We are walking in today: We Must Guard Our Potential!!
Witness watch throughout the Bible: H6822 tsaphah---to look out or about, spy, keep watch, observe, watch
Nahum 2:1 He that dasheth in pieces is come up before thy face: keep the munition, watch H6822 the way, make thy loins strong, fortify thy power mightily.
The Torah testifies...............
Genesis 31:49 And Mizpah; for he said, The LORD watch H6822 between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.
The prophets proclaim..................
2 Samuel 13:34 But Absalom fled. And the young man that kept the watch H6822 lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came much people by the way of the hill side behind him.
The writings bear witness...........................
Lamentations 4:17 As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our vain help: in our watching we have watched H6822 for a nation that could not save us.
Habukkak 2:1 I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch H6822 to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved.
Guard and Protect Your Potential
You were created to perform for an audience of one, the Lord Yeshua HaMashiach!
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. The Most High 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).
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. The Most High 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 The Most High and is worked out in our fight to keep what we have received. This treasure is both The Most High’s wisdom and power within us (our potential) and the gift of His Spirit.
What Are We to Defend?
As we have seen, The Most High deposits a treasure in each person He creates. This treasure is:
What Are We to Defend?
As we have seen, The Most High deposits a treasure in each person He creates. This treasure is:
a) The Most High’s wisdom and knowledge concerning who He is, who we are, and how we are to live in relationship with Him;
b) The Most High’s power that worked in creation through the spoken word and even today brings forth beauty from chaos; and
c) The Most High’s Spirit who lives within our hearts. Thus, The Most High 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 The Most High and not from us (2 Corinthians 4:7). This potency of The Most High within us—our potential—is the treasure we must defend. The treasure is the The Most High-invested vision and purpose for our lives, designed both to show His glory and to bring Him glory.
The Treasure of The Most High’s Wisdom and Knowledge
The prophet Isaiah recognized The Most High’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 The Most High. For the Lord gives wisdom, and from His mouth come knowledge and understanding (Proverbs 2:1-6).
What does it mean to fear The Most High? The psalmists liken those who fear The Most High 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 The Most High 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 The Most High’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 The Most High toward His children. Only as we come to The Most High through faith in Yeshua HaMashiach, “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 The Most High’s thoughts toward us.
Isaiah acknowledged this difference between The Most High’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 The Most High 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 The Most High 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).
The Most High sees beyond our vessels of clay to His wisdom within us and calls forth what He sees.
The Most High’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 The Most High 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, HaSatan 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 HaMashiach” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
When we bring our thoughts to Yeshua and make them subject to Him, we combat HaSatan’s strategy and unmask his deception. Yeshua, who knows both HaSatan’s works and the potential The Most High 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 The Most High’s Power
The Most High has also deposited His power within us. The apostle Paul spoke of this power as the means by which The Most High works salvation in us—“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of The Most High 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 The Most High’s power” (1 Corinthians 2:4-5).
In a similar manner, Peter and John understood The Most High’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 Yeshua, this man whom you see and know was made strong” (Acts 3:12,16).
The Most High 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 The Most High and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).
Even when we do not understand how The Most High 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 The Most High’s power. If we are children of The Most High, our greatest goal in life should be to resemble our Father. The Most High 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 The Most High’s power in us will bring this glimpse of our potential to pass, we tap into The Most High’s power to accomplish His will. This power of The Most High is at work in us to save us and to call us to a holy life in HaMashiach Yeshua (see 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 and 2 Timothy 1:8-10).
HaSatan knows that The Most High “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 The Most High’s power within us so that our vision can be changed into mission and The Most High’s potency may be revealed in us. The Most High’s power in us is a second treasure to be defended from the schemes of the evil one.
b) The Most High’s power that worked in creation through the spoken word and even today brings forth beauty from chaos; and
c) The Most High’s Spirit who lives within our hearts. Thus, The Most High 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 The Most High and not from us (2 Corinthians 4:7). This potency of The Most High within us—our potential—is the treasure we must defend. The treasure is the The Most High-invested vision and purpose for our lives, designed both to show His glory and to bring Him glory.
The Treasure of The Most High’s Wisdom and Knowledge
The prophet Isaiah recognized The Most High’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 The Most High. For the Lord gives wisdom, and from His mouth come knowledge and understanding (Proverbs 2:1-6).
What does it mean to fear The Most High? The psalmists liken those who fear The Most High 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 The Most High 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 The Most High’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 The Most High toward His children. Only as we come to The Most High through faith in Yeshua HaMashiach, “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 The Most High’s thoughts toward us.
Isaiah acknowledged this difference between The Most High’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 The Most High 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 The Most High 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).
The Most High sees beyond our vessels of clay to His wisdom within us and calls forth what He sees.
The Most High’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 The Most High 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, HaSatan 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 HaMashiach” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
When we bring our thoughts to Yeshua and make them subject to Him, we combat HaSatan’s strategy and unmask his deception. Yeshua, who knows both HaSatan’s works and the potential The Most High 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 The Most High’s Power
The Most High has also deposited His power within us. The apostle Paul spoke of this power as the means by which The Most High works salvation in us—“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of The Most High 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 The Most High’s power” (1 Corinthians 2:4-5).
In a similar manner, Peter and John understood The Most High’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 Yeshua, this man whom you see and know was made strong” (Acts 3:12,16).
The Most High 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 The Most High and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).
Even when we do not understand how The Most High 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 The Most High’s power. If we are children of The Most High, our greatest goal in life should be to resemble our Father. The Most High 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 The Most High’s power in us will bring this glimpse of our potential to pass, we tap into The Most High’s power to accomplish His will. This power of The Most High is at work in us to save us and to call us to a holy life in HaMashiach Yeshua (see 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 and 2 Timothy 1:8-10).
HaSatan knows that The Most High “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 The Most High’s power within us so that our vision can be changed into mission and The Most High’s potency may be revealed in us. The Most High’s power in us is a second treasure to be defended from the schemes of the evil one.
Shema Selah, Fiveamprayer guard and protect the treasure the Most High has given you!!! His Torah written in your heart and your mind!!
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