{"id":8058,"date":"2023-06-28T03:15:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-28T03:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8058"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:09","slug":"wrestling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8058","title":{"rendered":"WRESTLING"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I was a young youth pastor, I was always on the lookout for curriculum that was relevant for teenagers.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now that I am at Sardinia and once again getting to work a bit with teenagers, I come up with lesson ideas by simply asking myself, &#8220;What do I wish someone had told me &#8211; about faith or people or life &#8211; when I was that age?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tonight we went to the story of Jacob wrestling with the mysterious &#8220;man&#8221; the night before he was going to meet Esau.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I love the fact that the &#8220;man&#8221; changes Jacob&#8217;s name to &#8220;Israel&#8221; and that the name (which was taken then by God&#8217;s people as a whole) means &#8220;he wrestles with God&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I wish that when I was a teenager that someone had told me not only that it was OK to wrestle with God and to ask lots of questions, but it is actually a great thing to do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In fact, it&#8217;s one of the distinctives of God&#8217;s people.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And personally I have found that no matter what sort of wrestling match I care to challenge God to, He can hold His own.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was a young youth pastor, I was always on the lookout for curriculum that was relevant for teenagers.\u00a0 Now that I am at Sardinia and once again getting to work a bit with teenagers, I come up with lesson ideas by simply asking myself, &#8220;What do I wish someone had told me &#8211; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8059,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8058\/revisions\/8059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}