You Can't Give Up

Giving up.  We've all given up at one time or another.  I remember when I was in High School at one particular track meet, I found out I wasn't the fastest kid in the neighborhood anymore.  I was competing in both the 100 & 220 yard sprint races.  In a sprint it's all out as hard and fast as you can get your legs to go for the whole distance.  I'm glad "life" isn't that way.  Especially now days.

I had won most of my races the year before ... and thought I would continue my winning ways.  Nope, it wasn't to be.  The starters gun went off and my spikes dug into the cinder track and off I went.  Side by side for 50, 60, 70, 80 yards and then with just 10 yards to the finish line, all of a sudden ... I was third.

I didn't plan on that outcome.  I remember the word that came out of my mouth as I exhaled and found myself slowing down those last 6 or 7 yards because I realized I was beaten.  I "gave up" and "quit" before I crossed the finish line.  I crossed it, but I was putting on the brakes thinking ... "Why try now?" 

I didn't like losing.  But later ... I didn't like myself because I gave up ... even if it was only the last 5 yards.  Oh, I said to myself I tried, I did my best, but I knew better ... I quit, I gave up before I finished my race because someone I didn't even know was faster than I was.

That was a, "life lesson."  If you start it ... finish it.

I thought I would share this little snippet of my history, to use as a comparison with a man in scripture who didn't give up or quit when things didn't go right.  This man is Jacob who struggled and contended with a wrestler many of us have also met.  Jacob had to use all of his strength to prevail when he met this man, but he prevailed in the end because he didn't give up. 

We enter the middle of this strange drama in Genesis 32:24-30.  We find Jacob at the dawn of a new day, still in the struggle he has been in all night long as he wrestles with another Man.  Where this Man comes from or why Jacob is wrestling with Him is not shared with us ... only that seemingly, for whatever unknown reason, it is a struggle of desperation with Jacob because he holds on and will not let go of this yet unknown Man.

At this point, this Man asks Jacob to ... "Let me go, for it is dawn."  It's as if this Man doesn't want Jacob to see Him in the light of day; but by now Jacob has perceived that he has been wrestling with God. 

God ... in the form of the manifestation of the Son of God, now wanting to end this struggle, touches Jacob's thigh and it comes out of joint.  Jacob now feels the power of God from only one touch and he can no longer stand by himself.  Without any support from his thigh, Jacob now must hang upon this wrestler, and in this weakened condition learns the practice of sole reliance on his God, who is always more powerful than himself.

We should learn to do the same.
 
It is related that God could not prevail against Jacob because he held on with determination, if necessary it seems, even to the death.  "God could not prevail?"  How strange is that ... God could have shaken off the clinging grasp that Jacob had on Him as easily as He touched his thigh, but He does not when He hears Jacob's determined faith say ... "I will not let you go except you bless me."

The Word of God assures us that it was God with this statement in Hosea 12:4-5 ... "Yes, he had power over the Angel of the Lord and prevailed; he wept and sought His favor ... the name of Him Who spoke with Jacob is the Lord."  (Amplified)

So this Man ... God in the form that Jesus would become ... blessed Jacob and changed his name to Israel because he contended with God and lived, as Jacob said, "after seeing the face of God."

When we struggle or wrestle with anything, even contending with God for something … "hold on" … to your faith with the same tenacity, the persistent determination and strength, that caused Jacob to prevail over God, and "receive" a blessing from Him.

When I was younger, much younger, I could run wind sprints to stay in shape.  Now it would "wind me" if I tried to run a sprint.  But I am still in a race with time.  It's not a spiritual race, it's real ... but what we contend with ... is spiritual.

The Apostle Paul said the goal is to finish the race.  I didn't always win every physical race,  but I learned after a while, it didn't matter if I won or not.  What mattered was ... I didn't quit.  I didn't give up ... in life or ... with the Lord.

God will in the end always win.

You can't give up ... no matter what.   

 I find this drama to be one of the strangest in all of scripture.  I believe that God, for whatever reason He chose, entered into a bodily conflict with Jacob.  I have no idea as to why.  Nor do I need to know why.

The battle is real.  But it's not with God.