A Young man approached the foreman of a logging crew and asked for a job. “That depends,” replied the foreman. “Let’s see you fall this tree.” The young man stepped forward and skillfully fell the great tree. Impressed, the foreman said, “Start Monday.” Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday rolled by, and by Thursday afternoon the foreman approached the young man and said, “You can pick up your paycheck on the way out today.” Startled, the young man replied, “I thought you paid on Friday.” “Normally we do,” answered the foreman, “but we’re letting you go today because you have fallen behind. Our daily felling charts show that you dropped from first place on Monday to last on Wednesday.” “But I’m a hard worker,” the young man objected. “I arrive first, leave last, and even have worked through my coffee breaks!” The foreman, sensing the boy’s integrity thought for a minute and then asked, “Have you been sharpening you axe?” The young man replied, “I’ve been working too hard to take the time.”
All of us have experienced “priority disorder.” You know, when we find ourselves letting the things we should do fall behind the immediate things. Often the immediate things are not bad. They merely consume our time which in turn causes erosion in the areas of our life that is most needed. We experience this in our professional life, our social life, our family life and especially in our spiritual life. Have you ever sat down to read your bible and everything you needed to get done all of sudden comes to mind? And you find yourself dwelling on those things rather than what God is saying to you through His word? If the enemy can’t make you sin, he will make you busy. His one goal is to get you to pull back from what God has called you to do. For example: prayer time, bible reading, church attendance and volunteering. Don’t let the enemy dull your spiritual axe by keeping you from what God has called you to. Make a decision today to keep your spiritual axe sharp, you’ll find that when your axe is sharp the rest will fall into place. It is important to our spheres of influence that we remain spiritually sharp.
That is such a great illustration! This is how I end up having those days where I am working so hard to get nothing done :-). And I feel completely incapable of having a good attitude in the midst of it. It gets so frustrating! Then I have to force emergency time with God when I could have avoided the hardship altogether by prioritizing Him everyday. I love parables! They always leave me with a picture to easily be reminded by. Thanks Ror!
Amen! Thanks for the reminder!