The Athlete's Inner Game
Do you remember why you started playing?
There was a time when the answer to that question was immediate and obvious. You loved it. It was fun. You were good at it and being good at something felt good. You wanted to compete and this was the competition that fit.
Do you still feel that way?
If the honest answer is: not really, not right now — this is for you.
Read this passage slowly.
Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
Psalm 42:5 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
The psalmist is talking to his own soul. Why are you downcast? That’s a remarkable move — he’s examining his own interior rather than just experiencing it. And he’s not trying to immediately fix the downcast feeling. He’s acknowledging it, naming it, and then making a forward declaration: I will yet praise him. Not yet I do. Yet I will.
A motivation crisis almost always feels permanent. The fire is gone and it feels like it’s gone for good. That feeling is almost never accurate. What’s usually gone is not the motivation itself but the conditions that produced it. The novelty, the momentum, the clarity of purpose that existed at a different point in your development.
Those conditions change. The motivation doesn’t disappear — it goes underground and waits for something to call it back up.
What calls it back? Usually one of three things: rediscovering the original joy in a specific moment of the game. Finding a new reason to compete — for the people in the room, for a larger purpose, for what this is building in you beyond the sport. Or simply waiting — showing up without the feeling until the feeling returns, because it almost always does for athletes who keep working.
Why are you downcast? The question is worth sitting with. And the declaration is worth making: I will yet find my way back to this.
The fire goes underground. It doesn’t disappear. The question is what calls it back up.
When did you last feel genuinely motivated by your sport — not obligated, but actually lit up by it? What was happening in that moment?
Looking for the specific conditions of the last genuine motivation. That information is useful for recreating it.
The downcast feeling is not permanent. Show up. It will come back.
This devotional is for genuine motivation crises, not just flat days. Use it when the flatness has persisted long enough to feel like a real problem.