Answers on a postcard

God constantly exceeds my prayers and expectations. I sometimes doubt Him, or wonder if I'm heading the right way, or why I don't seem to hear His voice, and then days like yesterday happen where He confirms to me that He hears me, and that He speaks with authority into my life. I feel like there's too much to try and explain everything, but during worship at church last night, the words of the songs and the passages of Scripture I was reading just confirmed all kinds of ideas and issues I had collected during the last week or two, and spoke truth into my life concerning them. I'm pretty sure this post isn't going to do any of it justice, but I will struggle to convey them in a way that is coherent.

In fact, struggling, or wrestling, was the theme of the talk last night. We looked at Jacob's wrestle with God in Gen 32, as he tries to prepare for the arrival of his brother Esau, whom Jacob robbed of his inheritance as the older brother by tricking their father into giving it to himself. Jacob is dividing his family and estate between two places, so that one part can escape whilst Esau attacks the other with the 400-strong entourage he has brought along. He send his family ahead of him, and then:

"So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak."

Where did this man come from? Jacob obviously recognises him as being greater than he, and will not give in. God even dislocates his hip (!) in an effort to make him let go, but Jacob replies:

"I will not let you go unless you bless me."

God ask him his name, despite knowing it, and then gives him a new name, saying:

"Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."

Jacob, as far as I know, was the only man in history to see God face to face and live. His struggle with God, whilst not normal experience for us, shows us something of God's heart for His relationship with us: the answers to life's problems are not supposed to be easy "popcorn" sayings that help us through bad times: in fact, it is only as we struggle with God, and answer the questions He gives us, that we find out who we really are, and begin to work out why things work the way that they do. God asks many people who search him "What is your name?" In essence, He says, "Who are you, and what are you doing here?" We often have so many questions, and yet God skilfully helps us answer them by asking questions of his own. He knows the heart of the problem, even when we can't see it. We're so involved in the problems that face us, so overwhelmed or blinded, that we need God to give us fresh perspective, to open up the recesses of our heart where our true feelings lie, expose them, and to deal with them. It's not supposed to be a simple process: we all need to wrestle with God, constantly, over the things that matter to us, and also the things that matter to Him.

In chatting with a friend over coffee last night, I realised this principles applies to the way that I answer questions about my faith, or about suffering, about Jesus, the cross, the Christian faith, faith itself, and so on. So often we try and refine our answers to these 'postcard' length replies, thinking that we have cleverly found a way of explaining the truth. Now I'm not trying to criticise apologetics, in fact I'm usually the one defending apologetics (anyone else get the irony there?), but sometimes we work so hard on neat answers that we fail to serve those who are asking the question on two counts. Firstly, we actually may fail to listen to them properly, and to understand what the problem really is. Sometimes the questions is hypothetical, sometimes it comes from a real hunger to know the answer, and sometimes it is symptomatic of a deeper problem in that person's heart. In order to find this out, we need to ask questions ourselves, and ask for God's guidance and revelation concerning this person. Secondly, we can sometimes fail to point that person to God, in order to help them wrestle with Him over the issues that they have. We may have good answers, but it is only the Holy Spirit that illuminates truth, and it is when we do business with God, when we face up to the possibility that He may well exist and needs to be directly communicated with, that we find what we're looking for.

All I'm really proposing then, is a level of sensitivity in our conversations about God that leads us to always question, always probe for deeper reasons, always point them towards God, and in so doing, love them deeply by directing them to the One who has real answers, if only we'd struggle with Him long enough to find out.