God’s Greater Purpose

January 4, 2023
5 min read
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For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:14-21

This passage in Ephesians is one of my favorite prayer passages. It causes me to think more deeply and pray with more focus on the growth and development of the inner man, a concept that can seem abstract at times. I know it’s important but at the same time I can’t see it or measure how well it is growing or not growing.

The concept of the inner man came to mind recently when I was thinking about another passage in the Bible that tends to bug me. It is the account of Jacob wrestling with an angelic stranger (Genesis 32:22-32). When the angel can’t overpower Jacob, he touches Jacob’s hip and Jacob is left to live with an injured hip the rest of his life.

Personally, I would prefer a different outcome and that might be because I have a recurring and persistent back injury that can debilitate me at times. I have asked God many times for healing in my back and I can imagine that Jacob also asked God to heal him.

The truth is that injuries, disabilities, or poor health, can remind us of the hiddenness of the inner man. For example, unless an injury is obvious, as with a broken leg or arm, or unless someone has experienced the same issue, many times other people can be unaware or forget you are suffering.

However, what can go unnoticed or be forgotten by others, is very real and felt by you at all hours of the day. It affects your decisions, schedule, and even your mood. In the same way, what’s going on with the inner man – our personal relationship with the Lord, our emotions, hopes, prayers and decisions – while unseen is very much felt by us and impacts everything in our lives.

But there’s an even deeper connection between the inner man and an injury or health issue or any trial for that matter. The reality is that the inner man actually needs to experience trials and tribulation to grow and it is at this intersection between a physical trial and God’s work on his inner man that Jacob found himself.

The truth is that Jacob had a problem on both the inside and outside. His problem was not just his dislocated hip. It was much deeper than that. Jacob was a liar and deceiver. Jacob thought it was right to fool his dimwitted brother and Isaac, his elderly, blind father, to obtain an inheritance that did not belong to him.

Reflecting on Jacob’s injury has reminded me that I don’t always see or value things the way God does. To be honest, I think I would often trade physical well-being over spiritual growth. As Christians I know we pray for healing from sickness or injury for ourselves or others we love. It is good to pray for healing, but we need to keep the bigger picture in mind and accept that while some prayers are answered with a quick yes, others take time to answer and sometimes the answer is a no, at least for the time being.

Of course, only God knows the reason for how He answers our prayers, but we can take comfort that His desired outcome of the not yet or the no answers is that our trials, including our health trials, bring about fruit in our lives that cannot be attained any other way. One example of fruit is that trials often help us develop a much greater understanding of the depth of God’s love for us, and for others.

The humbling of Jacob enabled him to become the spiritual father of faith referenced in Hebrews 11. I don’t think Jacob made it to the Hall of Faith in spite of his dislocated hip, I think he made it to the Hall of Faith because of his hip.

In fact, the “exchange rate” of trials to spiritual growth is so advantageous, that even the apostle Paul exclaims, “For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ (Philippians 3:8).”

So why does a loving God seem to delay in answering prayer? Why is His answer sometimes a no, or not now? Possibly for the same reason He left Jacob in a physically crippled state. Jacob set his sights on an earthly reward but God, in His great mercy, diverted Jacob towards a higher reward showing us that God will fight for our own greatness, even when we can’t see it for ourselves.

It is good for us to remember that God’s primary goal, His main interest, is always the growth and development of the inner man and while we might not always appreciate it here and now, when we are in heaven one day, we will be forever grateful for His work in our inner man. Like Jacob, we might even find our names written in a heavenly sequel to the Hebrews 11 Hall of Faith!

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