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Iowa City Church Podcast


Welcome to the Iowa City Church sermon and teaching page.  We know that life can be confusing, and sometime just plain hard.  We believe the best way to live life comes through following Jesus.  These lessons and sermons are designed to be a resource to help you on that journey.  We hope you find them helpful!

Jan 17, 2022

A young, strapping lad decided he wanted to be a lumber jack.  His first day on the job he gets up early, grabs his axe and heads to the job site before the other men, to get a head start.  His first day on the job he amazingly fells twenty trees! 

The next day we wants to do even more, so he gets up even earlier and heads out to improve his output.  However, this day is much different.  He only drops fifteen trees.  He's not sure what went wrong.

On the third day, the young lumber jack is determined to get back to his first day achievement and he throws every ounce of strength into his task.  Yet, he still comes up short...but by a lot!  He is only able to chop down ten trees.  The disappointment overwhelms him and he is ready to quite.

A grizzled old veteran sees the disappointment on the young jack's face and he pulls him aside for a teaching moment.  The old veteran says;

"Youngster, while you're out here bright and early whacking away at these here trees, the rest of us are in the workshop sharpening our axes.  It's really hard to get much done if our tools aren't sharp!"

From that day forward, the young lumber jack made sure his axe was razor sharp before he went to work.

A lot of folks, maybe even you, head off into a new work week full of hopes, goals and dreams only to find your efforts squashed by Wednesday.  Others of you may have thought that your faith journey of following Jesus would look a lot different by now.  You work so hard, you do your best, but you just seem to come up short.

Question.  Are you sharpening your faith?  To achieve our hopes and dreams, to grow in our relationship with Jesus we need to be intentional about sharpening our faith.  According to Psalm 122, this happens when we worship together as God's people.

There are a lot of reasons, and excuses people give for not coming to Sunday morning worship services.  It's unfortunate because they are missing out on an essential discipline in living life to the fullest.  In this episode, we will talk about how weekly community worship sharpens our lives and our faith.  Don't miss out on part three of Long Obedience in the Same Direction!