming of our entire being? If so, don’t
let go when strained things inside begin to break. Don’t’ fight against hope
when it hurts. Keep surrendering.
Love wrenches away our masks when it sheds light in the dark
places. When we hold onto God in the fight, we give Him permission to authenticate
our brokenness.
And
this redemption will feel like wrath,
because
of our counterfeit perspective.
God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.
He points at the hard place and it breaks suddenly away.
This will leave a scar- and a limp.
And then His presence recedes so that we can rest. He
will be hidden in plain sight all around us while we slowly heal.
He will not overwhelm us with too much authenticity at one
time. He blesses our doubts and honors our needs. He knows when to walk away
from the fight. We cannot self-regulate
our passion.
More is to come, but He does not want us to strive any more
today. It is time to rest from the
struggle.
It is time to begin to heal.
He will answer the hard questions another time.
“Why do you want to know my name?” the man replied. Then he
blessed Jacob there.
Did Jacob let go, or did God? Was it mutual?
The blessing came in the instant between the wounding and
the healing, that timeless pause between defeat and victory, that eternal moment
between letting go and falling.
And when He releases us, we feel like time stands still. It’s
just the dark and the quiet and the empty hard place.
But we have an awareness now- this pain is a signature, a
promise, full of authenticity.
We
have seen a glimpse of our divine identity- we hold onto that blessing while we
limp away.
Jacob and I, we search our enlightened thoughts for a
Name to put to the new desire that is rising in our heart.
The pain of blessing radiates into our entire future. Now we have the power to give the fight
inside of us a new trajectory.
30 Jacob
named the place Peniel (which means “face of God”), for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life
has been spared.”
We thought we would not survive the surrender.
But we tasted holy victory,
the kind that comes after waving a white flag in the wind. And now we have
seen God, struggled with Him, glimpsed the futility of our counterfeit person and
been strangely blessed.
And I believe that one
day when we are least expecting it, long after we have surrendered in gratitude
and relinquished all control, the authenticity of our deep healing will reveal
itself in an instant.
We will discover we have the power to limp with compassion
towards those prisoners of war who we had once planned to rage against.
This fight was not what we had planned, but it was greater
than we could have imagined. This is the
emergence of the authentic self.
Yes, the knowing leaves a scar. But now we don’t have to blame broken humanity for our suffering- rather,
we can attach Divine blessing to it.
What
once stood as a symbol of defeat
is
now a war medal of victory.
He gives his beloved a limp that will be seen around the
world, with a story that will go down into history as the glorious revelation
of an eternal inheritance.
Dear readers, He has wrestled with me this week, and I have
resisted Him. I have the limp to prove it. I can accept my weakness or curse
it, but it’s a part of my story.
This is my story.
When God touched the strained and stubborn place, it sent
off a chain reaction that has the potential to bless the entire world, one
renaming at a time.
God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.
Never ask for Divine blessing if you want to maintain
control over your perceived identity. Love is always war- it rages against your
misconceptions and brings your counterfeit self to its knees.
What is my fully authentic self?
I don’t exactly know
yet.
I have no idea what I’m doing. None.
But one thing I do know for certain- He blesses my
questions. He prepares me for healing. And He renames my entire being.
He
gives my passion
a
new trajectory.
I have come here today
to talk about how sometimes holding onto God hurts, and why we should do it
anyways. The greatest blessings involve pain. This means we must trust in Someone
that blesses our submission to weakness.
But who in the world wants to be blessed in such a
crazy-backwards way, where the awakening hurts?
Once I am done writing this, I will limp forward from the
hard place with mysterious hope in my heart.
The kind of hope that hurts inside as a reminder of where
the healing has begun.
And I will come forth into my authentic self, one limping step
at a time.
And there, at the foot of the cross where His wounds bless
my soul, I will kneel and receive the bread and the cup alongside my fellow
prisoners of war.
We will worship the One who has met us in the arena and
brought us to our knees in victory.
And one fight at a time we will rise together above our
wounds and we will inherit our true identities in the blessed Presence of our
Creator.
Our victory is certain, because all are blessed when Love is
war.
This
is the proud moment
when
our brave surrender
becomes the catalyst
for our victory.
Yes, I am talking about you.
Dear tiny tribe of readers.
May all beings be peaceful and happy, even when it hurts. Amen
and amen.
~*~
With
deepest gratitude
for
my tiny tribe of readers-
Rebecca
