For tonight’s message, I want to focus your attention on something that affects every Christian at one

time or another: Losing our spiritual edge.

God wants us to stay spiritually sharp. Consider Ecclesiastes 10:10 “If the ax is dull, and one does not
sharpen the edge, then he must use more strength; but wisdom brings success.”
God is using this analogy to illustrate a very important truth: If you lose your edge spiritually, you lose
your effectiveness as well.
Maybe you feel that way today or have felt it in the past. Though you are exerting strenuous effort, you
are making a little progress in your spiritual life. God wants you to go forward. He wants you to
progress and not become stagnant in your spiritual life.
Let me borrow an illustration narrated by Bayless Conley regarding this topic. He has a friend whose
father was a logger many years ago. It was a time when they cut all the timber by hand with just an ax.
One day, his father shared about the way he would operate. After he chopped down a tree, he would sit
on the stump of the tree he had just chopped down, take out a file he kept on his belt, and he would
sharpen the edge of the ax. He would sit there until the ax was very sharp again, then he would go after
the next tree.
Each time he chopped down a tree he would do exactly the same thing. But he said most of the other
guys did not do that. They just wanted to keep going, never stopping to sharpen their axes.
Without a fail, he said he always got more done than they did and he used a lot less effort. They had to
exercise more strength, yet they got less done.
As we think about regaining our cutting edge, it is important to consider those things that would
indicate we have become spiritually dull.
I believe that one of the characteristics we should consider when we have lose our cutting edge is that
the voice of the Holy Spirit is no longer recognized. Those impressions that the Spirit makes upon your
heart, through which He guides you, are no longer clear.
In Matthew 13:14-15, Jesus talks about this in a pretty way.
And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: Hearing you will hear and shall not
understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive; for the hearts of this people have grown dull.
Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and
hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.”
This concern is echoed in Hebrews 5:11, where the writer, talking about the priesthood of Christ, says,
Of whom we have much to say and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.
The second characteristic of someone who has lost their edge spiritually is they lose their usefulness as
an instrument in the hands of God.
Revelation 14:14-16 tells us,
Then I looked, and behold a white cloud on the cloud sat One like the Son of Man, having on His head
a golden crown, and His hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a
loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud, “Thrust in Your sickle and reap, for the harvest of earth is
ripe.” So He who sat on the cloud thrust in His sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.

The One sitting on the cloud with a crown on His head is the Lord Jesus Christ. The harvest on the
earth is the salvation of lost humanity, men and women who do not yet have a relationship with God.
Then what is the sharp sickle? It is the church. It is you. It is me. If God is going to reap the harvest of
lost humanity, it is going to be through His people.
You and I are to be a sharp sickle in God’s hand in His great plan of mankind’s redemption. That
means the housewife, the doctor, the agriculturist, the teacher, nurse, medical staff, police, etc. every
one of us. We are to be setting our hand to whatever practical work we have gifted to do to see people
being saved and being discipled.
We can only do this if we have a spiritual edge.
My question is.. DO your still have that spiritual edge of Have you lost your edge? Have you lost that
sensitivity to the voice of God? Hearing with the physical ears but not understanding on the heart;
seeing with the physical eyes but not perceiving what God is doing?
Jesus said that happens when the heart becomes dull. When someone loses that edge spiritually, it
results in an insensitivity to the voice of God.
If this describe you today, ask God to open your eyes to see and your ear to hear. Let us also determine
to be an effective instrument—a sharp sickle—in the hand of our God. Begin now to regain your
spiritual edge.