When the Bible talks about how we are to live in relationship with God, it consistently uses one word:

Walk.

Consider, for example, the book of Ephesians, where Paul uses the word 6 times to describe how a Christ-follower is supposed to live with Jesus: “Walk worthy. Walk in love. Walk in good works.”

We are to walk with God, one step at a time, always moving forward, and by faith keeping in step with the Spirit. Thing is, though, that sometimes – maybe oftentimes – that walk with God becomes a limp.

Or at least it did for Jacob. Jacob, whose name meant “deceiver.” Jacob, who lived a life of self-reliance. Jacob, who was always working the angles for his own benefit. And then Jacob, who had a wrestling match with God in Genesis 32. And as a result of that wrestling match, Jacob came forth with two new components to his life:

Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he could not defeat him, he struck Jacob’s hip socket as they wrestled and dislocated his hip. Then he said to Jacob, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”

But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

“What is your name?” the man asked.

“Jacob,” he replied.

“Your name will no longer be Jacob,” he said. “It will be Israel because you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed” (Gen. 32:24-28).

Jacob left the wrestling match that night with a new name, but that’s not all. The text says that God reached down and touched Jacob on his hip socket. Jacob was marked with a limp. Isn’t that interesting.

If the biblical language for our relationship with God is framed in terms of a walk, Jacob limped. As he walked forward, his walk was marked by the struggle. Such is the case with all who struggle with God. Coming out of whatever crisis situation precipitated the struggle, we all limp—we emotionally, spiritually, and sometimes even physically hobble along the journey of life.

We have struggled with God, and we have come away from that wrestling match changed. Wounded somehow. Broken. We continue to walk with the Lord, but our gate is awkward because of what we’ve been through. Jacob limped, too, and I wonder how he felt about it.

It must have been inconvenient at times. It must have been humbling, too. Surely there were times when he looked at his cane, felt the pain of the old wound, and wondered if it were really worth it. But I suspect that in Jacob’s life, and in the life of anyone who has struggled deeply with God, limping along really isn’t a bad way to walk.

The limp is a permanent reminder of human frailty and divine power. This, friends, is the essence of trust – it is a knowledge of our own inability and an acknowledgment that we serve a mighty God.

When we struggle with our circumstances, we wrestle with God over the trust of our lives. And we don’t come out of that struggle unchanged. Our walk with Him is forever altered. We come out limping, but that limp is a reminder of what faith is really all about. So we limp forward . . . but we do so in faith. And as we do, we take comfort in this—our traveling companion knows the wrestling match, too.

Jesus knows how to wrestle, too. And wrestle He did that night in the garden. He wrestled with the cross that was coming. He wrestled with what had been set before Him. And in that wrestling match, when Jesus was asked the same question of belief, through drops of blood he looked to the sky and said, “I trust you.” And after that wrestling match, He was marked, too, except His marks were holes in His hands and His side.

I guess we would look like a rag tag bunch on the road together—Jesus with his “holey” side and all of us with our canes, all walking together down the road of life. But someday . . . someday, when we get to the end of the journey and we all compare wounds from our time on earth, and we realize that those were really light and momentary struggles in the light of eternity with God, we’ll celebrate together that we are loved by a God who loves us enough to wrestle us for our faith, and that our limps and wounds remind us that He is, in any circumstance, ultimately, divinely, lovingly, abidingly able.

Jesus will show off His own marks. We’ll hold up our canes. Then we’ll all put them aside—Abraham, Moses, David, Jacob, Paul, and all the rest who have been crippled on the journey. We’ll put them aside because we’re finally home. And it will be time for dinner.

Until then, we continue to walk with God. To limp with God. That limp, the brokenness that will go with us until the end, doesn’t just mark us as people who have had a child with cancer. It’s a mark that reminds us of the God who is worthy of our trust. He’s the One we have wrestled, and yet He is the One who has sustained us. Even now.