Less Effort More Power Pt 2

Last week we looked at how Jesus said “come to me and I will give you rest”. Not  a longer to do list. Not a work out regime, but rest. He also said his yoke, his teachings are easy.

We saw how at the time of the building of the temple God said through Zerubabel “it’s not by might or power (your efforts and hard work) but by my spirit that this thing will get built”. It’s not the amount of effort you put in, it’s about anointing.

We saw how in Isaiah 40 the promise of “those who hope in the Lord will run and not grow weary”

That was last week.

Ecc 10.10 If the axe is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed

If you want more power with less effort, make sure your axe is sharp! Perseverance is a good thing, but it’s not more spiritual to put in more effort with a blunt axe!

If you axe is not sharp, don’t stop using it altogether but sharpen it

A blunt axe is not only ineffective it is potentially more dangerous. Instead of cutting in it bounces off.

You need the sharp edge of the holy spirit in everything you do. You need to keep that edge sharp, honed by the holy spirit. If you use your axe without the holy spirit it will get more and more blunt.

Have you let your axe get blunt?

Don’t let the axe get blunt. Don’t let your quiet times with god get blunt. Don’t let your prayers get blunt.

A sharp axe means less effort and more power.

The less effort you put in and the more power that God supplies, the more glory goes to him!

Now want to look at a story in the old testament. It’s in 2 Kings 6: 1-6

There’s a number of things I love about this story – I’ll get to the axe bit in a minute. But there’s so much here that reflects things that I think are important about church

1. Who took the initiative? The prophets take initiative

They are not all waiting for Elisha to take the initiative. Too much of church life in the UK is about people waiting for the leaders to take the initiative.  We need lots of initiative taking. This was not about one man with the vision and drive and enthusiasm and anointing and everyone following his instructions. We need to be a people with vision and initiative. They were a prophetic group. We need to be a prophetic group.

2. They do not display an independent spirit

We are a body, not just a group of individuals doing our own thing. There is a real sense of submission. They submit this idea to Elisha – they don’t tell him this is what they are going to do. It’s not “we’ve heard from God and that’s it” They submit to Elisha but they do so not because this is what we ought to do, not because they are afraid of stepping out of line, but because they trust him.

3. Elisha is willing for them to take initative. Not a controlling spirit. It might go wrong (it did)
4. The heart is about expansion not re decoration. We always need to be looking for more and bigger. Things were good at this time, God was doing stuff but they didn’t want to settle for what they had however good it was. They were not saying “we’ve got something good let’s not upset it”. They were not settling.
5. Elisha – you come too. They didn’t want to stray from the anointing. It was important to them that Elisha went too. No independent spirit. They wanted Elisha with them because they knew god was with Elisha. It speaks to me of the presence of God. They wanted god’s presence. Moses – I don’t want to go unless you are with us.
6. Prophets became axemen – when the anointing comes, when the vision is vital you will turn your hand to anything – the axe was borrowed – implication he was not a regular axe user – he didn’t have his own axe he borrowed one because he knew God was on this thing. Not here’s an idea now someone else should do it.

7 God’s presence and anointing doesn’t mean that things won’t go wrong. The axe head flew off the handle and landed in the river. Maybe the axe was blunt! Maybe he needed to sharpen his axe.

8. This prophet lost the very tool he needed to serve God in this situation.

This is the real point of telling this story.

I’m going to use this as an analogy – we can be working hard in god’s purposes  and we lose the anointing and sometimes it’s a gradual thing that we hardly notice because an axe only gradually gets blunt.

In this story the axe doesn’t just get blunt, it gets lost. Some Christians keep hitting the tree with the axe handle not realising that they no longer have the axe head. We’re not just using a blunt axe but we’re trying to cut down the trees by hitting them with a stick because we’ve completely lost the axe head.

We can feel we’ve lost our old enthusiasm, we used to know god speaking to us but we’ve lost that we were stepping out into new things with god but we’ve lost our way a bit. Sunday becomes a bit of a duty. Prayer times – we start to opt out. Evangelistic events – we haven’t got vision for.

1. It was borrowed – everything is borrowed – it all belongs to God. Humility. Easy to get precious about “our thing” “my ministry”. (Mike and breaking bread?)
2. Where did you lose it? Firstly what caused this loss? Circumstances, weariness, trying to do too much, laziness, offended  by something someone else said or did, not recognised for what you did. Go and deal with the problem. Easy to say hard to do.
3. Go back to where you last had it. It was when I was reading my bible regularly, it was when I was listening to worship cds. We’re not trying to recreate something out of nostalgia.
4. Keep expecting the amazing – the axe head floated. That’s wacky. (Note – no one started up an axe head floating ministry! It was a one off). There’s something within us that wants to recreate it. Keep expecting god to do something new, something different. Don’t let our Xianity be rooted in what God did before, in the anointed songs of yesterday. Abby’s stories
5. What did Elisha do? He threw a stick in the water – just an ordinary stick. God uses the ordinary again! The ordinary to do the extraordinary. No special carvings, ceremony, no special words.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to throw a stick in the water.

Conclusion

There was another bit of wood that God used – a wooden cross – probably rough hewn. Jesus carpenter on a rough hewn cross. A place of sacrifice and surrender. Where Jesus made the supreme sacrifice, where he surrendered all.  The number one requirement to get the axe back is surrender to Christ, to say it’s all about you lord and then to allow the anointing to come. I want to say this carefully – the cross is not the destination, but its part of the journey that we keep coming to. The cross is not the destination – resurrection life is the destination.

The cross was the turning point of history, not the destination. Don’t just stop at the cross. The cross was a step towards your empowerment for him

It’s not about what you do it’s about what he’s done. Less effort from you and more power from him.