Genesis 32:24 Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak…”
This is a fantastic story. No where else in scripture does God engage another like this. Yet we shouldn’t be too surprised, because we have a wrestling match of wills on a daily basis. God is constantly reaching out to all of us. The more mature we get in the faith, the more we comply. But there is always some degree of resistance. Sometimes it’s five rounds in the UFC.
The topic is How to Introduce Yourself to God. All of us have brushes with Him constantly. We just need to learn His ways.
His is omnipresent, He loves us and the Bible is full of examples of how He works in peoples lives. He also works through our situations, good and bad. Romans 8:28 says “All things work together for the good to those who love God …” These things work for the good because we learn to let Him win the wrestling match. God can work any situation for the good for anyone, if they submit to Him.
It’s as if there are a thousand threads connected to us. God slowly draws us to Him. Sometimes through gentle nudgings and other times by stronger occurrences. The gentle times are usually the joys we experience. These could be hearing a cool song we haven’t heard in a while or tasting a savory meal. God created the food and our sense of taste. Thank Him. The stronger times are the more dramatic happenings. These cause us distress. C.S. Lewis said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures and shouts to us in our pain”. In these times we can turn to or turn away from God. Turning to Him may be a simple, “Help” or “I don’t get this”. Turning away may be ignoring Him and focusing on self. When we turn away, it’s as if we are breaking one of those thousand threads. It doesn’t make us independent of Him, but it’s a start. It takes a thousand rejections of Him. This takes decades. Just as God reached out to pharoah to a point, then stopped, so also, we reach an end. To return to the point, the happenings in life are our ‘meetings with God’. Use them to rely on Him, to talk to Him. He wants to engage us. He loves us and wants a friendship (father/child relationship). Get to know Him today.