When you become a follower of Jesus, you can’t stay the same. God gives you a new identity. The book of Genesis shows just how that happens. How God can change someone. Much of Jacob’s early life was characterized by deceit.
Jacob enters the night as a man who has spent his entire life getting the things he wants by his own strategy. He deceived his brother, deceived his father, and outwitted his father-in-law. Every blessing in his life had come through his own manipulating and doing.
He was about to face his brother Esau—the brother he robbed—and he had sent everyone else ahead. His entire family. (Let that one sink in. He was sending out his entire family before him, relying on his own strength and putting his family out there before trusting in God.)
He is alone. He has to face everything he has done in life on “his own.” A figure appears and Jacob does the only thing he knows how to do: He grabs. He holds. He refuses to release until he gets something. Even with God, his first instinct is to take. God lets him wrestle until dawn, then ends it with one touch. It changes Jacob’s walk permanently.
Genesis 32:25
“When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.”
Wrenched: To pull or twist (someone or something) suddenly and violently.
Then the “man” (God) said, “Let me go.” But again, Jacob, being Jacob, had to demand something. He replied, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” Then God confronted him, asking, “What is your name?” Jacob replied, “Jacob.” He was still wrestling as the man who lived in deceit.
Then God did something Jacob didn’t see coming. He told him his name will now be “Israel.” He wouldn’t let Jacob stay in the identity that left him stuck. He renamed him.
Genesis 32:28
“Then the man said, ‘Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.'”
Once Jacob identified how he saw himself, God saw something completely different. God gave him a new identity. The wound is the point. We will be wrenched when we wrestle with God.
The Anatomy of the Wrestle
The hip socket has several vital functions that mirror our spiritual walk:
- Stability and Weight Bearing: We have to rely on God to be our stability and bear our weight.
- Facilitating Mobility: The socket allows the hip to move in multiple directions. God knows our every direction.
- The Labrum’s Role: A specialized cartilage called the labrum lines the socket, acting as a seal to keep the joint lubricated and ensure smooth, frictionless movement. When we try to move on our own, we lose God’s protection as He moves our lives.
- Support Structure: God is our structure of support.
- Impact Management: The cartilage lining the socket helps absorb shock, protecting the bones from excessive pressure. When our lives are pressured and we face shock, God is our protection—the one who helps guide and move us.
Jacob could not enter his inheritance still walking the way he always had. The hip was not punishment. It was the permanent, physical reminder that the blessing he carried came from surrender, not strategy.
Essentially, God said, “I know you’ve blown it. I know you’re conniving. But beneath all your emotional hang-ups, all your insecurities, all the stuff you don’t want anybody else to know—I see an inheritance in you.” Beneath all of your sins and hang-ups, God sees royalty. You can be something great. You can be what He made you to be.
God blessed Jacob: “Then he blessed Jacob there” (Genesis 32:29).
God also gave Jacob a limp: “The sun was rising as Jacob left Peniel, and he was limping because of the injury to his hip” (Genesis 32:31). God and Jacob had spent much of the night in a wrestling match, and God had dislocated Jacob’s hip. Jacob’s limp served as a daily reminder to depend on God.
God does His deepest work in your life when He deals with your identity—the person you truly are, as opposed to the way you see yourself. The way you think about yourself dictates how you act. So, God makes His deepest changes in your life by changing the way you see yourself—by showing you how He sees you.
Some of your biggest struggles will crush you. You will feel like you have lost your support and stability. The thing God wrenched in you that you are still mourning—the thing that you lost, the thing that changes your walk forever—it’s going to change your life. After losing my son, I will never walk the again…
You will never walk the same again.
