The Power of Encounter, by Pastor Michele Garcia

This is what literally happens to Jacob with God, and what God does with us in our own personal encounters, with Him.

1. He wrestles, goes after us, and fights us until He makes us realize that we are weak and can’t be strong without Him–we fight Him in the encounter, until He brings us to an end of ourselves, and He exploits a weakness which we were pretty darn sure He doesn’t know about.

2. We get to the point where we are at the end of our own strength, but then in the midst of the craziness, the encounter we have with God, all of a sudden there is this moment of turnaround where in the encounter, we embrace it, our spirit rises up in us, longing to grab a hold of what God has for us, we then go after God and it becomes something that’s bigger than us–a time of relentlessness–where we won’t let go, until God blesses us, until we get everything from this encounter that we can, because we know there is He has for us that is worth it on the other side

3. By the end of the encounter you are forever changed–like Jacob, we may be given a new name–we are given a new identity–the things that we once held onto that we thought or allowed in our spirits to define us, are no longer true–because He gives us a new, victorious identity which is the exact opposite of who we believed we were!