After an intense counseling session, I uncovered some negative thoughts and beliefs I had about myself. My thoughts and feelings bounced around until I wrote them down in my journal and compared them to what God said about me in the Bible. The process of identifying and eliminating my untrue beliefs with God was a wrestling match in my mind.
When I placed God’s truth as the compass for all my beliefs, he revealed and eliminated the lies and agreements I believed to cope or survive in the past. As I held on to God, Jesus immersed me in his perfect love and healed my hidden wounds. Holding on to God created a space where he could empower, strengthen, and protect me. However, getting to a place of healing was a struggle.
Follow God’s Guides
During my wrestling match, I remembered the story of Jacob wrestling with God.
That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel (God-Wrestler) because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” (Gen. 32:22-28, NIV)
It’s so comforting to read stories in the Bible of ordinary people who wrestle with challenges. Jacob was unsure of his future or his family’s when he sent them across the stream. Scripture doesn’t tell us if he was seeking God for answers. But from the story, we learn that God was willing to meet Jacob in his uncertainty, frustration, and doubts. God was willing to be in the middle of his struggles.
Some Struggles are Good and Necessary to Grow
Every baby struggles in the womb before they are born. We struggle with learning to walk, what’s safe or dangerous, and discerning lies from the truth. We all struggle to know the differences between healthy, unhealthy, or toxic abusive relationships. We also struggle to understand what faith in God is about and how to walk with Jesus. All our struggles are necessary and good for us to learn, mature, and make healthier choices.
Unfortunately, many believers want an easy, comfortable, struggle-free life. They take the easy road, even if it means living in sin and disobedience. Many believers think that their salvation should make their life with fewer challenges. They don’t want to struggle. However, none of us would have learned to walk or not touch a hot stove without struggles.
In this broken world in our imperfect human condition, our circumstances will not change until we step into heaven and live with Jesus forever. While we are here, Jesus commands us and shows us how to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength to overcome our struggles. He also shows us how to love others as we love ourselves equally and in partnership.
Salvation is Our New Birth into Faith
Anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life emerges! Look at it! (2 Cor. 5:17, MSG)
Our new life is our consecrated spirit through Christ. However, new disciples of Christ must learn that they are responsible for learning how to study God’s word to feed their minds, hearts, and spirits. They must work with Jesus to know God, learn to obey God, and share Christ’s message of hope and salvation.
Our Struggles and How to Overcome
Our salvation doesn’t instantly wipe away all painful experiences, memories, unhealthy or toxic mindsets, or learned behaviors. To identify and be healed of these things in our lives, we must work with Jesus every day, which is a good struggle. Our faith in God is a combination of belief, working with Jesus every day, and trusting God’s truth and promises.
Living as a disciple of Christ requires daily participation. We must let Jesus teach us about his healthy love, boundaries, respect, and equality. Jesus will transform our lives to look like his the more we know and obey his ways, regardless of our struggles.
The process of living in our faith will bring times of inner struggles, tests, and trials. Jesus told his disciples this truth.
“And everything I’ve taught you is so that the peace which is in me will be in you and will give you great confidence as you rest in me. For in this unbelieving world you will experience trouble and sorrows, but you must be courageous, for I have conquered the world!” (John 16:33, TPT)
Jesus was fully man, which means he experienced the same inner struggles and challenges we will face. Jesus faced the typical struggles of our human condition. But he was tortured and crucified for our sins to show us how much he loved us. If Jesus had to struggle, why do believers think they are exempt from this process?
Struggling is good when you discover, learn, or God is refining parts of you that need strengthened, refined, and pruned. We can struggle with unexpected circumstances or realities of circumstances beyond our control. The point of our struggles is to lead us into the arms of our Saviour, Jesus.
God’s Plan in the Middle of Our Good Struggles
Our Creator and loving Father wants us to thrive in his unconditional love as we work with Jesus to become more like him. A loving father teaches their children right from wrong. But He allows them to make their own choices to learn on their own. When we hold on to God in the middle of our struggles and don’t let go, God will be in the middle of our struggle, just like he was with Jacob!
God has given us all we need to live a godly life. God uses Peter, the best friend of Jesus, to provide us with his guidance and prayer. Proclaim these truths and hold onto God in all your struggles!
May God give you more and more grace and peace as you grow in your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord.
By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.
In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness,and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.
The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:2-8, NLT)
