Sunday, 16 August 2026

Where's the 30 years ? Or the reality of Jacob after Peniel ?

 I think this is from Tozer . It's the kind of thing Gene Edwards would write but with more reference to the Body of Christ .



If you’re going to walk with God at any real depth, you’re going to walk with a limp.

Nobody asks for it. Nobody wants it. But Jacob found out the hard way that the man who wrestles with God doesn’t walk away the same. One touch on the hip socket and the patriarch limped for the rest of his life. Not a temporary setback. A permanent mark. Every step after that night at Peniel carried the reminder that he had been broken by the hand of God—and that brokenness was the very thing that made him usable.

We live in a generation of soft shoulders and fragile spirits. People who call every inconvenience persecution. People who need three days of recovery after doing almost nothing for the Kingdom. People who talk about sacrifice while carefully protecting their comfort, their image, and their emotional equilibrium. God is not handing out His true mantle to the easily offended or the chronically exhausted from inactivity. He places it on men and women who have been taken into deep places of brokenness—places that strip you, humble you, and leave you walking differently.

A.W. Tozer said it best: “It is doubtful that God will ever use a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.” That is not cruel theology. That is the pattern of Scripture. The limp is the evidence that you stopped wrestling for control and started surrendering to the One who wounds in order to heal, who breaks in order to remake.

If you’re walking really close to God, you’re going to walk with a limp. It will be the best and worst thing that ever happened to you. The pain will stay with you. So will the power. And neither the world nor the religious church world will ever understand either one.


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My take on this passage some 54 years after new birth and Bible reading .


That is  very good.....but it doesn't define real life . Nor that God is hurting anybody ....but the control aspect of the whole of Genesis 3 is true.


That's the hole in the previous generation . They had no explanation for Jesus 30 years of ' nothing '.

Only ministry .

Only anointing.

Their handling of Jacobs life is flawed because they imply ministry but there was none .


Just a real precursor to the pattern of Jesus Lordship in Joseph. How he brought His brothers  back together .

A  brief time of prospering which threatened Egypt . All this was the crucible for the first Israel to form but it's simply  not religious enough of story for the last generation to grasp thinking only in terms of two hour discourses or   revival meetings held regularly in buildings .

Even the gospels are much more than multitude meetings on the hillsides and from boats .

Jesus actually lived life .

And Joseph was an actual Prime Minister against all odds while Jacob interceded.

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