Is God the Biggest?

Bill Johnson often says that we must keep our awareness of God's presence at the forefront of our minds. We cannot allow for other things to become bigger than our awareness of His presence. Until Monday night I thought I had that figured out pretty well and that no matter what the circumstances, my awareness of God's presence was the biggest thing in my mind. Let me explain.

Late Sunday night I noticed that my knees were starting to hurt. I didn't think too much of it because I had spent a longer time kneeling during worship on Sunday night than I normally would, so I figured it would go away soon. Well, on Monday my knees were hurting worse so I decided to just lay down in bed and rest. For several hours I was aware of God's presence as a lay there. Well, by that evening I was having trouble sleeping and my knees were hurting really bad. In the middle of the night there were several times in which I audibly grunted due to the extreme pain that I was in.

When I woke up Tuesday morning I was in horrible pain. By now my back was also sore from being in bed for so long. Additionally I could hardly walk because of the pain and my knees also felt like they were going to buckle underneath me. I quickly became aware of how often I use my knees, from the slight bend to wash my hands in the bathroom sink to getting out of bed, rolling over in bed, and going up and down stairs. I ended up going to the prayer chapel hoping that being in His presence would heal me, but I was so miserably in pain that I could not even become aware of His presence. At this point I also had a terrible headache and so I ended up making my way over to the main building to just take it easy before school.

On my way there I almost fell over a few times. It felt like someone took a baseball bat to my knees and that they were going to buckle from underneath me. This isn't just soreness, I know what that feels like. My back is sore, as is my neck and collarbone, my knees just downright hurt. I was miserable the whole day at school. I couldn't concentrate because of the pain and the headache. I ended up just going home after school and skipping my Tuesday night homegroup.

Being able to lay down helped some and several hours later I noticed that my knees weren't hurting when I wasn't moving. A few times in the night I got up to use the rest room and quickly discovered that they were still hurting and still wanted to buckle under my weight (and I am not heavy!). However, I didn't have the killer pain at any time like I had the previous night or during the day so I woke up thanking God for the improvement. However I hardly slept all night due to my back and neck hurting and woke up with my collarbone also hurting.

My headache was so bad that I felt like I was in slow motion, so when I was getting very far trying to do homework, I decided to lay down and try to get some sleep. That didn't work for the sleeping part, but I did manage to have my headache go away temporarily while I put my pillow on top of my face. I managed to finish it (thank you God that I had already finished Dann's homework on the weekend!) and went off to school still in a lot of pain. My headache kept getting worse so I ended up just laying down in the back as Kris Vallotton spoke. After a while I couldn't handle that either so I went out to the lobby.

More and more people prayed for me but I was still hurting the same after school ended. I ran into Joaquin in the hallway and he and two other students started to pray for me. I tested it out by walking and found that my knees weren't getting weak as I walked. They prayed again and I walked even more, with less pain, but more importantly, without feeling like my knees were going to buckle.

I mention all this to say that with all the pain I was in I kept that as my focus instead of God's presence. Let me just say that God did not cause me to be in this pain to teach me a lesson, but He sure did use it to show me that I let this circumstance come between me and Him. How quick I was to allow my circumstances to take my focus away from God. Thank you God for your presence and for being bigger than the most excruciating pain I have ever been in!