Power Religion (Genesis 32:3-32)

A quick survey of any bookstore or Christian television programming suggests that more and more people are having greater and greater encounters with God: he appears to them, speaks to them, provides for them, protects them. God, it seems, is awfully busy making his rounds! Call me a cynic, but it seems that the encounters most people are having with God today look nothing like Jacob’s encounter with God the night before he met up with Esau. Where is the wrestling with God? Where is the fear? Where is the cry for a blessing? Where is the changed name and nature? Where is the lifelong limp? Further, where is the weakness of God in all these modern encounters? Perhaps our perceptions of a “power religion” need to change to be more faithful to the testimony of Scripture and the person and work of God.