The Night Jacob Wouldn't Let Go
Jacob's hip is out of its socket. It's the largest, most weight-bearing joint in the human body, built for strength, and it just gave out under the pressure of an all-night wrestling match. Any reasonable person lets go at this point. Jacob doesn't.
I think about that image a lot lately, because I keep running into the same conversation everywhere I turn: online, with clients, with friends, even among people who love God deeply. People are struggling. Not in some abstract, distant way. In distress, right now, in a world that feels chaotic and uncertain from the ground up. So I want to ask the question honestly: how do we cultivate godly confidence and trust when everything around us (the world, the church, even our own minds) feels like it's coming apart at the seams?
My favorite Bible character has an answer, even though he never says a word of theology about it. He just lives it, across five brutal chapters of Genesis. Betrayed. On the run. Years of hard labor and harder lessons. Finally heading home, and about to face the one relationship he's most afraid of. His name is Jacob, and by the end of his story, I think he shows us three things worth doing when confidence feels impossible to come by.
As Jacob made his way back toward the land he'd fled decades earlier, he passed through a place he named Mahanaim ("two camps") after seeing what he understood to be angels of God, a sign of provision right when he needed reassurance most (Genesis 32:1–2).
Before that moment arrives, though, look at everything already behind him: the deception, the years of consequences that followed, the hard seasons under Laban, and running underneath all of it, God's steady favor. Protection he didn't orchestrate. Family, prosperity, provision that showed up again and again, whether or not he'd earned it.
I retraced my own steps recently. I sat down and actually counted the ways God had shown up in my life, plainly, without my engineering it. It changes something. If you want to cultivate godly confidence and trust, this is where it starts: not manufacturing a feeling, but remembering an actual record.
What personal experiences have strengthened your confidence in God's love, provision, and care?
Here's what's strange, though: even with all that evidence behind him, Jacob still acted like it was up to him to secure his own safety. He plans the right words to say. He sends gifts ahead to appease Esau. He arranges his household to protect what matters most to him (Genesis 32:9–20). All of it strategic. All of it still, quietly, self-reliant.
Some of us do the same thing with God. We try to control the narrative. Say the right words. Offer the "right" gifts: more Bible study, more devotion time, more service, as if we're trying to appease someone we secretly suspect is coming to hurt us, rather than someone who already loves us.
I had to level with God at a point like that myself. Just be honest: I'm tired of trying. I cannot do this. And I'm in good company: Adam and Eve had to learn it. Abraham had to learn it. Jacob had to learn it. Even Israel at the Passover had to trust before the deliverance ever arrived, not after. Blood on the door frame, first, with nothing yet to show for it.
If you want to cultivate godly confidence and trust, at some point you have to stop negotiating and just return.
What specific thing do you want God's help with right now, the thing you keep trying to manage on your own instead?
Finally, Jacob is alone. No more strategy, no more gifts sent ahead, no one left to negotiate with but God Himself (Genesis 32:24). And that's when the wrestling starts, and when his strength, quite literally, becomes his weakness. The hip is the largest, sturdiest joint we have. Sometimes God has to show us that our strongest strength was never going to be enough.
In the middle of it, Jacob was confronted with his own past, his sin brought right back to his memory in that moment of vulnerability. And still, he wouldn't let go.
Some of us know exactly what that's like: grappling with God over something specific, keenly aware there's nothing left we can do except hold on. If your business fails. If you lose the job. If the relationship shatters. If you're sick and it isn't getting better. If you feel spiritually paralyzed and can't explain why. The question isn't whether you'll feel strong enough to hold on. It's whether you'll refuse to let go anyway.
What becomes possible in your life the moment you refuse to let Him go?
If you want to cultivate godly confidence and trust in a world that's chaotic, uncertain, and unstable, here's what it comes down to, by God's grace alone:
Retrace your steps: reflect often on your life, and every time God has already been good to you.
Return to your Source: recognize how little human effort actually solves what's outside of us, or wrong within us. Go back to God and say plainly: I cannot do this. Please do it for me, in me.
Refuse to let Him go: every day brings small, ordinary opportunities to practice this. No matter how it looks, no matter how you feel, hold on anyway.
"But now, thus says the Lord who created you, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior." (Isaiah 43:1–3)
Jacob wrestled in the dark, alone, and came out limping but blessed. We don't have to wrestle alone anymore. "We have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God... let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:14, 16).
The confidence Jacob had to fight all night for is the same confidence Christ now hands you freely, not because you're strong enough to hold on, but because He already is.
Until next time,
Michelle
See More Clearly.