Wrestling with God!

“Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak… Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ (Genesis 32:24, 26)

It will surprise no one who knows me that this is one of my favourite Bible stories. I have a long history in combat sports, including wrestling, and I’ve learned that for many of us there is no growth without blood.

Boxing has always appealed to me because, compared with other forms of pugilism, it is relatively safe. That’s why I distanced myself from kickboxing and MMA many years ago, despite once serving as president of a national MMA organisation.

Kickboxing and mixed martial arts fighting are, in my opinion, almost inevitably brutal. Boxing can also be brutal. The fight between Jacob and the mysterious figure who grappled with him by the River Jabbok was indeed brutal!

Major transitional moments in life tend to come with blood: fighting through an illness, giving birth, stepping into the ring for the first time.

Robert Bly (in ‘Iron John’) tells of an Indigenous Australian tribe where boys, upon coming of age, are taken out into a remote area and shown a distant tree where their forefather supposedly lost a tooth fighting a demon. As the boys strain to see it, the men knock out a tooth from each boy, after which the boys return home as men.

In white Australian culture, we have few such rituals, though I have tried to address that deficiency over the years in my boxing club. When young people reach sixteen or seventeen, I encourage them to take a flight. They ask, “But what if I get hurt?” My answer has always been, “If it doesn’t hurt, you didn’t fight.”

There is nothing quite like climbing into that sacred space where the normal rules of civilised society are suspended. The ropes keep the fighters in and fence civilisation out. Under the spotlight, nearly naked, heart pounding, fist meeting face, you fight until the bell allows you to stop. Then you return to your corner—often bruised and bleeding—and your mentors welcome you back into regular human society.

Real moments of growth almost always involve struggle and pain, and Jacob’s story is an archetype. He wrestles all night with a dark figure by the river Jabbok. He struggles. He fights. He is wounded. He is blessed. In the morning he limps away, saying, “I have encountered God face to face, and I have survived.” (Genesis 32:30)

The great Rabbi Maimonides argued that this episode must have been a dream, or perhaps Jacob wrestled Esau or even himself. How can a human wrestle with God? Yet what seems clear is that Jacob believed he had wrestled with God—and that this violent encounter made sense of his whole life.

Jacob’s life was marked by struggle from the beginning. His mother Rebekah’s twins “were wrestling within her” (Genesis 25:22). Jacob was born second, grasping his brother Esau’s heel, earning the name ‘Jacob’, which means “grabber”. And he lived up to his name — stealing his brother’s birthright, deceiving his father, fleeing for his life, and then grabbing everything he could from his uncle Laban.

Eventually Jacob heads home with all he has acquired—wives, children, servants, wealth—only to learn that Esau is coming to meet him with four hundred men. Jacob knows his time has come. Despite all his years of wheeling and dealing and grabbing and grasping, he knew he couldn’t stand up to his brother in a straight fight

He sends gifts ahead to appease Esau, then sends his family across the river and remains alone. But he is not alone! There was another figure there on the far side of the river… a shadow-dweller who had always been there, moving about in the background, waiting until Jacob was finally alone, and then he jumps him!

This was no gentlemanly Olympic-rules wrestling bout. This was traditional wrestling—an all‑in brawl ending in either submission or death. You see echoes of this kind of wrestling still in silat, jiu-jitsu, sambo, and the sandpit wrestling of India.

One of my trainers had spent his youth wrestling his way through those sandpits of India, where every village had its own distinctive style. He said he once stayed in a town where they wrestled with a large metal spike attached to one arm, and you were allowed one good shot with the spike when you got your opponent to the ground. Every man in that village was apparently carrying some horrific wound – a missing eye or a great hole in the face. This is traditional wrestling!

Genesis tells us that when God saw He could not overpower Jacob, He delivers him a shot to the ‘inside thigh’ — almost certainly a euphemism for a groin strike — and Jacob is left with a permanent limp.

This is not a comfortable image of God—one who fights His chosen people, wounds them, and blesses them with blows below the belt. It’s far from ‘gentle Jesus meek and mild’. We live in an age where popular spirituality is sugar and spice and all things nice. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a God of struggle and blood.

Have we wrestled with this God? – that is the question. Have we gone beyond thinking about God to actually coming to grips with God? Have we felt God’s fingers sink into our flesh? Have we screamed under God’s grip? Have we thrashed it out with the Almighty to the point where we limp away—damaged, yet able to say with Jacob, ‘I have wrestled with God, yet I am still alive’?

John Calvin wrote, “All the servants of God in this world are wrestlers.” He insists that it is God Himself who wrestles with us—not Satan, not other people—because God tests our faith by entering the arena as our opponent. “He, as an antagonist, descends into the arena to try our strength.” (commentary on Genesis, 1554)

Do we dare step into the ring with God? For Jacob, this was the moment of transition — not merely into adulthood, but into faith. He became Israel – the one who wrestles with God. His limp was not a mark of defeat but of transformation.

And so the invitation stands. Will we confront God in our humanity? Will we wrestle through our fears, our failures, our sins, and our griefs? Will we hold on through the long night until God blesses us? Will we dare to have it said of us that we wrestled with God and have survived?

Our Sunday Eucharist

We celebrated another great Sunday Eucharist last weekend. A big thank you to Constandi Bastoli for joining me on the panel.

Unfortunately, there was some miscommunication with Brynn Rees. He hadn’t received my emails and was flat out in a field with a team of farmhands at the time of broadcast. It’s a shame, as I think he would have had some extra insights on the subject of mustard trees. Next time …

I’ve clipped the discussion we had on Romans 8 where Paul talks about the unstoppable love of God. Costandi shares a wonderful story about the power of prayer, and the whole online team had plenty to say. Even without any input from AI Saint Paul, we went for nearly 15 minutes, but five of that was the reading. Enjoy!

You’ll find the Romans 8 discussion at the end of today’s post. Immediately below are the most popular ‘reels’ (short videos) from last week. I find it encouraging that my prayers for Dr Hassoun always draw the largest number of viewers. God willing, our prayers for him will prevail.

This Sunday is the first Sunday of the month and so we’ll be privileged to have David Baldwin and Tom Toby back with us in their regular sport. I appreciate that it does look like favouritism – having David and Tom with us every month, whereas most of our team only appears once every two months. Even so, they seemed to gel early on as a dynamic duo, and the balance between radical Christian and Shia Muslim seems to work brilliantly, so if it ain’t broke …

Join us, please, at midday on Sunday on Rumble. You can, of course, also join via Facebook, Twitter (X), LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia, and StreamYard.

Let me work your corner

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Every dollar helps keep the wheels turning—the websites, the newsletters, the broadcasts, and the boxing.

What’s On?

Sunday, August 2nd – Our Eucharist from noon @thesundayeucharist.com, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia, StreamYard and Rumble
Monday, August 3rd – Boxing at Brofit Gym in Bankstown from 6.30 pm
Tuesday, August 4th – Boxing at the Mundine Gym in Redfern from 7 pm.
Thursday, July 30th – Noon Bible Study @www.thesundayeucharist.com/bible
Saturday, August 8th – Boxing at the Legends Gym in Kensington from 3 pm

The persecution of our dear brother, Sheikh Hassoun, continues unabated. Recent images that are circulating show a face that has been damaged by torture and deprivation. I appreciate the Scottish brother who invoked the spirit of William Wallace in the graphic on the right (above). Please continue to pray with me for his freedom.

Meanwhile, here in Sydney last Tuesday night, we enjoyed an inspiring address from Dr Yousef Khoury. our distinguished brother from the church in Gaza.

Dr Khoury is part of the Bearing Witness tour, organised by Palestinian Christians in Australia. If you missed him and his colleague, Dr Lamma Mansour, in Sydney, you can still catch them in Melbourne and Perth. Full details are available here.

I’m pasting my one-minute interview with Dr Khoury last Tuesday night below to inspire you to make the effort if they are in your area.

Yes, the times are dark, and all the indicators suggest escalating violence between the US, Iran, Israel, Yemen, and the growing number of other players being drawn into the vortex of destruction. Even so, the image of Jacob, wrestling with God through the long hour of darkness, gives me hope.

Almighty God,
who meets us in the dark and does not refuse the struggle,
grant us courage to wrestle with you
and faith to hold fast until your blessing comes.
Wound what must be healed,
strengthen what must endure,
and send us into the day marked by your mercy and renewed in your grace.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.