Potential Is Fulfilled When It Is Released!!!

Acts 20


We are walking in today:  Potential Is Fulfilled When It Is Released!!!

The Most High Shares His Potential

The Most High’s nature is built around sharing and giving. Before the world was created, everything existed in Him. All that we have seen, now see, and yet will see comes from Him. The Most High could have kept all this stuff inside Him, but it wouldn’t have benefited Him there. He had to release it through creativity before the beauty and power of His potential could be revealed.

Everything The Most High called into being He gave a purpose that meshes with the larger purpose of the world. Every animal, bird, fish, insect, reptile, plant, and tree is connected to the whole of creation. If one species becomes extinct, its death disrupts and impacts the entire ecosystem. In essence, each part of The Most High’s world in some way balances and enriches the rest.

You Share The Most High’s Potential

Human beings are The Most High’s crowning creative act. The treasure He put in us He took from Himself. He chose to give us part of His potential so we could use it for Him. The Most High could have run the world by Himself, but He brought us into His plan so we could bring glory to Him by revealing all He is. He doesn’t need our involvement to accomplish all He is capable of doing and being, but He wants us to enjoy the blessing of participating in His purpose. Your gifts, talents, and abilities are your share of the endowment The Most High gives to mankind to bless all creation.

As a parent enjoys watching a child learn new things, The Most High finds satisfaction in watching you discover and use your potential. In essence, you show forth The Most High’s nature and reveal His potency when you fulfill your potential Your purpose is equal to your potential, and your potential is equal to your purpose. The more you understand your purpose, the more you will discover what you can do.

The Most High finds satisfaction in watching you discover and use your potential.

Thus, The Most High gets excited when you take authority over your bad habits. He enjoys watching you discover and use the deposit of His power and wisdom within you. Sometimes it would be easier for The Most High to just snap His fingers and take over, but then He’d lose the joy of watching you order your life and the pleasure of seeing you expose His potential.

The other day, my wife and I were sitting at the table where our little girl was doing her homework. She had to spell some words and find the words that rhymed. I was so tempted to give her all the answers because I knew them right away. I held back because I knew I would rob her of the pleasure of producing her own potential.

The Most High works with you in the same way. There are some things He’d like to do for you, but He’s holding back so you can enjoy your success when you do them yourself. You say, “The Most High, change this situation,” and The Most High responds, “Well, I could, but there’s something you could learn about what you are capable of doing and being, so no, I won’t take over and do it for you.”

Just as I tell my daughter, “You figure it out,” when she asks me, “Daddy, what’s this?” so The Most High allows you to work things out for yourself. He’s proud of you when you succeed, just like I’m proud of my daughter when she successfully completes her homework. I produced her as part of my responsibility, now I find pleasure in seeing her use what I shared with her. The Most High finds the same pleasure in you. He has shared His potential with you, now He wants to enjoy the benefits of that gift. His joy overflows when you release all He has given you.

Potential Is Never Given for Itself

When I was in college, says Dr. Myles Munroe, I went on a tour of Europe. After several days, I lost interest in all I was seeing because my fiancée, who is now my wife, was not there to share it with me. On that trip I learned the truth of this principle: Potential is never given for itself. Whatever The Most High gives to you, He gives for others. Even as a solitary instrument cannot produce the majestic music of a symphonic orchestra, so human beings cannot glorify their Creator in isolation. I need your potential to maximize mine, and you need my potential to maximize yours. All we have been given is meant to be shared.

Isolation Is Not Good

After man had finished naming all the animals and no suitable helper for him was found among them, The Most High performed another significant act of creation. Why? “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18).

The Most High did not make woman because man asked for a wife, nor because a helper for man was a good idea. Man needed a companion because he could not realize his potential without sharing it with someone. His solitary existence was not good. To be solitary or alone is not the same as being single. To be alone is to be isolated and cut off from others. Communication is impossible because you have no one like yourself to share with. This is what The Most High says is not good.

To be single is to be unmarried. Marriage is not a requirement or a prerequisite for the fulfillment of your potential. You do not necessarily need a husband or a wife. What you do need, however, is someone with whom you can share your potential. This is true because your personal satisfaction is connected to your fulfilling The Most High’s purpose for your life, and your purpose cannot be achieved in isolation.

You need those people who will call forth your potential and into whom you can pour your life. You may be wired to be single, but you are not designed to live isolated and alone.

You need someone with whom you can share your potential.

A Word of Caution

You must be careful, however, when, how, and with whom you share your potential. Even as isolation is not good for personal fulfillment and the maximizing of potential, so sharing your hidden wealth in a manner that transgresses The Most High’s laws of limitation is not good. All your natural abilities, all the gifts you have cultivated, and all the knowledge you have accumulated are yours to share within the context of The Most High’s principles, plans, and purposes. The Most High created everything to fulfill its potential within the limitations of certain laws.

In other words, He specified the boundaries within which all things can perform to their maximum capabilities. For example, The Most High created you to serve only Him. The context of living in an obedient relationship with Him is the only means of ensuring your happiness and fulfillment. Therefore, The Most High commands you:

You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol.... You shall not bow down to them or worship them (Exodus 20:3-5).

His command seeks to safeguard your ideal environment because He knows that you cannot satisfy your spiritual potential if you worship or bow down to something or someone else.

In a similar manner, The Most High set a physical context within which your potential may be shared. This physical context is the relationship originally enjoyed by Adam and Eve when Eve was given to Adam to be his helpmeet. This The Most High-given requirement for sharing physical potential is made visible in His command: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28).

Neither two males nor two females can produce a baby because man’s potential is fulfilled by sharing it with a woman, and woman’s is fulfilled by sharing it with a man. For their potential to be fruitful, men and women must share their physical potential within the context of a male-female relationship that is within the bonds of marriage.

What is known today as an alternative lifestyle is truly the abuse of natural destiny and the violation of human nature because it prevents this fulfillment of purpose. Woman was created to receive, and man was created to give. Thus, their shared potentials complement each other. A man cannot be fruitful without a woman, nor can a woman be fruitful without a man. Two givers or two receivers cannot work together to produce fruit. Be careful that you share your physical potential with the right person.

Your soulical potential is fulfilled by sharing it within the context of the family. Here a child learns to give and receive love and affection. Very often psychological and emotional problems arise when love is not felt and expressed in the formative years. If a boy never feels loved by his mother, he may become confused later in life if a male starts meeting some of those needs. Then his ability to give and receive affection, affirmation, and attention seeks to be fulfilled in the wrong context.

Men can enjoy deep and lasting friendships with men, but they must be careful what they share within that relationship. Certain things are good to share; others are not. The same is true of friendships between women. The Most High intends that you will fulfill your basic soulical potential within the context of the family.

Potential Is Fulfilled When It Is Released

Potential is fulfilled only when it is given to others. You cannot enjoy or fulfill your potential if you keep it to yourself. Everything The Most High gave you, He gave for me and everyone else. He blesses you with additional gifts when you use the blessings you have already received to bless others. In other words, fruitfulness is always given to make you a blessing to others. You are blessed when you take what you have and give it away. This is true because sharing your potential both reveals hidden possibilities and releases additional gifts.

Everything The Most High gave you, He gave for me and everyone else.

A seed produces nothing if it does not surrender its potential to the soil. If it says, “I’m going to keep what I have,” its potential to produce a tree is lost. Only as the seed relinquishes its outer shell and puts down roots that permit it to receive nourishment from the soil can it release its potential to be a tree. Through self-giving, the seed is transformed and gives birth to new possibilities. Then the tree, having been blessed by the gift of the seed, begins to push out blossoms, showing forth some of its fruit. In time, it yields fruit with more seed that can continue the cycle of giving. If anything along the way chooses to withhold its potential—be it the seed, the tree, or the fruit—the cycle is broken and much potential is lost.

This same truth is evident in the music of an orchestra. The instruments’ potential to produce music cannot be fulfilled until the individual notes are released by the players. If even one player refuses to release what he possesses, the loss extends far beyond the one who withholds his contribution because the withheld potential of one affects the potential of all. Indeed, the music either remains hidden and dormant or it emerges misshapen and incomplete. All suffer loss—musicians and music—if even one person or one instrument refuses to cooperate. Only as all give of what they possess can the potential of the music be released.

Giving Exposes Potential

Treasures that are hidden and locked up benefit no one. Say, for example, that your grandmother gave you a beautiful necklace that she wore as a bride. If you keep it locked in a safe and never wear it, its beauty is wasted.

Or perhaps you have wedding gifts of beautiful china, sterling silver, and fine crystal that you have never used to serve a meal. You’re wasting the potential of those dishes. They cannot do what they are supposed to do sitting on a shelf. People bought them for you to use. Treasure is useless unless you expose it. Potential can never be attained if it has no opportunity to give. I am gonna say that one again, potential can never be attained if it has no opportunity to give.

This was the power of John F. Kennedy’s words, spoken at his inauguration to be the president of the United States: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Kennedy’s words prompt us to focus on what we can give instead of what we can get. It is through our giving that we discover what we can do and be.

This was also the wisdom shared by the apostle Paul, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Releasing what you have received benefits you and others. Holding on to a treasure forfeits the blessing inherit in the treasure, and no one profits from it. Like the seed, you must release what The Most High has stored in you for the world. You do this by releasing seeds into the soil of the lives of others.

Shema Selah what is the potential that the Most High has put inside of you, to share with the world???