2019 Prayer and Fasting, Day 16

I did relapse yesterday by going onto ESPN.com for about an hour. I'm not going to lie; it felt good. If this week reminded me anything, it's that as much as I want to turn to God (and I do), I also don't. As much as I have claimed that I want to surrender my life to Him and let Him drive the car that is my life, I also don't.

The pastors who have preached on Sundays so far have encouraged us that if we fall off the fasting path, we can just try again the next day. When I relapse, I'm finding that that's not the battle I'm fighting. The battle I fight is a battle of wills. On the one hand, I want to follow Jesus and into all that He has for me, because I understand that following Him is more rewarding than anything else. On the other hand, I want the American Dream, and the things that a number of my friends' parents were able to give to my friends when we were growing up. I want it because I want the pain of my past erased, because I think that that's how it's going to work. I also want to eat my cake and to have it, too. And yes, I want the impossible, and on my terms. And there's the rub.

The below passage, I've been thinking about, especially at times like this when I wrestle with grabbing tightly onto my will vs the thought of actually laying it down.

Genesis 32:22-32, New International Version 

Jacob Wrestles With God
That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 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. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
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.”
Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.
So Jacob called the place Peniel [aka "Face of God"], saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”
The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.

When I injured my lower back three weeks ago, this passage came across my mind. As I write, it is almost completely healed. A few months ago, I also screwed up another part of my body (mildly), but that too has healed. Thoughts came across my mind in both instances of the possibility of either body part not healing or not healing properly. I have a toe I fractured a few years ago, as well as a permanently cracked fingernail from when I was 12, that can attest to that line of thinking.

For the record, I have heard it said that the man that wrestled with Jacob was Jesus, before He came into the flesh a few millennia later.