There And Back Again | Part 43 - Wrestling With God

There and Back Again | Part 43

In 49 B.C., Julius Caesar stood before the Rubicon River with a decision to make. Crossing it with his army meant crossing a legal and political line from which there was no turning back. History remembers the moment with the phrase, "Crossing the Rubicon," meaning "a point of no return."
Jacob had his own Rubicon, but Scripture calls it the Jabbok. He stood on one side with his past behind him and Esau waiting on the other side. There was no more running, no more scheming, and no more controlling the outcome.
We all have our Jabbok! Those moments when life brings us face-to-face with something we cannot control or undo...
- A diagnosis. A broken relationship. A difficult decision. A season of loss. A call to obedience.
When you reach your Jabbok, don't run from God or try to cross it in your own strength. Look to Jesus. Cling to Him. Trust Him with what is on the other side.
The God who met Jacob at the Jabbok still meets His people at their points of no return.

God asked Jacob, "What is your name?" — vs. 27
He wasn't asking because He didn't know. Jacob needed to acknowledge he had spent his life as the deceiver, the schemer, and the man who grasped for God's blessing in his own strength.
Sometimes God has to bring us face-to-face with who we have been before we can become who He is calling us to be. At the Jabbok, God gave Jacob a new name: Israel.
The name Israel comes from the Hebrew "Yisra'el" and is connected to the idea of striving or wrestling with God. God explains the name by saying, "you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” — vs. 28
Jacob walked away limping, but renamed. In the same way, the Gospel doesn't merely change what we do... it changes who we are. — 2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:9-10; | Peter 2:9
When Jesus meets us at our Jabbok, He doesn't leave us the way He found us. He calls us out of our old identity and into the new identity He has given us in Christ.

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