In order to attract settle to their esteem services, churches are resorting to new forms of evangelism. One church in Georgia has sincere to impart sideways cars and cuisine as an outreach tie. However, the greatest creative outreach corporation has been strong-smelling by Rob Adonis, a professional warrior who strong-smelling Concluding Christians Wrestling. His visualize is to bring new settle to church by wrestling for the Peer of the realm.
Mr. Adonis made-up the form of using wrestling as an evangelism tool came when on earth God appeared in a dream and told him to use his abilities to bring settle to the Peer of the realm. The same as asked whether Christianity and pro-wrestling were exchangeable, Mr. Adonis points out that in the Old Testament, Jacob wrestled with an angel (to read the full story, crack show).
But did he? Did Jacob fight with an angel? This is not what the Bible says. In the story of Jacob's encounter with the peaceful creature, the biblical journalism says: "Jacob was gone solitary, and a man wrestled with him until crack of dawn" (Genesis 32:24). I suffer the words of the journalism are crucial for the pull understanding of what happened to Jacob. The journalism says IT WAS THE Angel WHO WRESTLED Among JACOB and not Jacob who wrestled with the angel.
From the beginning, Jacob's life was clear by wrestling with settle. It was by cunning and ruse that Jacob had wrestled the acceptable from his brother Esau. It was by cunning and ruse that he wrestled the blessing from his surprise Isaac. In ultra, it was so of cunning and ruse that Jacob was edgy to absconder from the ferocity of his father-in-law Laban.
The same as Jacob was fleeing the peril posed by his brother Esau, God appeared to him and improved the agreement he had through to Abraham: "I am the Peer of the realm, the God of Abraham your surprise and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I momentum impart to you and to your progeny" (Genesis 28:13). As a result, God through dissimilar agreement to Jacob: "I momentum not try you until I convene done what I convene promised you" (Genesis 28:15).
The Peer of the realm never gone Jacob solitary. At the contract of the Peer of the realm and following twenty time from that real thing encounter with God, Jacob gone his home in Paddan-aram to return to the land of his family tree, the land of the agreement (Genesis 31:3).
In order to restore to life Jacob from Esau's ferocity and in order to bring Jacob to a reason in his life someplace the agreement might be realize, it was indispensable for God to real thing definite Jacob as an opponent and swing him that his real rival was God. In a advantage, God put aside his divine power and struggled with Jacob as a man struggles with a man. The hostility between God and Jacob was not upright a dream or a water spiritual hostility. God became a material in order to fight with what Emil Brunner called, "a man in upsurge."
God wrestled with Jacob all that night. Wrestling with Jacob is what God did all that night and what God had been do its stuff all of Jacob's life. In the end, God was not qualified to disruption Jacob. The same as the man saw that he might not accomplish wary Jacob as they wrestled, he intentionally threw Jacob's hip out of intensive. The disabling of Jacob indicates how arrangement he had wrestled with God. The new name Jacob acknowledged indicates that, in his wrestling with men and with God, Jacob had prevailed.
Existing is an crucial lesson for us to learn from this. WRESTLING FOR THE Peer of the realm can be fun, easy, and it may pay well, but WRESTLING Among THE Peer of the realm can be tortured and life irregular. The truth is, relations believers who fight with God and win, may experience numerous exultant victories but, in the end, they momentum come out with broken bones. The lesson every Christian ought learn is simple: it does not pay to fight with the Peer of the realm.
Claude Mariottini
Educator of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary
Credit: wicca-teachings.blogspot.com
