Time to pull out the Ax
by jacob bock – subscribe to this blog in the column on the left.
I hope you took the time to discover your triangular focus, the three things most important to you. My focus in life is prayer+evangelism+mentoring.
You cannot do everything. Nor should you. 
Jesus did ONLY what his Father told him to do. That is all YOU should do.
Think about it. When you say not my will but yours be done, then the entire focus of our life changes- it is not about us, our dreams, our desires or what we want to do.
So once you determine what God wants your focus in life to be, whenever you are presented with something outside of that triangle, you have to ask yourself: does this take me towards these goals, or away from them? If it doesn’t line up: time to pull out the ax!
The Holy Spirit is constantly axing things out of my life. (Pruning if you may)
I wanted to learn the art of bookbinding. (Voice: What are you doing that for?) AX
I wanted to be a marathoner. (Voice: That is not what you are to be known for) AX
In other words, what ever does not take you toward your calling (focus, triangle) Ax it out. An amazing thing will happen:
- Your life will become so much more simple.
- You will have time to spare for the important things.
- You will have peace in your heart.
- You will be pleasing to God.
Here’s the deal. You know what you are suppose to dedicate yourself to. I know you know because I know God knows, and if God knows he is bound to let you know.
So just do it. Begin to eliminate everything in your life that does not help you become excellent on the three things that matter.
jacob bock
Good stuff!
Excellent! God does not want us to burn out. His burden for our lives is light and His yoke for our lives is easy. If you are weary and heavy laden and can’t seem to swing the axe, Jesus says come to me. I bet He can swing an axe…
Jacob, this thing got to my heart. Really good stuff!
Thank you!
Jacob:
Great thoughts. Reminds me of an illustration given years ago in a teaching I listened to on “The Principle of the Concentration of Force.” The illustration (it works in the U.S. with our drywall walls, may not work as universally in countries with masonry walls, although some partitions are not cement) was as follows:
If you place your open hand against the wall and push, it will not go through the wall–the force is too spread out over a large area to do anything. If you take a framing nail or an ice pick and push it hard against the wall, it goes through, not because the force applied is greater but because the force is concentrated on just one little point.
Obviously the application was that if we have too broad of a focus, we dissipate our energies, but if we focus on just one thing (etc.), we have an impact.
P.S. you should be getting a couple more old books in about a week or ten days, I used the address of the OTRB center on the Pza de la Puerta del Sol.
Linc
That’s really good. I made my triangle prayer, reading (the bible) and worship. It’s a small triangle, but that’s where it is. Also I had a question for you. It’s in one of the smaller gospels, Jude maybe, where the writer says something about when satan argued with the archangel about the body of Moses. Is it written about somewhere else? It is very curious to me. If you have time..I havn’t tried a blog don’t know about it. Thankyou!