DARE TO BELIEVE IN YOUR POTENTIAL

Genesis chapter 1






Today we are walking in: Dare To Believe In Your Potential










Job 21:14


Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge H1847 of thy ways.




KNOWLEDGE



Today we look to the word-KNOWLEDGE- H847 da'ath--knowledge, perception, skill, discernment





The Torah testifies.....................


Genesis 2:9


And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.


Exodus 31:3


And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom,and in understanding, and in knowledge, H1847 andin all manner of workmanship,


Leviticus 4:8


Or if his sin, which he hath sinned, come to his knowledge: then he shall bring his offering, a kid of the goats, a female without blemish, for his sin which he hath sinned.




The prophets proclaim..................


Nehemiah 10:28

And the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the porters, the singers, the Nethinims, and all they that had separated themselves from the people of the lands unto the law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, every one having knowledge, and having understanding;





Isaiah 33:6


And wisdom and knowledge H1847 shall be the stability of thy times, and strength of salvation: the fear of the LORD is his treasure.





Jeremiah 3:15


And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.






The writings bear witness.............



Job 34:2


Hear my words, O ye wise men; and give ear unto me, ye that have knowledge.



Psalm 119:66


Teach me good judgment and knowledge: H1847 for I have believed thy commandments.


Proverbs 1:7


The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.








Chapter 9
Dare to Believe in Your Potential


Human potential without right purpose produces self-destruction.


What Are You Doing With Your Potential?


Humankind has accomplished many things. There are many inventors in the world. Many people do great feats and accomplish great exploits. Imagine that you are one of them. Do all you can dream. If you can think it, you can do it.


Yet many of us still live below the level of our true ability. We have settled for the standards established by the opinions of others regarding our potential. We are afraid to move beyond our dreams to action. It is more comfortable to think about all we might do instead of working to achieve what we can do. People who change the world are people who stop dreaming and wake up. They don’t just wish, they act.


I’m here to encourage you to move on with the real things of life. What have you done since your last accomplishment? What new goals have you set?


Life Is More Than Shelter, Food, and Security


Maslow, one of the greatest influences on the thought patterns of psychology in our world, theorized that man is driven by his base needs. He believed that your most immediate need becomes your controlling factor. Therefore, your first instinct is to find shelter; second, food; and third, security or protection. Then you begin to move up the ladder of becoming self-realized and self-actualized, of developing self-esteem, and all the rest of that stuff. According to this theory, human beings are driven by their base needs.


It has been my experience, though, that we should live from the perspective of what exists that we cannot see, instead of being totally caught up in the details and needs of our daily lives. We should live and think in the potential. We should always see things that have not yet been manifested. Faith lives in the potential, not in the present. We need to have faith in the future, in our potential to bring about something better.


Stop worrying. When you realize that food, drink, clothes, and shelter are not the most important things in life, you will realize that there is more—and you can make it happen. When you make the “more” of life happen, all the other basics of life fall into place, into proper perspective.


I believe that Maslow was wrong. There are people who have everything material, but they still don’t know who they are. People accumulate things with the hope that the things will make them somebody. But you don’t become somebody by accumulating things. Ask the guy at the top who can’t sleep. Ask the gal who has everything except peace and love and joy in her heart. Maslow was wrong. You must have a realistic view of your self-worth and self-esteem first. You must know who you are first.


Are You Successful?


Everybody everywhere wants to be “successful,” but only very few people succeed. Millions are driven, possessed, and preoccupied with this passion. They would sacrifice anything to be seen or accepted as “successful.”


Success in today’s world is usually defined by the superficial rewards glorified in the media: wealth, power, fame, luxury, prestige, and recognition. Yet few of us have a firm idea what it takes to be or feel successful. It is easy to presume that a young corporate executive who rises to the top management position of a major corporation and earns nearly a million dollars a year is successful, but would the young man agree? That depends largely on the sacrifices he made to get to the top, the quality of his life outside work, and perhaps most significantly, his personal reason for pursuing his particular career.


If the young man has a positive sense of direction that encompasses his whole life—not just his professional career or bankbook—and if he understands why he wants what he wants, his accomplishments may give him genuine satisfaction, making him a success in his own eyes. If, however, he does not have this sense of fulfillment or clarity of purpose, and especially if he has been struggling to live up to someone else’s definition of success—be it that of a parent, a spouse, or perhaps society in general—he is likely to reach the top of his professional ladder, but wonder why he feels so dissatisfied and burned out.


In the end, he may realize that his identity as an individual has been compromised by the forces pushing him to attain career stardom. He has become trapped by the pressure to get ahead, and his life is out of balance. There are millions like this young executive who are striving daily after a prize they despise to accomplish a goal they personally hate.


We, as a society, have confused success with fulfillment, accomplishment with satisfaction, and achievement with peace. I believe it is essential for you and for me to look beyond the wonderful things material success can buy to the heavy price it can exact. You must question why you are so driven to succeed and why you’ve made the choices and the sacrifices that have shaped your private and professional life thus far.


Can you recall the personal goals that motivated you before external success became your life’s ambition? Do you remember the origins of your assumptions about success? After you’ve traced the development of your personal definition of success, you must consider what it means to be true to yourself—and to take that next step to expose an even better you.


Few of us ever stop to develop a personal and meaningful definition of success that allows us to thrive as well as strive. Instead, we absorb a composite of largely superficial illusions from the media, parental demands, and peer pressure. In essence, success in our culture requires becoming what everyone else tells you to be. It is assumed, almost as an afterthought, that success by the world’s standards will magically include happiness, but this formula leaves little room for genuine personal fulfillment.


Most people look at those who appear to be successful and think they would be fools to change their jobs or lifestyles, even if they hate what they are doing. Not surprisingly, life dominated day after day, year after year, and one step up the ladder after another by this quest for success becomes increasingly less satisfying and more anxious. Millions of people live at this critical point, trapped between external success and internal collapse. In simple terms, success is not as simple as we once thought.


Success Defined


What is success? By now it must be obvious that I am questioning the world’s perception of success. Success has very little to do with what you accumulate, possess, or achieve. It has even less to do with other people’s opinions and their assessment of you and your accomplishments. Success can only be defined by fulfilling your potential and purpose, measured by obedience. The following statements (worth repeating) support this premise:


Purpose is the original intent for the creation of a thing. It is the reason and why for its existence. Purpose is the “assignment” that is produced by the intent of the creator or manufacturer.


Completion of the intended assignment is the fulfillment of the reason for existence. Being true to the original intent is the essence of obedience and the measure of faithfulness.


The satisfaction and pleasure of the manufacturer when the product fulfills his intended purpose is the measure of success.


Success is the fulfillment and the completion of the original intent for the creation or the production of a product.


Success is obedience to purpose.


Success is not what you have done compared to what others have done, but what you have done compared to what you were supposed to do.


These statements show that success has more to do with being than doing. To be successful is to finish the originally intended assignment according to the plan and the specifications of the creator. Fulfilling your potential’s purpose is thus the key and the foundation of success. It is the only true source of contentment and the only accurate measurement of life. Therefore, success cannot be determined by the opinions of others about your actions.


You are not successful if everyone says you are. You are not successful if you have done what others expected you to do. You are not successful if you receive commendation and recognition from your peers or the accolades of the masses. You are truly successful only if you have fulfilled your potential and have done what you were purposed to do.


Purpose is doing not a good thing, but the right thing. As “the best” is the enemy of “the good,” so the enemy of “the right thing” is “a good thing.” It is dangerous to do a good thing at the expense of the right thing.


Be careful not to confuse right with good, famous, big, easy, acceptable, or popular. Your only responsibility is to respond to your purpose for your life. Your only measure of success is to fulfill your potential for your life! Living with purpose is the difference between being busy and being effective.


Don’t let the tragedy of faithfulness to the wrong thing waste your life. Refuse to allow activity without progress to dominate your existence. Purpose protects you from doing good at the expense of doing right.


You Don’t Need Things to Enjoy Life. You Need Life to Enjoy Things.


I have met so many people who have everything except the knowledge of who they are. Life is so much more than the things you worry about. Life is peace, love, joy, patience, and gentleness. When you put these things first in your life, everything else you need will just fall into place.


Peace is so important to a fulfilled life. You don’t have to worry when you know what is coming. You don’t have to worry if you know how a particular situation is going to turn out. Relaxand commit yourself to maximize your potential. Preoccupy yourself with your assignment and purpose for your life, knowing that success has already been provided.


What’s Really Important?


When we are distracted by our drive for personal security and our search for identity, we rarely achieve our true potential. Our search for things, what we can relate to through our senses and our minds, harasses us and keeps us so busy trying to make a living that we don’t have time to live. We are so caught up trying to make it through life that we don’t have time to be in life.


Have you ever seen people who work all day, every day, and then suddenly they realize they’ve grown old and can no longer enjoy life? They have missed living because they were so busy trying to make one.


Your potential is not determined by how much money is in your bank account or what title is on your business card. Nor is it determined by what others think and expect from you. You have the power to determine the extent of your ability and to develop and experience your entire potential. Although you may not look smart or creative or agile, but if that’s what it takes to fulfill your potential—those traits are already within you somewhere.


Potential Produces Faith. Faith Is Knowing Potential Is There.


Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we don’t see. Faith deals with potential—what you yet can see, do, be, and experience. Faith says, “I can’t see it, but I believe it is there.” Faith never deals with what you have done, but with what you yet could do.
But you have to live with faith, because faith is the stuff that deals with unseen things. Faith is not some spooky experience. It’s simply knowing that what you can’t see is there.


Can you imagine waking up every day, with all your problems, knowing that whatever you see is not the real story? Can you even imagine living that way—looking not at things that can be seen, but at the things that are not seen? What we see is temporary. It’s those things we can’t see that are eternal. Living by faith requires looking at the unseen; everything you could be is in you now, waiting for you to make demands on it by faith.


Wishing Is Not Enough—Dare to Desire


Have you misread the word desire? We have expected, perhaps, that the word desire means what we are dreaming about. No. Desire is craving enough to sacrifice for. Only if we are willing to die for what we desire will we receive it.


Desire is craving enough to sacrifice for.


How often have you had a good idea and done nothing about it because you didn’t desire it badly enough? When we want something so strongly we can taste it, an urgency energizes our efforts. This is extremely important for your faith, because faith is what you are asking for but can’t yet see. A strong desire enables you to stand your ground until you see what you have believed.


There are only a few who are gutsy enough to live in this manner. How much do you really desire the goals you have set for your life?


When you ask for something in faith, it is already on the way. You can’t see it, but if you believe, it is already in process. But you must not just desire it, you must, as discussed previously, work to make it happen.


Your Desire Controls Your Direction in Life


Many people get distracted in life because they do not desire anything enough to keep on course. If you do not set a goal for your potential and say, “Look, I don’t care what anybody says. That’s what I want to become,” you might as well forget it. You must have a goal that you desire so strongly that you will go after it no matter what the expense. If you are not willing to do that, you have lost already, because it is your desire for the thing that will keep you on the road of consistency. Potential needs desire to place demands upon it.


You must have a goal you desire so strongly you will go after it no matter what the expense.


This life is full of advertisements for your attention. Life is crowded and jammed with distractions. They come from all sides, trying to shake you from your goal. If you don’t have a goal, they will provide one for you. You must know where you want to go and what you want to become. Potential needs purpose to give it direction.

Refuse to be distracted or interrupted. The power of your potential will be revealed as you sacrifice everything to attain what you desire.


Potential Fulfilled for Only a Few


Unfortunately, many will never fulfill their deepest desires. They will fall prey to false attitudes and perceptions that keep them from achieving their real potential. How disappointing.


Perhaps you are a parent who has tried and tried and tried and still your kids don’t have productive lives. You’ve tried your best and given your best, but they still have disappointed you. Many employers feel this way. They give and give and give opportunities, and the people still disappoint them. And often some of the ones who are messing up the most are the ones to whom they have given the most. Each of us feels the hurt when the people we love and have tried to help, struggle in the gutter—their lives in ruins.


I want all who read this teaching to fulfill their potential; but I know only a few will. Only a minute percentage of those who hear the message about who they are will ever become all they could be. Many people will never fulfill their purpose in life. They will not be who they were supposed to be or achieve what they were designed to do. It’s terrible to say, but that’s why I’m sharing this with you. If only I could take my desire and put it into you, I’d do it. But I can’t. Some readers may end up in the gutter because they won’t receive and practice what they’ve read. I’m sorry, but it will happen.


Whether you fail or succeed, win or lose, does not depend on anyone but you. You must be willing to unclog the well, have faith, and work to fulfill your potential in life.


Be One of the Few


Not everyone will look for the things planted within them to reach their destiny. Not everyone will choose to fulfill their potential. Indeed, the number will be few.
I wonder where you are. Are you going through the broad gate where everybody is going nowhere? Are you one of the many who aren’t going to be anything more than they are today?


Come, join the ones journeying through the narrow gate. Be one of the few. Decide you’re not going with the crowd. Separate yourself, square your shoulders, and do something. Choose to be somebody instead of nobody. Leave your footprints in the sands of history and carry none of your potential to the cemetery.


It is true that few will dare to take the challenge to live an abundant life. That’s terrible. I wish that none should perish, but it is only a wish.


Are you going to join the other guys? Are you going to be any different from the other young girls? Are you going to give in to your base nature and mess up your life getting lost so no one can ever find you? Are you going to be one of those people whose grave has to be marked to make sure everyone knows you used to live on this planet?


Or are we going to be compelled to remember you because you made your mark on history? Will you decide that you are going to build so many monuments in people’s lives that they won’t have to put a stone on your grave to remind us you lived?


Don’t join the crowd—you’ll get lost. Be different. Stick out like a sore thumb. Join the few.


The United States Marines established a recruiting standard that expresses this attitude: “We want a few good men.” They don’t want everybody or anybody. They want “the few, the proud, the Marines.”


Crowds don’t excite me. It’s those few who I see still working on it 20 years later who excite me. They are still there plugging away. It’s the few who don’t allow disappointment to disarm them. They are motivated by their failure and refuse to quit until they’re finished.


Are you a can-do person? Are you brave enough to face the challenge and take the risk to be effective? Will you dare to believe the impossible no matter what others say? I hope so. The world desperately needs people who will go for the miracles no matter what it takes. The world needs people who will believe for the potential buried within them—desiring their dreams enough to move out and act.


Only a few will find the kind of potential that allows them to live from the depths of their hidden ability. But for those who do, deep wells of possibilities will come to light.


Join the few. Release the miracles hidden in your thoughts. Dare to try again and again even after you’ve failed. Become reconnected to Yah and find out who you are and what you can do. Give your potential a chance—you can do much more than you can think or imagine. Become the beautiful, successful, joyful person you were created to be.