After some of my experience leading
up to this great adventure and especially through the training camp stuff, I
have really been impressed to share this part of my heart with my family,
supporters, team mates, and anyone else who cares to listen. For the past
couple years I have really been at a cross roads in 
my faith. Because I grew up
in a wonderful church and a Godly home, I have known who God is and that he is
good for pretty much my entire life. I was saved and filled with the Holy Spirit
at a young age and have had much Godly teaching, leadership, and council for as
long as I can remember. As I began to become an adult and take more and more
responsibility for myself, I entered a time in my life where I really needed to
make my faith my own. My father, and another very close mentor both advised me
that I was going to have to have my own experiences and challenges of faith to
really gain my own personal relationship with God.
This is some of the wisdom that
they have proven to me that makes me trust them so much. My parents and
spiritual uncle (no blood relation but closer to me than most family) were both
willing to let me go, risking that perhaps I would not choose the way they
would want me to, but knowing that they could not force anything on me, and
trusting that I could be left to my own experience with the Lord and that He
would take care of me. Now this did not include a physical departure or even
social estrangement from these figures in my life but an understanding that
they could not answer every question, or be depended upon completely for
everything I would ever need, spiritually, emotionally, and physically.
As I began to learn “life lessons”
I really entered into this struggling with God. Not that I didn’t believe in
Him anymore or anything like that, but I needed him to show up and show me who
he really was. Sounds kinda demanding of me huh? You might think so and in fact
I thought that at times too. But that was not necessarily an accurate
assumption of the situation. I came to realize that this is a point that
everyone comes to in their relationship with God. At some point, you just need
to have it out with Him. Jacob did, and even though his wrestling was quite
literal, it was exactly what I’m getting at here. He needed God to show up. I
needed God to show up. I, at this time in my life, was ready to wrestle with
God. It was not that I thought I was right about something and he wasn’t or
that there was one thing I wanted Him to give me, but more of the way that a
young boy will wrestle with his dad just because its in him to do so and he
wants to see what his dad can do to him and for him. Not quite getting it yet?
Let me give you another example.
In the movie Forest
Gump, there is a character by the name of Lt. Dan. He has become one of my
favorite movie characters and here’s why. He first comes into the story as the
main character’s commanding officer in Vietnam. He is a self confident,
cocky, and strong individual, well suited for his role in the war effort. He
came from a line of war heroes who died in battle and believed in the corner of
his mind that this would be his glorious destiny as well. When the unit was
attacked and he was badly injured and lying on the jungle floor, it looked as
if this destiny might be coming true. But our hero of the film came running
back and dragged him out alive. He ended up in a military hospital having lost
both his legs and consumed with self pity for missing his destiny and being
left in a useless state. He degenerates into a drunken mess but comes to be the
first mate on our heroes shrimping boat some years later. During a hurricane in
which their vessel was caught helplessly, Lt. Dan instead of hiding below decks
from the storm, is up on top of the highest mast screaming with all his might
at God “Is this the best you can do? Let’s have it out, just me and you! You’ll
never sink this ship!!! HAHAHA. Come on lets go, me and you.” The next morning
in the calm waters after the storm, he was changed.
This screaming angry
lunatic had become a serine and peaceful man, apologizing to the hero for being
so ungrateful to him for saving him, with no worldly explanation. That is
because this was not a worldly experience. He had faced off with God. This was
the culmination of his wrestling with God experience. Had Lt. Dan taken his
life misfortunes wrongly and behaved poorly? Maybe. Was he wrong to finally
come to a point where he challenged God about it all? Absolutely not. Did God
say never question me? No, in fact he said “try me and see that I am good.”
Now I don’t mean to speak as if I’m
some grand special person who has been imparted with all this wisdom that I
just need to share with everyone. That is not who I am and not my intention. I
can only testify to what I have myself experienced and it is what I have found
in these stories of struggling with God. I came to a point in my life where I
did not have any simple answers left, and no clear picture of who I was, who
God was, and what direction I should take. So this is where I come to the point
of a wrestling match with the big man upstairs. What does this wrestling look
like? Well a piece of it is that I have had an ongoing conversation with the
Lord that most of the time sounds something like this. “Come on God, I’ve had
it, fight me! I’m on top of the mast and I’m in this storm that is my life and
you’ll never sink this ship! Let’s have it out, just you and me. Wrestle me for
darn sakes. I wanna feel you! And I won’t let you go until you bless me.” It
sounds kinda crazy but this prayer is very deep for me and it very often
includes unintelligible groanings just to express what I’m feeling. This need
to have it out and grab onto God is for me, like I believe it was for Jacob, a
desperate cry that “God I can’t handle living in this crap anymore and go
without you so I’m going to cling on to you until you bless me.”
Guess what? God can handle my crap.
He can wrestle with me, and He has and continues to bless me. But guess what
else? I’m not done wrestling with Him because every time I do, He shows up and
when he does I tell Him I won’t let go till he blesses me, and though not
always at that very second, He does bless me more and more. 
Now I don’t know about you, but I loved wrestling with my Dad as a boy and in the same way I now love to wrestle with God. I feel as though it’s the only way
to get some of the most deep, passionate and strong things down inside of me to
come out. . Its kinda like a spiritual work out session which I come out of
feeling stronger, more like a warrior ready to carry the banner. Its awesome. I
am thankful that God is not limited to being this wise old man with a big grey
beard sitting on a cloud who controls everything and that He can come and
wrestle with me and take away my deepest afflictions, and that He can understand
my groanings that are too deep for words.
