But here's the thing. You can't let yourself feel that way. I've been feeling like it for ages it seems, and the only happiness I feel when I live that way is during a very short window of time each morning where nothing has gone wrong yet or been difficult for me. And I don't know about you, but I want to be happy all of the time, so something had to be done.
I recently watched a video online that was meant to motivate athletes to truly want to succeed. Here's the essentials:
-Basically, a strapping young athlete went to someone up top, someone he might consider a role model in the field, and asked him to help him achieve great success. The higher-up agreed, instructing him to meet him at the beach the following morning at 5 AM.
Bright and incomprehensibly early the next morning, the athlete arrived at the beach and waited for the coach, stretching and anticipating a killer workout that would prepare him for the success he desired. He thought about how much he wanted to be in bed, but stayed because he at least wanted to try for success.
Soon, the coach arrived, taking the athlete by surprise when he ordered him to walk straight into the ocean in his athletic wear. The athlete, of course wanting to stay as dry as possible without looking like a chicken, walked in knee-deep. The coach then instructed him to walk farther and farther out, until the athlete, much to his dismay, was up to his ears in water.
Then, the coach shoved down the athlete's head, holding him underwater for a full minute, until the athlete's lungs burned for air, until all he could think about was breathing again, thinking about how he would die without it. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the coach allowed him to emerge from below the surface of the water, and the athlete gasped for air and sucked it in, feeling a relief he had never felt before.
Angry, he asked the coach why he had tried to kill him. The coach replied, "Until you want success as badly as you wanted air just now, you won't get it. Until you want it so bad that you're willing to give up sleep, what everyone thinks of you, and your own laziness, you won't get it. You have to want it as bad as breathing!"-
So what do you want? If you're a Christian, you should want God's will more than anything else. But do you truly want it more than anything?
Until you want it as bad as air, you won't ever be happy. Until you want it so bad that you recognize that you will die without accepting it, you will never know true happiness. Because you will die without it. The only way to avoid the death of sin is Christ, and truly accepting Him means wanting to glorify Him more than air.
You don't have to stop wanting sleep, friends' opinions, and other things that you want. But you do have to be willing to risk more for God than for those things. Which can be hard. I know that I'm often willing to risk a few points of my grades for just a few more hours of sleep. I know that sometimes I let what people might think of me get in the way of what I should do. But the only way we can ever truly be happy in any situation is to wholeheartedly and desperately follow God, wherever and to whoever he takes us. Go ahead and risk what people think of you. But don't do it for popularity; do it when people might think you're crazy for loving God so much. And never forget; you can't live this way on your own. Ask God for the passion for Him that He deserves, and it'll come.
So, if God wants you to be a physicist, missionary in Africa, teacher, engineer, or whatever He wants you to be, want it more than air. Risk everything you've got for it. And if you do that, even a few bad grades won't get you down because God will lay out the framework for you to get where you need to be, even if all A's aren't in that plan.
