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!