It wasn’t the day that it took place that was actually the hardest. It was the next morning. It was waking up and before becoming totally conscious of what the day held ahead, it was that thought for just a brief moment that maybe, just maybe, the previous 24 hours were a terrible nightmare. But as I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and started to recognize no, in fact, it wasn’t a dream. Like an avalanche or a tidal wave of emotion, it just hit me. I had these thoughts in my head, these feelings in my heart on that day, July 5, 2005. The thought that I woke up with was failure. I’d failed as a friend. I’d failed as a pastor. I’d failed as a guide. I’d failed as a protector. The previous day on July 4, 2005, I held one of the students in the youth group in my arms and performed CPR for an hour and a half while he took his last breath on a trail just outside of Fort Collins, Colorado. A lot of you have heard me tell that story before. You’ve heard my heart, but it’s one of the things I look back on and see God’s gracious hand in and his goodness most, but I can tell you that the 24 hours after it were pure hell. The two years that followed were filled with questions. I was a pastor and I felt like the biggest hypocrite because I was wrestling with God. Some of the questions I had for God were: God, if I’m going to serve you and this is how you’re going to treat me, why in the world would I continue to give my life to you? God, I thought I was following you, but there’s no way if I’m following you that life should end up looking like this? God, if I’m a fully devoted follower of Christ, if I’m a disciple, then why am I feeling so depressed? This is two years of my life with this cloud, feeling like it’s just sitting over my head. God, if you’re so powerful, why in the world didn’t you stop this? And it pains me to believe that I know you could have. Have you ever been there? Where you just woke up in the morning and just wanted to say back to God, “God, I know you rule the universe and if that’s true then why in the world does life stink so badly??!!”
I was a college pastor for five years before the Lord led Kelly and I back to Colorado to pastor this church. As a college pastor I would walk onto college campuses and had the chance every single week to engage college students with questions about faith. I started to hear this resound that echoed off of university campuses all across southern California. It was this resound: I used to go to church. I just didn’t get it. I started to ask more questions and you know what was interesting? It’s not Jesus that they didn’t like. It’s not necessarily even YOU that they didn’t like. Or me. What they didn’t like was that church never felt like a safe place to struggle. What they didn’t like was that church never felt like a safe place to doubt. What they didn’t like was that they felt like, in order to enter these doors in any sort of church, they had to have life figured out and they had to have it together. In order to come (to church), they had to arrive at a place where they knew intuitively, if they were honest, that they would never get to. They didn’t know that we all just play games! Or do we? They didn’t know that THIS is a safe place to struggle, a safe place to wrestle. The question I want us to engage with this morning is: What happens when life falls apart? What happens when we have questions that we don’t have answers to? Do we push in or do we run away?
I have three kids: seven, five and three. I have a boy, a girl and a boy. My boys absolutely love to wrestle with me. They love it! My son Reid, who’s three years old, will come and jump on me unexpectedly. Anybody else have that blessing on a daily basis? I’m sitting there minding my own business and it’s like a cannonball and he lands on my lap! He grabs my shoulders and says to me, “Daddy, I’m a jaguar! Rowr!!” For a few moments I pretend to be scared and then I go, “Well, I’m a lion!” Then we’re rolling around and we’re wrestling on the floor. I had a friend a number of years ago tell me, “I measure my parenting effectiveness by how much time I spend on the ground.” I like that. Our kids love that! What is it about wrestling that our kids love? They love the contact. They love the clinging. They love the physical interaction. They love to feel you. I think they also love to know that you’re stronger than them, even though they resist that. They love to know that at a moment you could just flip them over, pin them, done, no conversation, no questions asked. They love that! They desire that contact, that interaction.
What if God was the same way? What if God loved the wrestling? What if far more than answering questions, God loved authentic doubt? What if faith looked far more like wrestling than it did certainty? What if? What if church once again became a safe place to say, “I don’t have it all figured out.” “I don’t know all the answers.” “There’s some things that haunt my soul.” “I can’t figure out why we’re following God and they passed away.” “I can’t figure out why I lost the job.” Why the relationship crumbled. Why the health report didn’t come back the way we wanted. I can’t figure it out. What if church became, once again, a safe place to wrestle?
If you have your Bible, turn to Genesis 32:22-32. We going to look at a passage where Jacob is going to wrestle with God. Over the past few weeks we’ve been walking through this narrative of the patriarch Jacob. Remember, Jacob is born as a second born in a first-born society. He’s loved way more by his mother than he is by his father. He prefers to cook in tents rather than hunt in the fields. All three of those things were stacked up against him from birth. From birth, he’s trying to prove himself. He’s trying to say, “I’m okay and I’m deserving of any love that should come my way.” Throughout the course of his life, he has some successes. He goes and lives with his uncle for 20+ years. His uncle is coercive and manipulative, but Jacob prospers even there. God’s hand is on him. Now, he’s being led back home, the place that he left over two decades ago. On the way there he’s going to have to encounter his brother, who he ran from 20+ years ago. It’s this picture of….you and I know this journey….to face the things on the deepest level that haunt our souls. We can’t run from them forever. Jacob is throwing things ahead. He’s sending gifts to his brother to try to appease him and to be accepted by him. It’s on THIS journey, before he meets his brother, that he has an encounter with God.
Here’s how the encounter looked. The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip on the sinew of the thigh.
What’s going on? What a strange passage!! Can we all admit that that’s a weird passage?! We don’t have to pretend that the Bible always makes sense at face value! What a strong passage! Jacob is camping. He’s on a solo camping trip, he’s all alone. He’s got his tent pitched and he’s ready to go and somebody shows up out of nowhere and goes MMA on him. They wrestle through the night. At some point, this man/God just touches his hip and he’s out of joint in his hip for the rest of his life. Couldn’t you have done that earlier? If all he had to do was touch his hip, was this really ever any sort of wrestling match worth betting on? What in the world is going on here?! I think if you read the passage from the perspective of God, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But if you read the passage from the perspective of Jacob, it starts to make more sense. Jacob saying: Oh yeah, we were wrestling and it was……we were face-to-face and we were going at him and I almost had him. If you were to ask my kids if they could beat me in wrestling matches, both of my sons, three years old and seven years old…..and I’ll admit I’m not exactly a physical specimen, but I’m pretty sure I can take them…..most of the time they would agree with you. They’d go hey, I think it’s 50/50. We’re hearing this interaction (of Jacob) from the perspective of Jacob. We read it through the lens of our enlightened minds and go, “Come on! That would never happen.” God just appears out of nowhere and wrestles with Jacob throughout the night? Come on! The Bible is so ancient, it’s so primitive, it’s so out of touch. And yet…. We’ve all have those seasons in life where we’ve wrestled with God, haven’t we? We’ve all had those questions that we can’t seem to get resolution for. We’ve all had these mysteries that sorta sit on our shoulders and weigh us down where we go God, I don’t get why you did that or didn’t do that and God, I don’t understand why that’s happening. All of us, whether you’re a follower of Jesus this morning or not, have had these questions where we’ve wrestled with God.
My experience has been that those questions revolve around two primary things: 1) God, who are you? Because I believe you are all-powerful and I believe you are all good and the Scriptures really teach me that. But if you’re all-powerful and you’re all good, then do you not care? That’s one of the questions we have. For well over a year after my mom passed away, I wrestled with this: God, who are you? The second question is like it. God, who am I? Who am I to you? Do you love me? Do I have worth? I think all of the questions that we wrestle with as human beings—-and those are human questions—-if we were to boil them down and tear away all the layers, what we’d get down to are two primary questions: God, who are you? and, in light of that, God, who am I? So here’s what I want to do this morning. I just want to give you the freedom to say, “I don’t always understand what God is doing.” I want to give you the freedom to say, “I have questions. I have doubts.” I know, I get it. In modernity and a version of Christianity that’s been entrenched in modernity, we have equated faith with certainty, but I want to assure you the Scriptures never do. They never do. People who walk by faith, they wrestle with God. They struggle with God. You read through the book of Job, ok? Job interacts with God. He wrestles with God. It’s only when his friends come and they have all the answers that Job gets off track. His friends start trying to answer the questions that aren’t intended to be answered. They want to say, “Job, here’s why it happened. And here’s how it happened. And here’s a resolution.” And God goes no, no, no, no, no, just wrestle with me. This stinks! Draw near.
David, the man after God’s own heart, will say to us in Psalm 73:3, why in the world do the wicked prosper? He’s like I don’t get it. I’m trying to do everything right here, God, and the people that are against you, antagonistic towards you, are the ones you seem to be blessing. What’s the deal? You have John the Baptist, a friend and relative of Jesus the Messiah, sitting in a jail cell (Matthew 11:4-6) knowing that his days are coming to an end. In fact, days later his head, literally, will be on a platter at Herod’s party. He sends his disciples to go ask Jesus, “Hey, are you the one that we were waiting for? Because this doesn’t look like it’s going to turn out good.” What’s he doing? He is wrestling! He’s wrestling with God. He’s not settling for easy answers. You have the apostle Paul, once called Saul, who has this thorn in his flesh and he says: Three times I pleaded….. (2 Corinthians 12:8). It’s not this hey, three times I politely asked you, “Jesus, would you please take this away?” In the Greek it carries with it this emotive, deep longing of…..God, COME ON!! ACT! MOVE! DO! I believe that you can. Why aren’t you??
If you read through the Scriptures and look at people who follow Jesus, here’s what I think they would testify to you and to me — they would testify that the only faith worth having is an honest faith. A faith that’s mixed with confidence and questions. A faith that doesn’t always have it all figured out, but that says I’m unwilling to let go even when there’s questions. I’m clinging to you. I’m wrestling with you. God, I am in this for the long haul. Here’s the truth of the matter, friends—-Wrestling with God is essential towalking with God. It’s not some sort of nice addendum to the Christian life. It is central in who we are as followers of Christ. That there’s things that are going to come up in our life where we’re not going to have the answers and we’re going to have to enter into seasons of struggling and seasons of wrestling and we are better for it. I think a lot of the narrative that we’ve embraced as a church culture in the West is: walking by faith means that you’re always certain, that you’re always confident, that you’re always sure and if you aren’t, then you’ve gotta get it figured out before you really consider yourself a follower of Jesus. Dallas Willard, sort of tongue in cheek, said the way that we teach theology, typically, is you should believe this whether you believe it or not. And that’s true, isn’t it? We know we’re not suppose to doubt, but what happens when we do? We know we’re “not suppose to question,” but what happens when we have questions? You show me a strong friendship and I will show you two people who have the ability to wrestle with each other. To disagree and to still say, “We’re in this together.” You show me a marriage where one person has just shut down and another person makes all the decisions, tells everybody what to think and what to do, and I will show you a straw man of a marriage. It’s this question, it’s this interaction, it’s this wrestling where we really grow in relationship.
I want to show you the dynamics of how this happens in the life of Jacob. Genesis 32:22. Let’s look at this and sort of dissect it a little bit more to see what was going on in Jacob’s life and how did God use it. This is after he sent all these gifts ahead of himself to try to earn the acceptance back from Esau. The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” Not only has day broken, but the narrator of Genesis is so poetic and it’s so beautiful…..there’s this breaking of day that’s happening, certainly, but there’s also the breaking of Jacob. Jacob’s being torn down. Jacob’s being shown who he really is. Over the course of this evening what’s been happening his entire life sort of comes to a focal point, to a fruition, and what we start to see is God is lowering him in order to eventually elevate him. He’s breaking him in order to rebuild him. It’s often in those unwelcome seasons of brokenness that we see the preceding unprecedented seasons of fruitfulness.
Jacob’s left alone. He is vulnerable, he’s open and what I have found over the course of my life, and maybe you would disagree, but what I’ve found is when I’m most broken I’m most open. Anybody want to agree? I will to cling to my own abilities until I have nothing left to cling to. Any amens out there? This is the human story. This is human nature. When Jacob is left alone, here’s what he starts to do. He starts to be open. He starts to be vulnerable. He starts to interact with God in a different way. We see that his isolation leads him to a place of revelation. Here’s the thing for you this morning. You may be going through one of those seasons of loneliness. You may be left alone. The word I want to speak over you is when you’re alone you have two choices: loneliness or solitude. It all has to do with the attitude. God, are we going to wrestle with you or are we going to focus on the fact that we’re all alone. Loneliness or solitude? Jacob chooses solitude. He engages with God.
The second thing we see is that he’s out of joint. Not only physically with his hip, but life just feels like it’s just been thrown upside down and spun around and thrown out there. The attempts he’s making to win the approval of his brother are falling short. He thinks he’s walking into a war that there’s no way he’s going to win. He is out of joint. God is bringing him low. It’s the picture of a farmer tilling the soil in the springtime before he starts to plant the seeds. The soil that’s gotten hard after a long winter. He needs to dig deep down into in order to start to break it apart, so that the seeds will take root. If God just throws the seeds on top of Jacob, his heart isn’t ready to receive them. It’s this process that God leads him through where he eventually comes to the place where he’s able to receive. I love the way that John Bunyan, the great Puritan author, puts it: “Conversion is not the smooth, easy-going process some men seem to think. It’s wounding work; without the wounding there is no saving.” It’s that tilling process. We don’t like it, but we need it. The song that Aaron just sang so beautifully for us by Jason Gray, he says, “The wound is where the light gets in.”
All of us get to that point in life where God is tilling the proverbial soil of our soul and here’s what we all have to deal with: are we going to be the type of people in those seasons who tap out or cling on? I call my generation the “tap out” generation. When it gets hard, we leave. When it’s tough, we’re gone. What I love about Jacob is he knows he’s not going to win this battle. He’s already lost it! He says, “I won’t let go.” A few weeks ago, I meet with a friend in my office. He’s been through the valley of the shadow of death. He’s lost some things that were dear to him. Sitting with him in my office, I said to him, “Hey, I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know why this all happened and I don’t know why God allowed it.” To say anything else would have been disingenuous. I could have gone theological as far as the problem and pain and the reason of suffering, but it wasn’t what he needed. My encouragement to him was you have two choices: you can either push away or you can cling on. That’s the place we all get to in the wrestling with God. Are we going to be the type of people who cling on or are we going to be the type of people who push away?
Sometimes God invites us into seasons of mourning rather than seasons of knowing. And that’s okay. We don’t need to trivialize those things. As Christians we sometimes do, don’t we? Here’s one refrain that just drives me nuts — Well, everything happens for a reason. It’s like the Christian trump card. BOOM! What are you going to say to that?! Well, does it? Does everything happen for a reason?? If that’s true, we’ve got to find reason for some pretty crazy things, don’t we? Do you know what the Scriptures actually say? You can’t find any verse that says “Everything happens for a reason.” What the Scriptures actually say is that God weaves together good out of everything for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28) He’s able to take these things, that maybe without Him would be disjointed, and He weaves them together for your good. You know what that means? Not everything was good until God got ahold of it. {That’s for free.}
Jacob is alone, he’s wrestling, he’s out of joint, he’s disoriented. Verse 26: Then he (the man/God) said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” What’s Jacob’s deepest longing? When we gets ahold of God, what does he want more than anything else? Blessing. He wants a good word spoken over him. He wants to hear the voice of God saying you’re okay, I’ve got you. I’m good. I’m in control. I love you. He wants to hear that his life matters. You know what’s interesting? Jacob’s already been blessed. If you read back through the Jacob narrative, it starts with him stealing a blessing from his older brother. Remember, he dresses up as Esau. He walks into Isaac, his father. Isaac lays hands on him and Isaac blesses him. But Jacob knows that blessing was never intended for him. For the decades that follow, those words, rather than being seeds of hope in his life and goodness, actually start to turn on him, because the words spoken over him he knew wasn’t actually for him. When He’s wrestling with Jacob, what does God ask him? What’s your name? You go back to Genesis 27…..Isaac, his father, asked him the exact same thing: What’s your name? At THAT point, he did not answer honestly. He said, “My name is Esau.” Because I think that’s what I have to do to get blessed. I have to lie about who I really am. I have to ignore the deep, painful places of my soul where I didn’t add up. I’ve got to put on a mask. I’ve got to put on a show. In order to be blessed, I’ve got to lie about who I really am. But when God gets ahold of Jacob, He says, “Jacob, what’s your name? I need you to say it. I need you to admit it. I need you to step out of the shadows. I need you to come clean, because if you’re going to be blessed, it’s only going to be as you actually are, not as you wish you were. So, Jacob, what’s your name?” I imagine Jacob’s mind immediately goes back to putting on all of the clothes that were Esau’s, covering himself in fur that looked like Esau’s freaky hair and lying about his name. At this moment, Jacob says, “I am Jacob.” My prayer is that some of you will have an “I AM JACOB” moment with God today. This is who I really am. And in saying “I am Jacob,” what Jacob’s saying is I’ve been the swindler, I’ve been the cheater, I’ve been the liar; I’ve lived up to everything my name meant and everything my name said. It’s in this moment—this moment of brokenness, this moment of solitude, this moment of openness to God—God says back to him, “Ok, Jacob. Here’s the thing….drum roll…..your name is no longer Jacob. You’re wrestling with me, Jacob. You’re interacting with me. You’re not pushing me away, you’re drawing me in and you’re saying I won’t let go! Therefore, your name is no longer Jacob, swindler, cheater, liar, thief. It’s no longer that. Although you have to come to terms with the fact that that’s reality. Now your name is Israel, which means you strive with God.” Isn’t it interesting that Jacob’s name goes from cheating people—which is horizontal—-to wrestling with God.
Here’s what we start to see—that you and I, we have to admit that so much of the time God doesn’t answer the questions we have. We don’t have the “everything happens for a reason and here’s the reason” type of life with God, do we? If you do, I’d love to meet and talk with you. I’ve got some questions for you. I don’t. We have the type of interaction with God where we go to him with questions and longing…..hey, will you bless me? Will you make this situation turn out well? Will you redeem the pain? I’m going into battle with Esau and all I want, God, is for you to tell me that I’m going to win this battle. That’s not what he hears. What God does, so much of the time, is he doesn’t answer the question that we ask, he answers the question underneath the question underneath the question. He answers the thing that’s deepest within us—the longing that we have most that just occupies it. If we were to resolve that question the other ones wouldn’t matter quite as much. Here’s what God does. He says: genuine prosperity (or blessing) is only grounded in renewed identity. It’s Him saying this is who you really are. It’s the only way we can live with and wrestle with the questions of life. Why does this happen? Why did that happen? Why did that person get sick? Why did that person die? I don’t know all the answers to those questions, but I’m going to wrestle with God and I’m going to cling to God and I’m confident that what’s more important to God is not that I gain something, but that I become someone. That He starts to change me from the inside out. Did you know that you’re invited to have an Israel type of faith? The type of faith where we wrestle with God, where we strive with God. Why is that a great and beautiful thing? Because it means you’re clinging to him. It means you’re saying, “I will not let you go until I hear from you—who am I?” And, friends, that’s the gospel. The gospel answers the question: who are you? So if you walked in here JACOB, my hope is that you walk out ISRAEL. You walked in maybe cheating and manipulating people. I want you to walk out wrestling with God. This is the gospel, because here’s what he says over you—-I have adopted you! (That’s identity, yes?) I have called you my own. I chose you before the foundation of the world that you would be holy and blameless in Christ. That you would be adopted as sons and daughters of the King. He will not always answer every question, but He always gives his blessing. His blessing is found in the reality that YOU..Hello!!..you’re name is child of the one true King!! You’ve been saved! You have been redeemed! That’s your name!!
As Jacob starts to walk away, he walks away with this limp. It’s the “gospel limp,” friends. It’s the “I have wrestled with God”….I’ve come with my questions, I’ve come with my doubts, I’ve come with my fears and I still have a lot of those, but I know who I am! I am loved by Him and I am chosen by Him and I am called in Him and He is the rock that I am building my life on! Struggling with God always leads to a transformation from God. He goes, “God, I’ve seen you face-to-face. We’ve been intimate together.” But that only happens through the authenticity. It only happens through the wrestling and the struggling. We often look for answers, but God just wants our honesty. I don’t get it, God, but I know you’re good and I trust you. Isn’t it fascinating that when Jacob wrestles with God and he comes out the other side….if you were to look at him you’d go, “Oh, man! He got the worst end of that deal! The rest of his life he’s just dragging a foot!” But I think if you were to talk to Israel, what he would say to you is….I know it looks like an injury, but I want to tell you it’s a reminder. It’s a reminder that I’m no longer Jacob but I’m Israel. It’s a reminder that I can have a relationship with God that’s honest and I can wrestle with him. It’s a reminder that I’m no longer who I was, but I am who He says I am! I don’t know about you…I want that limp! I want the reminder God, this is who you say I am.
If you’re thinking, “Paulson, I’m still a little bit held up on the ‘is it all right to question God?’ Is it all right to doubt? Well, I would submit to you it is. Jesus did. That’s the trump card! He’s in the garden going to the cross and he cries out, “Father, if there’s another way, let’s do it that way! Father, I don’t get it!” Luke 22:44 says he’s sweating drops of blood! He’s so agonized by what he knows awaits him. He’s wrestling with God. Then he clings to his Father and then surrenders to him — Not my will, but yours be done. It’s interesting that in the same way that Jacob was left alone, your King, your Messiah, was left alone. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Therefore, because he was left alone, the Scriptures say that you never have to be abandoned. The Scriptures are really clear in Romans 8:38 that nothing can separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Just like Jacob, Jesus was out of joint on the cross. His bones had dislocated, his muscles moving around. He was out of joint Psalm 22:14 says, but because he was out of joint, you can be made whole. The Scriptures are clear in saying that by faith you are made complete in him. Because he gave up his name…..the Scriptures say that he emptied himself of all that it meant to be God (Philippians 2:7) and that he took on the very nature of a servant and submitted to God, even to death on a cross. He gave up his name and because he gave up his name and his glory, YOU can be filled with all of the fullness of God.
It doesn’t mean that we always get all the answers. But it means that we have the most important answer. The answer to the most important question: God, do you love me? And in the midst of all the chaos in the world, of all the pain and all the questions, His cross and His resurrection declare over you—You are loved. You are chosen. You’re forgiven. That’s your new name. You are redeemed. So, friends, because of the work of Jesus, we can wrestle honestly with God AND walk confidently in his world! And I would pray that you do. My prayer is that this would be a safe place to say, “I don’t get it.” A safe place to say, “I’ve got questions.” A safe place to say, “God, I don’t understand why you didn’t heal this way and this time and God, I don’t understand why that didn’t work out the way that I hoped it would.” Where the cross would hold us in such a way that it would allow us to cling to God, even when life doesn’t make sense. Let’s pray.
Before we go running out of here, I just want to invite you to take a deep breath. What’s going on in your life that maybe you’ve ignored and pushed down? I don’t know about you, but I’m really good at that. What are the things that if you were just honest with God and didn’t say what you thought He wanted to hear but what was really in you, what would you say? This just in—he knows anyway! Jesus, we come to you today. And in all of the brokenness of this world—we don’t have all the answers to it, we don’t have it all figured out, but Lord, in the midst of all of that and whatever life brings our way, whatever storms we find ourselves in, our desire is to be the type of people that say I’m holding on; I’m clinging to you, Lord. We believe that you’re clinging even harder to us. Lord, would you help us to be honest with you, to engage you not as we wish life were, but on the terms that life really is. Father, as we’re honest with you and honest with ourselves, may we hear you speak a better name over us. Lord, would be hear the truth that we are children of the One True King—adopted, saved, redeemed, made holy—because of the work of Jesus. May that draw us in in every season. May we cling to you, rather than running away. God, as we’re honest, would you do a work that only you can do. It’s in your name that we pray. And all God’s people said….Amen.
