TODAY'S BLOG:

Taken from the book: "CAN YOU STAND TO BE BLESSED"
by Bishop T. D. Jakes!

"Jacob, whose name meant 'supplanter' or 'trickster', literally 'con man', was left alone with God.  God cannot accomplish anything with us until we are left alone with Him.  There, in the isolation of our internal strife, God begins the process of transforming disgrace into grace."

My thought is this, IT WAS AT A POINT in his life, Jacob sought the intimacy of knowing God.  He, at once, was overtaken by a deep desire to know God. Bishop Jakes, tell us....

"...when we, like Jacob, seek to know God, He will inevitably show us our real identity.  The greatest riches Jacob would ever receive were given while he was alone with the Father.  It was simply the Father's telling him his name!

"Imagine how shocking it was for this almost dysfunctional person to find that he was NOT who he thought he was.  Here everyone had been calling him something that he really wasn't.  All of his life they had called him a trickster..... Jacob simply acted out what everyone had said he was.  But with the grip of a DESPERATE man he caught the horns of the altar of prayer and prayed until the Father gave him his real identity.  He said Jacob, "Your name is Israel, and as a prince you have wrestled with God (see Gen. 32:28). You could be a PRINCE and not really know it.  My friend, if no one else knows who you are, GOD KNOWS.  If you pray, the Father will GIVE YOU A NAME."

My final thought is this 'don't take other people's opinion of who you are' because God alone knows.  When he has told you, walk in it with confidence and never answer to anything else.