Refining Word

Eccl.10:¹⁰ “If the ax is dull, and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed but skill will bring success” [with emphasis]

Energy consists of four components –physical energy, mental energy, emotional energy, and spiritual energy. To manage your energy, you must be optimal in your physical energy. In order to achieve this, you need to exercise and be deliberate about watching what you eat. What you eat and how you exercise will determine your physical energy. If you do not exercise and you do not eat right, you are going to struggle.

To be optimal in mental energy, you need to exercise your mental muscles and you do this by thinking of new ideas everyday. Even if the ideas turn out to be useless or ideas you never get to use, just exercise that muscle. By forcing yourself to think of ten new ideas everyday, you will be forcing your mental muscle to exercise. Think of ten new ideas everyday for a week and you will be shocked at how sharp you will become mentally.  You can apply these same methods to your spiritual and emotional muscles to generate spiritual and emotional energy.

Eccl.10:¹⁰ “If the ax is dull, and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed but skill will bring success” [with emphasis]. In other words, God is saying work smarter, not harder. For you to get some certain tasks done, you need to deploy your physical energy. For some tasks, you need to sharpen and deploy your mental energy. For some other projects, it is just emotional energy you need. The task can be completed easily if you have the right emotional energy and there are people to help you do it. God wants you to work smarter.

Whenever something is before you, ask yourself two questions; is this the best use of my time – should I be the person attending to the details of this task, should I be the person taking up this challenge? The second question, is there an easier way to do what is before you? It is not laziness to look for an easier way to do the work. When you find the easier way to do the task, you free up time to do other things. When the axe is sharp, every blow makes a significant impact – and work is faster. It is wisdom not laziness to sharpen the axe.

Prayer: Holy Spirit, help me see where my axe is dull and teach me how to go about sharpening it so that I will always bear fruit, in Jesus Name. Amen!