UNLOCK YOUR

POTENTIAL
Becoming Your Best You

DR. MYLES MUNROE

Copyright © 2013—Myles Munroe

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Permission will be granted upon request. Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are from
THE HOLY BIBLE, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by
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Bible, and (NKJV) from the New King James Version. Take note that the name satan and related
names are not capitalized. We choose not to acknowledge him, even to the point of violating
grammatical rules.

Destiny Image Publishers, Inc.

PO Box 310, Shippensburg, PA 17257-0310
“Promoting Inspired Lives.”
ISBN 13: 978-0-7684-0442-5
For Worldwide Distribution
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Previously Published ISBN: 978-0-7684-9438-9

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Parts of this book were previously published as Maximizing Your Potential Expanded Edition: The
Keys to Dying Empty, ISBN 978-0-7684-9438-9, copyright © 2013.
 CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1
How to Become Your Potential

CHAPTER 2
The Enemies of Potential

CHAPTER 3
Guard and Protect Your Potential

CHAPTER 4
Cultivate and Feed Your Potential
 CHAPTER 1

How to Become Your Potential

What you have done is only a mere fraction of who you are.

Slowly the young man worked his way through the brush and the young trees that had grown up
through the cracked foundation of the dilapidated house. Cobwebs filled openings where windows
had once been and hornets’ nests clung to the scorched beams of the floor above. A partially burned-
out staircase hovered in the corner and a broken oil lamp lay dashed on the first step. Years of dirt
and debris littered the floor, with an occasional wildflower providing a discordant note of charm and
warmth.
At the base of the staircase, the young man halted. Dared he try to climb the stairs to the main
floor above? He doubted the rotted wood would hold him, yet the desire to go higher impelled him
cautiously on. For years he had wanted to explore this shell of a house, but his mother had strictly
forbade it, reminding him that the forlorn gate to the fence that surrounded the property contained a
faded “No Trespassing” sign and warning him that it was not safe. How long the house had stood this
way, he didn’t know, for within his memory it had always been so. Today no one could stop him,
however, for only a few hours before he had bought the land on which the house stood.
Moving carefully from one step to another, testing each before putting his full weight upon it, the
young man gingerly mounted the stairs. Here and there he skipped a step that threatened to give way
beneath him. At the top, he paused to survey the charred remains that surrounded him.

He stood at the end of a long room that appeared to have once been a kitchen. Broken pottery and
twisted metal littered the floor. A warped candlestick lay on the edge of what must have been the
family table. Here and there scraps of material waved in the breeze that blew through the paneless
windows. Nearly one whole wall of the room was missing, gaping into a room beyond. Though he
wondered what that room might reveal, a step in that direction quickly changed the explorer’s mind,
for his foot went through the floor. Light streaming from the room beyond suggested that little
remained of that part of the house.
Turning to his left, the young man discovered a long hallway with an opening on either side. Here
the floor creaked beneath his step, but it did not give way. The opening to the left revealed a room
dominated by a massive stone fireplace. Parts of the chimney had tumbled onto the rusted, sooty grate,
and the filth on the hearth warned that many birds had built their nests within the chimney’s shelter.
The only furniture in the room was the crumbling remains of a small table.
The opening to the right, farther down the hall, revealed a small sitting room with the hulks of
rotting furniture leaning against two walls. Strips of blackened wallpaper hung from the ceiling, but
the walls contained no gaping holes as had the other two rooms. Backing quickly from the room when
a rat scurried across the floor through the carpet of leaves that had blown through the broken
windows, the young man turned to retreat. Suddenly a faint streak of light at the end of the hall caught
his attention.
Moving cautiously around the broken boards on the floor, the explorer moved toward the hint of
light. As he neared the blackened wall, he realized that a closed door lay at the end of the hallway.
The doorknob turned, but the rusted hinges prevented him from opening the door. Though he pushed
with all his strength, the door would not yield. Disappointed, the young man retraced his steps through
the kitchen, down the rickety stairs, and through the cluttered basement. As he started to climb into his
car, the thought came to him: That hint of light must mean an open window or a hole in the wall.
Perhaps I could see into the room from the back of the house.

After much effort, the explorer stood at the back of the house, having worked his way under the
low branches of old trees and through the overgrown bushes and waist-high weeds that hampered his
progress. A single window adorned the back wall. Although direct access to the window was denied
by high bushes, a large tree spread its limbs within inches of the cracked, but nearly whole, panes.
Inching his way up the tree and out the limb, the explorer gasped with astonishment as he peered
through the dirty glass.
This room appeared to have been largely untouched by the fire that had ravaged the rest of the
house. Candlesticks stood on the mantle over the small fireplace, the wax from the candles having run
down the stone onto the hearth below. Books lay open on the desk to the right and curtains hung at a
high window to the left. Although the walls were yellowed with age and spotted with water, they
were not black like those of the rooms he had entered. Who would have thought such a room could
exist in the otherwise ruined house?
Excitement coursed through the young man’s veins. Why, this room might reveal what the rest of
the house must have looked like before the fire. It might also provide the clues he needed to determine
who had lived here and why the house had been left to rot instead of being rebuilt. Perhaps other
treasures awaited him in the parts of the room he could not see, untapped resources that would help
him to solve the mystery that had always surrounded the house in his young mind. Wildly his
imagination soared as he looked into the unexpected chamber that lay before him.
In time the young man withdrew from his vantage point in the tree. His mind was filled with
wonder, for the room held possibilities beyond his greatest hopes. Perhaps it would afford him the
opportunity to fulfill his boyhood dream of restoring the house to its former grandeur. Already he was
busy calculating how he would force open the door at the end of the dark hallway. Then he would
know more certainly the wealth of his find.
Potential. The unexposed, untapped, hidden, dormant revelations that lay beneath the accumulated
dust and grime of many years. Potential. Strength and beauty that lay unmarred by the ravages of fire,
wind, and water. Potential. The possibilities for rebuilding after years of destruction, decay, and
neglect.
 Our lives are very much like this decaying house. The strength and beauty God gave to men and
women when He created them in His image and likeness too often are not evident in us. Our minds
are cluttered with impure thoughts and mixed motives, our bodies are weakened by the effects of bad
habits and poor decisions, and our hearts are warped by misplaced trust and the absence of love. In
many ways, we are empty people working our way through the problems and detours of life with little
hope that things will ever change. This discouragement and dissatisfaction with life is the result of
our separation from God, a separation that came when Adam and Eve sinned by choosing to put their
own thoughts and desires above God’s commandments and promises. (See Genesis 3.) Every person
shares this tendency to establish his wants and will over God’s. Therein lies the source of our
discouragement and dissatisfaction.
Our discouragement and dissatisfaction with life are the results of our separation from God.
God’s intent for men and women has not changed, nor has He taken from us the strength and beauty
He gave us at birth. These gifts are buried within us, covered over by the attitudes and assumptions
that prevent us from living the abundant life God planned for us. In effect, many have placed a “No
Trespassing” sign over their power, strength, abilities, talents, and capabilities. Because we have
obeyed that sign, many of the possibilities with which we were born still exist within us—hidden and
dormant, unused and untried.
TREASURE IN CLAY POTS
The great writer Paul refers to this hidden wealth within as “treasure in jars of clay” (2
Corinthians 4:7). The jar may not look like much, but the treasure inside it is valuable and priceless.
In other words, what people see when they look at you is not who you truly are. You can become
much more than you now are.
Who would have thought that Saul of Tarsus, a fervent Jew who vigorously opposed the followers
of Jesus, would become Paul the apostle, the greatest missionary the Church has ever known?
Certainly not the Christians he persecuted—they did not expect anything good from him (see Acts
9:20–21)—nor Saul himself. Not in his wildest imaginings would he have seen himself as a servant
of the One he despised. Yet, like the old house, Saul contained a dormant wealth that was not evident
under the outer trappings of his misguided religious fervor.
That same wealth is present in you. You are capable of more than others expect of you—even
beyond your own most extravagant dreams. Unexposed, dormant potential rests beneath the surface of
your daily existence, waiting to be discovered and released. Although access to this great treasure has
been clogged by sin, the strength and beauty of your potential can be reclaimed. The destruction,
decay, and neglect of years need not continue to hold captive the reality of who God created you to
be.
You are capable of more than others expect of you—even beyond your own most extravagant dreams.
This untold wealth within you is uniquely yours because God creates no two people for the same
purpose. Your personality, abilities, and resources are God’s gifts, bestowed on you before He gave
you the breath of life, and they contain the possibility for bringing meaning and fulfillment into your
life. They are available, however, only to those who put forth the effort to recover them and to use
them according to their God-given specifications. Learning to tap the hidden wealth of your
potential is the greatest task and the most pressing need of your life because if you do not discover
how to expose and use this treasure, you will die with it. This wealth, which is the all-surpassing
power of God within you, is never given to be buried. God wants you to release all He gave you for
the benefit of others and the blessing of your own life. Let us use the stories of the ruined house and
the life of the apostle Paul to establish some keys you can use to tap into your potential.

KEYS TO RELEASING YOUR POTENTIAL

The explorer in the story of the old house was undoubtedly excited as he backed away from his
perch outside the unexpected room at the back of the house. He had received a glimpse of the house’s
former grandeur, a prelude to understanding the original owner’s dreams and plans when he built the
house. That glimpse suggested the possibility of establishing the necessary link to the house’s past—
before fire, wind, and water had caused major destruction—that would enable him to rebuild the
house according to its original design.
Know Your Source
No one knows a product like the manufacturer. If you are going to move from who you now are to
whom God created you to be, you too must seek to understand the nature of God’s original design for
you, before sin ravaged your life. That understanding is not available to you unless you become
reconnected with God, your Creator. Apart from Him, you cannot and will not release your full
potential because He gave you this potential and He designed you to fulfill it. You must know God,
your Source, if you want to experience a satisfying, abundant life.
Saul of Tarsus met his Source on the road to Damascus when Jesus Christ spoke to him from a
bright light that left him blind. For three days he remained blind and did not eat or drink. He simply
waited before God, wondering what would happen next. Then God sent a man named Ananias to
place his hands on Saul to restore his sight and to bring the Holy Spirit into his life. Immediately,
something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes and he could see again. It was during this period that the
purpose for Paul’s life was revealed to him by his Creator/Source. After that, Saul spent several days
with the disciples in Damascus, preaching that Jesus is the Son of God and proving that Jesus is the
Messiah.
What a change! Few of us will experience a change as dramatic as that which occurred in the man
Saul who became Paul, but a change just as radical—from being self-centered to God-centered—
must occur in all who would discover and use their full potential. This is true because the foundation
key for releasing potential is always a relationship with the source or maker of a product. You
must have a life-changing encounter with the One who made you if you want to become who you were
created to be.
Like the young man who could not restore the house to its former grandeur without understanding
the builder’s original design and intent, you cannot expose the gifts, talents, and natural abilities that
God put into you if you do not become reconnected with Him. All you do and are apart from God will
always fall short of the true value and capacity of your potential. Therefore, fulfillment and value are
impossible without Him. Only by returning to your Source/ Manufacturer/ Creator can you hope to
unlock His power within you. You must know your Source to become your potential. This is the
foundation key.
Understand Your Function

The mode of operation for maximum performance of any product is determined and established by
the manufacturer/creator, and must be obeyed for maximum benefit. Thus, the second key to releasing
your potential is knowing how God created you to function and applying that knowledge to your life.
No builder can successfully restore a house unless he first knows the specifications determined by the
builder and the features provided by the original blueprints. A shower, for example, may fulfill part of
the designer’s intent for the bathroom, but it cannot match all the functions of a tub. Thus, installing a
shower in place of a tub would change not only the room’s appearance but also its ability to provide
the intended functions that were built into the original design.
Man was designed to live by faith. God’s original design for men and women calls for them to
live from the perspective of faith with eternity in their hearts. The Book of Hebrews defines faith as
“being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). This is God’s
mode of operation. He is not influenced by outward appearances; neither is His power diminished by
seemingly impossible obstacles.
God is not influenced by outward appearances; neither is His power diminished by seemingly
impossible obstacles.
The apostle Paul learned the importance of looking beyond what is immediately visible and
evident. Although he encountered many situations that seemed to stand in the way of his mission to
share the good news of Jesus with those outside the Jewish world, he persevered by focusing on His
God-given task and by relying on the Holy Spirit to guarantee the completion of God’s plans. Thus,
Paul testified, “[I] live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).
Your ability to unleash your potential is tied to your willingness to consistently live from God’s
perspective, which saw Paul the apostle in Saul the murderer. He created you to share His viewpoint.
If you allow the obstacles that clutter your path and the expectations of others to discourage you and
to send you on time and energy-consuming detours, your God-given talents and abilities will be
wasted. Learning to function by looking beyond what you now see to what is yet possible is an
important key to releasing your potential. You must resolve to live by faith.
Understand Your Purpose
To fully release your potential, you must discover your corporate and specific reason for
existence and the accompanying assignment. One of the first tasks of a builder who wants to restore
an old house is to determine the purpose for each room. Although this purpose may not be
immediately evident, the rebuilding cannot accurately and effectively duplicate the original building if
the purpose for each room is not established.
 In a similar manner, you cannot effectively release your potential if you do not discover God’s
purpose for giving you life. Your potential and your purpose are perfectly related because God never
requires you to do or be something that is not part of His purpose. Likewise, He never requires
something of you that He did not provide for when He created you. Your potential enables you to
fulfill your purpose, and your purpose reveals the potential hidden within you.
Your potential enables you to fulfill your purpose, and your purpose reveals the potential hidden
within you.
From his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus to the end of his life, the apostle Paul
knew that he had been called and saved by God for a specific purpose: “…God, who set me apart
from birth and called me by His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach
Him among the Gentiles…” (Galatians 1:15-16). Similarly, the apostle Peter discovered his purpose
when Jesus told him three times, “Take care of My sheep” (John 21:16; see also John 21:15-18). Both
remained faithful to God’s purpose, dedicating their lives to its accomplishment and conforming their
actions to its fulfillment.
You are like these apostles. You too have a purpose set forth by God and the skills, talents,
abilities, and characteristics that enable you to fulfill His plan. Your responsibility is to discover
what God designed you to do and how He planned that you would accomplish it. Until you discover
God’s blueprint, you will not have the motivation to uncover the potential that will empower you to
accomplish it, nor will you be happy and fulfilled. Discovery of purpose is discovery of potential.
Success without an understanding of purpose is meaningless. Knowing and cooperating with your
God-given purpose is the third key to releasing your potential. He alone knows why He created you
with the specific combination of personality, abilities, and dreams that make you the unique
individual you are. You share the purpose of humanity to glorify God by fulfilling your individual
purpose and by releasing the power, beauty, and possibilities hidden within you.
Success without an understanding of purpose is meaningless.

Know Your Resources

Provisions are given for the fulfillment of vision. Every builder, before he starts a project, both
estimates what materials he will need to complete the job and determines what resources are
available to him. God functions in a similar manner. As He forms and fashions each person for a
specific purpose, He also provides the necessary resources to accomplish His plans.
The apostle Paul knew that God had given him certain resources to help him fulfill his purpose
and release his potential. Varied in nature and use, these resources included his tent-making skills, his
Roman citizenship, his Jewish education and upbringing, and, most importantly, his faith in Jesus
Christ and his confidence that God, through the Spirit, had given him a message for the world. (See
Romans 15:15-19.)
Paul was careful, however, to view these resources only as tools given by God to accomplish His
plans. Therefore, he always treated his resources as being less important than the One who gave them.
His education and upbringing as a Jew, for example, had to be refined and redirected before Paul
could use, not abuse, them. Thus, he came to see the law, which had been all-important to him as a
Pharisee, as God’s gift for showing men their sin and their need of a Savior. (See Romans 3:20.)
Resources cannot and should not be substituted for the Source.
You too possess God-given resources. The proper use of these resources will release your
potential, but their misuse will destroy you. Hence, you cannot fulfill your limitless potential unless
you learn what resources you have, how God intended them to function, and why He gave them to you.
The effective use of your resources is the fourth key to releasing your potential.
Maintain the Right Environment
All potential demands conditions conducive to the maximum fulfillment of purpose. Consequently,
all life forms have ideal conditions in which they grow and flourish. The apostle Paul clearly
understood that the conditions in which we live affect the nature of our living. Light that is continually
surrounded by darkness is in danger of losing its brilliance. Righteousness that repeatedly associates
with wickedness may, in time, be tarnished. Thus, Paul writes:
“I [the Lord] will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they
will be My people. Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no
unclean thing, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to you, and you will be My sons
and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.” Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us
purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out
of reverence for God (2 Corinthians 6:16b–7:1).
Paul’s observations are as applicable today as they were when he wrote them. “For what do
righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?”
(2 Corinthians 6:14b) You cannot consistently spend time with ungodly people, or be surrounded by
unrighteous behavior, and maintain your fellowship with God. That’s serious business, since
fellowship with God and obedience to His laws and commandments are essential ingredients of
your ideal environment. Life outside that environment will destroy your potential because a wrong
environment always means death.
Life outside your ideal environment will destroy your potential because a wrong environment always
means death.
All manufacturers establish the ideal conditions required for the maximum performance of their
products. In the same manner, you were created to function under specific conditions established by
your Creator. Any violation of the Manufacturer’s specific conditions minimizes His intended effect.
The laws of God are given not to restrict us but to protect us by maintaining the ideal environment for
maximum performance. Obedience protects performance. Disobedience diminishes potential.
As fish cannot live in polluted waters and plants die in parched ground, so you cannot live in
conditions that do not acknowledge God as the central, all-important factor of daily life. Creating and
sustaining a God-centered environment is as important for your growth and satisfaction as designing
houses that fit their climates and settings is for the reputation and the success of an architect.
Maintaining your ideal environment is the fifth key to releasing your potential.
Work: The Master Key

Dreams without work accomplish nothing. The young man peering into the unexpected room could
dream forever about restoring the house, but his dream would become reality only if he channeled his
excitement and vision into drawing blueprints and doing the work of rebuilding. In a similar manner,
the apostle Paul could not have reached the non-Jewish world with the gospel of Jesus Christ if he
had only rejoiced in his new relationship with God, learned to live by faith, surveyed his resources,
and sought a healthy environment in which to live. Paul had to work to release his potential and to
achieve his purpose.
Dreams without work accomplish nothing.
The New Testament is filled with stories of Paul’s efforts to share God’s gift of salvation with
those who had not heard the gospel. (See particularly Acts 13–20.) When one door closed, he looked
for another. When his traveling companions interfered with his plans, he parted company with them
and looked for others who could share his vision. Not even riots, beatings, and imprisonments
prevented him from continually seeking ways to share the good news of Jesus. Again and again, Paul
worked hard—fighting discouragement, misunderstandings, and distrust—to fulfill his commission
from God.
You also need to work. The love of work is the secret to personal progress, productivity, and
fulfillment because work encourages the release of potential, and potential is the abundance of
talents, abilities, and capabilities given to every person. When you refuse to work, you deny
yourself the opportunity to fulfill your potential and your purpose, and you forfeit the productivity that
could have blessed yourself and others. Therefore, you steal from the world. The greatest safeguard
against this theft is both to understand the purpose and the nature of work, and to live from that
knowledge.

The Purpose of Work

Most of us are not interested in discovering what we can accomplish when we go to our jobs. We
go to work only because we want a paycheck. This view of work is contrary to God’s purpose for
giving work. He is more concerned with our use or abuse of the skills and talents He gave us than He
is with our financial wealth or poverty. He wants us to be good workers, not good job keepers. This
change in attitude requires that we begin to see work as a blessing, not a punishment.
Work as God planned it was given to man before he sinned. It is His tool to make us productive
and fruitful. Because God’s assignments and activities always involve work, He designed men and
women to share in His creativity by giving them the opportunity to work. Even as God worked
through His spoken word to make the unobservable visible, so too we must work to reveal the
invisible possibilities that exist in us. Although the conditions of work changed after sin—becoming
painful and requiring great effort—the purpose of work did not. Work is not a result of sin.
In essence, work is God’s gift to help people discover their potential. Until you start working to
discover what you yet can be, you will miss the blessings inherent in work. This is true because work
profits the worker by…

providing for physical needs,

building self-esteem,
teaching that the discovery and use of talents, skills, and abilities is far more important
than the acquisition of money,
developing an attitude that sees a challenge as a cause for rejoicing because it holds the
possibility for success,
offering the opportunity to transform dreams into reality,
multiplying resources, and,

revealing the potential that is yet to be exposed, tapped, released, and employed,
Work also blesses others as we give generously of what we have and who we are.
Work is God’s gift to help you discover your potential.
The Nature of Work
God’s work in creation was to deliver the stuff hidden inside Him. He labored to birth the world.
This concept of laboring to deliver is the central factor in God’s perception of work.
Work releases potential and empowers success. It uses innate abilities and natural talents to share
experience and proficiency. It also energizes the world’s productive ability and activates man’s
creative power. In essence, work brings forth from a man or a woman the possibilities that will die
with that individual unless they are activated, performed, produced, and fulfilled. In the absence of
work, strength and energy waste away, dreams and visions wither and die, God-given skills and
talents degenerate, and productivity wanes. In essence, laziness, which is the absence of work, aborts
potential and sacrifices possibilities.
Work releases potential and empowers success. Laziness, which is the absence of work, aborts
potential and sacrifices possibilities.
Therefore, God’s purpose for giving you work is to bless you by calling forth from you all that He
sees in you. He designed you to meet your needs and the needs of others through your ability to work.
When you see work from this perspective, and you accept your opportunities to work as the gifts of a
loving God who wants to draw from you the wealth of your hidden potential, you will find that work
becomes an anticipated pleasure to be embraced as an opportunity to find happiness and fulfillment.
Work is the master key to releasing your potential.
These six keys are essential for the release of your potential. If you disregard even one of these
principles, you will limit your potential because the violation of a law always incurs a penalty, and
history has proven that these laws are true. Commit yourself today to practicing these keys so your
potential will not die with you. God wants all He put in you for the good of the world to be released
and maximized. Only then can you truly become your potential.

God works the vision in; man works the vision out.

PRINCIPLES THAT GOVERN POTENTIAL

1. What God speaks to is the source for what He creates.
God spoke to Himself when He created you, so you came from God.
2. All things have the same components and essence as the sources from which they came.

Because you came from God, who is Spirit, you also are spirit.
3. All things must be maintained by the sources from which they came.
You must be maintained by God, your Source. Apart from Him you will die.
4. The potential of all things is related to the source from which it came.
Your potential is related to God’s potential.
5. Everything in life has the ability to fulfill its potential.
God built into you the ability to fulfill your potential.
6. Potential is determined and revealed by the demands placed on it by its creator.
God reveals what He created you to do by placing demands on you. You are capable of doing
everything God asks of you.

KEYS TO RELEASING YOUR POTENTIAL

1. You must know your source.
God is your Source.
2. You must understand how you were designed to function.
God designed you to operate by faith.
3. You must know your purpose.
God created you to express His image, to enjoy fellowship with Him, to dominate the earth, to bear
fruit, and to reproduce yourself.
 4. You must understand your resources.

God has given you resources of spirit, body, soul, time, and material things.

5. You must have the right environment.

God created you to live with Him in a relationship of fellowship and obedience that is established
and maintained by His presence, assurance, guidance, and direction.

6. You must work out your potential.

Work is God’s blessing to challenge and expose your potential.
 CHAPTER 2

The Enemies of Potential

Your ability is your responsibility.

The cyclists arose early the first day of the journey. By noon they were well on their way to
completing the first leg of their cross-continent trip. As they fell into bed that night, exhaustion and
exhilaration vied for attention. The day had given them an exciting taste of the joy that lay ahead. It
had also warned them that much hard work lay between them and their intended destination.
The next morning they awoke to blisters, sore muscles, and a spectacular sunrise. Amid groans,
teasing, and words of encouragement, they prepared to break camp and to begin riding. To their
chagrin, however, two of the ten bicycles had flat tires. Repairing the flats delayed their starting by an
hour or more so that the heat of the day was upon them when they hit the road.
That evening as they set up camp, anxiety and discouragement overshadowed the exhilaration of
the night before. First, the bikers had been soaked by a late afternoon downpour. Then, the campfire
was difficult to start because wood was scarce and what they found was wet. Finally, one cyclist
discovered that a strap on his pack was nearly worn through, and another realized that his canteen
was missing from his gear. As they huddled in their sleeping bags on the damp ground, each hoped the
next day would be better.
Dawn was just beginning to light the sky when an angry shout broke the silence. An early riser had
awakened to find the contents of his pack strewn all over the ground. Something—or someone—had
gotten into it during the night. The others quickly checked their packs, only to find that some of their
food was missing too. Although no one voiced the thought, more than one cyclist wondered if
someone was trying to stop them from finishing their journey. It was a silent, troubled group that
mounted their bikes that third morning.
Our lives are not unlike this cross-continent bicycle trip. When we come back to God and begin to
glimpse and act on His plans and purposes for our lives, we become excited and we anticipate the
joys and the surprises that lay ahead. As we meet obstacles and discover the perseverance and hard
work that will be required for us to fulfill our God-given potential, our enthusiasm often wanes and
boredom or disillusionment sets in.
Then, like the cyclists, we must simply stay with the journey in spite of the hardships and the
discouraging situations and events that plague us. Even as a pregnancy is no guarantee of the birth of a
healthy child, so beginning a journey does not ensure that it will be finished. Vision can be aborted.
 The world is proficient at aborting potential. Not only will it do nothing to help you reveal and
use the hidden you, it most likely will discourage you by measuring your efforts against its
standards for success—standards it made because the world doesn’t know what true success is.
Beware of these standards and the disparaging words of those who live by them because, if you let
them, they will undermine your journey. Then tragedy strikes as success dies in failure, hope dies in
despair, and visions die in the absence of confidence. This abortion of potential breaks the heart of
God.

Tragedy strikes when success dies in failure, hope dies in despair, and visions die in the absence of
confidence.
You are responsible to release your potential. No one else can or will do it for you. Releasing
some potential, however, does not mean that you will release all your potential. Redeeming all your
potential requires that you protect your potential, cultivate your potential, share your potential, and
discover and obey the laws of limitation regarding your potential. These are the keys to maximizing
potential.
You can work hard to achieve a dream, but if you do not protect it, cultivate it, share it, and act
within God’s standards and directives, you will lose it. This loss occurs because knowing God’s
requirements and fulfilling them are two very different experiences. One is information, the other
action. Many times what should have been doesn’t happen because somewhere between the dream
and its completion our great aspirations are trampled and destroyed. This is the work of the destroyer.
THE ENEMY OF YOUR POTENTIAL
When God placed man in the garden, He commanded him to work the garden and take care of it.
The King James Version of the Bible says that man was to till and keep the garden, while Today’s
English Version assigns to man the responsibility to cultivate and guard the garden. This requirement
of God is given to man before he breaks fellowship with God through disobedience. Man is in his
ideal environment, being filled with God’s power and anointing, living in perfect holiness and purity,
and enjoying God’s fellowship and presence. Thus, this commandment implies that something or
someone was waiting to take or attack what man had been given to keep. The Scriptures warn us of
this thief.
I [Jesus] am the gate; whoever enters through Me will be saved. He will come in and go
out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that
they may have life, and have it to the full (John 10:9-10).
Satan is our enemy. He wants to destroy the power of God within us so that God’s glory is not
revealed in us. He who was thrown out of Heaven to the earth, where he “leads the whole world
astray” (Revelation 12:9), is out to remove us from the One who is our life and our salvation. He’s
out to destroy all we could be because he knows that those who become rerooted in God have the
ability to act like God, showing His nature and likeness. Consequently, satan comes as a thief to steal
our potential because he cannot boldly challenge God’s power within us. Our outward container,
which is our body, reveals nothing of the treasure inside us. This all-surpassing treasure is God’s
power and wisdom.
The Lord is exalted, for He dwells on high; He will fill Zion with justice and righteousness.
He will be the sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and
knowledge; the fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure (Isaiah 33:5-6).
In other words, the key to releasing God’s power within you is reverencing Him, which is living
with Him in a relationship of obedience and submission. You are filled with heavenly wisdom, but
you have to follow God’s program to benefit from it.
Jesus spoke of this need to live in relationship with God when He said:
Remain in Me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain
in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me. I am the vine; you are the
branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you
can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in Me, he is like a branch that is thrown away
and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in
Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you (John
15:4-7).
No wonder satan tries to steal our potential. He fears God’s power within us because it is greater
than he is. Therefore, our dreams, plans, and ideas are targets of his evil forces. The minute we have
a good idea, the deceiver will send someone to criticize our dream because he cannot permit us to
accomplish our vision. As long as we are only dreaming, he is safe and he’ll let us alone. When we
begin to act on our dream, he’ll hit us full force.
Our dreams, plans, and ideas are targets of satan’s evil forces.
You are responsible to guard your dream and bring it to reality by safeguarding and protecting it
from injury and loss. To do so you must understand how satan seeks to rob you of your destiny.

ENEMIES OF POTENTIAL
Satan’s methods for stealing dreams are many and varied, according to the vision and the
personality of the dreamer. Let us identify some of these enemies of potential so you will recognize
them for what they are, the deceiver’s activity in your life.
1. Disobedience
The Bible repeatedly states that disobedience withholds God’s blessings and rains His curses
upon us. This is true because disobedience brings into our lives the natural (God-ordained)
consequences of our actions. Teenagers who experiment with sex destroy the beauty of the first
intimacy that is to be enjoyed between a husband and a wife, open themselves to AIDS and other
diseases, and risk losing the joys of youth due to the birth of a child. They also forfeit their dreams to
problems in marriage in later years, to serious illnesses and possible death, and to the
responsibilities of raising a child before they have matured into the task.
 Jonah learned the consequences of disobedience when he boarded a ship going in the opposite
direction from the city to which God was sending him. He nearly lost his life by drowning. In a
similar situation, Lot’s wife, in spite of God’s commandment not to look back, sacrificed her life for
one last look at the city she was fleeing from. Disobedience always wastes potential and retards the
attainment of goals. You cannot persist in disobedience and maximize your potential. To maximize
your life you must submit to God’s will in everything.

2. Sin
Although the effects of disobedience and sin are similar, sin is a more basic ill because it is total
rebellion against the known will of God—or to say it another way, a declaration of independence
from your Source. The resulting alienation from God destroys potential because we cannot know God
if we do not have His Spirit, and His Spirit is the password to unlocking our potential. Sin, in
essence, says, “I know better than you do, God, how to run my life.”

King David experienced the desolation and death that result from a rebellious spirit when he
violated another man’s wife and tried to cover up his action by having the woman’s husband killed in
battle and taking her for his wife. The son born to David from this affair died, and David endured the
agony of separation from the God he loved. What the child could have done in his lifetime was
sacrificed, as were David’s energy and vitality during the months before he confessed his sin. It is no
wonder David prayed:
Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from Your presence or take Your
Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and grant me a willing spirit,
to sustain me (Psalm 51:9-12).
Destroying your relationship with God through sin is always suicide. You cannot become who
God created you to be if you persist in rebelling against Him. Without God’s Spirit living and
working in you, you will die with your potential. Sin caps the well of your potential. To maximize
your life you must avoid compromise with ungodliness.
3. Fear
Fear is having faith in the impossible. It’s dwelling on all that could go wrong instead of what
will go right. Although, for example, accidents do happen and cars must be carefully maintained and
driven, fear that prevents us from driving or riding in a car immobilizes our potential because it
severely limits where we can go.
Fear is dwelling on all that could go wrong instead of what will go right.
When as a lad, David met the giant Goliath with a slingshot and three stones, he most likely was
afraid. Yet because he mastered his fear by trusting in God instead of thinking about all that could go
wrong, he freed the Israelites from the oppression of their enemies and honored the name of God.
(See First Samuel chapter 17.) His faith in God moved him beyond timidity to power. Fear is seeing
Goliath too big to hit. Faith is seeing Goliath too big to miss. Paul wrote to Timothy about this ability
to move beyond fear:
…fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For
God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline
(2 Timothy 1:6-7).
A spirit of self-discipline submits the information we receive through our bodies and our minds to
the knowledge we receive from God’s Spirit. It refuses to allow our minds to run wild imagining
everything that could happen and chooses instead to apply God’s promises to the situation and to
depend on God’s love and power for the outcome. Faith, our God-given mode of operation, combats
fear and encourages the maximizing of potential. He who fears to try will never know what he could
have done. He who fears God has nothing else to fear. To maximize your life you must neutralize fear
with faith.
He who fears to try will never know what he could have done.

4. Discouragement
Most things worth having require patience and perseverance. No pianist plays perfectly the first
time she touches the keys, nor does an athlete win a race the first time he runs. Many discouraging
moments exist between an initial experience and the perfecting of a skill.
Unfortunately, much potential is sacrificed on the altar of discouragement. Perhaps you’ve
experienced this enemy as too many sour notes hindered your ambition to practice or the failure to
win a prize took you from the race. Replaying the music until it’s right and running every day are the
only ways to fulfill your potential. Concert pianists and Olympic athletes aren’t born. They move
beyond their discouraging moments to perfect their innate skills.
The same attitude is required of you to maximize your potential. God will not give you a dream
unless He knows you have the talents, abilities, and personality to complete it. His commands
reveal the potential He gave you before you were born.
God commanded Joshua to be courageous (see Deuteronomy 31:7; Joshua 1:7-8). Even though
Joshua didn’t feel courageous, God knew courage was in him and commanded him to show what was
there.
Those who are under command—military command, for example—just do what they are told. No
matter how they feel about the command, they just obey it.
You must respond the same way to God’s commands. Even if you are feeling discouraged about
completing the task, you must start it. Do what needs to be done no matter how difficult or impossible
God’s commands feel. Then discouragement will have no opportunity to destroy your potential. To
maximize your life you must neutralize discouragement with hope.
5. Procrastination
How many times have you delayed so long in making a decision that it was made for you, or in
completing a project that it was too late for your intended purpose? Most of us do this more often than
we’d like to admit.

Procrastination, the delaying of action until a later time, kills potential. The Israelites
discovered this when they found many reasons why they couldn’t obey God and enter the land He was
giving them. When they saw that the land was good, with an abundance of food, and finally decided to
take the land as God had commanded them, they discovered that the opportunity to obey God was
past. Disregarding God’s warning that He would not go with them, they marched into battle and were
soundly defeated. God left them alone to fight for themselves.
If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done (Ecclesiastes 11:4 LB).
Procrastination often grows out of discouragement. When we become discouraged, we stop
finding reasons for doing what we know we can do. Then God allows us to go our own way and
suffer the consequences. Sooner or later, we will discover that we’ve lost much because we refused
to act when God required it. Very often He will find someone else to do the job. Procrastination is a
serious enemy of potential. It eats away at the very core of our time and motivation. To maximize your
life you must destroy procrastination by eliminating all excuses and reasons for not taking action. Just
do it!
Procrastination eats away at the very core of our time and motivation.
6. Past Failures
Too often we are unwilling to take risks in the present because we have failed in the past. Perhaps
the first story you sent to a magazine wasn’t published, so you never wrote another story. Perhaps
your first garden didn’t produce many vegetables, so you never planted another garden. Perhaps your
first business proposal didn’t win the bank’s approval, so you never started your own business, and
you’re still working for someone else.

Failure is never a reason to stop trying. Indeed, failure provides another opportunity to enjoy
success. The apostle Paul discovered the truth of this when he met Jesus and turned from persecuting
Christ to preaching the good news of God’s salvation in Him.
…I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not
consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind
and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which
God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a
view of things…. Only let us live up to what we have already attained (Philippians 3:12-
16).
Paul was not unaware of his failures, but he refused to allow them to keep him from doing what he
knew he could do. He believed that the God who had called him to serve Him would accomplish
within and through him all that He had purposed. He trusted in a power higher than himself.
…I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ
 Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may
gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the
law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and
is by faith (Philippians 3:8-9).
Paul had messed up, but in Christ he found the reason and the strength to pick himself up and move
on. You must do the same or you will never see your full potential. Refuse to be a loser no matter how
many times you lose. It is better to try and fail than never to try at all. Remember, you cannot make
progress by looking in the rearview mirror. To maximize your life you must let the past be past and
leave it there.
7. The Opinions of Others
Most of us have had the experience of sharing a great idea with friends only to have them tell us
50 reasons why it won’t work. Too often such criticism prompts us to abandon our ideas because we
wanted those with whom we shared our dreams to approve of our plans.
Forsaking dreams because others belittle them or say we are crazy for trying them wastes
potential. So does changing our plans to suit the ideas and expectations of our family, friends, and
business associates. Satan uses those closest to us, whose opinions we value, to get to our potential.
He kills our vision by shaking our faith in God and our confidence in ourselves.
Satan uses those closest to us, whose opinions we value, to get to our potential.
Because the destroyer uses those you trust most to keep you from translating your vision into
reality, you must accept that no one is for you except God. No human being can be trusted to defend
your potential. You alone are responsible. By refusing to allow the disparaging comments of others to
discourage you, by removing yourself from their influence when your vision becomes threatened, and
by clinging to God’s commandments and directions, you can unleash the totality of God’s power
within you.

Jesus demonstrated the importance of disregarding the opinions of others when He went to
Jerusalem one Passover and the crowds believed in Him because of the miracles He performed.
But Jesus would not entrust Himself to them, for He knew all men. He did not need man’s
testimony about man, for He knew what was in a man (John 2:24-25).
He had a good reason to be cautious about accepting the affirmation of the crowd: He knew the
fickle nature of people. He didn’t trust their cheers and their pats on the back. Accolades should be
appreciated but never required.
The events of the week preceding His death confirm the wisdom of His decision. One day the
people in Jerusalem received Him with great joy and hailed Him as the Messiah. Several days later
they clamored for His death. Had He relied on their praise and good will, He very well may have lost
the opportunity to fulfill His God-given purpose to be the Savior of the world.
You too must beware of allowing the opinions of others to influence your decisions. Do not trust
others to work for your good. Too often folks you thought were for you will turn against you and
destroy what you have been working to accomplish. Remember, you are required to perform for an
audience of one, the Lord Jesus Christ. When He applauds, then you are successful.

Get your encouragement and promotion from God. Tap into the heavenly realm and receive the
confirmation of your plans from Him because His opinion is the only one that counts. The opinions of
others can destroy your potential if you permit them to touch your dreams and visions. To maximize
your life you must declare independence from the opinions of others.
8. Distractions
This is one of the principal enemies of maximizing potential. All of us have had the experience of
walking into another room and saying, “Now, why did I come here?” We had a purpose when we
decided to go into the other room, but something between our decision to go and the moment we
arrived sidetracked us from our original intention. Or we may allow side interests to distract us from
our main goal.
Say, for example, that you set the goal of walking three miles every day to improve your health.
The first day you walk three miles in a little over an hour. The second day your walk takes an hour,
but you walk only half a mile because you keep stopping to pick wildflowers. Picking flowers isn’t
bad. It’s the result of picking flowers—the distraction from your goal—that is bad.
Satan uses distractions to stop our progress toward a goal, or at least to change the speed of that
progress. If he cannot convince us that our dream is wrong, he’ll throw other things into our path to
slow the development of our vision or he’ll push us and induce us to move ahead of God’s timetable.
One of satan’s most successful devices is to preoccupy us with “good” things to distract us from the
“right” things.
Perhaps God has planted the seed of a dream that He wants you to accomplish 20 years from now.
Between then and now He has many other plans for your life. Let that seed incubate, and proceed
cautiously. As you stay open to God’s leading in that area, He will reveal when the timing is right.
Never sacrifice the right thing for a good thing.
Likewise, if God says, “Now is the time,” be careful to examine your thoughts and actions closely
to see if they help or hinder the completion of your goal. If a plan or activity distracts you from
accomplishing your vision according to God’s schedule, it is bad for you at that moment. The apostle
Paul understood this truth.
“Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is
permissible for me”—but I will not be mastered by anything (1 Corinthians 6:12).
Everything that doesn’t help our progress hinders it. This is true because obeying God too soon or
too late is disobedience. Therefore, we must be careful not to get drawn into good activities that
distract us from our overall purpose. God requires our prompt response to Him throughout the
journey. Obedience part of the way is really disobedience. We must be true, then, to our whole vision
over the long haul because true obedience to God is doing what He says, when He says, the way He
says, as long as He says, until He says “stop.”
Because distractions take us off course, we cannot maximize our potential if we allow ourselves
to be distracted from faithfully obeying Him every step of the way. Even if God, in His love and
mercy, permits us to get back on course, we cannot recover the time and effort we wasted being
distracted.

God is the only One who knows where you are going and what is the best way to get there. He
will not send you by roundabout routes with many delays; neither will He lure you into detours and
dead ends. The fulfillment of your potential is His hope and joy. To maximize your life you must stay
focused on your purpose and avoid distractions through discipline.
9. Success
Success is another enemy of potential. When we complete a task and quit because we think we’ve
arrived, we never become all we are. If, for example, you graduate from college and teach first grade
for the rest of your life when God wanted you to be a high school principal, you forfeit much of your
potential because you stopped at a preliminary success. Leave your success and go create another.
That’s the only way you will release all your potential.
Leave your success and go create another.
Remember, satan is afraid of our potential. He knows that God created us to do something great.
Therefore, he will allow us a small success and try to convince us that we have arrived. Then, we
will not want to move on to greater successes. We must beware that a small success does not keep us
from accomplishing our larger goal or purpose.
In a similar manner, we must be careful to judge our successes by God’s standards, not the
world’s. Success in the world’s eyes is not really success because the world does not know what true
success is. True success is being right with God and completing His assignment and purpose for our
lives. It’s knowing God and obeying Him. Thus, we cannot succeed without discovering and doing
what God asks of us. Without God, everything we do is nothing.
Therefore, do not be intimidated by your lack of achievement in the world’s eyes. The power of
God within you is greater than any other power. When you’re hooked up to God and you’re obeying
His directives, you will achieve success by His standards. Refuse to allow the world’s measurements
of success to encourage or discourage you because God’s standards are the only criteria that matter.
Follow Him as He leads you from success to success. To maximize your life you must never allow
temporary achievement to cancel eternal fulfillment.
10. Tradition
Traditions are powerful enemies of potential because they are full of security. We don’t have to
think when we do something the way we’ve always done it. Neither do we receive the incentive to
grow and be creative because our new ideas may interfere with the conventional way of doing things.
Say, for example, that you are hired to be a receptionist in a manufacturing company. Invoices,
orders, replacement parts, personal mail, trade journals—everything comes through your desk before
being distributed. Because the company is a large one, you spend much of your day sending out mail
or deciding who should receive incoming mail. This prevents you from presenting the company to the
public as effectively as you would like and often delays the routing of important contracts and
specifications.
Thus, you propose that all outside vendors and salesmen should be notified that their business
will receive prompter attention if it is addressed directly to the department to which it pertains.
Invoices should be sent to accounts payable, payments to accounts receivable, shipping instructions to
the expediting office, parts to the supply room, etc. Your proposal is not implemented, however,
because the receptionist has always opened all the mail. Indeed, you are criticized for being lazy and
inefficient because you cannot handle both the mail and your other duties as the company’s
gatekeeper. Most likely, it will be a long time before you make another suggestion to improve this
company.

The tragedy is that the tradition, which probably served its purpose well when it was started,
prevents the accomplishment of the purpose for which it was established. When the manufacturing
company was small, it made sense to have the receptionist open all the mail and stamp it received
because she also served as the secretary for the various departments. Now that the company has
grown and each department has secretaries and clerks within it, the continuation of that tradition is
self-defeating. Disorganization, rather than efficiency, is the result.
Remember, no matter how good the present system is, there’s always a better way. Don’t be
imprisoned by the comfort of the known. Be an explorer, not just a passenger. Don’t allow yourself to
become trapped by tradition or you will do and become nothing. Your present level of success will
be your highest level of success, and God, who is not trapped within tradition, will find someone else
to do what you could have done. Use your imagination. Dream big and find new ways to respond to
present situations and responsibilities. Then you will uncover never-ending possibilities that inspire
you to reach for continually higher achievements. We are sons of the “Creator,” who created us to be
creative. Nowhere in Scripture did God repeat an identical act.
Refrain from accepting or believing, “We’ve never done it that way before.” Now is the time to
try something different. The release of your full potential demands that you move beyond the present
traditions of your home, family, job, and church—in essence, throughout your life. To maximize your
life you must be willing to release ineffective traditions for new methods.
11. A Wrong Environment
Nutritious vegetables cannot grow in poor soil and healthy fish cannot thrive in polluted waters.
Neither can we maximize our potential in a wrong environment. The apostle Paul speaks to this
principle when he says, “Bad company corrupts good character” (1 Corinthians 15:33b). That means,
no matter how good our intentions may be, if we get in with bad company, we will eventually think
and act as they do. We will not change them, they will change us.
Many dreams die because they are shared with the wrong people. Joseph learned that lesson the
hard way. Indeed, he landed in a pit and was sold into slavery because his brothers were jealous of
their father’s favoritism toward him and they were offended by his dreams that placed him in
authority over them. This is really not so surprising because older brothers rarely enjoy being
dominated by younger ones. Had Joseph kept his dreams to himself, his brothers’ resentment may not
have developed into a plan to murder him.
Many dreams die because they are shared with the wrong people.

Remember, others do not see what you see. They cannot completely understand the vision God has
given you. Protect your potential by choosing carefully those with whom you share your dreams and
aspirations, and by maintaining an environment in which your potential can be fulfilled. To maximize
your life you must manage your environment and the quality of the people and resources that influence
you. Your greatest responsibility is to yourself, not others.
12. Comparison

Many parents struggle with the temptation to compare their children’s strengths and weaknesses
with the skills and temperaments of other children. This tendency to compare can be lethal to
potential because it may produce either discouragement or false pride. Both prevent us from
becoming all we can be. Discouragement keeps us from trying new things because we lack the
confidence that we can succeed. False pride short-circuits our potential by giving us the illusion that
we have arrived.
If, for example, you compare yourself to an artist who paints beautiful landscapes and bemoan
your lack of artistic ability, you may never discover that you have a knack for arranging flowers into
pleasing bouquets. The fact that you cannot draw a flower need not prevent you from making
attractive flower arrangements. Likewise, you may sacrifice an Olympic record because you are
satisfied to run the 100-yard dash faster than your brother.
Whenever you compare your skills and abilities with others—either favorably or unfavorably—
you forfeit the opportunity to become your potential because you try to make equal but different
people the same. God created you with your specific blend of personality, skills, and abilities to
fulfill your purpose. To maximize your life you must understand that you are unique, original, and
irreplaceable. There is no comparison.
13. Opposition
Satan has a way of snuffing out our great dreams by causing us to compromise. Most often this
occurs because we give in to opposition. If he can’t stop us, he’ll push us to make a deal that is not
God’s deal. Then we have no hope of attaining our goal because we are trying to accomplish our
God-given vision with human values and specifications. Opposition is natural to life and necessary
for flight. If everyone agrees with your dream, it’s probably a nightmare.
Let’s say God gives you a vision to establish an adoption agency to place orphans of war.
Because you don’t raise the funding as quickly as you had hoped, you become impatient and look for
additional sources of revenue. When a local businessman offers his support, you eagerly accept his
gifts.
At first this arrangement works very well, but when the businessman demands a position on the
agency’s board and begins to dictate who can be sponsored for adoption and who can be adoptive
parents, you begin to wonder if your decision to accept large sums of money from him was a wise
one. Yet, to safeguard the financial support you receive from him, you agree to his conditions. In so
doing, you compromise your vision. To fulfill your vision in life you will usually have to swim
upstream against the tide of popular opinion. Opposition is proof that you’re swimming, not floating.
Compromised vision always kills potential because a vision that is attempted outside God’s
guidelines cannot reveal His power. Take your dream and be willing to die for it. This is a
requirement for maximizing potential. To maximize your life you must accept and understand the
nature and value of opposition.
14. Society’s Pressure

Finally, pressure from society’s standards and expectations is a threat to potential. The word
society comes from the same Latin root as the word social, meaning “a companion,” and ends with
the suffixity, which means “the state or condition of something.” Thus, society means “the condition
of being companions” and refers to the people we frequently associate with.
The people we associate with, if they make judgments based on age, race, financial status,
ancestry, and education, may pressure us to relinquish a dream because they do not believe we can
accomplish it: “Your daddy was nothing, so I don’t expect that you’ll amount to anything either.”
“You’re going to start a business at your age? That’s for young people to do.” “Only white folks live
in fancy houses.” “They don’t let Germans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Italians, Puerto Ricans… live in
that neighborhood!” “You can’t manage a restaurant. You never finished high school!” “No woman’s
ever going to be the president of your country!”
God doesn’t think that way. He walked up to Sarah when she was almost 100 years old and told
her that she would have a son. Imagine telling your neighbors that you’re going to have your first baby
at that age. They’d laugh at you and ridicule your dream of being a mother.
Many dreams are killed by laughter and ridicule, but your dream doesn’t have to die. Dare to
be different. Accomplish something. Trust God’s word rather than society’s expectations. Never is as
old as the first time it changes. It only lasts as long as the person who refuses to allow society’s
dictates to squash his or her dream.
Those who say “I can” no matter how many people say “you can’t” transform dreams into
realities. They have learned the priority of remaining true to their vision and they have developed the
inner strength to trust God when society pushes them to abandon their goal. They are those who
maximize their potential.

A TREASURE WORTH MAXIMIZING

 When the apostle Paul described our potential as treasure in clay pots (see 2 Corinthians 4:7), he
recognized that discovering and exposing that treasure is not always an easy task.

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;
persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).
He faced the discouragement, failure, opposition, negative opinions, and age-old traditions that
could have enticed him to forfeit his potential and forsake God’s purpose for his life.
Yet, because he affirmed that this treasure is the “all-surpassing power…from God and not from
us” (2 Corinthians 4:7), Paul persevered to the end. He relied on God’s power in his life to achieve
what God had purposed. Like John, he stood firm in his faith that “the one who is in [me] is greater
than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4b) and his conviction that his Shepherd would take care
of him:

My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and
they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given
them to Me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand (John
10:27-29).
You too must trust God and cooperate with Him to fulfill all the dreams He gives you and to reach
all the goals He sets before you. Yes, satan will use the enemies of your potential to destroy God’s
power within you, but you are not captive to his ways. You can choose to protect yourself from his
attack; to cultivate the possibilities you yet can accomplish; to use your talents, skills, and abilities
for the good of others; and to live within the laws of limitation that govern who you can become.
These keys to maximizing potential, together with the keys to releasing potential, acknowledge both
your dependence on God and your responsibility to trust Him and cooperate with Him as He works in
and through you.
As we expect a plant or tree to grow from a seed because we know it exists in it, so God calls
forth from us the wealth of our potential. He wills that we should bear fruit that shows His potency.
Practicing the keys that maximize potential and recognizing the enemies of potential are essential
steps in our journey of becoming who we are.
KEYS TO MAXIMIZING YOUR POTENTIAL
1. You must guard and protect your potential.
2. You must cultivate and feed your potential.
3. You must understand and obey the laws of limitation that govern your potential.
4. You must share your potential.
PRINCIPLES
1. Vision can be aborted.
2. Satan is your enemy. Your dreams, plans, and ideas are targets of his evil forces.

3. Beware of the enemies of your potential:

• Disobedience
• Sin

• Fear
• Discouragement
• Procrastination
• Past Failures

• The Opinions of Others

• Distractions
• Success
• Tradition
• A Wrong Environment
• Comparison
• Opposition
• Society’s Pressure
4. God’s power is stronger than all the enemies of your potential.
 CHAPTER 3

Guard and Protect Your Potential

You were created to perform for an audience of one, the Lord Jesus Christ!

The boy sighed with satisfaction as the last of the four towers stood firm and tall. Now all he had
to do to finish the sand castle was to draw the design on the top of the walls. As he worked, he
watched the approaching waves. Before long they would be up to the castle. The surf had been far
down on the sand when he started building four hours before, but he had known that the time would
come when the waves would approach where he worked. Hence, he had built a large moat with an
opening toward the sea to help the water stay in the moat instead of coming up over the entire castle.
He hoped the moat would protect his castle for a few minutes before the waves completely destroyed
it.
As he finished the last of the walls, the boy also kept an eye on his younger sister. Twice she had
come to “help him.” The first time she had smashed an entire section of the wall with her shovel
before he could stop her. The last time he had been on guard and had seen her coming. Thus, he had
protected the castle from major destruction by catching her hand. Now he was especially guarding
against her attack because he knew that the time he had been looking forward to the whole time he had
built the castle would soon be here. Water would soon fill the moat. Because he planned to play with
his boats in the moat of the castle, the boy hoped the moat was wide and deep enough to prevent the
first waves from destroying his morning’s work.

THE TWO STAGES OF DEFENSE

The boy building the sand castle was wise. He recognized the approaching waves and the
misguided help of his sister as enemies of his goal to build a castle and to play with his boats in its
moat, and he defended against them.
The defense of something occurs in two stages. The boy’s first step was to guard his castle by
building a wide, deep moat that would keep the first waves from sweeping over it and by keeping a
watchful eye on both the waves and his sister so he would see them coming and, thus, have the
opportunity to defend against their attack.
Guarding is preventive in nature. It occurs while the possibility of an attack is present but before
the threat is active and near. Recognizing the existence of an enemy who wants to steal or destroy the
treasure, the one who guards watches over the treasure to safeguard it from injury or loss. He does so
by taking precautions against an attack and by keeping watch so the enemy cannot slip up on him and
catch him unaware. Guarding leads into the second step of defense, which is the action necessary
when an enemy steps over the established boundary and threatens the treasure.
Guarding occurs while the possibility of an attack is present but before the threat is active and near.

This second step of defense is protecting. Protection is active defense in the midst of an assault.
It implements the pre-established plan to preserve the treasure from danger or harm. The boy
protected his castle when he caught his sister’s hand to keep her from ruining it.

Protecting is active defense in the midst of an assault.

WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR DEFENDING OUR TREASURE
Protecting and guarding work together. One without the other presents a weakened resistance to
the thief who is trying to steal the treasure. The responsibility for this resistance lies with the
recipient of the treasure. God didn’t tell Heaven or the angels to protect the garden. He told Adam to
protect it. In a similar manner, the apostle Paul admonished Timothy, not his mother or his
grandmother, to defend the treasure he had received:
Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about
you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, holding on to faith and a good
conscience. Some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith (1 Timothy 1:18-
19).
This defense begins with an understanding of the treasure we have received from God and is
worked out in our fight to keep what we have received. This treasure is both God’s wisdom and
power within us (our potential) and the gift of His Spirit.
WHAT ARE WE TO DEFEND?
As we have seen, God deposits a treasure in each person He creates. This treasure is a) God’s
wisdom and knowledge concerning who He is, who we are, and how we are to live in relationship
with Him; b) God’s power that worked in creation through the spoken word and even today brings
forth beauty from chaos; and c) God’s Spirit who lives within our hearts. Thus, God reveals Himself
to us and crowns us with His potency—His power, authority, and strength to effectively accomplish
what He wills.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God
and not from us (2 Corinthians 4:7).
This potency of God within us—our potential—is the treasure we must defend. The treasure is the
God-invested vision and purpose for our lives, designed both to show His glory and to bring Him
glory.
The Treasure of God’s Wisdom and Knowledge
The prophet Isaiah recognized God’s wisdom as a treasure, as did the psalmists and King
Solomon. They also agreed that the fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure:
 He will be the sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and
knowledge; the fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure (Isaiah 33:6).

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow His precepts have good
understanding… (Psalm 111:10; see also Proverbs 1:7).
My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to
wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry
aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden
treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For
the Lord gives wisdom, and from His mouth come knowledge and understanding (Proverbs
2:1-6).
What does it mean to fear God? The psalmists liken those who fear God with those who “hope…
in His unfailing love” (Psalm 33:18), who “understand [His] statutes” (Psalm 119:79), and who
“walk in His ways” (Psalm 128:1). They also compare fearing God with trusting Him (see Psalm
40:3; 115:11) and advise those who would learn what it means to fear the Lord to “turn from evil and
do good; seek peace and pursue it” (see Psalm 34:11,14). Solomon equates fearing the Lord with
shunning evil (see Proverbs 3:7; 8:13) and hating knowledge with failing to fear the Lord (see
Proverbs 1:29). Thus, to fear the Lord is to trust and obey Him. In so doing we defend the deposit
of His wisdom and knowledge within us.
The apostle Paul speaks of God’s wisdom within us as a “secret wisdom” (1 Corinthians 2:7)
because sinful man can neither know nor understand the thoughts and the heart of God toward His
children. Only as we come to God through faith in Jesus Christ, “and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians
2:2), and through the presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts (see 1 Corinthians 2:9-16) are we
privileged to understand God’s thoughts toward us.
Isaiah acknowledged this difference between God’s thoughts and ours:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the
Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and
My thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do
not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields
seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is My word that goes out from My mouth: It
will not return to Me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for
which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:8-11).
This wisdom of God is a treasure to be cherished and defended. His thoughts toward us are good
and His knowledge of us is perfect. He sees beyond our vessels of clay to His wisdom within us and
calls forth from us what He sees. As we learn to see as God sees and to live from His perspective,
we begin to understand this treasure of His wisdom and the importance of safeguarding it from the
snares of the evil one. Paul wrote of this to Timothy:
Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and
the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in
 so doing have wandered from the faith… (1 Timothy 6:20-21).
God sees beyond our vessels of clay to His wisdom within us and calls forth what He sees.

God’s wisdom will never match the ways of the world:

For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the
intelligent I will frustrate.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the
philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? (1 Corinthians
1:19-20)
We must be careful to safeguard His knowledge within us so we can see the perfection and beauty
of His plans and purposes for our lives.
Sadly, satan influences many people to close their eyes and walk away from their visions
because they don’t believe what they see. He knows the potential they contain—what they
can become, the many goals they can meet, and the ideas they can accomplish—but they
don’t. This is why the apostle Paul instructs us to “take captive every thought to make it
obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
When we bring our thoughts to Jesus and make them subject to Him, we combat satan’s
strategy and unmask his deception. Jesus, who knows both satan’s works and the potential God
builds into every human being, cleanses our sight and enables us to see rightly through the eyes of
faith and hope. This is the beginning of wisdom.
The Treasure of God’s Power
God has also deposited His power within us. The apostle Paul spoke of this power as the means
by which God works salvation in us—“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of
God for the salvation of everyone who believes…” (Romans 1:16)—and he carefully portrayed this
salvation as “a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that [our] faith might not rest on men’s
wisdom, but on God’s power” (1 Corinthians 2:4-5).
In a similar manner, Peter and John understood God’s power to be the secret behind their power:
…“Men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own
power or godliness we had made this man walk? … By faith in the name of Jesus, this man
whom you see and know was made strong” (Acts 3:12,16a).
God doesn’t want us just to know who we are in Him; He wants us to become it. This occurs as
we take hold of His power and make it our own. We must always be careful “…to show that this all-
surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7). Even when we do not understand
how God is working in our lives or what He is trying to accomplish, we can do great things when we
cooperate with His power. This is true because potential is vision in a dormant state that can be
activated by our faith in God’s power. If we are children of God, our greatest goal in life should be to
resemble our Father.
 God doesn’t want us just to know who we are in Him; He wants us to become it.

Whenever we see ourselves being something, doing something, or going somewhere, and we
believe that God’s power in us will bring this glimpse of our potential to pass, we tap into God’s
power to accomplish His will. This power of God is at work in us to save us and to call us to a holy
life in Christ Jesus (see 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 and 2 Timothy 1:8-10).

Satan knows that God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to
His power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20) and he is threatened by potential that is
transformed by this power. Therefore, we must diligently defend God’s power within us so that our
vision can be changed into mission and God’s potency may be revealed in us. God’s power in us is a
second treasure to be defended from the schemes of the evil one.
The Treasure of the Holy Spirit

Paul also identifies the Holy Spirit Himself as the deposit or treasure within us that we must
guard.
Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set His seal
of ownership on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to
come… (2 Corinthians 1:21-22).
Now it is God who has made us…and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing
what is to come (2 Corinthians 5:5).
The Holy Spirit both reveals God’s wisdom and power in us and guarantees that we will receive
all God has planned for those who seek His wisdom and live by His power. His presence in our lives
is an important deposit because He is the key to tapping into God’s storehouse of wisdom and power.
We cannot understand and apply God’s wisdom without the Holy Spirit; neither can we live by His
power. He is the Counselor to teach us all things (see John 14:26), the Searcher of our hearts to
reveal to us the deep things of God (see 1 Corinthians 2:9-11), and the One who testifies that we are
God’s children (see Romans 8:16). Through Him we know God’s thoughts and understand what God
has given to us:
We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may
understand what God has freely given us. … The man without the Spirit does not accept the
things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot
understand them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:12,14).
THE TREASURE OF POTENTIAL
In essence, God’s wisdom, power, and Spirit are the treasure we must safeguard. They are a
deposit of Himself in us so that we can act and function like Him, sharing in His work. Together they
are our potential, the source of our dreams and visions. We must remember, however, that having this
deposit of God does not mean that we will keep it.
All the great things God has put inside us—our visions, dreams, plans, and talents—are satan’s
targets. He is afraid of men and women who have faith in God’s wisdom and power, because they
take their visions and translate them into action. They not only set goals, they make them happen.

All the great things God has put inside us—our visions, dreams, plans and talents—are satan’s
targets.
The deceiver fears the treasure we possess. His destructive tactics and deceptive influences come
into our lives to nullify and entrap all God has given to us. He isn’t going to let us fulfill our potential
without encountering resistance from him. Indeed, his attack is so severe that Paul advised Timothy to
seek the help of the Holy Spirit to meet and overcome it:
Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit
who lives in us (2 Timothy 1:14).
Have no fear! God has given us everything we need to safeguard our hidden wealth from the
schemes and deceit of the evil one. We must be careful, however, not to rely on weapons of human
strength and wisdom. We cannot whip the enemy by ourselves, “for the foolishness of God is wiser
than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength” (1 Corinthians 1:25).
Only as we are “strong in the Lord and in His mighty power” (Ephesians 6:10) can we withstand
satan’s onslaught against us. The Holy Spirit, sent by Jesus when we receive Him as Savior, is our
Helper.
GOD’S PLAN OF DEFENSE
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the
authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in
the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil
comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.
Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of
righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the
gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can
extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the
sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with
all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert… (Ephesians 6:12-18).
This description of the armor of God details a plan to guard and protect your life against satan’s
invasion. You must understand the provisions of this plan and put them into practice if you want to
defend your potential.
Recognize your enemies as the spiritual forces of evil.
First, recognize your enemy as the spiritual forces of evil, “for our struggle is not against flesh
and blood, but against…the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil….”
What looks to be a conflict in personalities or a difference in values may well be a struggle on a more
basic level. Discouragement, opposition, criticism, and the other enemies of potential are the work of
evil forces through those who are close to you. Learn to recognize and combat these obstacles for
what they are.
Learn to recognize and combat the enemies of potential.

The Scriptures are filled with examples of satan’s work. Moses’ mother and sister relied on
God’s power to save him from death when Moses’ life was threatened by the Pharaoh of Egypt’s
decree that all Hebrew boys should be killed at birth. After his mother had hidden him for three
months and she could hide him no longer, she put him in a basket and placed it among the reeds in the
Nile River. His sister then watched from a distance to see what would happen to him. When
Pharaoh’s daughter found him and took pity on him, Moses’ sister brought her mother to care for him.
(See Exodus 2:1-10.) Thus, Moses was saved from Pharaoh’s murderous plan.
Joseph was but a youth when his brothers plotted to kill him. After they had sold him into slavery
instead of killing him, Joseph endured many hardships that could have prevented his potential from
being unveiled and exercised. First, he was falsely accused of seducing his master’s wife and was,
therefore, thrown into prison; then he was forgotten by those he helped. Still Joseph remained faithful
to God and continued to trust Him. He didn’t allow the enemies of discouragement, opposition, and
the negative opinions of others to destroy the dreams God had given him.
After many years, Joseph was placed in a position of great prominence because he interpreted
Pharaoh’s dream. Thus, his potential to interpret dreams and to manage wisely were effectively used,
and his purpose to preserve his father Jacob’s family in the midst of a severe famine was fulfilled.
(See Genesis 37–47.)
King Saul tried to kill David many times. After Saul disobeyed God and God chose David to
replace Saul as king, “…the Spirit of the Lord…departed from Saul, and an evil spirit…tormented
him” (1 Samuel 16:14). As a young man, David came into Saul’s house to soothe him with the playing
of the harp. Because he found favor with Saul, David became one of Saul’s armor-bearers.
Before long, David ran into trouble. As he became a great warrior and grew in popularity, Saul
came to be jealous. One day Saul hurled a spear at David. Another time he sent his men to David’s
house to kill him. Although David escaped, he spent many years as a fugitive, trying to avoid death by
Saul’s hand. Discouragement, fear, loneliness, distractions, negative opinions, and pressure from
others were all part of those years. Yet, David trusted God to fulfill the promise he had received
when Samuel had anointed him to be king. In time, David fulfilled his potential and became the
greatest king in Israel’s history.
Although death is a favorite way for satan to destroy potential, he will most likely try to ensnare
you with one of the enemies of potential. Be alert to recognize these enemies for what they are—
satan’s attacks on your potential.
Expect Satan’s Attack.
Paul knew that the attack of satan is inevitable. Thus, he told the Ephesians to put on the full armor
of God so they could withstand when the evil day came. He wanted them to expect trouble so they
would be prepared to meet it when it came.
 No matter what you do, you will always have critics. This is true because some people cannot
bear to see others succeed. When you aren’t doing anything, you’re not a problem for them; but when
you start fulfilling your dreams and visions, you’ll attract attention. People don’t care about you until
you start doing something big.
No matter what you do, you will always have critics.

This opposition often occurs because your critics aren’t doing anything. Those who are working
out their own dreams don’t need to be threatened by your accomplishments. They are too busy to be
jealous and too confident to worry how your success might affect them. Thus, you must be careful of
those who are doing nothing with their potential. They will be your greatest critics.
Learn to expect their opposition and to rise above it. Refuse to get drawn into their petty quarrels
or to allow their words and actions to influence your self-esteem or your behavior. Every dream you
share has the potential to cause jealousy, so be careful with whom you share your dreams.
Sometimes you must keep your dream to yourself because no other person can understand it. Indeed,
your dreams may sound funny or pretentious to others.
Just stick with what you’re supposed to do until you achieve what you’re after, and let those who
are going nowhere go there without you. Others who are pursuing their purpose and maximizing their
potential will understand your behavior, even if they can’t see your particular vision. Find them and
enjoy their company, for those who are going somewhere are more likely to support you in your
journey. This is an essential factor in guarding your potential.
Prepare to overcome satan’s attack.
One way you can prepare to defend your potential is to make wise choices. Consider carefully
with whom you associate and where you spend your time. Examine your reading material and how
you fill your day. Be cautious with whom you share your dreams—if you share them at all.

A second priority in preparing to meet satan’s attack is to be sure that your vision is from God.
Don’t conjure up your own ideas. If they contradict God’s Word, you know your ideas are not from
Him. God will not deny His Word. False dreams and fake prophecies are sure ways to lose your
potential. Satan will distract you any way he can.
Prepare for his attack by staying in close fellowship with God and by seeking His knowledge and
wisdom.
A third method for fortifying yourself against the assault of evil is to seek God’s discipline and
direction in your life. Be truthful in your dealings. Act with justice and virtue. Live at peace with
others in so far as it is within your power, being careful, however, not to compromise your loyalty
and obedience to God and His Word. Seek His chastening when you have failed and “rejoice in
[your] sufferings, because… suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character,
hope. And hope does not disappoint us…” (Romans 5:3b-5). God will honor your efforts to obey
Him and, in so doing, you will guard your potential.
 Stand firm in the midst of attack.

Sooner or later, satan is going to step over the boundaries of your defense and you are going to be
under attack. Then it is time to move from guarding your potential to protecting it. Paul admonished
the Ephesians to stand their ground and, after doing everything else, still to stand. Perseverance is the
key. You may not win the war in one battle, but you can stand firm in the midst of each assault.

Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Paul—all persevered through numerous battles to emerge
victorious. At times they faltered and failed, but they always returned to the battle. You too must
persevere when the forces of evil threaten to overwhelm you to destroy your potential. The story of
Nehemiah offers some hints on how to do this.
HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM ATTACK
Nehemiah, a common man, had a job as the cupbearer of the Persian king in whose land he was an
exile. When he heard of the plight of his former countrymen who had not been carried into exile and
the sorry state of the city of Jerusalem, he mourned for them and asked God to help him return to
Jerusalem so he could rebuild the city. God heard his prayer and granted him favor in the king’s sight
so that the king gave Nehemiah both his permission to return to Jerusalem and the resources to begin
rebuilding the city.
Not everyone, however, was happy that Nehemiah was taking an interest in the well-being of the
city and its inhabitants.
When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard about this, they were
very much disturbed that someone had come to promote the welfare of the Israelites
(Nehemiah 2:10).
Even though Nehemiah was trying to do something beneficial, these fellows were angered by his
plans. So they started to make trouble for him.

“What is this you are doing?” they asked. “Are you rebelling against the king?” (Nehemiah
2:19b)
But Nehemiah was not to be deterred. He gathered workers together and began to rebuild the
gates and the walls of Jerusalem. This incensed Sanballat further so that he began to ridicule the
Jews:
What are those feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will
they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble—burned as they
are? (Nehemiah 4:2b)
Tobiah joined in his mocking:
What they are building—if even a fox climbed up on it, he would break down their wall of
stones! (Nehemiah 4:3b)
 Nehemiah did not reply to their ridicule. Instead, he turned to the Lord in prayer (see Nehemiah
4:4-5) and kept on with the work. This illustrates the first guideline for protecting your potential.
Don’t answer your critics.

There are several levels of anger. At first your critic may be annoyed by you, but if you persist in
your work, he becomes incensed. Sanballat, Tobiah, and their associates became incensed by the
continued work on the walls of Jerusalem and committed themselves to destroying the potential of
Nehemiah and the other workers who were rebuilding the city.
They all [Sanballat and his cohorts] plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem
and stir up trouble against it. But we [Nehemiah and the other workers] prayed to our God
and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat (Nehemiah 4:8-9).
Nehemiah responded to this new threat the same way he had answered the last one. He prayed to
God instead of answering his critics. He also added a second line to his defense. He posted a guard.
This is the second guideline for protecting your potential. Post a guard to lessen the likelihood of
attack.
When our enemies heard that we were aware of their plot and that God had frustrated it, we
all returned to the wall, each to his own work (Nehemiah 4:15).
This reveals a third means of protecting your potential from attack. Allow God to fight for you.
The workers stood guard, but God frustrated the plans of the attackers. The Israelites relied on Him to
fight for them:
Wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet, join us there. Our God will fight for us!
(Nehemiah 4:20)
For a while, Nehemiah and his helpers worked in peace. Yet, they did not let down their guard.
From that day on, half of my men did the work, while the other half were equipped with
spears, shields, bows and armor. The officers posted themselves behind all the people of
Judah who were building the wall. Those who carried materials did their work with one
hand and held a weapon in the other, and each of the builders wore his sword at his side as
he worked (Nehemiah 4:16-18a).
Thus, they employed a fourth means for protecting their potential from attack. Don’t allow a lull in
the battle to convince you that the war is over. Don’t confuse quiet with peace.
Finally, when Nehemiah’s enemies received word that the wall had been completely rebuilt, they
sent a message to request a meeting:
Come, let us meet together in one of the villages… (Nehemiah 6:2b).
Nehemiah wisely countered this as well, recognizing it for a different kind of attack:
But they were scheming to harm me; so I sent messengers to them with this reply: “I am
 carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it
and go down to you?” (Nehemiah 6:2c-3)

This reply reveals a fifth and a sixth means of protecting your potential from attack. First,
Nehemiah sent a messenger instead of going himself when his enemies summoned him. Stay away
from the opposition. Second, he refused to stop his work to talk. Don’t waste time talking.

Even when Sanballat sent letters four and five times requesting Nehemiah to come to a village to
talk, and tried to intimidate Nehemiah by suggesting that he would soon be in trouble with the king in
Persia, Nehemiah remained firm in his stance. He again sent a letter instead of going himself, and he
accused his opposers of making things up in their heads to create trouble. You too must remain firm in
your decisions and refuse to be intimidated by your oppressors. These are the seventh and eighth
factors in protecting your potential when you are under assault.
Nehemiah used many methods to fight for his vision. You must employ the same methods to
preserve your potential from attack.
FIGHT FOR YOUR VISION
There will always be people who are committed to destroying you. They will criticize you,
ridicule you, and become angry with you. Let them. You are not responsible for their actions, only
your own.
Fight for your vision. Share your dream only when you must, and choose carefully with whom you
share it. Do the background work and stay on course when the going gets rough. Expect opposition
and be careful not to allow the threats and accusations of your enemies to intimidate you. Stick with
your decisions and remain committed to your goal. Don’t let quietness fool you so that you are caught
unprepared by a later attack. Talk to God about your needs and allow Him to respond to your
oppressors. Never answer them yourself.

Finally, keep yourself busy. Don’t allow the battle to interfere with your work. You may not be
popular, but you will be successful because God works with those who put forth the effort to stay
with the vision He has given them. Thus, your opposers will learn that they are not as important as
what you are doing, and you will remain focused on your vision with renewed wisdom and strength
to accomplish it. Your potential is worth the effort of overcoming its enemies.
GET MOVING
God helps those who help themselves. This familiar saying expresses an important truth. Paul
told Timothy to seek the help of the Holy Spirit (see 2 Timothy 1:14), not to expect Him to run the
whole show. The Holy Spirit will not take over our lives, but He will assist us in running them.
That’s the meaning of His name (paracletus). He is our helper or assistant. He doesn’t guard our
potential. He helps us to do so by guiding our decisions and by empowering us to withstand and
triumph in the midst of trials.
Guidance, by definition, requires movement. Merriam Webster’s 10th Collegiate Dictionary says
that to guide is to “direct in a course or to show the way to be followed. [It] implies knowledge of
the way and of all its difficulties and dangers.” As a ship that is resting in the harbor cannot be
steered, so the Holy Spirit cannot guide us if we are not going anywhere. When we say, “Guide me,
Lord,” the Holy Spirit replies, “Where are you going?” He needs us to move so He can turn us in the
right direction.
If you want God to guard your potential, you have to start using it. If you want Him to protect it,
you have to start protecting it. Let’s say, for example, that you have a dream to go back to school and
become a teacher, but you’re struggling with your dream because you have poor reading skills. God
will help you protect your dream of becoming a teacher if you sign up for an adult reading class and
work hard to learn to read.
Or again, you may have the ambition to be a nurse or a cabinet maker or a store manager.
Research the nursing programs in your area and get all the facts before you present the idea to your
parents or your spouse. Find a skilled carpenter to serve under as an apprentice before you set up
your own shop. Start going to school in the evenings to get your master’s degree in business
administration before you apply for a supervisory position. That first step you take may not be the
right one, but God can’t help you until you do something. He can’t close a door you haven’t opened or
affirm a decision you haven’t made. If you aren’t doing anything to accomplish your goal, He isn’t
doing anything either. The Holy Spirit can’t work for you unless you are working.
The same principle is true for protecting your potential. Perhaps you have the ambition to
graduate from school with honors, but too much of your study time is being spent working a part-time
job or hanging out with friends. Quit your job or rearrange your hours to give you more study time.
Limit your social activities and make your free hours productive and relaxing. When you do
something to remove the attack against your vision, God will aid your efforts. Nevertheless, the
initiative must come from you.
Or perhaps you’d like to lose weight because your appearance is affecting both your self-esteem
and the confidence others have in your ability to accomplish a given task. You know you can do the
job, but you never get the chance to try because neither you nor your boss is willing to risk giving you
the extra responsibility. When you make a sincere effort to watch what you eat and to get the proper
exercise, God will reaffirm His estimation of your value and motivate others to see you as a capable,
valuable person. His action to protect your potential depends on your actions.
God won’t take a bad habit or an inappropriate lifestyle from you because He didn’t give it to
you. He will affirm your decisions and strengthen your efforts when you start taking positive steps to
rid yourself of the negative influences, the wrong attitudes, or the poor choices that are threatening
your potential. Destroy the cigarettes or drugs. Move out from living with your boyfriend or
girlfriend. Stay home instead of spending every night at the local bar. Leave the room when you are
about to hit your child in anger. Take responsibility for your own actions when your boss asks you
why a project isn’t completed or your spouse is disappointed that you forgot her birthday or your
wedding anniversary.
A boat that is still cannot be turned no matter how long or how far you turn the wheel. Move a
small distance and the boat will respond to a gentle touch on the wheel. The guarding and protecting
of your potential is the same. If you stay stuck in your present rut with no attempts to get out of it, your
dreams will wither and die. Start moving and the gentle touch of God will begin changing you and
helping you to achieve seemingly impossible dreams. God is your partner. You must work together
to protect your potential. When you start contributing to your own protection, the Holy Spirit starts to
protect you as well. He empowers what you begin and redirects your efforts when they don’t match
His expectations. Then you can begin to discover your potential and to protect what you see.

Guarding potential is a daily task that requires more wisdom and power than we possess. God is
in the business of maximizing potential. He’ll empower our efforts if we cooperate with Him, but He
will not do the work for us. Begin today to follow the guidelines for guarding and protecting your
potential. The future of your dreams and visions is at stake.
PRINCIPLES

1. You are responsible to guard and protect your potential.

2. The treasure you must defend is God’s wisdom, God’s power, and the presence of God’s
Spirit in your life. This potency of God within you is your potential.
3. Guidelines for safeguarding your potential:
• Recognize your enemies as the forces of evil.
• Expect satan’s attack.
• Prepare to overcome his attack.
• Stand firm in the midst of attack.
4. Guidelines for protecting yourself from attack:

• Don’t answer your critics.

• Post a guard to deter attack and to warn of impending danger.
• Allow God to fight for you.
• Don’t allow a lull in the battle to convince you that the war is over.
• Stay away from your opposition.
• Don’t waste time talking.
• Refuse to be intimidated by your critics’ threats and accusations.
 CHAPTER 4

Cultivate and Feed Your Potential

Whatever you eat eventually eats you.

The old woman smiled as she entered the small, hot room. A blaze of color met her eyes. African
violets of many shades of pink, purple, white, red, and blue, and variegated mixtures of these colors,
filled the room. The room had not always looked like this. When she and her husband had first built
this house many years before, this had been their children’s playroom. Then, toys had filled the
shelves.
After the last of their children had left home, the woman had become very depressed, missing the
children and having very little to do. That’s when a friend had given her clippings from her African
violets and had persuaded her to turn the playroom into a greenhouse. The idea had been a good one,
giving her renewed interest in life.
Over the years, she had spent many hours here. At first only one of the many shelves had
contained plants. Now the original shelves were completely filled and others had been added. She
still remembered her joy when her violets bloomed for the first time. Many hours had preceded that
triumph, for she had never been known for having a green thumb. In fact, some of her friends had tried
to discourage her new adventure because in the past plants had been more likely to wither than
flourish while in her care. Still she had forged ahead. In time she had come to understand that her
plants had failed because she had not given them sufficient care. Indeed, they had died from neglect.

When the first plants not only lived but flourished under her touch, she gained the confidence to
add other colors by getting more clippings from her friend. She also began reading books and
magazine articles about the care of African violets and talking with others who loved plants. One day
while reading a horticulture magazine, she discovered an article on creating hybrids. That was the
day she became hooked.
Since then, she had spent part of every day in this room, watering her plants, checking for insect
pests, rooting new cuttings, fertilizing the plants that were about to bloom, picking off old blossoms,
and rotating the plants so each one received sufficient light. Even the day her husband had died, she
had wandered in here to find solace among her friends—as she had come to think of her plants.
In the evening, she often read gardening and horticulture magazines here, having moved her
favorite chair from the living room when her husband was no longer there to spend the long hours
with her. After nearly 40 years of hard work and extensive reading, the riotous color that surrounded
her revealed the success of her efforts.
 Now, her skill in cultivating and breeding African violets was known throughout the community,
and over the years she had found great joy in teaching others the art of cultivating plants. Every year
her conservatory was considered to be the highlight of the garden tour. Plant collections throughout
the town—in gardens and rooms—were testimony to her skill.
The successful fulfillment of your potential is similar to the task of growing prizewinning flowers.
Both require careful attention and diligent effort to produce winning results.

POTENTIAL DOESN’T GUARANTEE PERFORMANCE

God made everything with the ability to produce fruit or to reproduce itself. Yet, the potential to
produce does not guarantee performance, nor does the quantity of fruit guarantee its quality. You may
have a good idea that produces mediocrity-laden results. Or you may have big dreams that amount to
very little. This is true because pregnancy is no guarantee of fruitfulness, and performance is not
ensured by plans and dreams. Pregnancy and performance match when the potential to produce is
properly cared for and developed.
Pregnancy is no guarantee of fruitfulness, and performance is not ensured by plans and dreams.
You may have the potential to be a world-class architect, but your ability does not guarantee that
you will reach this level of success. You may never progress beyond drawing doll house plans for
your daughter or designing a model train layout for your son. An important key to producing what you
are capable of is spending the necessary time and effort to promote the development of your talent.
You must cultivate and feed your potential.
A GARDEN TO CARE FOR
When God made man, shrubs had not yet appeared on the earth and plants had not yet sprung from
the ground. Only after man’s creation did God plant a garden and give it a river to water it. Why?
Until then “there was no man to work the ground” (Genesis 2:5). The earth was pregnant but nothing
was coming out because there was no one to care for the soil’s babies.
Thus, we see that God created all life to depend on cultivation to maximize its existence because
potential cannot be released without work. In essence, God said, “I can’t allow these trees and plants
to grow yet because they need cultivation when they start growing and there is no one to care for
them.” The fruit and seeds of many plants and trees were present in the ground, but the soil did not
produce them until Adam cultivated the garden.
The New International Version of the Bible says that God gave Adam the responsibility of
working the garden. The Revised Standard Version and the King James Version describe man’s task
as that of tilling the garden, and the Good News Bible speaks of cultivating. All point to man’s
assignment to help the garden produce to its fullest capacity. Thus, man was created to have a
cultivating ministry by making the earth grow richer as he gives to it, feeds it, and adds to it.

WINNING THE PRIZE REQUIRES RUNNING THE RACE

 Potential is like soil. It must be worked and fed to produce fruit. King Solomon referred to this
process of releasing the fruitfulness of man when he said, “The purposes of a man’s heart are deep
waters, but a man of understanding draws them out” (Proverbs 20:5). Notice, the drawing out of
man’s potential requires effort. Like the fisherman who brings forth the treasures of the sea by hard
work and the farmer who harvests the fruit of the ground by the sweat of his brow, so man must labor
to tap even a portion of God’s potential within him.

Potential is like soil. It must be worked and fed to produce fruit.

The apostle Paul understood this need to put forth the effort to release his fruitfulness.
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such
a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training.
They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.
Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the
air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I
myself will not be disqualified for the prize (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).
Understanding and wisdom are the keys to the success of man’s mission. His race to maximize
everything God has given him begins with knowing what God requires of him and how He expects
him to reach the finish line. The primary principle in cultivating one’s life for maximum living is to
destroy ignorance by the pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.
KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING PROMOTE GROWTH
Suppose I wanted to create a beautiful vase to place in my living room, but I knew nothing about
making pottery. My first step would need to be a visit to a master potter, or at least to the local
library, to learn all I could about working clay into beautiful pieces. I would have to learn about the
selection and preparation of the clay, the throwing and shaping of the vase on the potter’s wheel, the
length of time and the conditions for seasoning the raw pot, the proper temperature and duration for
firing the pot in the kiln, etc. Much work, including many hours of practice on much lesser pots than
the vase I hoped to create, would precede my reaching the goal of making a vase to place in my living
room.
This procedure is not unlike the process we must undertake to maximize our potential. Knowledge
and effort must co-exist, but knowledge is the foundation for success. As we saw in the last chapter,
God’s wisdom and knowledge become available to us when we are connected to Him through the
presence of His Spirit. An understanding of His ways and the discovery of His purposes are part of
the treasure He has given us.
For the Lord gives wisdom, and from His mouth come knowledge and understanding. He
holds victory in store for the upright, He is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for
He guards the course of the just and protects the way of His faithful ones. Then you will
understand what is right and just and fair—every good path. For wisdom will enter your
heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul (Proverbs 2:6-10).
 The search for knowledge requires effort. You must seek it like a treasure that is precious to you.
You cannot touch God’s knowledge, however, without diligence and exertion.

Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to words of knowledge (Proverbs 23:12).
My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to
wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry
aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden
treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God
(Proverbs 2:1-5).
By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through
knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures. A wise man has great
power, and a man of knowledge increases strength; for waging war you need guidance, and
for victory many advisers (Proverbs 24:3-6).

Building a house and waging war require great effort. They do not just happen. The same is true
for storing up things. If you’ve ever canned or frozen fruits and vegetables in the summer to provide
for your family in the winter, you know that many long, hot hours precede the final act of putting the
finished jars on the shelf.
In a similar manner, removing treasures from the earth is also arduous and time-consuming. Wells
must be drilled before oil can be pumped from the depths of the earth, and great shafts or tunnels must
be dug before the mining of diamonds, silver, and other precious metals can be achieved. These are
the images Solomon used to illustrate the strength and the dedication you will need to exercise if you
hope to gain the knowledge that will advance the unleashing of your potential.
Knowledge must always precede action or much time and effort will be wasted through misguided
efforts and dead-end directions. God, who planned your life and granted you the potential to fulfill
His plans, works for and with you when you seek to know Him and to understand and follow His
ways.
Knowledge must always precede action or much time and effort will be wasted through misguided
efforts and dead-end directions.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF NEGLECTING KNOWLEDGE
Sadly, we often forfeit our potential because we neglect the wisdom, knowledge, and
understanding that come from God alone. Solomon spoke of the consequences of this neglect, as did
the prophet Hosea:
Wise men store up knowledge, but the mouth of a fool invites ruin (Proverbs 10:14).
The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death. Good
understanding wins favor, but the way of the unfaithful is hard. Every prudent man acts out
of knowledge, but a fool exposes his folly (Proverbs 13:14-16).
 My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. “Because you have rejected knowledge, I
also reject you as My priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will
ignore your children” (Hosea 4:6).

A lack of knowledge is not the same as the unavailability of knowledge. Hosea says that God’s
people perish because they have rejected knowledge. Knowledge may surround us, but unless we
apply it to our situation or use it to inform our decisions, it is useless to us. We cannot really excuse
ourselves before the Lord saying, “I didn’t know,” because opportunities to gain knowledge abound
in our world. We live in an age of an information explosion with libraries, tape ministries, teaching
videos, television, and radio bombarding us on every side with opportunities to stretch our horizons
and increase our knowledge. What we can confess to God is, “I rejected the opportunity to learn.”
The saying, “What you don’t know can’t kill you,” is simply not true. Too often we suffer loss
because we did not take the opportunity to learn the facts about a particular subject. We perish
because of what we don’t know. No matter how great your dream is, if you don’t have the
information relative to your plan, forget it.
THE PENALTIES OF IGNORANCE
The devil doesn’t destroy God’s people…the government doesn’t destroy God’s people…the
economy doesn’t destroy God’s people… cocaine and marijuana don’t destroy God’s people.
Ignorance destroys God’s people. This one thing is behind every destructive influence in our lives.
God rejects those who reject His knowledge. In other words He says, “We can’t do business. You
haven’t used the tools I gave you, so I can’t help you. You can’t even talk intelligently with Me.”
Ignorance affects how God answers our prayers because we ask for things we don’t need or shouldn’t
want. To ask rightly we must understand how we operate, how the devil operates, how the world
operates, and how God operates. Asking God to do something for us before we understand these
aspects of our situation is wasting our time and God’s. He must reject everything we request because
our prayers and His ways, will, and desires for us do not line up.

Ignorance affects how God answers our prayers because we ask for things we don’t need or shouldn’t
want.
Research your dream before you start working to achieve it. Learn everything you can about the
business you want to start or the people you want to reach. You need good information to make right
decisions.
God also ignores the children of those who ignore His knowledge. This is true because your
children learn what you know. If you don’t know anything, they aren’t going to learn anything, and they
will thus make the same mistakes and have the same values and attitudes you have.
Ignorance messes up the next generation. It destroys not only your fruitfulness but your
children’s as well. Thus, you and your children reap what you sow, and your lack of information
harms them. Our world is experiencing a multitude of human disasters that give evidence to this fact.
Abortion, AIDS, environmental issues, drugs—all reveal the consequences of the rejection of
knowledge by this generation and those that preceded us. In essence, ignorance is generational and
transferable. The decision to pursue knowledge, improve understanding, and gain wisdom is a
personal decision but not a private issue. Every book you read affects your grandchildren, so read
and cultivate yourself for posterity.
TWISTED VALUES

Our ignorance of God’s will and His ways has twisted our world. We devalue what God values
and elevate what is insignificant to Him. He sees the tremendous ability we have and we look at the
earth houses that contain that treasure (see 2 Corinthians 4:7). He created us to show forth His power,
but we are more interested in success by the world’s standards. He affirms our ability to tap into His
wisdom, but we make decisions based on the information we receive from our physical senses and
our education.
Our poverty of knowledge is revealed by our inability to fulfill God’s potential on our own. We
live aimlessly without purpose, flitting from one thing to another and never accomplishing anything.
Such life is a waste of time. Without a sense of purpose we are like stillborn babies.
Your potential will be wasted if you do not allow God to cleanse your sight and redirect your
values. Then you can escape this purposeless existence. This occurs as you become aware of the
world’s standards and compare them carefully with God’s. You may be surprised by what you find.
POTENTIAL UNDER ATTACK
The Bible says, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel
16:7c). It’s time you and I reevaluate the standards of the world. Our cars are faster but weaker. Our
clothes are sharper, but they come apart at the seams. Our vinyl shoes shine nicely, but they lack the
durability of leather. What appears to be better may indeed be a compromise on value and worth.
These upside-down values are attacking your potential.

Our world has become very concerned about pollution issues. Environmental groups are angered
by oil spills and they warn us about the need to protect endangered animals, rain forests, and
waterways. As consumers we are constantly reminded to dispose of waste properly as part of the
effort to protect our planet’s air and water supplies, and we are encouraged to recycle to promote the
wise use of the earth’s resources.
Sadly, we are more concerned about the destruction of the earth’s atmosphere than we are about
the poisoning of our children by the airwaves they breathe in our homes. We are interested in the
purity of the water we drink, but we do not monitor the pollutants that fill our minds. Our world is
sick because we value the wrong things.
In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus rebuked the Pharisees because their values were mixed up. As Jesus
and His disciples were walking through a grain field, they were picking and eating grain because they
were hungry. Since it was the Sabbath, the Pharisees complained that they were breaking the law.
He answered [them], “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions
 were hungry and in need?…he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread,
which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” Then He
said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man
is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Another time [Jesus] went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there.
Some of [the Pharisees] were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched Him
closely to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled
hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.” Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the
Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent. He
looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the
man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored
(Mark 2:25–3:5).

Matthew records Jesus’ words on this occasion slightly differently:

[Jesus] said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will
you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a man than a sheep!
Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:11-12).
The values and standards of our world are not so different from those of the Pharisees. We save
whales and try to protect endangered species, but we allow babies to be aborted. We cannot shoot
flamingos, but we can take a scalpel and kill human fetuses.
We are sick. We are no different than those Jesus admonished. Therefore, we need to rethink our
values and redefine the definition of pollution. The most damaging pollutants that are poisoning our
communities are not coming from cars, factories, and toxic waste dumps. They come from
bookshelves, televisions, movie houses, and rental videos. They come from our schools and colleges
where teachers who do not believe in God teach our children that God is a crutch or a figment of their
imaginations. Don’t tell me not to shoot flamingos when teachers are shooting my children by teaching
them corruption, error, evolution, and Godless philosophies!
The only way to combat this pollution is to examine what we are feeding our children and to
cultivate with care the environments in which they grow. Then we can activate and stimulate their
potential, and ours, with the proper nutrients and fertilizers. God determined this need to care for our
potential when He placed Adam in the garden and commanded him to work, till, and cultivate it.
A TWOFOLD PROCESS: CULTIVATING AND FEEDING YOUR POTENTIAL
Potential must be cultivated and fed to produce fruit. But how do we do this? How do we
cultivate and feed the talents, skills, and abilities we possess?
The definitions of cultivate include: a) to prepare and work to promote growth; b) to improve
growth by labor and attention; c) to develop and refine by education and training; and d) to seek or
promote, such as a friendship. To feed something means that we a) supply with nourishment; b)
provide as food; c) furnish for consumption; and d) satisfy, minister, and gratify. All these definitions
imply that the process is to be beneficial, not harmful. If the provisions do not supply nourishment that
is essential for growth, they are not truly feeding us. Likewise, if the activity and attention do not help
us to develop, refine, improve, and promote our abilities, skills, and talents, they cannot truly be
called cultivation.
Even as seeds do not become plants overnight, so the wealth of our potential cannot be exposed
and fulfilled in an instant. We must exert effort to cultivate what God has given us, and we must
exercise care to fertilize and water it properly. As specific plants require certain nutrients and
conditions to grow, so we must provide the right nourishment and environment to encourage the
maximizing of our potential. These specifications have been set by God, who created us. To ignore
them is to invite death.
Cultivating and Feeding the Three Dimensions of Potential
We are like a fallow field. We contain much fruit, but our fertility will not become evident until
and unless we cultivate and feed our bodies, souls, and spirits. These are the three dimensions of
potential. Cultivating and feeding work together to promote maximum growth and fulfillment. If we
activate and stimulate our potential through challenging work and experiences, but we neglect to
provide the appropriate fertilizers that will sustain and maintain it within those situations, before long
growth will become stunted and eventually stop. Likewise, if we feed our bodies, souls, and spirits
according to our Manufacturer’s specifications, but we fail to foster and develop occasions when we
can try new things and reach for new goals, we will still diminish the effective release of our
potential. Both cultivating and feeding are necessary for wholesome growth.
Each dimension of our potential—body, soul, and spirit—has definite specifications and
materials for cultivation and explicit requirements in fertilizers. These specifications or requirements
prescribed by our Manufacturer ensure that each part of our being operates at peak performance and
achieves maximum fruitfulness. They are essential ingredients for unveiling who we can be and what
we can do.

You are what you eat. This is true for all three dimensions of potential. If you eat excessive fatty
foods, you will gain weight and your face will be covered with pimples. If you feed your mind with
trash, your thoughts will be in the gutter. If you feed your spirit the information received through the
senses of your body and the education of your soul, neglecting God’s wisdom and knowledge, you
will operate from worldly standards and values.
You are what you eat.
Cultivate and Feed Your Body
Your body is a precise machine that requires proper food, exercise, and rest. Healthy food,
regular exercise, and scheduled periods of rest are essential for it to operate at its maximum potential.
Physical health deteriorates when sweets, fats, or other harmful foods are stuffed into the body, and
the body’s strength and endurance are lessened if exercise (work) is missing from your daily routine.
Likewise, the absence of rest depletes the body’s resources until exhaustion and even collapse
eventually occur. Cultivate and feed your body by living within a healthy routine that includes
nutritious food, moderate but systematic exercise, and regular sleep and relaxation.
Secondly, the cultivation and feeding of your body requires that you use it with discretion,
setting it apart for its intended uses. God did not give you a physical body so you can fill it with
empty calories or treat it as a beast of burden. If you have a choice of a salad or french fries for lunch,
choose the salad. The fries may taste good, but they do little or nothing to nourish you. In a similar
manner, consider the proper use of your body when you are working or exercising. For example,
safeguard your back by bending your knees to lift a heavy load.
This requirement to use your body with discretion also means that you should treat it with respect
and exercise caution not to abuse it. Take care not to allow cigarettes, alcohol, and other harmful
substances to enter it. As the apostle Paul warns us:
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what
is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10).

Each person will have to give an account for what he did with his body.
Third, you must cultivate your physical body by preserving it and protecting it from pollutants.
If you are going to do something for the world, if you are really going to contribute to the
effectiveness and the productivity of your nation, you cannot be sick because you cannot be effective
if you are sick. As the apostle Paul says:
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you
have received from God? …Therefore honor God with your body (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
In his letter to the church at Rome, Paul adds:
…offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual
act of worship (Romans 12:1).

For something to be a sacrifice, it must be valuable and worth giving. You cannot effectively
honor God if your body is too heavy or your heart is weak because you have filled your body with
cholesterol-producing foods. Preserve your body by understanding and obeying the Manufacturer’s
directions. You are responsible to protect your physical temple. Cultivate your body.
Cultivate Your Soul
Your soul consists of your mind, your will, and your emotions. What goes into your mind always
influences what comes out. If your children watch disrespectful, smart-mouthed kids on TV, they will
learn to talk and act the same way. In fact, they won’t even know that they are being disrespectful
because their values and wisdom will have been skewed by the things they saw and read.
Be careful, then, to convert your mind by filling it with godly, uplifting materials. Feed it God’s
Word instead of junk novels. If you spend much time reading ivory-towered romantic fiction, you will
come to have unrealistic expectations of your spouse and you will either degrade or destroy the
marriage relationship through unfaithful thoughts, words, and actions. Turn on a teaching tape instead
of the afternoon soaps. Take part in a small group Bible study. Use your moments of leisure to uplift
rather than tear down.

Likewise, cultivate your mind. Spend some time each week in serious Bible study or research a
useful topic you know little about at your local library. Attend concerts and lectures, or take evening
classes at a community college. The whole purpose of encyclopedias, formal education, and other
sources of knowledge is not to make you smart, but to give you the opportunity to make yourself
smart. Use the resources available to your mind to inspire you to activate your dreams and reach for
new goals. Your mind is a powerful tool created by God for the good of mankind.
It’s a pity to die with water when people are dying of thirst. Yet it happens every day as people
who have the answers to the world’s problems refuse to feed and cultivate their minds so they can
reach into the deep wells of their possibilities and pull out what the world needs. Look to the careful
cultivation and feeding of your mind. Remember, the person who doesn’t read is no better off than the
person who can’t.
It’s a pity to die with water when people are dying of thirst.
The cultivation of your soul also includes the discipline of your will. Discipline is training or
teaching someone or something to obey a particular command or to live by a certain standard. The
discipline of your will is particularly important because the will is the decision maker. If you refuse
to discipline your will, you won’t be successful in fulfilling your potential because your will
determines your decisions, which govern your potential.
I imagine Jesus in the garden before His arrest. His will was saying, “Let’s find another way to do
this,” but God said, “There is only one way.” Because Jesus’ will was disciplined, He said, “Okay,
Your will not Mine be done.” (See Mark 14:32-36.) If you do not train your will to be subjected to
God’s wisdom and purposes, you will forfeit the purpose for which you were born, and your potential
will be wasted. Self-discipline is the highest expression of self-management, which is manifested in a
disciplined will.

The cultivating of your soul also requires that you control your emotions. Too often we allow
our emotions to control us instead of our controlling them. Tantrums and fits of rage are symptoms of
this malady. Emotions are controlled by understanding. Ecclesiastes 7:12 says:
Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter, but the advantage of knowledge is this: that wisdom
preserves the life of its possessor.
What we know to be true from seeking information and examining the facts must be the basis on
which we make decisions and relate to other people. Emotions often color what we see. They also
prompt us to say hasty words and to make unwise choices. Emotions governed by information
provides an environment in which the potential of our souls can be maximized.
Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a
city (Proverbs 16:32).
 Jesus said that the soul is the most important dimension of our make-up because the soul is both
our receiving center and our distribution center. It receives information through our physical senses
and discernment through our spirits and it sends directions back to both our bodies and our spirits.
Thus, our souls processes information from both the physical and the spiritual worlds. Jesus said in
Matthew 5:5, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” The word meek does not mean
“weak,” but rather “controlled power” or “disciplined energy.” Self-discipline will cause God to
trust us to manage more of the earth’s resources.

Too often the soul is neglected and permitted to pick up information that is not good for the spirit.
Maximize your potential by cultivating and feeding your soul so that your spirit may fellowship with
God, who is the source of all potential.
Cultivate and Feed Your Spirit
Maximizing your potential begins with your decision to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and
Savior because the measure of your true potential is your spirit. Until you become reconnected with
God through faith in Jesus Christ and the presence of His Spirit in your heart, you are spiritually dead,
and the potential of your spirit is unavailable to you. Then your mind can only be controlled by what
you receive through your senses and your mind.
Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature
desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the
Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life
and peace (Romans 8:5-6).
The secret wisdom of God concerning your potential (see 1 Corinthians 2:7-11) cannot influence
your life if His Spirit is not present in your heart because only God’s Spirit knows and understands
God’s plans and purposes for you. These were written long before your birth. They contain the
information you need to live to the fullest and to achieve everything you were sent to do. Attaining
your maximum potential is impossible if you do not cultivate and feed your spirit by hooking yourself
up to God and abiding in Him. (See John 15:1-8.)
Cultivating and feeding your potential is a second key to maximizing your potential. As you pay
attention to the fertilizer you give your body, soul, and spirit, and the work you do to keep them
healthy by the Manufacturer’s specifications, you will be surprised and delighted by the many things
you can accomplish and the satisfaction and joy in life you will experience. You must cultivate and
feed your potential according to God’s specifications and with His materials.
Show me your friends, and I will show you your future.
PRINCIPLES
1. The potential to produce fruit does not guarantee either fruitfulness or the quality of the fruit.
2. Potential must be worked (cultivated) and fed to produce fruit.
3. Ignorance messes up the next generation because God rejects both those who reject knowledge,
 and their children.
4. God designed the potential of your body, your soul, and your spirit to be maximized by specific
fertilizers and environments that promote positive growth and development.
5. Cultivate and feed your body by getting the proper food, exercise, and rest, by using it with
discretion, and by preserving and protecting it from pollutants.

6. Cultivate and feed your soul by feeding your mind positive, Godly information, by disciplining
your will to discover and live by God’s wisdom and purposes, and by governing your emotions
with God’s truth.
7. Cultivate and feed your spirit by living from God’s secret wisdom dispensed through His Holy
Spirit.