What is your potential?
We would all love to know our potential. Wouldn’t a look into our future and see who we get to be if we play our cards right? We could even argue with God that it may boost our incentive to get our act together. Although, this would play right into a performance based relationship with God. Our Christianity would really be about us instead of God. We would be good at being good so we could be the best. Fortunately, that’s not Christianity works.
Seeking our potential is the wrong question. Christianity is not about being good, it’s about being in relationship with God. We recognize that God is worth our efforts to connect with Him because He is of ultimate value and there is no one greater than Him. Jesus told the story about a man who found a treasure in a field and went and sold all that he had so he could buy the field. The field is God. We also recognize that we can’t connect with God because of our sin and humbly ask for His forgiveness. Last we recognize our need for Him in our daily lives. We give Him full access into our thinking and behavior. If we are being honest we do more than ask, we beg. And so we invite God into our lives, to live and abide and help us grow. We invest into drawing closer to God and allowing Him to point out the thought patterns and behavior that keeps us from being even closer to Him. This entire process that occurs our entire life.
This is the central interest of God. He is heavily invested into you being with Him. The more that you are with Him, the more that He perfects our character. This upgraded character is what upgrades our potential. As we become more responsible to our relationship with God, the more that we are responsive to humbly accept the transformation in our lives to look more like Jesus, God will trust us with opportunities to do His will. John 15, one of my favorite chapters, presents Jesus famously teaching His disciples to abide in Him. Our connection to God is so important, Jesus says we will either thrive with it or die without it. It’s interesting that there is no middle ground. God wants to be connected to you. Jesus says that connection is so important that if we are connected the byproduct is lasting fruit or growth. This abiding relationship is what drives our potential.