Have You Ever Wrestled with God?

Have you ever wrestled with God? I mean if you believe God is Sovereign over the affairs of mankind, possessing extreme and ultimate power, and that He also loves you do you struggle with things happening in your life? For example, if you are longing to be married yet year after year you are alone how does that fit into your understanding of a Sovereign, loving God? If your arms are empty and you know God's word says that children are a gift from the Lord and yet you have asked for this gift but He has not given you a child how do you respond to your disappointment? If your marriage seems war torn and the trajectory of life spent with this other person seems more than you can bear do you ever wonder where God is?

I wonder if the people who received the letter from Jeremiah wrestled with what they read? They had been taken from their home. They were in a foreign land and all they wanted was to go home. Yet the message God sent them through Jeremiah was that they were to settle in this land where they had been taken captive against their will. But He also added, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."(Jeremiah 29:11) The real question was, could they trust God if His will for them was so contrary to their own will?

How do you respond to this wrestling match with a Sovereign loving God who sometimes allows things in your life that seem unbearable? If you have surrendered your will to God and yet have found yourself held captive by circumstances not of your choosing perhaps these words from Jeremiah will bring you comfort. "Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:12,13)

"Lord, here I hold within my trembling hand,
This will of mine--a thing which seemeth small;
And only Thou, O Christ, canst understand
How, when I yield Thee this, I yield mine all.

It has been wet with tears, and stained with sighs,
Clenched in my grasp till beauty hath it none;
now, from Thy footstool where it prostrate lies
The prayer ascendeth. Let Thy will be done." D.M. MacItyre