Thoughts for another day

August 1, 2008

Today's verse: Hos. 12:4. Yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him: (KJV)
(Pls. read the above before you read further. Thanks)

Sometimes when in prayer, I reflect upon the power of God and it’s availability to us humans. I hear of many healings in testimonies and many lives transformed by God’s power. Then again I hear of powerful events in the lives of people when they invoked God and the note-worthy interventions of God in the lives of ordinary people. All this makes my mind burst with pure hope in the Lord and I wonder how I can make God’s power come alive in my life. Perhaps, today’s verse and a reading of the background of the verse will allow some illumination to me and of course to you my beloved in Christ.

Let’s go back to the time of Jacob’s wrestling with the Angel. We know that his mind was clogged with fear then. He was filled with tremendous anxiety: a man with wives, children, livestock and property fleeing from Laban, moving towards Canaan, the land of his father and toward Esau, his brother. Dread filled him for he remembered how he had cheated Esau and he didn’t know what to do. At this time, an Angel of the Lord, that is, the Lord, came and Jacob struggled with him. Jacob would not let God go, but persisted till the time, the Lord asked him, to allow Him to go. But Jacob agreed only if He would bless him and God did that.

Now here is a lesson to learn: of the power, of persistent, heart rending prayer to God. I call this ‘moving prayer’ for it translates into a kind of passionate intercourse with God, moving Him to act on your behalf. A situation when, you are so troubled that you tug at His heart. A circumstance of utter desperacy where without God’s supernatural power, you know you are sunk. And so you tremble in utter supplication. Adopting a stance of, ‘I will not move Lord, till you bless me.’ What a prayer. An act of mere man that pleases the Almighty so much that He yields. Strive my friend to break your heart in prayer that He tells His angels, ‘Now I must look upon him down there, who brings Me to tears!’