Hi, my name is Pete Scazzaro. I want to welcome you today to the Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast.

Our title is Hard Lessons from the Life of Jacob, Part 3. Hard Lessons from the Life of Jacob, Part 3.

And actually, the message today comes out of Genesis chapter 32, and it's called, I subtitled it,

crippled and changing. Crippled and changing. We find Jacob here,

you know, in a middle of an enormous conflict with Esau. Now, when Jacob was a young man,

he used trickery and deceit to steal the birthright and blessing that rightfully belonged to his

older brother Esau. And so as a result,

he had to flee from his brother's wrath as he wanted to kill him. And so after 25 years now,

have passed. And there's been no contact between Jacob and Esau. Talk about a cutoff. Jacob then

begins the journey back home. And so he's facing the conflict head on and getting ready to meet Esau.

And so he's full of uncertainty as he's about to meet him.

And so we're going to pick up this passage in Genesis chapter 32 as Jacob is in the middle

of the night going to wrestle with an angel who many believes to be the pre-incarnate Jesus.

And this angel is going to strike his hip out of joint,

and he and this will get reconciled. But what's so amazing about this passage is how God meets

Jacob in a revelation, God, in revelation through conflict. It's our, there's a lesson here, because

conflicts offer us a revelation, not just a possibility of reconciliation, but they, we meet God.

In huge, unique ways, we don't often like it, God comes to us and very painfully through

conflicts with people, and we often end up leaving with a limp.

If we allow God to do that work in us.

And so this great text, as you'll hear in just a few moments, we see Jacob allowing God to do a work in him where he is, in a sense, crippled by it.

But he's changed by it.

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