I Will Not Go Until You Bless Me
“I Will Not Let You Go Until You Bless Me!”
Are you seeking a mighty blessing from God for your life? How much do you want it?
Charles Wesley, who helped found the Methodist Revival movement, wrote a hymn about the Old Testament Patriarch Jacob, who wrestled with God all night long, refusing to let go of God until he blessed him. Jacob said, “I will not let you go until you bless me!”
It is one thing to sort-of want a blessing from God. To kind-of wish that maybe God will perhaps bless your life some day in the future.
It is something quite different to hang onto God for all you are worth: to struggle and wrestle and refuse to let go until God gives you his blessing right now. Not on some unknown day off in the future, but this night. This morning. This day. “I will not let you go until you bless me!”
Now we must not misunderstand this passage! It’s not that God didn’t want to bless Jacob for some reason. Not at all! God desperately wanted to give Jacob his blessing, just as he desperately wants to bless you and me! But for us to receive the blessing of God you must really want to receive it! You must fight for the blessing that God wants to give you!
So the question every human faces is this one: “How much do you want THE MORE that God has for your life?” God has MUCH MORE for your life, but how much do you want it?
Otherwise, the blessing God has for you will never mean to you what it must mean if you are ready to receive it.
Until every bit of who I am wants every bit of what God has to offer me, until I will grab onto God and hold onto him with every ounce of my strength and for all that I am worth, he will withhold his blessing because of his great love for me. Until I so want his blessing that I will gladly let my life be totally transformed by his grace, God must not, cannot, will not give it.
I must not be grudgingly willing for my old self to be crucified with Christ and for a new self to be born, I must yearn for it! Hope for it! Demand it! And Hold on all night until it happens.
Unless I am willing to walk away from my encounter with God, or limp away from it like Jacob did, as a completely new person, I do not yet want it with my whole being.
Jesus declared that “we must ask and keep on asking, and we must seek and keep on seeking, we must knock and keep on knocking.” For these words denote a continuous action, a complete commitment on our part. We don’t quit. We don’t give up. We don’t stop. We contend for the blessing, asking, seeking, knocking. We must want them so much that we never stop seeking for God’s blessing. We are unrelenting. We are resolved. We are determined to keep going until we have been thoroughly remade by the blessing that we seek.
Nancy and I want to invite you to come and join us at Camp Egan for a three day Healing Prayer Training Retreat on March 20-22. It is being offered by the Oklahoma Conference’s LCMDT, and is being financially sponsored by the Oklahoma Methodist Foundation who will provide you with a scholarship if you need financial assistance to attend the retreat, even up to 100%. It will begin on Thursday the 20th right after lunch, and will end on Saturday the 22nd right after lunch. Our son-in-law, Nathan Cates, will lead the music and singing for the retreat. Register by March 13 on the Oklahoma Annual Conference website at okumc.org.
God wants our lives to be lives of healing for the world around us. God wants to use us to make a mighty difference. But how much do we want the blessing?