An Encouraging Word- Wrestling With God (11/16/2025)

                     A Word of Encouragement - Wrestling With God
                                November 16, 2025
    When I was a kid we used to attend a church camp in northern Ohio run by the Mennonite Church. Camp Luz was a summer tradition for our family. I loved going to camp. We had great home-cooked meals. We learned arts and crafts. We had chapel services together around the campfire at night and inside the chapel  in the mornings. We took long hikes and in the morning went polar bear swimming in the big pond with the fish and snapping turtles, made arts and crafts, and learned new sports and games. Our cabins had bunk beds and each slept about 25 kids. We would stay up late singing or telling stories, laughing together. When I was in college I went back for a few years and worked all summer at Camp Luz as a counselor, sometimes as a cook, and sometimes as a janitor. When my son Hayden was a freshman in high school we went together for a week to serve as camp pastors. I still remember hearing stories from the camp director of when my dad was a camper and blew up a couple toilets in the bathhouse with cherry bombs! (yes, Don Morgan did this lol!). Ironically , my dad went back and also served at Camp Luz about 30 years ago, bringing his construction crew with him to build a brand new bath house for the camp. I guess that's pretty good restitution for blowing up two of their toilets with cherry bombs in the 1960’s! 
    Camp Luz has remained a special place in my heart for my entire life. When I was a kid I made a decision in one of those chapel services to ask Jesus Christ to come into my life and be my Savior. I still remember that feeling of being a new Christian. It felt like heaven was holding a big Kool-Aid pitcher and was pouring pure joy into my heart from above. It felt like every corner of my heart was being scrubbed clean and made brand new. All I can describe is overwhelming love. I knew at that moment that God had done something in my life and that it was only something He could have done. He had made me clean and new. 
    There have been many times in my life where I have had Camp Luz moments, like when I was baptized in my preacher’s pool when I was 12 years old, and when I asked to be baptized again at my church when I was 14.  I have felt these close moments with God when I dreamed about my brother Joe who had passed away, when in the dream he told me that Jesus had held his hand all the way to Heaven and that I didn’t have to be sad or worry anymore. I felt this closeness to God when I went through a divorce and God reminded me that if I would just trust Him that He would supply every need my children and I had. I felt this again when my daughter moved out on her own and my two sons deployed with the Army.  God reassured me that they would be OK. I felt this when I found out I had cancer almost ten years ago and God promised me He would walk with me through the journey. 
    All of these times in my life I have thought back to those days at Camp Luz- the singing , the Bible stories, the feeling of overwhelming love and joy God poured into my little heart when I experienced His Presence for the first time. Mostly I have thought back to the Bible story that Camp Luz is named after. Luz is the name for a Biblical location where Jacob had met God face to face. Sometimes it is called Bethel. In Genesis 32 , Jacob literally wrestles with God all night long. He refuses to quit until God will bless him.  In the midst of this epic wrestling match, God does indeed bless Jacob. 
Jacob- was a real piece of work- a thief, liar, scoundrel. swindler. God asks him what his name is and Jacob replies, “May name is Jacob”. But God had other plans. He renames him, telling him, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” Jacob’s new name , Israel, means “one who struggles with God but overcomes”. 
    I don’t know about you, but I have had some real struggles with God over the years. I mean some down on the mat ugly wrestling match situations. I have been angry at Him. I have told Him I hated Him. I have cursed Him. I have told him He is not welcome in my life. I have told Him that He does not matter to me. The striking thing is, all the times God could have won that wrestling match with me and been done with me, He just didn’t let go. As I wrestled with my anger, my bitterness, my pain, my unbelief, He just continued to hold on and not let me go. I am realizing now that He was with me as I wrestled with all of these things. He wasn’t wrestling with me to defeat me. He was wrestling with me so we could overcome these struggles together.  When I finally decided to lay them down, to give them to Him , to allow Him to be the Victor, He did the thing that doesn’t make sense. He gave me the victory. He gave me the crown. He gave me the wrestling championship belt! He saw me through his eyes, not as Melissa, but as His Precious Child- Overcomer!  He gave me the greatest blessing of all- His Presence in my life. 
    Sometimes it is hard for us to put away the old version of ourselves that we used to be. But when we are in Christ Jesus, the past and its mistakes have been wiped away. We are a new creation , given new life in Him. 2 Corinthians 5:17 “ But if anyone is in Christ , he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new is here! (NIV)”. 


Scriptures to Hide In Your Heart:
Genesis 32:22-30 (New International Version)
22 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. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 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. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
28 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.”
29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.
30 So Jacob called the place Peniel,[ saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

Romans 8:16-18 (English Standard Version)
16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

1 Corinthians 15:57 (New Living Translation)
“But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.”


Songs to Encourage You:
In Christ Alone (Natalie Grant)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJgttKAlKmU

What I Really Need (Bryan Fowler)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnI464OHysI&list=RDfnI464OHysI&start_radio=1

Carry (Elias Dummer with JJ Heller)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydB_gaYWzOI


You are loved beyond measure! Praying for you and your family every day.

Melissa Boggs
Christian Life Academy Administrator