The Shock Knife Test: Why Practice Beats Knowing

I'm excited to keep going in this series, because today I want to give you the clearest test I know for the difference between knowing the Word and actually trusting it.

Are you the wayside — or are you staying until you understand?

Nobody who heard this parable that day understood it right away. Not even the twelve. The difference was what they did next — some left confused and didn't care, others stayed and said, "I don't understand this, but I want to."

That's how you get out of the first ground. Not by understanding immediately, but by refusing to leave until you do.

The shock knife test

I was once training alongside police officers and special operators in an edged-weapon defense class. The instructor would show a technique, then give us ten or fifteen minutes to drill it.

Half the group ran the technique five times and then stood around talking for the rest of the time. The other half — the group I was in — drilled it for a few minutes to get the muscle memory, and then started going at each other hard, slamming into walls, testing whether it actually held up under pressure.

By the end of those fifteen minutes, both groups looked the same on paper. Everybody had learned the technique.

Then the instructor pulled out a shock knife. The people who had trained hard didn't flinch, because they trusted the technique. The people who talked instead of trained had no confidence at all.

That's exactly how it works with the Word. If you want it to hold up when the enemy pulls out the shock knife, you have to put it into practice long before that moment ever shows up. You just do.

Marriage and the Word work the same way — feelings aren't the measure

There are mornings I wake up and don't feel especially swept up about being married. Nothing's wrong — I've just got a lot on my mind, and I'm not feeling it in that moment.

But I don't quit my marriage because I woke up without butterflies. I made a commitment, and the more I invest in it on the ordinary days, the more the feeling actually returns.

The Word works the same way. Stay with it, even on the days you don't feel anything. The investment is what brings the feeling back — not the other way around.

Champions show up when they don't feel like it

How many people would actually be in shape if they only went to the gym on days they felt like it? How many champion athletes would still be champions if they only trained when they were motivated?

The reason champions stay champions is that on the days they didn't feel like it, they still showed up. That's the same principle behind staying rooted in the Word.

Feelings are not the test. Consistency is.

Bearing fruit doesn't mean you get to stop doing what produced it

“That you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

Colossians 1:10 (NKJV)

Here's something worth catching: some ground actually starts producing fruit, and then it becomes unfruitful. Things click, results start showing up — and then, somewhere along the way, they stop.

I heard a man describe exactly this. Things were bearing fruit after he first got saved and started applying what he'd learned. Then the fruit slowed down, and he asked the Lord why. The answer was simple: because you stopped doing what you used to do.

Don't be the person who loses five pounds and celebrates by eating two pounds of ice cream. Getting results is not permission to stop doing what produced them. Maintaining a harvest takes the same consistency it took to grow it.

Fight To Win.