Rivaling God

Did you know that we attribute our spiritual heritage of honesty and nobility to a man who stole and deceived? I find it difficult to reconcile that contradiction within myself. Imagine what would happen if God approved of people who took from others what was not rightfully theirs. Or even worse, if God found people favorable for their ability to stay in conflict with him.

And yet there was a man that God favored that was exactly this. The patriarch Jacob. It never made sense to me before: here was a man that stole the birthright of someone else, and deceived his own father, and by extension, sabotaged the heritage of his twin brother.

It’s not until you’ve suffered sufficient disappointments in life, and with God, that you find yourself feeling like you are being framed as a cosmic whipping post. Things simply never seem to get better. Nothing seems to work out. The promises of God in life are still present, but their fulfillment is never properly in sight – and when it is, something comes along and destroys it all in one fell-swoop. Then one has to recover from the pain of that disappointment and start anew, while still somehow hoping that God is sovereign, and will somehow, one day, make that which He said will happen come true.

And in the midst of this process, one evaluates oneself, and wonders what exactly it is, that one might be doing wrong – only to find nothing of sufficient note that would obstruct God or oneself from receiving the fulfillment of such a promise. One thinks: “well what the heck is it then, that one should do about this situation, especially when one is powerless to change those circumstances that always obstructs the good from happening?”

And it is at this point that the opposite of Jacob: the man or woman who is always upright, unselfish, honest, self-sacrificing, that lives in us, that destroys our identity before God, and the heritage that Jacob left behind. Our good morality keeps us from doing the one thing Jacob was rewarded for: obtaining that which is priceless at all costs.

For none of our God given promises were designed apart from expanding His will on Earth, and his dominance through love inside us. The heritage of Isaac was given to the one who wanted it most, not the one who took it for granted. God doesn’t want His priceless plans in the hands of those who do not value them sufficiently. Maybe, some of our hands have become unworthy of them, and we disqualify ourselves unknowingly.

So situations come along and challenge you. And you MUST rival them, fight them, outlast them, until you are challenging God Himself, even if you are not aware that it is He that you have been wrestling against this whole time. And in the wrestling your hands become increasingly worthy of holding that which He had for you, or that which He has been desperately looking for someone to trust with. We are not God. We are not to live in rebellion, but we are absolutely to hold Him accountable, feel His strength in a combative embrace, to measure ourselves against, to increasingly become people of consequence to Him, to prove how much we are willing to suffer to obtain that which comes forth from Him – to become champions in our own right. But we can’t do it without consuming (godly) ambition – even with a willingness to supplant those who have willingly or ignorantly discarded the value of that which God has given them.

There is no place for sonship or daughtership here. Not in this context. We wrestle as athletes, or conquerors. There is no place for self-pity, for self-righteousness; no place for sorrowful regret. He is our opponent. We must wrestle with Him as someone worthy of a fight. Leave your piety at home! Be vicious, aggressive, and borderline destructive, because wrestling with God is not a fair conflict! Do not let Him go until He coughs up that which He has promised! Make no mistake – you will bear scars from it – the one’s that properly present where your strength was spent: wrestling with your creator, rather than fulfilling God’s promise by your own means.  

… unless you want to be the ass of your circumstances, and the wrestling match you refuse to acknowledge you are in. At least some people will praise you for a type of morality that makes you weak; both to the eyes of your heart, and the eyes of God.