"Losing Your Cutting Edge."

Ecclesiastes 10:10- "If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength..." The idea behind the verse is if your axe is dull, you have to work harder to accomplish the task. The axe represents our service for the Lord. It is easy for us to loose our "cutting edge" and become "dull" in our walk with the Lord. How does our axe become dull? There are four things that will dull our axe:

1) Our axe becomes dull through NO USE. If you leave an axe lying in the garage, it will gradually become rusty just through lack of use. We also become dull and ineffective when we remain idle in serving the Lord.

2) Our axe becomes dull through MISUSE. When you use an axe in a way that it was not intended to be used for, it will get dull real quick. Likewise, when we use our life in a way that God did not intend for us to, we will loose our "cutting edge." God made us to be used to bring Him glory.

3) Our axe becomes dull through HARD USE. Sometimes when you are chopping on a stump or the roots of a tree, your axe may hit a ROCK. Ouch! That hard surface will dull or blunt your axe. There are times in your Christian life that you will have to go through some HARD PLACES. God may ask you do perform some HARD TASKS. Sometimes you will have to deal with some HARD PEOPLE. Hardness will dull your axe.

4) Finally, our axe becomes dull through MUCH USE. Yes, that's right. We can get so busy serving the Lord that we become dull without even knowing it. We must constantly pause for moment to sharpen our axe. Reading the Bible sharpens our faith. Prayer sharpens our spirit. Church attendance sharpens our fellowship. Meditation sharpens our mind. We need to take time for these things, or we will get dull.

A young lumberjack challenged a veteran lumberjack to a contest of who could cut down the most trees in a single day. At the end of the day the winner was obvious. The older lumberjack had won. The younger man could not believe it!

"How could you have cut down more trees than I did?" he asked. "Every hour you sat down while I kept right on cutting. I don't understand. How could you have cut more trees while sitting so much?"

"When I sat down, I was sharpening my axe," the older lumberjack said. "Why didn't you stop to sharpen your axe?"

"I didn't have time," the younger man said. "I was too busy cutting."

Don't get so busy that you don't have time to come to church and sharpen your axe.

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"Soli Dei gratia"
www.hurricane.net/~avhughes
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"Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13).

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