Tonight I want to talk to you about how to obtain the life that God wants you to have.
Tonight I want to talk to you about two individuals that had something in common.
These two men lived on this earth hundreds of years apart from one another yet they met each other one night. While on earth they had many differences, but they had one non denying similarity, they were men of prayer.
Genesis 32:22-31 NKJV
22 And he arose that night and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven sons, and crossed over the ford of Jabbok. 23 He took them, sent them over the brook, and sent over what he had. 24 Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. 25 Now when He saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. 26 And He said, “Let Me go, for the day breaks.”
But he said, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!”
27 So He said to him, “What is your name?”
He said, “Jacob.”
28 And He said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.”
29 Then Jacob asked, saying, “Tell me Your name, I pray.”
And He said, “Why is it that you ask about My name?” And He blessed him there.
30 So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: “For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” 31 Just as he crossed over Penuel the sun rose on him, and he limped on his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the children of Israel do not eat the muscle that shrank, which is on the hip socket, because He touched the socket of Jacob’s hip in the muscle that shrank.
I. Before Jacob entered the land of Promise he first had to wrestle with God
In our lives it as at the moment when God is fixing to bless us that he sometimes chooses to wrestle with us. We must choose to hold on and as Jacob did and wait for the blessing!
That night a “Man” whom Jacob assumed to be an angel or theophany (a preincarnate appearance of God in human form, v. 30) wrestled with him. Who is this Man? We’re not sure, some suggest it was an angel others suggest that it was Christ himself, the redeemer. I believe it was indeed Christ himself, for it says that he saw God face to face. The main point to understand is that he was divine. In the struggle the Man touched the back of Jacob’s thigh. Some commentators feel the ball and socket there were thrown out of joint. Others say that a ligament (sinew, or tendon) was torn. Either way, Jacob was left with a permanent limp.
Sometimes a wound is a very special act of God’s grace. See wounds and scars help us to remember what exactly we had to go through. Jacob struggled to hold onto the man, for after suffering the wound he must have realized how much more powerful this Visitor was than he himself, and he wanted His blessing.
How often we need to be wounded for the same reason! It’s easy for us to trust our own skills and abilities. But sometimes a wound (physically, or in a broken relationship, or in the failure of a much-loved plan) will remind us to cling to God again, totally dependent on Him for blessing. How good it is that God doesn’t hold back from hurting us—for our own good.
See before God would bless Jacob he asked him a question. He asked him “what is your name?” See back then names had meaning to them. In essence your name told everyone what kind of person you were. Jacob meant deceiver. For that’s exactly what he was. So in order for him to tell this man who he was he at the same time had to confess his life. After he told who he was when God blessed him.
In this experience Jacob received a new name: Israel, “he who strives with God.” Jacob had struggled with God, refusing to give up until God blessed him. That name may well represent the transformation of character that had begun in Jacob. But now the wound remained, a constant reminder of Jacob’s need for God.
A Jacob wholly dependent on God can become an Israel. What can we become if we let each wound draw us closer to the Lord and make us more dependent on Him? What is impossible for us to achieve if God is behind us, if we submit ourselves to God. But we have to submit ourselves to him. I can do ALL things, through Christ who strengthens me! But I have to have faith in Him, every aspect of my life has to be dependent upon him. Every breath I take, every move I make, every thought I have has to be about Him.
We must hold on to God for the blessing. It is at our weakest moment that God chooses to bless us. When we are injured and just barely holding on through determination is when we receive the blessing. Had Jacob not have held on the blessing would not have come. We have to go through the valley in order to reach the mountain top!
II. What was so special about Jacob? Why would God choose to bless Jacob?
Because Jacob was a Man of Prayer! He was with God in spirit!
We must Pray to receive God’s blessing!
Jacob was a man of prayer; he sought God in everything he did. Look at his prayer.
Jacobs Prayer
Genesis 32:9-12
9 Then Jacob prayed, “O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, O LORD, who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,’ 10 I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two groups. 11 Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children. 12 But you have said, ‘I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.’”
1. Jacob matured. He obeyed God’s command (v. 9). He acknowledges his own unworthiness (v. 10). He admits his fears, to himself and to God (v. 11). He shows concern for others (v. 11). And Jacob’s final thought is one of confidence, based on God’s commitment to him (v. 12). If we deal with our fears as Jacob did with his, we too will overcome.
2. Fear is not having Faith in what GOD has called you to do. Jacob trusted in God and sought God through prayer and his Faith was strengthened.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones once wrote: “Prayer is beyond any question the highest activity of the human soul. Man is at his greatest and highest when upon his knees he comes face to face with God”
How true this is…. I am at my closet and highest point when I bow down before my God. My spirit is lifted to the VERY PRESENCE OF GOD. That thought is almost inconceivable. That I, a worthless sinner, can be in the very presence of the Almighty God, because my righteousness, the very best I could do, is as worthless rags. When we start putting our hearts above our heads, is when things start happening. When we take the time to give God praise and bow down before Him, is when He starts doing stuff for us.
See at the top of the ladder stood the Lord himself, who confirmed to Jacob the promise previously given to Abraham (12:2–3, 7), and repeated to Isaac (26:3–5). In the context it seems clear that the ladder with the ascending and descending angels depicts God reaching out to Jacob and making a way for Jacob to have a relationship with him. The communion that was to exist between God and Jacob is symbolized in the ladder and the movement of the angels.
Commentator J. Oswald Sanders adds this lofty view of prayer:
No spiritual exercise is such a blending of complexity and simplicity. It is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try, yet the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high. It is as appropriate to the aged philosopher as to the little child. It is the ejaculation of a moment and the attitude of a lifetime. It is the expression of the rest of faith and of the fight of faith. It is an agony and an ecstasy. It is submissive and yet importunate. In the one moment it lays hold of God and binds the devil. It can be focused on a single objective and it can roam the world. It can be abject confession and rapt adoration. It invests puny man with a sort of omnipotence.
A. Prayer is the single greatest act of obedience. It was said of Christ that he would rise early of a morning and pray, and late of the evening he was found in the mountains in prayer with God. He prayed so that he could stay in the environment from which He came from. He stayed in the spirit. He united his earthly body with the spiritual presence of God his Father. He stayed in spiritual contact with His Father so that he would continually stay in his will and do what he was sent here to do.
See at the top of the ladder stood the Lord himself, who confirmed to Jacob the promise previously given to Abraham (12:2–3, 7), and repeated to Isaac (26:3–5). In the context it seems clear that the ladder with the ascending and descending angels depicts God reaching out to Jacob and making a way for Jacob to have a relationship with him. The communion that was to exist between God and Jacob is symbolized in the ladder and the movement of the angels.
B. Look back at the night before the crucifixion; what was Christ doing and what did he command his disciple to do? Pray! He prayed so that God’s will would be done. He prayed for the strength and the wisdom to bear what was fixing to be placed upon him, the sins of the entire world, from beginning to end, were to be placed on his shoulders. The sins of every man that will ever walk on this earth, sins that hadn’t even taken place he took care of. He made a way so that you and I had an exit route. We had an advocate in heaven long before we were born.
C. Think about that, Christ died for sins you hadn’t even committed. But that when you do commit them you’re forgiven. That is almost incomprehensible. But Glory be to God that that is the case, that any sin I commit I am forgiven.
By praying we submit ourselves to God. We must continuously be in prayer; every moment of our lives should be in prayer and communication with our Father. You may ask how is this achievable, How can I pray to God all day and night? Is that even feasible? Yes! But prayer is not simply babbling on and on repeating words and nonsense. Prayer is a state of mind, prayer is silence, prayer is letting God talk to you.
So many people get caught up in the action of prayer that the very reason for prayer is lost. We pray as we would talk to a beloved friend. It is a conversation! We don’t do all the talking! We let him talk to us. You’ve heard the saying: We have one mouth but two ears, we should listen twice as much as we speak. But we should never forget to be respectful. Remember who you are talking to! You are talking to the God of the Universe. Think about this, he holds the entire Universe in his hand! But yet he’s personable enough that He can communicate with something as little as us! Really think about that though: He holds the entire Universe in his hand…the entire Universe so who are we? We are tiny specs in the spectrum of the Universe we are finite, and insignificant so who are we to question the thoughts and decisions of God? But thank God and give Him praise that he is willing to hear us when we cry, every tear we shed he holds in his hand.
1. You may hold prayer with the utmost respect, yet you find your own practice lacks purpose and vitality, so you don’t spend time with God like you know you should. While there are many reasons Christians struggle to pray, I believe there is one overriding factor. Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes,
It is the highest activity of the human soul, and therefore it is at the same time the ultimate test of a man’s true spiritual condition. There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christian people so much as our prayer life. . . . Ultimately, therefore, a man discovers the real condition of his spiritual life when he examines himself in private, when he is alone with God. . . . And have we not all known what it is to find that, somehow, we have less to say to God when we are alone than when we are in the presence of others? It should not be so; but it often is. So that it is when we have left the realm of activities and outward dealings with other people, and are alone with God, that we really know where we stand in a spiritual sense.
A. How sad is it to realize that we are not where we should be spiritually? While at Promise Keepers I was really impressed with the emphasis they placed on this subject. They said we get so busy doing everything that has become a legality in church, i.e, meetings, visiting the sick, outings, cleaning the church, the list could go on…that we forget to praise God. We get so busy “doing things” for God, that we forget to give Him what he really desires from us, which is prayer and praise.
Faith is strengthened through prayer. As insecure and troubled as this world is, we must walk by faith. If we choose not to do this then our lives will fall apart. This applies to everyone no matter how long you have been in service of the Lord, from a novice to an experienced servant. Obedience to God’s word and prayer are the only ways to make it through this world.
Remember the words of Job: “But He knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I will come forth as gold” (Job 23:10, NIV).
So tonight as I close I want you to take a look at your prayer life, and see the changes that need to be made. Maybe you like Christ, need to shut the door to all the distractions of the world and be alone with God. For it is at the moment when you are alone with God is when Miracles in your life start to happen.
