Don’t Let Go Until God Blesses

“And He [the Angel of the Lord] said, ‘Let Me go, for the day breaks.’ But he [Jacob] said, ‘I will not let You go unless You bless me!’” GENESIS 32:26

 

PONDER THIS

Have you ever watched wrestlers? My eldest son was a wrestler. I have two grandsons who are wrestlers. Do you know what muscle is most important to a wrestler? His thighs. His legs. That’s where his strength is. If you take away his leg, he can’t begin to wrestle. The Angel of the Lord took away Jacob’s strength (v. 25). How was he going to wrestle anymore? And the Angel (the preincarnate Christ) said: “Let Me go.” But Jacob replied: “I will not let you go, not until you bless me.” Now if this was the Lord, why did He say: “Let Me go?” It was because the Lord didn’t want him to let go. You may be thinking, “That doesn’t make sense.” Oh, yes, it does.

When studying the Bible, you find out that many times God will act as if He wants to get away from us when He wants us to pursue Him with all our hearts. Do you remember on the Road to Emmaus when two disciples were going there after the resurrection, and Jesus appeared in His resurrected body? He walked with them, and their hearts were burning within them. Luke said Jesus made as if He would go further, and they said, “Oh no, don’t. Spend the night with us here,” and He did. (Read Luke 24:28-29.) In our moments of greatest uncertainty or difficulty, God calls us to pursue Him with all our hearts.

When was a time you felt like you were pursuing God?

How do times of struggle or difficulty lead you to pursue Him further?

PRACTICE THIS

Consider one thing you need to do to pursue God. Take action today.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

When God Swears by God

Since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.” (Hebrews 6:13–14)

There is one Person whose worth and honor and dignity and preciousness and greatness and beauty and reputation is more than all other values combined — ten thousand times more — namely, God himself. So, when God takes an oath, he swears by himself.

If he could have gone higher, he would have gone higher. Why? To give you strong encouragement in your hope. What God is saying in swearing by himself is that it is as impossible that he will break his word of promise to bless us as it is that he will ever despise himself.

God is the greatest value in the universe. There is nothing more valuable or wonderful than God. So, God swears by God. And in doing that he says, “I mean for you to have as much confidence in me as it is possible to have.” For if more were possible, Hebrews 6:13 says, he would have given us that. “Since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself.”

Now this is our God, the God who is reaching as high as he can reach to inspire your unshakable hope in him. So, flee to God for refuge. Turn from all the superficial, self-defeating hopes of the world, and put your hope in God. There is nothing and no one like God as a refuge and a rock of hope.

John Piper 

 

How Much God Wants to Bless You

“The Lord will again take delight in prospering you.” (Deuteronomy 30:9)

God does not bless us begrudgingly. There is a kind of eagerness about the beneficence of God. He does not wait for us to come to him. He seeks us out, because it is his pleasure to do us good. God is not waiting for us; he is pursuing us. That, in fact, is the literal translation of Psalm 23:6, “Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life.”

God loves to show mercy. Let me say it again. God loves to show mercy. He is not hesitant or indecisive or tentative in his desires to do good to his people. His anger must be released by a stiff safety lock, but his mercy has a hair trigger. That’s what he meant when he came down on Mount Sinai and said to Moses, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Exodus 34:6). It’s what he meant when he said in Jeremiah 9:24, “I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

God is never irritable or edgy. His anger never has a short fuse. Instead he is infinitely energetic with absolutely unbounded and unending enthusiasm for the fulfillment of his delights.

This is hard for us to comprehend, because we have to sleep every day just to cope, not to mention thrive. Our emotions go up and down. We get bored and discouraged one day and feel hopeful and excited another.

We are like little geysers that gurgle and sputter and pop erratically. But God is like a great Niagara Falls — you look at 186,000 tons of water crashing over the precipice every minute, and think: Surely this can’t keep going at this force year after year after year. Yet it does.

That’s the way God is about doing us good. He never grows weary of it. It never gets boring to him. The Niagara of his grace has no end.

John Piper