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Kyle and I have walked through Colossians 3 with Keegan & Josie for the past two weeks.  It’s the scriptural focus of the message series, Road Trip, they’re watching in LifeKIDS each weekend.  I love the fact that our family is focused on this one chapter in scripture.  The time spent just reading together has been refreshing.

Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience... Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony.  Col 12 & 14

I wish I could say this has been my demeanor the past few weeks.  Yet I’m amazed at how difficult it has been to live this out.  Ministry has been challenging, to put it lightly.  It seems that the simplest of processes in kids ministry aren’t so simple right now.  The level of patience, gentleness, and humility I’ve shown is less than I care to confess.

Why is it when I ask God to increase my patience, gentleness and humility… He likes to show me all the areas where it lacks the most?

Innovation at it’s best. No doubt the next big thing on Matt McKee’s & John Saddington’s technology wish list. Or you could just log onto YouVersion.com. Guess it depends on how much you want to spend.

I’m a ministry ‘rookie’.  Less than 10 years.

And there are certain things I don’t understand about church.

We don’t always like to deal with problems.

As Christ-followers, it seems we expect the challenges of life to wrap themselves up and resolve as quickly as the 30-minute sitcoms we grew up watching.  When someone reveals a problem we fire a combination of scripture hoping to vanquish it like the foe in a video game.  We’re not always comfortable with process when someone deals with life’s twists and turns.

Genesis 32 reveals a story of Jacob wrestling with God.  For years I read that story and figured Jacob got what he deserved.  You wrestle with God and you’ll walk away with a limp!

Don’t wrestle with God!!

I’m rethinking that now.

God blessed Jacob.  Made him the father of nations.  Why is that?  I don’t know.  I have no doubt commentators have written on this for years.  I have no new revelations here.  But today I look at the wrestle differently.

Jacob never let go of God.

He fought to hang on.  It had to be an ugly fight.  Not the pansy, stand-back-and-slap-a-little, kind of fight.  If he was relentless enough that the angel realized he wouldn’t overpower Jacob… I’d say Jacob was fighting to hang on to God no matter the cost.

I think when God is weeding out deeply rooted stuff there is going to be a wrestle and church needs to be a safe place for that wrestle to happen.  What does that mean?

It means messy things like broken marriages, sexual addictions, the loss of a loved one, disease, disability…  some will wrestle with God for years as they learn to give their pain/their sin/their will over to Him.

I think the point of blessing came because Jacob never gave up.  In fact, that was the moment God renamed him Israel (God-wrestler).