Pain & Greatness

I'm having severe hip pain and heading to a sports medicine doctor in a few minutes...and just struggling with my thoughts.  Today I was reading in Deut. 7:17-19, 21: "If you say in your heart, 'These nations are greater than I.  How can I dispossess them?' you shall not be afraid of them but you shall remember what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt, the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm, by which the Lord your God brought you out.  So will the LORD your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid...for the LORD your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God."  I realized that these are some of the feelings I have been having about my life, my diet, my art, my witness and ministry, my hip, my circumstances...thinking that they are greater than me, and greater than God.

That made me then think of 1 John 4:4:  "Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world."

He is greater!  He is greater than my fear, my doubt, my foolish thoughts, my pain, my understanding.  This took me to Phil. 3:7-11:  "But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead."

May I KNOW Him, and the power of His resurrection.