Wrestling

This may seem elementary to many, but I've noticed something new this year.  I've been privileged to either meet for the first time or gotten to know more intimately Christian leaders that are really making an impact on God's people.  Some of these include:

- Dr. Daniel Brown, from Commended to the Word in California, mentor, author, speaker, pastor, father.
- Alan Wright, pastor, author of one of my favorite books Shame Off You.
- Dudley Hall, minister, author, and above all, a Father in the faith to man.
- Kenny Thacker, my own spiritual father, an excellent pastor and an incredible speaker.
- Tammy Dunahoo, General Supervisor of Foursquare Churches in the United States

I have admired these individuals for a long time, simply because when I hear them speak or read their books, they make a particular sound...a call if you will. A call to look deeper, to think harder, to probe more beneath what we think we know.  I thought it was because they were all so smart or specially gifted to do that.  And, while they are very smart and very gifted, I've realized something that is true about all of them.

They wrestle.

Now, I'm not talking about Hulk Hogan or the Rock..you know, men in their underwear, acting as if they are throwing each other around the ring.  I mean a different kind of wrestling. 

Wrestling with truth.

After hearing Dudley Hall preach yet another challenging message this weekend, I remarked to him afterward how he was "messing with me" to which he replied something to the effect of: this:  "I'm messing with myself, too!":.  It took me a while, but I realized that everything he was preaching, everything I had heard Kenny say, all my conversations with Dr. Dan, and everyone else....they were just sharing from their own wrestling with truth what the Word of God is today. 

When God gives a word to a person, it challenges us.  Even if the word is an affirmation of our place as sons and daughters of God!  Because we are forced to recognize and then deal with our own humanity...our own weaknesses...our own lack of faith and shortcomings.

"Could this really be what God is saying?"  "If this is what God is saying, this changes EVERYTHING!"  "If that's true, how I live must change...how I give must change..."  Yes, these people are wrestlers.

I, for one, am NOT a wrestler. I tend to be much more on the side of settling in.  For most of my life, my brain had been so active with the wrong kind of wrestling (a wrestling to convince myself that I was all right and wasn't losing my mind or going crazy) that I just wanted peace...no struggle!  But, actually, I've realized that the very thing that brought me to the place of beginning to understand that I am already blessed, already loved, already accepted by God was wrestling:  wrestling with the truth that God loved me...something I never could believe. 

Don't get me wrong, I wrestle.  I read passages of Scripture that arrest me in my tracks.  But, I'm much too quick to settle into a surface reasoning, a workable understanding, and then move on to the next one.  When I hear the challenge from what God is saying, I tend to convince myself that I can't really understand to the deepest depths what He is saying, so why try?  Plus, I'm so busy trying to prepare sermons and pastor a church, I don't have time for that...right?

But what if God is really trying to shower us with Himself in those moments?  What if , in our haste to move to quick understanding, we cut off the very source that will ignite a delight in our Father and worship from our hearts when we realize how awesome and amazing He is?

I think I'm beginning to see what makes great leaders and preachers...well, at least ONE thing in a cast of many....and that's that when God gives truth, they dissect it...they meditate on it...they wrestle with it for a LONG TIME, like weeks, months, even years. They don't just assume that they get it the first time around because God is so infinite and so "other" that a single statement from Him could really take us a life time to unpack.  

And, they don't wrestle with truth so they can be great leaders and preachers...they wrestle BECAUSE THEY ARE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF GOD that DELIGHT IN HIM AND EVERYTHING HE SAYS.

I think my lack of wrestling demonstrates a lack of delight with my heavenly Father.

I don't even know how to proceed from here, but I know one thing:  I'm ready to discover what it means to be a wrestler, not so I'll be a better leader or pastor, or a smarter person, but because I'm a son of God that is learning everyday what it means to delight in Him.