I Will Not Let You Go Until You Bless Me

I Will Not Let You Go Until You Bless Me. 

In Gen. 32:24-32.

In this scripture, we see an encounter where Jacob wrestles with a Man until day break. Realising the Man was God himself, He asked God to bless Him.

God initiated this meeting. It seems God wanted to bless Jacob and give him the opportunity to wrestle, ask and receive the blessing. It was a blessing that equiped him to successfully carry the mantle of Abraham for the generations.

Jacob had already passed the tests presented him through his relationship with Laban, the father of Leah & Rachel. He had, with faith and courage, followed God’s instruction to return to his home land. This meant returning to face his nemesis, his brother.

God meets Jacob while He is on his way back.

God encountered Jacob and wrestle with him all night until God subdued him.

When Jacob realised his strength was gone, He asked God for a blessing. It was the blessing, not his own strength, that would equip him for his next assignment.

And I hear the Lord saying;

I am yearning to equip you,  My beloved ones, with  greater dimensions of blessing to empower and enable you to take ahold of what I have promised.

As you lay down your own will, your own strength, your own plans and ways of doing things, I will come and undergird you with blessing: with My strength, My ability, My anointing and My manifest presence to equip you in power and authority to possess the promises.

Like Jacob, allow me to wrestle you until you give up your own self life and desires and take up My cross that brings death to the flesh, but resurrection life to your spirit.

Reach out to Me, i will show you how to live by the Spirit and not fulfil the lust of the flesh and this world. Abandon the notion of a self motivated life and let Me be the motivation of your life, for I AM gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest to your soul, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

Follow Me, and you will be fishers of men and you will advance My Kingdom in your generation.

As a church, I believe we are at a crossroads like Jacob and we need a greater equipping to complete our assignment to ‘be the revival,’ and bring it into our sphere of influence.

God is saying right now - I am coming to encounter you and to equip you for the task ahead.

However, the blessing came because of the wrestle. God wrestled with Jacob all night, but Jacob was too strong. His flesh and his will, could not be subdued. The Man physically ‘touched’ him in his hip to overcome him.

The dislocation of Jacob’s hip took his strength to stand and it changed the way he walked. He now walked with a limp, symbolic of needing to lean on another.

To this point Jacob’s desires had dominated His life. His flesh, had dominated his life. Jacob’s strength, his flesh, and his will was too strong for God to work with, so God touched him and caused his flesh to weaken. He eventually yielded to the God that he wrestled with.

This is a necessary process for us all so that we can live a yielded, surrendered life in submission to God and be willing to live the ‘crucified life.’ that Jesus has called us to.

Our flesh, our will and our desires are very strong. They are fed by the spirit of the World, which we are bombarded with on all sides. I believe God is dealing with our self-life, so we can embrace and enjoy a life of victory over the world, the flesh and the devil.

Jesus himself wrestled in the garden with great drops of blood, to bring His will into subjection and surrender to the horrendous path before him. (Luke 22:39-45)

Paul’s thorn in the flesh was not taken care of by God because it ensured his pride did not overpower his life of submission. Paul declared: ‘your grace is sufficient for me.’ (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)

Bless Me

Once Jacob realised that he no longer had his own strength to rely on, he knew he needed God’s strength. He cried out that God would ‘bless him.’ He knew that He was now totally dependent on God. He asked for God’s blessing to make way for Him to meet and prevail over what was ahead.

God gave him that blessing, because it says he had ‘prevailed with God and with men’. He prevailed in his quest against the flesh. Jacob wrestled, but God bought him to the place of submission. Like Jesus, he prevailed in ensuring God’s will was established in his life, not his own.

Arise , Shine for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you!

It is the process of death into resurrection life that God is doing in His church.

Our rising is first dependent on our yielding. We can only rise in resurrection power after we have totally yielded in surrender and died to our flesh and the desires of life.We cannot be like the rich young ruler who walked away from his life with Christ, because of the cost of giving up and yielding all he had. It is a wrestle that we must ask Jesus to win!

Don’t despair in this season of wrestling. Wrestle until the Spirit of God enables you to prevail over the self-life and the flesh and allow God to bring you into a place of victory.

When you do, ask God for a blessing. A blessing that will change your name, ie; change who you are and empower you to fulfil all your destiny in this generation.

Catch the Thief

As the songs of deliverance and sounds of deliverance rise among us, we have been alerted to plans of the enemy that have been stealing from us.

God is highlighting again our’ thought’ life. What is your ‘self talk’ and how much of this is not you, but the enemy of your soul, speaking, fear, unbelief, and discouragement.

In particular, ‘the accuser of the brethren’ is using accusations to discourage and steal momentum from us. Don’t receive the accusations the enemy is bombarding you with, especially from others in the body of Christ. Scripture talks of ‘fault-finding Pharisees.’

Stand against any religious, pharisaical spirit that is rising up against you or in you.

The enemy is attempting to steal abundant life, hopes, dreams, courage, self-worth and your ability to stand and especially your ability to rise in faith.

Let’s catch these old thought patterns and depose them and come out from under the mindsets that are robbing and stealing from us. Don’t allow the enemy to take over our thoughts.

Let God deliver us from agreement with the enemy’s accusations and old familiar taunts.

Read scripture out loud to replace the enemy’s thoughts and agree with God’s understanding of you and His love for you.

Now is the season to catch the thief and be delivered from condemning thought patterns that steal our life, joy and effectiveness to advance the Kingdom.

Israel

We watch over God’s natural people, Israel, to bless the Lord’s people and land. However, in watching over God’s people in the natural, we gain insight into what is happening for God’s ‘spiritual’ people, the church. As scripture declares: ‘as in the natural. so in the spiritual.’

Right now, Israel’s new government is under attack more than ever before. There is chaos and resistance surrounding them and they are having trouble establishing new laws and policy’s for the nation.

This is a picture of the warfare surrounding the establishing God’s governmental leaders in the nations and in his church. There is a great rearranging in the nations. The coming forth of the five-fold in the church is also being met with great resistance. What the enemy has meant for evil, God will use for good, to fashion and develop His apostles and prophets and leaders into those who will rightly establish the the Kingdom of God on the earth in all humility and obedience.