When a knife first comes out of the forge of a skilled knifemaker it has one job, to cut! During the first few times, it is used it can cut through just about anything. I love seeing videos of knives being tested to cut multiple water bottles lined up in a row. Knives are designed to be sharp!
When we use a knife for the first time to cut open a juicy steak, we almost feel like the knife slides right through the steak. It was first designed to cut through a steak effortlessly. It was in its designed purpose and intent.
With continued use, the knife becomes dull over time, if it is not sharpened with iron. It has a hard time cutting through the same juicy steak.
Did its purpose change?
Has anything changed about the knife? Did its maker stop calling it a knife? Has its intended work and its purpose changed? No! The only thing that changed was that it stopped being sharpened by other iron. Iron sharpens iron.
In the hands of the knifemaker, the knife is pushed against abrasive stones and metals with great care the knife is again sharp if not sharper. The knife has literally lost some of its iron in the sharpening process because of the stones and metal were so hard, abrasive and tough.
I recall an old knife my grandfather had that he used to repair some of the first television sets, the real old ones that had tubes. When I had this knife added to my collection it was rusty, chipped and dinged. I caught my father looking at this knife one day and heard the story of how my father and grandfather tinkered on TVs together. This inspired me to undertake the task of reshaping the broken blades, sharpening the knife and polishing and buffing the handle to bring it back to its former glory. The look on my father’s face when he received this as a gift was incredible!
Even a person who is doing everything that God has purposed for them to do will still dull if not continually sharpened. Strong people constantly need objects in there life to sharpen them. Some, maybe the smartest among us, invite people into there lives to increase their efficiency and to encourage them to new heights. There are numerous examples that can challenge us, like podcasts, books, articles, peer groups, conferences, seminars, and coaches.
My wife and I experienced this recently in a ministry we were apart of. We started helping college students and it was a blast! Conferences, meetings with food, talking about life and just plan doing life alongside young men and women. But what we started to experience is that in our zeal to impact others we had forsaken the exact things we were telling these college students to do. We didn’t have coaches, we had very few peers who challenged us, we started to get distracted by life and stopped reading, amongst other things. We all know how distraction can creep into our lives and start to deteriorate us.
Soon we had lost some of our passion and zeal. Had we lost our purpose in that season? What had happened was we needed to be sharpened, honed, and in some cases re-forged. We got challenged, we were refocused and renewed. It took intense focus by our Maker to sharpen us without breaking us, but I am so thankful we allowed the process to happen.
Let us invite the Maker to sharpen us today.