How long will you wrestle with God?
Wrestling with God is a foolish exercise practiced by the immature.
August 12
Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide them. I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the LORD.” And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.
Psalm 32:5
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How long will you wrestle with God?
The word that drew me to this verse is ‘Finally.’ The psalm itself is about God’s forgiveness. David is commenting on the joys experienced by a man that has had his sins forgiven by the Lord. This is a personal commentary on his own feelings at being forgiven for the sins he committed against the Lord with Bathsheba and her husband Uriah.
All the sins we have ever committed (or will commit) are known by God. Not one of our sins can be hidden from His eyes. God’s omniscience sees everything, including the very thoughts in our heads. It is absolutely impossible to hide anything from God. And yet, in our foolishness, we do not come to God and confess our sins before Him. Instead, we try to hide them from a God who sees and knows everything.
God calls that rebellion. The picture I have from this verse is a wrestling match. When my sons were young, we would wrestle. They were small, compared to me, so, it was very lopsided. No matter what they did they could not prevail over me. I would let them wrestle but at any moment I could have pinned them easily. They are both grown and out of the house and I am certain that either one of them could easily pin me.
We will always be small in comparison to God. We will never grow up so much that God couldn’t pin us easily. Wrestling with God is a foolish exercise practiced by the immature. ‘Finally’ David confessed his sins to God. There is a point in all our lives when we should realize that we can’t win our wrestling match with God. Rebellion is a waste of our energy and a sign of immaturity. We realize that it is time to grow up and get right with God. That is done by humbling ourselves before God and confessing to Him what He already knows about us.
David goes on to give us the result of his confession. God forgave him all his sins. To forgive is the equivalent of erasing a debt. God expects absolute perfection from His people. When we anything that is contrary to the Word or will of the Lord, we have sinned against Him. That sin incurs a debt; you owe something to God. The book of Romans tells us that what we owe for our sin is death; a debt we cannot pay on our own.
Jesus paid that debt on the cross of Calvary. When we come to God and admit that we have sinned, God erases our debt. When someone is young in the Lord, we understand when they wrestle with Him. It is when we begin to mature that these wrestling matches with God become acts of pure foolishness. We should know better. Confession of our sins to God is a spiritual exercise that we should engage in often. Humble your heart before the Lord so that He doesn’t make you do it. Jesus, help us to understand the joys and freedom of Your forgiveness.
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