Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.
– Genesis 32:28
Wow, what a statement. Jacob’s name is transformed to Israel after a night of striving or wrestling with God, which is what his name means, one who wrestles with God. And there’s a lot we could talk about in this passage, this verse about what that means.
Genesis 32:28 teaches us the importance of personal communion with God.
But the big picture that I want to encourage you with today and lead us to pray according to today is the fact that you and I have clearly been designed by God for communion with him at a deep level, at a personal level. When you think about your time alone with God, which I hope you have time set aside much like Jesus talks about in Matthew 6, where you have a place that you go to. A closet, so to speak, apart from everyone and everything else where you meet alone with God at a particular time.
And as you view that time, don’t see it as just checking off a box, going through motions, maybe reading a chapter or more of the Bible, and spending some time in prayer just listing off some things. No. Picture that time as deeply personal time with God, where you’re calling out to God, crying out to God with all the things that are heavy on your heart, knowing that he hears you. The other day in our family worship in our home one of the kids was just talking about how he was reminded reading one of the Psalms that there he is laying in his bed, reading the Bible and praying, and God, God himself, the God of the universe is listening to him and hearing his cries.
Genesis 32:28 encourages us to make the most of our time with God.
I want to encourage you to see yourself in communion with God during those times, in striving with God, in wrestling with the different things that are heavy on your heart, and asking for God’s help and asking for God’s blessing and asking for God’s provision and trusting that he hears you and he answers you according to what you ask, and he transforms you through this communion with him. I just want to encourage you to make the most of time alone with God that you have today. Don’t treat that as just monotonous religious motion, casual routine, but an actual meeting with God.
Oh God, we praise you for the privilege of communion with you. Jesus, we praise you for paying the price for our sins. For dying on a cross. The curtain of the temple being torn in two. The way being made open for us to come to you, to talk with you, to hear from you, to be with you, not just in even concentrated time, but continually all throughout the day.
This verse portrays how communion with God leads to transformation.
So, God, we pray that you would help us to experience the fullness of deeply personal communion with you. God, I pray this over my own life. I pray this over every single person listening right now that you would help us today. Even as we’re praying now, once this podcast ends, help us to experience the wonder… The depth, the beauty of personal communion with you… Talking with you, listening to you, walking with you even wrestling with you. And in the process being transformed by communion with you.
God, we want to experience what Jacob experienced in even greater ways through what Jesus has made possible for us. And not just, oh God, on interceding for things in our own lives. Or your blessing in our own lives. But on behalf of others.
Prayer for the Urdu People
We pray today for Urdu people around the world, over 2 million of them from Pakistan and North India. God, we pray, we strive with you. Please God show your salvation to the Urdu people. We’re asking you to bless them. We’re asking you to cause the gospel to spread to the Urdu people. That they might be saved. That they might experience communion with you. God, please, please, please, teach us to pray. And help us to pray for unreached people, and do not let go until your blessing comes on them.
Oh God, we plead on behalf of Urdu men, women, and children, that your salvation might reach them. And we trust that you’ll use our pleading… Our striving in prayer to be part of the means by which your gospel spreads to them in the mysteries of your providence, your design for us in prayer. God, we want to experience your full design for us in prayer and deep personal communion with you. May it be so we pray according to your Word in Genesis 32:28. In Jesus’ name, amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, and Don’t Hold Back.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
