Wrestling Prayer

I’m a girly girl. I oooh and ahhh over a bouquet of beautiful flowers, I squeal and run at the nearby buzz of a bumblebee, and I love being held close in the arms of my man.
Simply put, there’s nothing innately inside me that wants to wrangle with a bear, ride a mechanical bull, or crawl in the mud. I prefer things neat, tidy, and smelling sweet.
While Eric loves the idea of “wrestling,” it is not something I’m naturally inclined to gravitate toward. It’s always mystified me why guys like to roll around on the ground interlocked, sharing sweat, and miserably contorted. The whole notion of wrestling is very unfeminine. It’s a smelly, sweaty, bloody business, and if it weren’t for the Spirit of God, I might never have come near it.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with being girly. Nothing, that is, unless it stands in the way of God bringing about the fullness of His gospel life within us.
A study of Scripture reveals that our God is a wrestler. He’s a fighter. He’s a manly, valiant, mighty warrior. And the business of His kingdom is often smelly, sweaty, and bloody. His mighty men have been splattered with the blood of battle, His prophets have died grisly deaths, His messengers have been beheaded, sawn in two, and impaled in the most horrific fashion.
There is nothing girly about Jesus picking up a whip and strolling into the temple to purge it of crooked merchants. And the idea of Jesus sweating great drops of blood, being scourged with a cat-o’-nine-tails, and being unceremoniously nailed to a bloody cross makes me squeamish.
God made me a girl. And He did that on purpose. But He asks me to become the kind of girl who is actually useful to His kingdom purposes. I need to become the sort of girl who is unafraid to poke my head into the battle of the ages and cry out, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine who is blaspheming the armies of the living God?”
God wants me to wrestle. God wants to stick grit in my girliness. He wants me to be prepared to tangle, to interlock my soul in this eternal combat—not with other girls, not with sweaty boys, but with Him, and with the otherworldly powers of darkness. He wants me to wrestle in prayer, to grab ahold of His great and precious promises and fight to see them unfurled in living reality on this Earth.
What you are about to read is a book more easily grasped by the mudslinging, spit-wad shooting, crawdad collecting sort of audience that has an inherent well of testosterone to draw from. But this isn’t a book just for men, any more than the Bible is.
Christianity has confused catching mice with the real work of the kingdom, which is more like hunting lions. We’ve lost the sacred work of prayer. And we no longer know how to wield the power of God in this world. Lions, bears, and blaspheming giants are having their way in the church today, and it is high time that we start doing something about this travesty.
No, I have not lost my girlishness. However, I can say I have become a huge fan of wrestling…at least God’s version of it. I still get a bit squeamish around smells, sweat, and blood, but God is toughening me in all the right ways. This girl is learning how to deal out a mean uppercut to the enemy’s smirking jaw—and, I must admit, it’s quite satisfying to see him whimper in pain.
I personally know no other man who can speak on the issues this book presents better than my husband, Eric. This book is merely a peek into his life—this stuff is his daily diet. He’s a man acquainted with both the prayer closet and the public arena of proclamation. Eric is a wrestler. He understands the power of prayer and he wields it mightily. The truths in this book aren’t merely ideas he thinks about; they are principles he lives each day. So Eric is going to lead us in this grand and epic conversation. Then, at the end of each chapter, I’ll add my two cents of practical application and real-life analogy.
This isn’t just another book about the disappointments and disillusionments of unanswered prayer. And even though there are many practical truths woven in these pages, this is not primarily a prayer how-to book. Rather, it’s a soul-stirring message about the explosive possibilities of true wrestling prayer. This message may seem larger-than-life at first. But I believe that if you take this book to heart, your spiritual life will never be the same. In fact, history will never be the same!