Reaching Our Potential
My regular walk takes me through a city park with softball diamonds on one side and an empty grassland on the other. As I entered the park this morning, I immediately noticed that something had changed. Yesterday, I barely noticed the empty grassland. It’s just open space that’s typical of Texas. But overnight, the entire field had blossomed with beautiful yellow flowers. I was surprised at the unexpected metamorphosis. I immediately thought about Jesus instructing His apostles not to worry about what they would eat or wear, because if God clothes the lilies of the field, how much more will He clothe you. That’s an apt encouragement in these uncertain times. But the thing I focused on was “potential.” Potential is the difference between what something is, and what it may become.
Yesterday, the field was a barren wasteland. I had no idea that it would become a beautiful floral landscape today. We are all in a state of “becoming.” For those of us who have been saved, we are a new creation. Now we have the potential to grow in Christ, to know Him, and serve Him increasingly each day. We should not be satisfied with where we are on our spiritual walk. We are God’s creatures, and He is molding us and shaping us into what He wants us to become. He wants us to realize our full potential. Right now, we may only contain the seeds of what God may bring to full bloom tomorrow through His grace and our cooperation with the Holy Spirit. What makes us uncomfortable today may be in our wheelhouse tomorrow if we are willing to be bold and trust God.
When I first started seminary, I would intentionally come to this one class a minute late every time, because that professor called on students to pray before class, and I didn’t want to pray out loud in front of others! God has done a work in me, and in all of us who want to be all that God wants us to be. Jesus said in John 12:24:“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” We have to die to ourselves to bear fruit. We have to die to our enslavement to fear and comfort to reach our potential in Christ.
God has more for us to do and more for us to become. Like the barren field, we have the potential to be more than we are, to grow in the knowledge of the Lord, to do the works that God prepared in advance for us to do. The field just sits there and waits to bloom in season. We need to be like Paul, who said that no matter what lay behind, he always pressed forward toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. What can we do today that will help us realize our potential tomorrow?
