Genesis 32:22-32 [NLTse]

²² During the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two servant wives, and his eleven sons and crossed the Jabbok River with them. ²³ After taking them to the other side, he sent over all his possessions.

²⁴ This left Jacob all alone in the camp, and a man came and wrestled with him until the dawn began to break. ²⁵ When the man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob’s hip and wrenched it out of its socket. ²⁶ Then the man said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking!”

But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

²⁷ “What is your name?” the man asked.

He replied, “Jacob.”

²⁸ “Your name will no longer be Jacob,” the man told him. “From now on you will be called Israel, because you have fought with God and with men and have won.”

²⁹ “Please tell me your name,” Jacob said.

“Why do you want to know my name?” the man replied. Then he blessed Jacob there.

³⁰ Jacob named the place Peniel (which means “face of God”), for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.” ³¹ The sun was rising as Jacob left Peniel, and he was limping because of the injury to his hip. ³² (Even today the people of Israel don’t eat the tendon near the hip socket because of what happened that night when the man strained the tendon of Jacob’s hip.)

Sermon

Anybody here ever have to wait a long, long time for God to answer one of your prayers? … How long did you have to wait? … How long did you have to wait? …

Anyone here still waiting for God to answer a prayer? … How long have you been waiting? … How long have you been waiting? …

Has anyone here stopped praying about something or another because so much time has gone by that you’ve decided God must not be listening, or you’ve got to thinking that maybe He doesn’t care, or that you’ve gotten to thinking that maybe prayer doesn’t matter? …

Yeah, those who live in a dynamic relationship with God and who are familiar with prayer are also familiar with the delays – and sometimes the years and years and years of delays – that are a part of praying and having our prayers change the world. And yet, these same delays can be ammunition for the enemy of our souls to tempt us to believe that prayer doesn’t matter, that God doesn’t care, and even doubt the existence of God altogether!

With all of this in mind, did you ever notice how, according to Luke, that after teaching His disciples the basic model of prayer in “The Lord’s Prayer”, how Jesus then immediately taught them about the importance of persistence in prayer?

Luke writes, “Then, teaching them more about prayer, He used this story: ‘Suppose you went to a friend’s house at midnight, wanting to borrow three loaves of bread. You say to him, “A friend of mine has just arrived for a visit, and I have nothing for him to eat.” And suppose he calls out from his bedroom, “Don’t bother me. The door is locked for the night, and my family and I are all in bed. I can’t help you.” But I tell you this—though he won’t do it for friendship’s sake, if you keep knocking long enough, he will get up and give you whatever you need because of your shameless persistence.” (11:5-8)

R. A. Torrey, a friend of Dwight L. Moody’s, and one of the great Holy Spirit preachers and teachers of his day, described the practical application of Jesus’ teaching on persistence in prayer this way: “The central lesson in this parable of our Lord’s is, that, when we pray, if we do not obtain the thing the first time we ask for it, we should pray again; and if we do not obtain it the second time, we should pray a third time; and if we do not obtain it the hundredth time we pray, we should go on praying until we do get it.”

The Lord goes on, right after this teaching on persistence, to give us an astonishing promise about the results of such relentless prayer. He says, “And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” (11:9-10)

Prayer at its most profound level is not just conversation with God, but is a living, active, dynamic engagement with God that includes wrestling and persistence. As we saw in our reading from Genesis, Jacob was blessed because he would not let God’s angel go until the angel blessed him. And the Lord Jesus seems to be encouraging us to have this same attitude. Apparently our Father likes us to wrestle with Him, not letting go until we have received what we have been asking for.

When my kids were younger, wrestling together in their rooms, on the lawn, or on our living room floor was an integral part of our life together. Noah and I would circle each other round and round, lunging at each other for a good hand-hold or take down. As Eden got older, she would get involved or set Noah to get me from one direction as she came at me from the other. I remember times when I would be walking across the room, minding my own business, and I’d hear a, “Hi-yah!” and find Caleb clinging to my back and Eden slamming her shoulder against my knees. Soon Noah would have joined the fray, too, and I would be seriously outgunned: Pinned down and having to resort to tickling or little pinches (they hated the tickling and little pinches) to try to break free.

Of course, those bouts were never about my kids trying to get anything from me. Pinned underneath them I never heard them crow with triumph, “Now bless us, Dad!” But that does get me thinking about another kind of wrestling that we sometimes go through together. Caleb is especially gifted with these moves: It’s the wrestling art of debate. Caleb regularly engages Amy and me, trying to get us to give him a dog or a new computer game or more time to watch TV or to stay up later or to get more Magic The Gathering cards and other such “bouts”. As frustrating as it can be to sometimes go round and round with him, I also often find myself secretly proud of the logic he’ll use or the examples he’ll raise that get Amy and I backed into a corner, reduced to that famous parental phrase of desperation, “Because I told you ‘no’, that’s why!” J

I think about these wrestling matches with my kids – both physical and mental – and I think about my praying and praying and praying to God, and I remember that it’s never been a fair fight. Each and every time with my kids I could use all my strength and all my know-how and overpower them and hurt them and win every time. It would leave them in tears, but I would win! And yet, then we wouldn’t get to keep on wrestling! I realize that in Amy’s and my debates with them that Amy and I are experienced enough and sinful enough that we could shame them or say hurtful, nasty things to them, and we could win each and every debate. But, again, then we wouldn’t get to wrestle! I confess to you, and I think I may be speaking on our Abba’s behalf, as well: The truth is, I like losing to my kids. I raised them to wear me down. I raised them to outmaneuver me. And, of course, after a few matches or two, I love blessing them, whether they are specifically asking me to or not.

About persistence in prayer and wrestling with God in prayer, the great Martin Luther wrote, “[God] does not give what the saints seek on the surface of their hearts and with that foam of words, but He is an almighty and exceedingly rich Bestower who gives in accordance with the depth of that sighing. Therefore He lets prayer be directed, grow, and be increased; and He does not hear immediately. For if He were to answer at the first outcry or petition, prayer would not increase, but would become cold. Therefore He defers help. As a result, prayer grows from day to day and becomes more efficacious. The sobbing of the heart also becomes deeper and more ardent until it comes to the point of despair, as it were. Then prayer becomes more ardent and passionate…” (Martin Luther, Commentary on Genesis, Luther’s Works, vol. 5, pp. 359-60)

Answers to prayer are not a matter of putting the time on our knees into a cosmic gum ball machine and getting just what we wanted just when we want it. The answers to our prayers arise out of the dynamic of our relationship with God. As we persist in prayer, we get to know God’s moves. As we debate with Him we get to know His logic. Keeping at it not only shows our commitment to Him and our relationship together, but over these periods of time as we are praying and waiting, we also find our requests being refined and molded and shaped to be more in line with His will.

And yet it’s not just our requests that are refined. We, too, are being refined as we wrestle and persist with God. As we wrestle with God, His presence, and the intimacy of embracing Him and struggling with Him, melts us and molds us. And we grow to be able to pray more and more according to His will and to truly be able to pray in Jesus’ name.

Paul writes, “And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s Own will.” (Romans 8:26-27) As we strive in prayer the Holy Spirit is shaping us so that He can truly intercede through us.

Of course, part of our problem is that, in the eternal life of God, waiting year after year for prayers to be answered is nothing may seem like nothing to Him. But in my life and your life, waiting year after year is a long time! That is our human nature being bound by time and space. And so, in our waiting, He calls us to trust Him: To trust that He knows all that’s involved in bringing about what we’ve asked Him for by faith; to trust that His timing as He orchestrates history and governments, as He reshapes the Devil’s evil designs for our good, as He dances around human sin and selfishness to bring about His purposes and answers to our prayers out of it all. To trust Him. In our dialogue with God, we are engaged with One Who truly has an eternal perspective. What may seem like a lifetime of persistence in prayer is just a fleeting moment in His eyes. And God is always on time!

Another reason we can have to pray for so very long is that there may be spiritual realities hindering our receiving God’s answers to our prayers. (I went into this more deeply during a sermon last year, so I won’t go into too much detail here. But, we see an example of such things in the book of Daniel where God has immediately answered Daniel’s prayer by sending him an angel, but the angel gets delayed by an “archon” [that is the New Age name for a high level evil spirit]. The angel finally overcomes the evil spirit, but as a result God’s response to Daniel was delayed. [See Daniel 10:12-13])

In a similar way, the answers to our prayers can also be blocked when demons are successful deceiving or distracting those whom God has chosen as the means for answering our prayers.

Even so, through it all let’s remember that God is almighty. He speaks, “Let there be light,” and there is light! And yet God has limited His means of working in the world to include us: He wants to work through us. And this means that God takes seriously our prayer, our faith, and our obedience. Our talking to Him, our listening to Him, our trusting Him, and our obeying Him really do make a difference, both to God and to the working out of His purposes in the world.

Like a complex domino run, there is an intricate interaction of people and history and circumstances that need to come together for our prayers to be answered. And the more world-changing the prayer, the more people and happenings and circumstances need to come together to bring it about.

And yet, this is the way God works.

For 400 years the Hebrews cried out to God in the oppression of slavery in Egypt. Finally, God gets ready to answer their prayers and what does He do? Exodus tells us, “About this time, a man and woman from the tribe of Levi got married. The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son.”

He works through the process of cooperation with human beings. So, after 400 years, Amram and Jochabed (Moses’ dad and mom) need to meet, get married, have Miriam and Aaron, and then have Moses. Innumerable decisions, layer upon layer, built by acts of the human will, all come together to put into place the workings of God. (With freewill and human sinfulness getting in the way to muddy things up and to slow things down.) And only then, finally, it all comes together to the point where God – with “signs and wonders” – can lead His people out of bondage in Egypt and into the Promised Land.

All this takes time. There is no other way for God to work if He is going to work with us. So, often, prayers take time, and so, often, prayer calls for persistence.

It can be painful and disappointing when God does not answer our prayers at a certain moment of time. But through it all we can know that God loves us, that He knows intimately all the strands that need to be woven together, that He knows intimately all the dominos that are required, and where they need to be set, and how. And we can also know that we have an awesome responsibility to be in prayer and to persist in prayer with our Abba. And we must not give up and we must not give in. Because if we do then visions and plans in the heart of God that He has placed in our hearts for prayer will never become reality…

So, let’s pray… [We can be tempted, but help us trust that You hear our prayers because of Jesus’ sacrifice…]