Today we're gonna talk about the importance of discomfort in our relationship with God. That's what we're talking about today. So woo! Discomfort! Who's ready to feel not comfortable? Anybody? Yeah, you shouldn't clap. Why would you clap for that? You people clapping are weird. Um, talking about discomfort. Now, here's the deal for context. We're in a series right now called People God Uses. And what we're actually doing is we're looking at the family tree of Jesus, which is a really interesting, interesting list of names. Okay? Like we're talking about a group of people. These are the ancestors of Jesus. Matthew chapter one gives us a bunch of those names. And it's like a who's who of really incredible stories from the Bible, but also a who's who of really messed up, flawed, scandalous people. You know, it's amazing when you read through the list. If you know the stories in the Bible, you read through the list of the people that end up basically bringing Jesus into the world, and you're like, wow, man, God has low standards, you know? And that should that should encourage you because it means that that he can use even us. Because all of these people are people God used to bring his son into this world. And what's even crazier is with all their flaws, God used a lot of these people to do incredible things when they were on the earth. You know, God, God, He's so incredible, and this is something that we say pretty often, it's important for us to understand that the Bible, it's not a story of amazing people doing great things for God. It's the story of really broken, flawed people who have an amazing, loving God who can use their brokenness to do incredible things. And that should give a lot of us hope. Because even when we're broken and kind of messed up, God can still use us if we want him to. You know, I want to be useful to God. I want to be part of the story that he's telling. I think it's the greatest story that's ever been told, the story of God's love for people and the lengths that he's willing to go to bring people to himself. There's never been a greater story than that, and I want to be part of that story. And when I look through this list of names of people that God used to bring Jesus into the world, this list of names that that becomes the family tree of Jesus, I see people who have so many issues, and yet every single one of them, in some way, was used by God to do something really special. I want to learn from that because I want to be someone that God uses. And so last week we started by looking at a man named Abraham, who's the first name on the list. That's why we started there. And we said that Abraham, we're giving everybody nicknames. Abraham is the believer. He was a person with great faith. Didn't have perfect faith. His faith absolutely stumbled, like everyone with faith does, but he had enduring faith. He was a believer, and God likes to work with believers. Today we're gonna look at his grandson, a guy named Jacob, and Jacob is the wrestler. He's a wrestler. And we'll talk about what that means in just a little bit. Just know that Jacob's someone who could handle some discomfort in his journey. Now I'm gonna go ahead and be really direct and honest. Um, I don't like Jacob at all. And I would say it to his face if he was alive right now. I think Jacob is the worst. Like, you know, like when you when you grow up and maybe you become familiar with people in the Bible or whatever, and maybe it's a whole new thing to you, and you're coming here and it wasn't part of your childhood. I didn't start going to church until I was in the fourth grade, and that's because we moved to a new house, and this person invited my parents and I to go to church, and we went, and that person got arrested the very next day. Literally, never saw them again. They went to jail. And so, but they invited us to church, so it worked. And uh, and we started going and we liked it. And I and as a kid, I just thought the stories that I heard in church were so cool. I thought they were awesome, and I was really open to it, and so I started reading my Bible, I started reading Genesis, and uh, man, that is not rated PG. Like, if you've ever read those stories, my parents were like, Stop reading the Bible, stop it, because you're not ready for some of this stuff. Like the Bible doesn't, it doesn't cut the ugly parts out. It's one of the cool things about scripture, it's really honest. And so I start reading the Bible and I start reading all these stories, and pretty soon I've got certain people in the Bible that I'm like, man, that person is awesome. You know, like King David, I loved him when I was a kid. I loved his story because yeah, he has issues and he makes mistakes, but then there's all these things about David that are just awesome and admirable, and I wanted to kind of be like David. I've never heard a person say they want to be like Jacob because he's awful. He's the worst. I'm just he's just the worst. Let me explain. Um, from birth, he's awful. From birth. It's possible. Okay, so Genesis chapter 25, here's where Jacob enters the story. Isaac, his father, pleaded with the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was unable to have children. The Lord answered Isaac's prayer, and Rebecca became pregnant with twins, but the two children struggled with each other in her womb. So she went to ask the Lord about it, why is this happening to me? And the Lord said to her, The sons in your womb will become two nations. From the very beginning the two nations will be rivals. One nation will be stronger than the other, and your older son will serve your younger son. And when the time came to give birth, Rebecca discovered that she did indeed have twins. The first one was very red at birth and covered with thick hair like a fur coat. It's like a wookie, basically, is what happened. That came out. So they named him Esau. Um, I don't think he was like a Wookiee, he's just a hairy kid. Uh then the other twin was born with his hand grasping Esau's heel. So they named him Jacob. Isaac was 60 years old when the twins were born. Now, that name Jacob in their language, in the Hebrew language, it translates to the supplanter or the one who deceives. Because he was born grabbing a hold of his older brother's heel, like he was trying to pull him back in and say, I want to be first, me first. Like, and that is exactly who Jacob ends up being. As a brother, he's he's terrible. I'm sure a lot of us in the room have had some pretty, pretty awful siblings at times, you know. Um, my little brother, I love him to death, but one time when he was like four, he stabbed me in the leg. Stabbed me. Literally. Uh, it was with a pushpin, it wasn't like a knife, but it counts. I've been stabbed, okay? It counts. A metal, it broke the flesh. And what was awesome is that he was really young, so I pretended that I died. And he cried over my body. And uh then I was like, surprise, you know? Um, because that's what you do when you're a sibling. You try to ruin the emotional health of your siblings. That's what you do. And uh, and Jacob, Jacob was really good at this. Like, guys, the worst brother. So, because his brother Esau was the oldest, there were a few things in their culture that were due to him. One was something called the birthright. The oldest, the oldest male in their culture would be given the inheritance from the father and all the authority that went along with the father's authority. So, you know, at a certain time, Esau was destined to have the birthright, the authority and the inheritance. And that's a big deal. Well, one day, Jacob stumbles upon Esau, and Esau is like starving, like legit starving. Remember, this is 4,000 years ago. There's no refrigerators, there's no drive-throughs, and so you would go through famines, you would go through times where you hadn't eaten in days and days. And Jacob happens upon Esau in that state, and Esau's like, please give me some food, because Jacob has some. And Jacob's like, I'll give you food if you give me your birthright. And there's some back and forth, but finally Esau, in kind of a moment of weakness, says, Fine, take it, whatever. And then he he eats. And so Jacob takes advantage of his starving brother and deceives him into giving him the birthright. That's the kind of brother that Jacob is. He's a terrible brother, he's a terrible son as well. Isaac, when he gets older, it goes blind. Isaac, he's he's blind. And so when it comes time for Isaac to give the blessing to his children, that was another part of their culture, is you would bless your children. And in their culture, they believe that the blessing that your father would speak over you, it would stick with you for your whole life. And we might look at that and say, that's really superstitious, but how many people's words have stuck with you for years? Like, think about that. And so it's time for Esau to be blessed. And so Esau's out, he's hunting, and Jacob finds out that when Esau gets back, his father is going to bless him. And so Jacob puts on some of Esau's clothes, disguises himself like Esau, goes into the tent of his blind father, does his best Esau impression, and his father blesses him, thinking it's Esau. So then Esau comes back and he's like, Dad, I'm ready for my blessing. And the dad's like, What are you talking about? I just gave it to you. And he's like, What are you talking about? And then they figure out what happens, and Jacob stole the blessing. And he's like, Dad, just bless me. And Jacob's like, I already blessed him. Like I said he was gonna be blessed, and he is, because they believed it was that powerful. And so Esau said, If I see him again, I'm gonna kill him. And Jacob runs away. Which is another thing Jacob happens to be really, really good at doing is running away from things. Again, he's the worst. Okay? So later on, Jacob becomes a father. He has 12 sons, one daughter. Poor girl. And uh and the thing about Jacob as a dad is if he was a bad son, or if he was a bad son and brother, I guess, he's an even worse father. So what happens is he shows extreme favoritism to one of his kids. Like extreme favoritism, to the point that the other brothers don't even have to wonder if their dad likes this one more. And it's the 11th child. So he's got ten older brothers that end up being so filled with jealousy and rage that they end up selling their brother Joseph was his name, to slavers in Egypt. So they sell him away. Then they convince their dad that he was just mauled to death by a wild animal. And if you feel bad, if you're like, poor Jacob, remember what he did to his dad. Like, totally deceived his father. It's kind of like it's just the family tradition at this point. And so they they sell Joseph away, but it backfires because instead of their father now loving them, now that Joseph's gone, their father just takes all of that love and gives it to Benjamin, who is the youngest child in the family. And all this kind of comes to this boiling point where years later there's this famine in the land, and the only place to get food is Egypt. And Joseph, who was sold as a slave to Egypt, has actually risen in the ranks, and he's actually second in charge of all of Egypt, but the brothers don't know that. They go to Egypt, all but Benjamin, who stays with his father, to get to get food. And Joseph's in charge of food distribution. They see Joseph, they don't recognize him. It's been a long, long time, years and years and years, but he recognizes them, but he sees that Benjamin, his little brother, isn't with him. And in Joseph's mind, they've probably just done the same thing to Benjamin that they did to him. And so Joseph kind of plays this game with them and he says, Hey, how do I know you're not spies? Because they were foreigners. And they said, We're not spies, and they start telling them about their family, and they mention this Benjamin. He says, Well, I don't see this Benjamin with you. And they're like, Well, yeah, that's because he's with our father. And Joseph says, Okay, well, here's the deal. I'm gonna keep one of you here. I'm gonna hold one of you captive. And he chose this brother Simeon, and he says, Until you bring this Benjamin back to me, he stays here. And so the brothers go back, and they have to convince their father to let Benjamin come with them so that Simeon can be freed. It's this huge mess. And we read about it in Genesis chapter 42. This is real quick. It says, When the brothers came to their father Jacob in the land of Canaan, they told him everything that had happened to them. The man who was governor of the land spoke very harshly to us, they told him. He accused us of being spies, scouting the land, but but we said, We're honest men, not spies. We're twelve brothers, sons of one father. One brother is no longer with us, and the youngest is at home with our father in the land of Canaan. Then the man who's governor of the land told us, This is how I'll find out if you're honest men. Leave one of your brothers here with me, take your grain for your starving families, and go on home. But you must bring your youngest brother back to me. Then I'll know that you're honest men and not spies, and I'll give you back your brother, and you may trade freely in the land. And here's Jacob's response in verse 38. My son will not go down with you. His brother Joseph is dead, and he is all I have left. Keep in mind, he's talking to his other sons. Right? He's it. He's the only one I care about. If he dies, if anything should happen to him on your journey, you would send this grieving white-haired man to his grave. I mean, he looks at his children, he says, I don't care about you. I only care about him. And I'm willing to let my other son be held captive in a foreign land, then risk this son. Like I said, guys, I'm not joking. Jacob is the worst. Okay? For years and years I would think about this fact that Jacob, there's like no redeeming quality about him. And it's maddening because the story we're about to read here in a second, he has his name changed to Israel. He becomes the namesake of the entire nation of people that God uses in scripture to bring his son into this world. It's named after him, and there's like nothing good about him. I thought that for a very long time. That Jacob's just he's the worst, and he is he's really bad. But a couple years ago, I was listening to a message by this pastor that I I've listened to for for years, ever since I was in college, and he did a message on Jacob, and I was like, ah, I don't want to hear a message on Jacob. I I can't stand Jacob. And uh and he said something in it that for the very first time thought occurred to me that I never thought I would have. I went, whoa. I kind of want to be like Jacob. And that threw up on my mouth a little bit because I don't like Jacob. He's he's the worst. Okay, let me let me explain. Jacob has this moment in his life, and it's like it's a defining moment. It is the defining moment of his life. And it takes place a little bit after he's deceived his father and his brother, and a little bit before his son Joseph is sold into slavery. What's going on at this moment in his life is he's at he's about to go back to his home. He hasn't been there in years. The last time he was there, his brother Esau said, If I ever see you again, I'll kill you. And so Jacob took that threat seriously and he went and stayed somewhere else until he wore out his welcome there because he's a very deceptive person, and that's what deceptive people do. And so it's time for him to go somewhere else. And he's headed back home, but he he remembers the grudge that he and Esau have, so he sends a messenger ahead just to sort of scout and let him know what's going on, and maybe tell his brother Esau that he's gonna come. And so as they're traveling, this messenger comes back and he says, Hey, your brother Esau is on his way to meet you with 400 men. And he's like, We're all gonna die. And you know, you think, what would you do like in that situation? What do you do? You know, you man up, right? You man up and you go first, and you go out and you meet with Esau and you bury the hatchet and you own your mistakes and you get humble, whatever, right? That's what you do, right? Not if you're Jacob. No, no, no. If you're Jacob, you move yourself to the back of the line, okay? Which is what he does. And you divide your family up into groups because you're like, okay, they might get these, but they if they go after these, these can get away. And so if I split everybody up, I can make sure that at least some of them survive. And then I'll hang back here and and and have the advantage of seeing how it all plays out. That's what that's what Jacob does. Again, guys, if you haven't caught on to this theme, the worst, right? And so Jacob sends his family off in front of him, like, hope it goes well. Have fun with those 400 guys. I'm just I'm just gonna be back here, you know, guarding the land or whatever. And he he stays back. And and we get to this moment in his story, in Genesis 32. This left Jacob all alone in the camp. And this is one of those stories where a lot happens in a few words. It's it's kind of odd. And a man came and wrestled with him until dawn began to break. And when the man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob's hip and wrenched it out of its socket. And the man said, Let me go, for the dawn is breaking. But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. What is your name? the man asked. He replied, Jacob. Your name will no longer be Jacob, the man told him. From now on you'll be called Israel, because you have fought with God and with men and have won. Please tell me your name, Jacob said. Why do you want to know my name? The man replied. And then he blessed Jacob there. Jacob named the place Penail, which means face of God. For he said, I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared. The sun was rising as Jacob left Penail, and he was limping because of the injury to his hip. And as far as we know, he limps for the rest of his life. It's a weird story, right? And so, like theologically, this is what's apparently happening here. Uh God has taken on the form of a person. And this is actually something that God does a few times in Scripture, like the biggest time would be Jesus, okay? But even in the Old Testament, there's a few moments where God comes disguised as a person, essentially, and interacts with people. And in this specific situation, he does this with Jacob and gets into a wrestling match with a guy. It's a weird story. I mean, just picture you're Jacob and you're worried about your family and you've set them all off and you're by yourself, and who knows what you're about to do. Maybe you're gonna pray, maybe you're gonna just cry, I don't know. And from the distance, like you see a guy walking toward you, and as he gets closer, you recognize like he seems like he's coming at me, you know, not just toward me, but to me. And then the guy comes and just starts to wrestle with you. Like, have you has anyone here ever wrestled, like legit wrestled before? Okay? I had a roommate in college who was a wrestler, and we always used to, all the guys in in my dorms, we used to mess around and we did like, we would box and things like that until a guy broke his nose and then told us to stop. Um and uh but one day, one day we had this horrible idea to like wrestle. And uh I learned a valuable lesson that day is that you cannot beat a wrestler. It's impossible. If someone really knows what they're doing wrestling, you will, you will lose because they can twist your body into shapes that you didn't know your body could twist into. And they can they can move your joints into places where you're like, I literally don't know how to move right now because it feels like if I do, I'm gonna break every bone that I have. And uh, and so my roommate was a really good wrestler. I've never felt so much tension and I've never felt so much discomfort in any moment in my life than wrestling. And that's what goes on with with Jacob and this man, God. They wrestle, and this goes on for hours and for hours and for hours. And it gets to the point where God just says, you know, I'm tired of this, and he just dislocates his hip. And then he says, Let me go. And Jacob says, No, not until you bless me. And so the man gives him a new name. God gives him a new name, and his name is Israel, which literally translates wrestles with God. Jacob went from being the deceiver to the one who wrestles with God, and that's at least an upgrade, right? We can admit that. That's definitely the one who deceives versus the one who wrestles with God. He gets this new name and he gets this blessing. So I'm listening to this pastor a few years ago tell this story, and he says this thing about Jacob, and again, I've I've never liked Jacob, and I just think he's the worst. And the pastor says, you know, here's the thing about Jacob. Say what you want about him. Say what you want to say about him being a horrible person and deceitful and selfish and cowardly, and all those things are true. But here's the thing about him: he was someone who would rather have died holding on to God than to have lived knowing he had let go. Jacob was someone who would rather have limped away from a genuine encounter with God than just avoid it altogether. And when I heard him say that, the idea that Jacob would rather have died holding on to God, that he refused to let go of God, no matter how much discomfort he felt, he would not let go of God. That that hit me. And I had to do some soul searching and ask myself, man, do I cling to God like that? Do I hold on that tightly to God? And for the first time in my life, I found myself saying, Man, I think I kind of want to be like Jacob, you know. See, it's a powerful idea to wrestle with God. We as people, we don't like, we don't like to wrestle. We don't like to wrestle with anything. We want lives that are tension-free and discomfort-free. That is why so many of the products that we buy are all about maximizing comfort and alleviating tension. We want as as little discomfort as possible. But when it comes to God, when it comes to our relationship with God, if we don't wrestle with Him, if we don't embrace some discomfort, if we don't actually like go there with God from time to time, we miss out on the greatest blessings. We miss out on the greatest blessings. We have to be okay with the struggle. We have to be okay with the idea of wrestling with God and struggling and really going there. I mean, if you look at Scripture, some of the greatest people in Scripture, they were wrestlers. Like they they they wrestled with God. If you know the story of Job, a really incredible story. Job experiences tremendous tragedy. He loses children. I mean, it's it's it's intense. And in the midst of that tragedy, he's having a really hard time with God, as you can imagine. I'm sure many of us have been in situations like that where we're looking at God and we're saying, hey, God, you're doing it wrong. Maybe you have the boldness to actually say it, maybe you just think it. But that's where Job is at. He's he's like, God, you've messed up. You've clearly made some major mistakes because I've been faithful to you, and look at what's happening. And so he goes to God and he starts asking God some pretty intense questions. I don't know if you've ever done that before. If you've ever gone to God with some pretty intense questions, like you're kind of demanding an answer. But Job does this for a while, and then God responds. This is really interesting. This is in Job chapter 38, and we learn in this that God is a good wrestler. Check this out. God talks, Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words? Brace yourself like a man, because I have some questions for you, and you must answer them. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you know so much. Who determined its dimensions and stretched out their surveying line? What supports its foundations? Who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? Who kept the sea inside its boundaries as it burst from the womb? And as I clothed it with clouds and wrapped it in thick darkness, for I locked it behind barred gates, limiting its shores, I said, This far and no farther will you come. Here your proud waves must stop. Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and cause the dawn to rise in the east? Have you made daylight spread to the ends of the earth to bring an end to the night's wickedness? As the light approaches, the earth takes shape like clay pressed beneath a seal. It is robed in brilliant colors. The light disturbs the wicked and stops the arm that is raised in violence. Have you explored the springs from which the seas come? Have you explored their depths? Do you know where the gates of death are located? Have you seen the gates of utter gloom? Do you realize the extent of the earth? Tell me about it if you know. God's a good wrestler. Job finally gets a chance to respond in Job 42. He says, I know that you can do anything and no one can stop you. You asked, Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorance? It is I. And I was talking about things I knew nothing about, things too wonderful for me. You said, Listen and I will speak. I have some questions for you, and you must answer them. I had only heard about you before, but now I've seen you with my own eyes. I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance. That is Job limping away from his wrestling match with God. But here's the beauty in it. After this moment, Job is blessed by God like you cannot believe. Everything that he lost, it's given to him double. Just like Jacob received this incredible blessing at the end of his wrestling match. I mean, he has his entire identity changed. He'd spent his entire life being known as the one who deceives. And he was a very deceptive person. But I imagine if you grow up and your name is deceiver, maybe at some point you just kind of own that. And God changes his name and says, From now on, you are Israel, for you have wrestled with God and won. He has an entire new identity. He's richly blessed. Job is richly blessed, but but first he wrestles with God and he experiences great discomfort. We look at someone like David. If you've ever read the Psalms, the Psalms are ancient songs and poems written about God. And in many of the Psalms, the best ones, David is just, he's giving it to God. He's frustrated. He's going through some real hardships in life, some tough situations, and he's just going to God, like, where are you? What are you doing? You're asleep at the wheel. And then by the end of some of those Psalms, he's like, But you're amazing, and I'll worship you with my whole life. And what we see happen there, it's a wrestling match. David's wrestling with God, and he's he's giving God all of the discomfort, all the pain, all the struggle, but by the end of it, God is winning. And he realizes the blessing that comes from knowing God. And here's why I'm talking about this. I know so many people that want to have a relationship with God, like David had. I mean, you read the Psalms and you recognize the closeness that David had with God and the depth of his relationship with God. I know a lot of people who are like, I want that. I mean, who wants that? Anyone want that? I know lots of people who want that, but they don't want to go through what David had to go through to get that. I mean, a lot of us want the blessings of Job. How many of us would love it if God just doubled everything we have? I would love if he doubled everything I had except for children. I don't want that, but everything other than that, double it, you know? I mean, we would love it if we received the blessing of Job, but how many of us want the story of Job? See, sometimes we just we just want to bypass the discomfort and get the blessing. We just want to be zapped, right? We just we just want to wake up one day and have more, be better, have a deeper, closer relationship with God and everyone around us, but we don't want to go through the discomfort that it takes to actually get there. We don't want to wrestle. We just want the result. Years ago, ten years ago plus, I just started working here and uh I was the youth pastor. I did junior high and high school, and that was kind of my comfort zone. And there was a word that that Steve, who ran the church at the time, used to use a lot. It was the word bandwidth. He really valued people who had high bandwidth, the people that could just do a lot. And uh, and so I was like, man, I want to have high bandwidth. And so I started praying about it. I was like, God, give me more bandwidth. You know, it's the buzzword. And uh about a week later, I had a meeting with uh with Steve, and he said, This is a really funny meeting. I won't go into all the details, but basically what ended up happening is he says, You're now in charge of the children's ministry too, like all the elementary school kids and the junior high and the high school. And I already felt like I had enough on my plate. And uh we have a lot of you guys have a lot of kids. We have lots of elementary school kids at this church. Like literally, our biggest demographic is a kids ages four to eleven. So great job. And uh I spent about four years in charge of that. And and the funny thing was I wanted more bandwidth. I didn't want more to do, you know? I just wanted to magically have the ability to do what I was doing and it not feel like it was as taxing. I didn't want I didn't want God to give me like a huge addition, like put a lot more on my plate, but that's what he did, and guess what happened as a result? I got more bandwidth. It just took like years and years and years of me being stressed out of my mind to realize it. But I got exactly what I asked for. I got the bandwidth. I just had to go through the process. A lot of us we want the result, but we don't want the pain. And look, I'm not saying that God enjoys the pain, I'm not saying that he desires that, but the simple reality is if you want to go there, if you want the depth in your relationship with God, you've gotta be okay with the struggle. You've got to be okay with some discomfort. You've got to wrestle with God. You gotta you gotta go there when it doesn't make sense. You gotta you gotta run to him. Whatever life has not worked out the way that you think it should, and you don't understand why you're in the situation you're in. Like, you gotta be okay to go to God and be like, hey, we've gotta talk. And understand that God likes wrestlers, he's okay with it. He's like, let's go. And you guys get together and you go back and forth, and I'm telling you, what's gonna happen through that is your relationship with God will deepen. You'll experience a closeness with him that you've never had before. Really interesting thing about Jacob. And worship team, you guys can make your way out. We'll wrap up. Really interesting thing about Jacob. Right after God changes his name, right after this wrestling match, he makes a little altar, kind of a monument to what's happened in his life, and he makes it as an altar to the God of Israel. It's the first time that God is ever called the God of Israel. Before that, every time Jacob prayed or talked about God, he called God the God of his grandfather Abraham and the God of his father Isaac. Never once did Jacob call him his God. He was always the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac. But after he wrestled with God and he clung to God and he refused to let go of God, and God blessed him and changed his name and changed his identity. After that, now he could say, It's my God, the God of Israel. See, when you wrestle with God and you're okay with the struggle, he becomes yours. There's a depth that develops there, and it's powerful and it's amazing. And when you go there with God, like you're kind of unstoppable. Because you've been through it, you know, and you mature and you strengthen. We've got to be people who are okay with the tension. And look, like, you know, from a teaching perspective, I'm always really wary of so-called like teachers of God or the Bible, whatever, who eliminate all the tension. You'll you'll find a lot of people like that, a lot of people who want to teach you about God, but they've kind of created this idea of God that that perfectly lines up with everything you would like God to be. There's no tension, there's no confusion, there's no moments where you're like frustrated with God because he doesn't do what you think he should do. Stay far away from those people. Because they don't know God. To walk with God is it's it's beautiful and it's powerful and it's amazing, and it is also hard and frustrating, but it's good. Very rarely in life is something good and easy. And we tend to choose easy, but we should choose good. What I'm saying is this is that if you really want to go there with God, he'll go there with you. Just don't be afraid of the struggle, don't run away from it, don't avoid it. Like if you have disappointment and hurt and frustration, have you taken it to God? I mean, like, really taken it to God and said, What is going on? Like, what explain this to me, help me with this? I'm serious, do that now. Be okay if he responds back, and you're like, Yes, sir. But go there with him, man. Like, he he can handle it, he he enjoys it. God likes to wrestle. I mean, he decided to take this guy, Jacob, who's just awful at every other thing you can imagine, except for the fact that he's willing to go there with God, that he's willing to struggle with God, and God says, You know what? I like that so much, I'm gonna make your name the name of all my people. God likes to wrestle, so wrestle with them. Be okay with the struggle, just never let go of them. Sometimes I work with people who are going through hard things and they begin to detach from God, and I'm like, no, no, no, don't do this. I know you've experienced a tragedy, I know you're going through something hard, but don't pull away from God. He's not gonna pull away from you. Don't pull away from him. Like, keep holding on. And other times I'll I'll work with people who go through something like you cannot believe, and they just they cling tighter, and that that's what what Jacob did. That's what all of us can do. What I'm saying is if you've got struggle and pain right now, go to God with it and hold on to him and have this mentality that says, I will take all of my struggle, all of my questions, all of my pain, I'm gonna take it right to you, but I'm not gonna let go of you. I will I refuse to let go of you until you give me the blessing that you've promised. I will hold on and I'll never quit. If you do that with God, if you wrestle with him, I'm telling you, you will receive the blessing that he's promised you. He's a good God and he loves you. You just you have to struggle. That's the honest truth. You don't get the results without the struggle. It's just that we don't like to struggle. So I'm just saying as we we wrap up, let's let's be wrestlers. Let's be wrestlers. Let's let's be okay with the times that it's not okay. And in those moments, let's just let's just take it to him. I'll finish by reading Romans chapter 8, verses 15 through 17. This is one of my least favorite, favorite verses. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out Abba Fathers. Means if you've given your life to Jesus, he's adopted you. You are in the family of God, you are a son or a daughter of God, which is pretty amazing. Says the Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we're children of God. And if children, heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, like we're co-heirs with Jesus, is what that's saying. The same inheritance that Jesus is due, his birthright, so to speak, his glory, his power, his authority, like he shares that with you. You are a co-heir with Christ. Everyone loves that. Every time you read that or it's ever read, people love that part. We're co-heirs with Jesus, and and you're supposed to go, woo, because we're co-heirs with Jesus, guys. Alright, that's no, that's just you missed it. You missed the chance. It's too late. It was forced. I understand. I'm sorry. But but here's my point is everyone loves that part. But then there's a stupid if right after that. I hate ifs. Your fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him. No one likes to read that part. In fact, a lot of times when this verse is read, that gets just like cut off. I'm not saying like, let's struggle, but do we struggle? Yes. And look, if you're here this morning and your life has been a struggle, welcome to the club. We we are a church full of people with issues and struggles and problems. None of us are perfect, none of us pretend to be. We can either struggle or we can struggle with God. Let's struggle with him and let's see what he does. Let's see what he does inside of us. Let's see the people that he transforms us into through struggling with him. Let's see the name that he gives us, let's see the identity that he births inside of us because we're willing to wrestle with him. Let's be like Jacob. Let's let's wrestle. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you, God, for every person that's here. And Lord, you know what we're talking about? It's kind of heavy. You know, I don't like heavy stuff. I like to be funny and goofy and all that. But uh I need to struggle with you more, Lord. I just I'll admit that. I struggle way too much on my own. I internalize and I try to work it all out myself when I should just go to you exactly as I am, even if it's frustrated and confused and angry. So Lord, I'm I'm just saying personally, I want to, I would like to wrestle with you a little bit more, understanding that it might cause me to limp from time to time, but I'd rather limp right next to you than walk far from you. So Lord, I pray in our hearts as a church, as a family, because that's what we are, I pray, Lord, that you would grow in us this mature recognition that we will have problems. You actually promise us that. But through everything, we can hold on to you. Just like you hold on to us. We love you, Jesus. It's in your name we pray. Amen.