UNLOCK

YOUR
POTENTIAL
Becoming Your Best You

DR. MYLES MUNROE

Copyright © 2013—Myles Munroe All rights reserved. This
book is protected under the copyright laws of the United
States of America. This book may not be copied or reprinted
for commercial gain or profit. The use of short quotations or
occasional page copying for personal or group study is
permitted and encouraged. 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 International Bible Society. All
rights reserved. Quotations marked (LB) are taken from The
Living 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 Printed in the U.S.A.
Bahamas Faith Ministry
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Nassau, Bahamas

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.