Spiritual Misfit by Michelle DeRusha

Author:Michelle DeRusha [DeRusha, Michelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60142-533-1
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

I immediately noticed the word wrestle in these verses. The text didn’t read “argue” or even “fight,” but instead used the highly charged verb “wrestle,” a very specific word choice evoking very particular images—images of grown men rolling around on the ground, grunting, struggling, entangled; of bulging muscles and sweaty bodies; of competition, power, and violence. This interaction between God and Jacob was clearly not a discussion, or even a heated argument. It was a battle, a physical match.

To me, this story seemed less about the struggle itself and more about the simple fact that God allows us to wrestle with him. I understood that God condones wrestling, even encourages it, because struggle is a catalyst for transformation. God could have easily won the match with Jacob. In fact, when I looked closely at the passage, I noticed that in the end, when the time was right, God clearly did overpower his rival; he merely brushed Jacob’s hip with his hand and left the man with a lasting injury. But God saw that Jacob needed the struggle in order to shed his old self and his old ways and grow closer in a genuine relationship with him. Wrestling with God enabled Jacob to trust God in his heart, on his own accord. God, it seemed, would not overpower my free will and force me to trust him. He wouldn’t coerce genuine trust and love out of me; instead he would work through the process with me. Even if that process required a long and wearisome wrestling match.

The more I read of the Bible, the more apparent it became: God chose flawed people. Jacob, a wreck of a person—deceitful, selfish, and cunning—was encouraged to wrestle with God in order to persevere as the father of God’s chosen people, the father of all nations. David, a murderer and adulterer, was chosen to carry on the ancestral line of Jesus. Peter, the man who wavered in his faith as he walked across the water and later betrayed Jesus not once but three times, was chosen as the rock, the one who would spread the good news and help build the early Christian church. Many of the people I met in the Bible, including the disciples themselves, turned out to be ordinary humans—flawed, fallible, and struggling. Yet through these ordinary people and despite their many imperfections, God accomplished great things.

This realization gave me hope, hope that my questions and doubts and wrestling and waffling were all an important part of my journey, part of the growing pains I would experience in my deepening relationship with God. Peter told me I could waver. David told me I didn’t need to be perfect. Jacob told me it was okay to wrestle. And through these people and their stories, God told me he chose me again and again. In spite of my flaws.

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