Night before Exam

My final exams (3rd semester of 10) start tomorrow. I’m glad for them because they are already late and we will have a short 4th semester. Our year at college is from July to June and the first half of the year is finishing 10th March with the end of these exams, so the second half of the year will be tiny - March to June including exams.

Story Making is a lot of fun I am really enjoying reading what everybody’s coming up with! Thanks for playing.

Today was a bit tiring for me (I’m absolutely exhausted right now).
I was walking a little while ago (not exercise but I had somewhere to get to) and I just wanted to lie down and sleep, my head hurt and my flesh said “you’re allowed to fuss yourself a little bit”. I don’t know if that is true or not sometimes, but it was definitely not true today. Immediately I thought about religious people who preach at others and know every rule of the book, but can’t deny their own desires when it comes to actually living their ideals. And I thought “nope don’t wanna be like them” and decided to continue walking. Then I thought that is the most negative incentive I could have given myself. Christ is worth it and it’s for HIM I should be doing things, not because I don’t want to be like other people. I felt a huge burden get off my heart. It made me really happy to think about Christ and doing everything with Him in mind. I remembered the verse from Philippians 1 - “Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will.”

I was trying to preach Christ with my actions, trying to “live” Christ- but it was not really from good will it was (to put it crudely) to make myself ‘better’ than other “religious” people. Paul says later in that chapter, “What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.” So it’s better to do what’s right with a less-right incentive, than not to do what’s right. If I had gone on and done the right thing without the right reason, it would have still been better than giving in to my desire to sleep and doing wrong. At least that way I would be causing less harm to other people and maybe God would have given someone else a chance to correct my attitude without much real damage being done and bring me back on track. But I can almost guarantee that if I made a habit of doing things for such reasons (i.e. not directly for Christ) I would very quickly become an unhappy, crabby and self-pitying person. I would always be doing the right thing in my eyes, I would always be sacrificing myself and probably expecting to be fussed by other people since I’m giving up the chance to fuss myself. And I would totally miss out on the joy of serving in Christ.

So God showed me the better way. To live for Christ, to know that my present sufferings (though they can hardly be called sufferings, I am so incredibly blessed) are considered nothing compared to the glory which is in store. And even the joy of living for Christ in this present day without thinking much about the future- even just living for Christ today makes all my burdens feel like nothing. I feel so free.