Susan Narjala
Keeping it Real
A Holy Hunger, A Divine Discontent
Have you ever stopped in your tracks and thought, “Something’s missing… I’m not sure what it is,” and then, almost immediately, switched back to your routine?
Often, in the distractedness of the daily, we don’t stop long enough to understand why we’re restless or discontent.
In one of my favorite stories in the Bible, Jacob (Abraham’s grandson) experiences that holy hunger for more of God.
You may remember the story. Jacob has left Padan Aram where he had been working for his uncle for 20 years. He has made it. He is like rich, like Jeff Bezos rich. He seems to have everything he needs, and then some.
He is now on his way back to Canaan and knows that he will soon meet his brother, Esau, the man he had tricked using goat stew and a hairy costume. Obviously, Jacob is now distraught because he knows that he hasn’t exactly qualified for the “Best brother” award.
But on his way back to Cannan, Jacob stops all he is doing to pray.
He first reminds God (and himself) of His ways: “O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, Lord, you who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,’ (Gen 32:9-10)
Then He reminds God (and himself) of his own weakness: “I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant….Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children.” (Gen 32:10)
He reminds God (and himself) of His word: “But you have said, ‘I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.’” (Gen 32:11)
As he waited on the Lord, God gave him wisdom to deal with a hostile brother. Jacob sends Esau cattle and goats and camels in advance to show that he was now different, no longer a deceiver.
And then comes the beautiful part: Jacob: in the aloneness of the night, Jacob engages in an intimate struggle with God. God, in the visible manifestation of a man (known as a theophany), meets with Jacob in an all-night wrestling match.
Jacob, a man who had everything he could ever think of, knew that he desperately needed God. The man on the run becomes the man who wrestles with God. The deceiver becomes dependent on the divine.
Jacob is consumed with divine discontent — a dissatisfaction with the things of the world and a longing for more of God.
He who says to God: “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” (Gen 32:26). Jacob understands that the blessing is God himself. And that the blessing comes through surrender.
This man, who was once a weakling attached to his mother’s apron strings, is now renamed a warrior. Yet Jacob doesn’t stride out of there with brusque confidence. He walks out with a new identity, hobbling with a holy limp — a reminder that in dependence on God, he found strength.
Friend, are we too easily content with the baubles of the world? When we face that inner restlessness in our souls, may we not rush to satisfy ourselves with daily distractions.
May we pray for a holy hunger for the Lord, where we are willing to let Him strip everything else away.
Let the floor of your ordinary room become holy ground. Take hold of Him and let Him take hold of you. Let Him wreck you in the most beautiful of ways so that you walk in complete dependence on Him. Declare to Him that nothing else and nobody else will satisfy — and then surrender.
May He stir within us that passion to say, “I will not let You go unless you bless me.”
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Comments
9 Comments
Sandy Powers
Thank you so much for your devotions! I read every single one, and every one -as well as your YouVersion Bible Plans- takes me deeper in my walk with God! God BLESS you and your ministry today!
Susan Narjala
Thank you for the encouragement, Sandy! Truly blessed by that. – Susan
Dawn
Susan, I am so blessed by your devotions and the truths that you share. Thank you for being so vulnerable with your life which cause me to see the Word in new ways.
Susan Narjala
Amen. Thank you for sharing that, Dawn. Blessed my heart today. – Susan
Peter
Susan, you are running with the horses. Congratulations on your contemplative chutzpah!
Admirable. You haven’t balked stepping into dirt ring of the wily wrangler himself.
Is there a more kaleidoscopic character in all of Scripture?
This complex, conflicted, conspiring con man from what can only be described as the most disaffected, disturbingly deceit-ridden, discontent, dysfunctional and yet divinely chosen lineage in the entire Bible. Meet the Don of duplicity, this genetic grabaholic, Jacob. All he possesses testifies to his trickery. For more devastating insight regarding the sophistication of Jacob’s trickery, his ultimate wealth grab from his scurrilous uncle boss, Scott B Noegel’s Sex, Sticks & Trickster in Gen 30:31-43, University of Washington (freely available as pdf download), is fascinatingly enlightening.
The original, compulsive and consummate exponent of Art of The Deal, has his deal-making instincts rise to the fore even as God (the Angel of the Lord) struggles with him in a strange, dream-like encounter: instead of saintly submission, we have a bully bargain: I will not let you go until (unless) you bless me. “What’s in it for me?”, the screeching anthem of his life blares into the first faint rays of oncoming dawn. It helps to remember who is speaking to who; to consider the absurdly asymmetrical proportions of might and grip, clearly neither in Jacob’s favour. Regardless, blessings must be wrestled out of God’s hand. The head-lock that unlocks divine beneficence. Guile is the key to Grace. “I will not let YOU Go UNLESS…” The art of the deal is the constrictor’s continual clanging chorus of ‘Gimme More’.
Wouldn’t you expect the most visceral, vivid, high-contact, exhausting God-encounter (an all-night wrestling bout) to produce instant and radical transformation? The once scurrilous is now a saint?
Alas…
Need proof? Read on. Consider also Jacob’s trophy for ‘overcoming’: an angelic ‘touch’ on the inside of his thigh, a life-saving inch away from his family jewels. A ‘touch’ so forceful it permanently dislocates his hip. Lends new meaning to the clichéd, click-baity testimony title: ‘Touched by an angel’.
Consider the limping God-wrestler’s lion-hearted courage in the very next scene as he prepares to meet his feared brother (the one he artfully deceived and robbed of his inheritance). Consider his commendable chivalry in sending out his servants and wives ahead of him as potential canon-fodder to face Esau’s anticipated ire. The trail of gifts and offerings that precede this entourage. And possibly a jello-Jacob, cowering and quivering in the rear of the procession.
Back to the last moments of Jacob’s head-spinning God encounter. And his obdurate opportunism.
He isn’t satisfied that God himself encountered him with eye-popping intimacy in this most high-contact contact sport, bodies intertwining and twisting with each other in mortal combat. This ‘close encounter’, this apparent skin-to-skin closeness with God Himself is not blessing enough. Not for Jacob. He wants more, and cannot but negotiate it in a bully bargain… with God! The hubris is head-and-side-splitting.
How’s the hip doing, Jacob? Or should now we say, Israel? Still limping? Walk this way, in remembrance of Me?
The story was never about Jacob. It was always and will always be about God. The compassionate, gracious, merciful God who persists with the perverse, the stubborn, the twisted. And chooses them to bear His holy name.
May Jacob ever remind us that we can only be blessed by God’s ever-generous abundance as an act of divine grace, not human deft and guile.
Ted Senapatiratne
Thanks Susan! So well said!
We sure need a daily reminder to slow down and seek God. Like Jacob to say … and pause and wait for God to speak … for us to listen and wait to hear … the answer to our prayer to God… “Lord, I will not let you go, till you bless me”!
You really have me pondering and like one of the Worship Leaders in our church has said, his constant desire is “THRONE BEFORE PHONE”. (Don’t get on the phone before having time before the throne of God).
Blessings on you, Susan!
Susan Narjala
Throne before phone. That’s a good one 🙂 I need to remember to seek God before everything in the morning and throughout the day. His grace is sufficient. Blessings, Susan
Caroline
Thank you so much Susan! The LORD is using your words as a gentle and loving reminder to me…. All praise and glory to HIM!
“ When we face that inner restlessness in our souls, may we not rush to satisfy ourselves with daily distractions.
May we pray for a holy hunger for the Lord, where we are willing to let Him strip everything else away.“
Susan Narjala
Amen. So thankful that you were encouraged by this post, Caroline. Blessings, Susan