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Power with God and Men

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 27, 1902

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 79, No. 21.

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Power with God and Men

By Harry Champness

HARRY CHAMPNESS
“And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him.”
It is night. A solitary man has thrown himself, helpless, on the ground. With strong crying and tears he is pouring out his prayers and supplications. The brook flows on unheeded with its babble over the loose stones and great bowlders. The cry of the jackal and of the night owl is unnoticed by that agonized heart. An awful sense of dread and fear settles upon that prostrate man as the past rises up before him. His iniquities prevail against him.
He sees himself again standing by the bedside of his aged father, with the skins of the kids of the goats upon his hands and upon his neck. He feels again the guilty dread that had seized him that day when his father insisted on feeling him. He trembles once more as the words still sound in his ears: “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” Yet he knows that God has not forsaken him because of his sins, and so he gathers himself up to meet with God before he should meet with man on the morrow.
He has heard that Esau is coming with four hundred men. He humiliates his soul before God, and determines that he will humble himself before his brother on the morrow. “I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast showed unto thy servant,” is the cry of his soul. God is going to demonstrate the truthfulness of it.
Suddenly in the darkness of the night a hand is laid upon him. He springs to his feet to meet his unknown assailant. They are locked together in an awful embrace until the breaking of the day. Then the unknown visitant touches the hollow of Jacob’s thigh, and the hollow of his thigh is out of joint as he wrestles with him. And Jacob, stripped of all his self-energy, no longer wrestling, but clinging, comes out of that encounter, then limping, halting on his thigh, a prince with God and a king with men. “By his strength he had power with God: yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him.”
The prey of a great spoil has been divided. The lame take the prey. We enter maimed into life. He revives the heart of the humble and contrite. “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time.” We must be stripped of all our self-energy before we can have power. “God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.”
O, it is good when God steps into our lives, and puts his finger on the thing that has been thwarting his purpose! It is good to have a limp in all after-life as long as the power of Christ may rest upon us. The thorn in the flesh may remain, but his grace is sufficient; for his strength is made perfect in weakness.
God does not want our strength. He wants our weakness. There must be emptying before there can be filling. There are wonderful possibilities in store for those who will abandon themselves in God’s hands. We must have power with God before we can have power with men. Like Jacob, we set ourselves to work to wrestle for it. We find that it can come only by throwing ourselves helpless on God.
What the church needs to-day is power,—not the power of human schemes and plans, however good they may be; not the power of oratory, however pleasant it may sound; but the power of the Holy Spirit. This can be obtained only by utter abasement. We are too strong for God. We need to come down. We must humble the soul before God. There is too much self-energy in all our methods. When we are stripped of this, the Spirit of God will begin to work.
This is the day of his power. This is the time for the glorious closing triumph of this message. Who, then, is willing to consecrate his service this day unto the Lord?