The amount of struggling I’ve done with Almighty God regarding To Die Is Gain in the past several months could quite possibly be compared to the championship wrestling match of my life! My family and dearest friends can testify. They’ve witnessed and kindly listened, but thankfully and more importantly, they prayed.
My maiden name is Begnaud. And for those who bear that name, it comes with a pride of life, willful stubbornness, and a resolved determination to be unmoved. You could say I was destined to wrestle and to fight standing at just shy of 4 foot and 11 inches.
The only mortal being who ever sought to wrestle with me was my brother when we were kids. Specifically I recall being held in a headlock position against my will for quite some time, when finally to my relief, “Martin! Claire!” Mom would scream from the other room. Then he’d finally release his grip. Yes, we’ve made amends. For the sake of civility, I’ll leave out the other part of the story.
The more I think about this, perhaps my brother was used by God all those years ago to help bring about this particular blog and my lifelong relationship with wrestling. Most certainly God has a sense of humor!
My nephew is on a high school wrestling team. Now that I’m back from my Navy spouse adventures of 24 years, soon I’ll attend one of his matches and learn about the scoring and rules. I’ve been told some matches are short and others can go long.
Such is the same when wrestling with the Lord – some matches are shorter than others.
When my journey with the Lord began 24 years ago, I surrendered as best as I knew how. Looking back someone could have posed the question, “are you ready to wrestle?!” Thank God no one asked me that! I might have dealt with PTSD moments from my childhood, being held down in a headlock position, while trying to imagine an invisible creature holding me down. Uhhhh, no thank you. Though perhaps this is what Jacob felt like in the book of Genesis when he wrestled with the angel.
What someone, anyone could have posed was –
learning to embrace wrestling with Immortal God is very much a natural part of our journey,
in the Word, with the Word – Christ.
Wrestling with a particular doctrine, character trait and/or truth should be expected as we press in, gaining knowledge and understanding in the all encompassing Word of God on our journey to grow closer to Him..
The beauty of wrestling with Immortal God is at the end of every wrestling match stands a Champion who wins every time. With tear-filled eyes, in every wrestling match I have learned a little more, gone a little deeper, seen more of Christ on every page of Scripture, and embraced more of Christ’s Immeasurable qualities, which through each and every match has brought me to this truth
Jesus Christ is Trustworthy!
If I can trust Him with my soul for eternity, I can trust Him in the here and now on planet earth.
If I didn’t wrestle at all in my relationship with God, through Christ, I shudder to think how shallow my walk would be.
As a believer, we will wrestle with our flesh, the world, and the devil until the day we go home to be with the Lord. As a believer, we wrestle too with our Lord.
Prior to and even after we launched this project, I seemed to daily, hourly be caught wrestling my own flesh which continued to rear its ugly head time and time again. Fear, dread, worry, more fear, selfishness, lack of confidence and motivation were all frequent struggles at times. But, then the Holy Spirit would recall truths from God’s Word like these:
“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.”
Galatians 5:16-17
Then as if to wake me up from a slumber….
“I press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of god in Christ Jesus.”
What is the goal? Christ is the goal of my life.
Life’s mission now is to please my Lord and Savior, to follow where He leads and to one day hear the words “well done good and faithful servant”.
If I could sum up what my personal hope is for you, having visited To Die Is Gain, wherever you are on your journey with God…I would consider myself a failure if I had not first pointed you to the person of Jesus Christ.
If we at To Die Is Gain do not point you to Christ, then we are not about making disciples of Christ! And to that my friend, we will give an account.
So I say look at Christ. Wrestle in getting to know Him. Join our Bible study and let the wrestling begin. You could say….it’s okay to wrestle!
2 Responses
Wrestling with Christ is certainly a painful part of growing in Him! In these wrestling seasons I often feel as if “I Surrender All” should play on repeat every day! It seems once I’ve exhausted myself by wailing against what God is trying to do in my life, He finally brings me to a place of surrender. A time where I let out an exhausted sigh and simply fall on my knees in surrender. As my loving father I can only imagine He must be thinking, “If you’d just trust me my daughter, I’ve got a perfect plan”. In time I can usually see His beautiful plan unfold and again I’m reminded that His plans are not my plans – but they are the BEST plans! Each time it deepens my faith in Him and reminds me just how perfect His love really is!
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