(catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day) Many in this season, are having their beliefs challenged. So today I want us to challenge our belief systems, because that’s the path to reaching our potential….
Our potential is made up of our power, strengths, talents, resources and capabilities. And there is a desire within most of us to discover that and then commit ourselves to its fulfillment no matter what others may think or do or what the conditions around us may be.
Transformation is defined by Webster as “to change in the very nature of composition or structure.” Transition is the change of circumstances, position or location and doesn’t guarantee transformation. Transformation is the inner changes which open up our potential in the midst of all of our transitions. Individuals and churches must face transitions all the time. We lose those whom we love. We relocate, we change jobs, our bodies experience change. Our lives changes in many ways. Only we determine how we respond to these transitions?
How we handle transitions can determine whether we are beingtransformed or deformed…
Your Purpose plus your Potential equals your Capacity. How much is in you? How much are you utilizing, how much is untapped?
Discover your purpose and mission in life, and you will find the energy and commitment to propel yourself beyond and through the obstacles. But if you permit yourself to be consumed by life's emergencies and superficial urgencies, without establishing priorities, it will divide your energy and your focus, and you will never achieve your purpose. Our DNA, our gifts, abilities, opportunities, and resources are God’s gift to us, what we do with them, is our gift back to God! Our true expression of that gratitude is in using what He has given us to benefit and minister to others and make a lasting impact on our world.
Your time, resources and energy are too valuable, to allow everything and everyone else to control it but yourself. We must give ourselves permission to let go—and release the people and things that manipulate our minds, hearts, and souls with distracting thoughts, unprofitable behaviors, and demands which don’t align with your mission.
One key to maximizing your potential is to identify all the situations and people that restrict, limit and block that potential.I’m not saying just dump them, but put them in order of priority…
Remember, you will never change anything that you are willing to keep on tolerating, focusing on and giving power to. Three students at seminary, noticed a patch of ground that they decided to plant a garden on. They went to the President of the college and asked him for permission. He told them the ground was hard and dry and nothing would grow on it, but they were welcome to have a try… They borrowed shovels, rakes and pick axes from the care taker and began. Once they broke through the hard surface, they found rich black dirt and began. They were amazed at the tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and lettuce which the ground produced. With care, hard work, good seed and the right tools, they helped the ground reach it’s potential. The president judged by the hard outer surface, but the students got beyond appearances and discovered it’s true value. It’s amazing the difference it makes when you are doing what you’re supposed to be doing… and when You’re on mission…
But What do you do, when you know to do a thing, but your heart isn’t in it… THE ANSWER…. You train your heart. There are two categories of *……people in the world… Those who follow their heart and those who lead their heart. Either one can lead to trouble unless they have the right center of reference and healthy priorities.
Psalm 51:10 “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” The heart, represents what is at your center, the core of your being, that which occupies the bedrock of your motivations and impulses.
Proverbs 4:23 “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow all the issues of your life.”
Luke 6:45 “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for what you have filled your heart with, will be expressed in your life”.
William Barclay said, “There are two great days in a person’s life—the day we are born and the day we discover why.” ~
Developing your potential involves a look into your own soul.
The soul consists of our mind, our will and our emotions. All three are waiting to be trained and molded and shaped. What you let into your mind always comes out in how you live your life. Our mind is a powerful tool God has given us to achieve our missionand stretch ourselves to reach our dreams and goals.. Someone recently said, ‘Don’t go anywhere without a book”…. That’s about the Input you choose, which results in the output you have chosen! We must train our brain to if we’re going to reign in life or we will be ruled over and put in bondage.
The second area of searching your soul, includes disciplining your will and submitting it to God. Discipline is about boundaries.It’s why we have guard rails on highways. Your will determines your decisions, which govern your potential and allows you to persevere through hardships and adversity, and reach your dreamwithout becoming road kill on the highway of life.
Jesus said to his father in Mark 14: 32-36, "Nevertheless, Your will not mine be done." Self-discipline is the highest expression of self-management, which is reflected in a well balanced, approach to lifeand knowing what helps your purpose and what does not.
The third area of searching your soul, requires that you learn to control your emotions. Your emotions can cost you your perspective. If you go into the hospital, the first thing they do is to stabilize you. Hydration, oxygen, heart monitor, and your history that tells them how you got there. In the same way our emotional self, can be stabilized through meditation on the word, surrender, repentance, and yielding to God’s will.
Proverbs 16: 32 tells us that “he who is slow to anger is better than the mighty and he who rules his spirit is greater than he who takes a city”.
Self- discipline is all about God being able to trust us, to manage more and more of His family business in the earth.
In his book 'Maximizing Your Potential,' Dr. Myles Munroe reveals six keys to releasing your potential. (He’s in heaven now…he has reached his potential) I trust these concepts will encourage all of us to greater achievement in 2020. I like the line on the bottom “The key to dying empty”
1. Know, and be confident in your source. God is our creator and he knows us better than anyone else. Develop a close, intimate relationship with your maker as your source. Wayne Dresky the hockey star, says, “don’t just chase the puck, figure out where it’s going and be there”…. That’s what an intimate relationship with the Lord will do… He knows where it’s all going and He’s there!
John 15: 4 says, "Apart from me you can do nothing."
We must always remember to perform for an audience of one, the lord is our creator, our lover and biggest fan. What if our greatest goal was to seek His pleasure? If God is for me what can stand against me….
2. Learn to function by looking beyond what you now see, and seewhat is still possible.
Proverbs 23:7. “As a man thinks, in his heart, so is he" This is a vital key to releasing your potential. We are what we are today because of what we believed about ourselves yesterday. And we will be tomorrow what we believe about ourselves today. I read of a woman, about 30 years old, married with two children. She had grown up in a home where she was constantly criticized and often misjudged by her parents. As a result, she developed deep feelings of inferiority and low self-esteem. She was negative and fearful, and had no confidence at all. She was shy and confused and did not consider herself to be particularly valuable or worthwhile. She felt that she was not really capable at anything. Life was just one obligation after another, with very little enjoyment or fulfillment.
One day, she woke up, in the hospital, with a severe concussion and complete memory loss after a car had gone through a red light and smashed into her as she was driving to the store. She could still speak, but she had no recollection of any part of her past life. She was suffering from total amnesia.
Determined to understand what had happened to her, she began reading medical textbooks and studying in the specialized area of amnesia and memory loss. She met and spoke with specialists in the field. During this period, something amazing happened. She became a new person completely. She became a genuinely positive, confident, outgoing woman, highly articulate, well informed, and very much in demand as a speaker and an authority on memory loss, with an important contribution to make.
When all memory of her negative childhood had been wiped out. Her feelings of inferiority were wiped out as well. She had transitioned into transformation. When she changed her thinking, she changed her life. 3. Understand your purpose. You must discover your specific reason for existence and the assignment God has given you to fulfill. If you can’t see it, you will never be able to achieve it! This means that no matter how much our potential is, by attaching ourselves to the wrong things, we take up vital time and space and buy into the illusion that life is only one limitation after another. If you can see it in your spirit, you can have it!
4. Be Confident in Your Calling. If you have accepted Christ, you have been transformed from a lump of coal to a diamond. Don’t sell yourself cheap! God has given us connections abilities and resources to use for His glory. He has already seen us successful, at what He has place us here to do… You don’t have promises, you are a promise. The prophet made an incredible statement in… Jeremiah 1:4 Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, v5 Before I formed you in the belly I knew you, and before you came forth out of the womb I set you apart for my purposes, and I ordained you a prophet unto the nations. v6 Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am as a child. v7 But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for you shall go to all that I shall send you, and whatsoever I command you, you shalt speak and do. Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with you, I will deliver you, saysthe LORD.
5. Maintain the right environment. Philippians 4:8 ‘Whatsoever things are of good report, If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” Create and sustain a God-centered, “God will & God can” environment. Fill your mind with positive input which is in harmony with your dreams and goals. Watch what you listen to, guard what you view on television and in magazines. Be careful what you let in your spirit. We’re not fighting an enemy out there somewhere, it’s the enemy within, that we must overcome….When Chris was a little guy, he used to jump up and stand in front of the screen if anything came on the TV that wasn’t wholesome or Godly…He was protecting the environment!
6. Dreams must be combined with committed effort….Dreams, without the willingness to work, simply exposes that your values are out of whack. To love your work is the secret to personal progress, productivity and fulfillment, because we will always find what we’re looking for no matter where we go or what we do.
The only real limits on our lives in this year ahead, are the limits we ourselves put upon ourselves. If we are to change our performance and our outcome, in any area of our lives, we have to change our self-concept and our core beliefs about ourselves—
We may not have the power to choose where we come from, but we can choose where we go from here. Christianity is the most powerful belief system on earth. It is based on the Word of God which tells us we are formed in the image and likeness of God. It tells us that we were created with dominion and authority. We are imbedded with incredible abilities and talents. We are even told that we are unique above the angels of God. We are encouraged to believe that we can do all things through Christ who indwells us and who has given us The Holy Spirit to be our daily guide and counselor. Our God is a “can do” God, who has never been defeated, and who has never failed or been mistaken!.
Many of our self- limiting beliefs have no facts at all to back them up, (our nose is not going to grow, and we are vital, worthy and powerful and we can make a difference) self-limiting beliefs come from erroneous conclusions which we have allowed others or our circumstances to make about ourselves and those we deal with.
Satan has tricked us by weaving a web of self-deception and self defeat. You probably won’t ever be willing to slay the dragons that you have become good friends with! The starting point of unlocking our potential, and accomplishing more than we ever have before, is for us to challenge our self-limiting beliefs. We begin this process of freeing ourselves by declaring that they are completely untrue, or at best, they are a mixture of truth and error.We make up our minds to be honest and transparent with ourselves. We choose to be honest with the person in the mirror!
A rabbit and a snake were both injured in a California earthquake. The impact caused both to become blind and to lose their memories. In an attempt to find out who they each were, they decided to use the touch test. First, the snake felt the rabbit. "Well, you are fuzzy and warm. You have a round cottony tail and two long ears." "Hooray!" exclaimed the rabbit, "I must be a bunny." Next the blind rabbit began to touch the snake. He was thoughtful for a moment. "Well--you are scaly, and cold and you have fangs and a forked tongue." The snake cried out, "Oh no! I must be a politician." Well, let’s imagine for the moment that we have no limitations on our abilities at all. Imagine that we could be, or do, or have anything we really wanted in life. Imagine that our potential is unlimited in every way. This is what happened with the woman who acquired amnesia… free of all her self-limiting beliefs, she could be the calm, confident, unafraid person who could be comfortable in the transitions of her life.
Imagine that you could set and achieve any goal you put your mind to. The way we think, is in reality, how we will live our life.
OUR SELF-CONCEPT HAS THREE PARTS like a pie divided into three slices. They are all connected to one another. All three elements together make up your personality. They determine what you think, feel, and do, and everything that flows out of you.…
Your self-ideal is the first part of your self-concept. Your self-ideal is made up of all of your hopes, dreams, your vision for life, and your ideal self. Your self-ideal is composed of the virtues, values, and qualities that you most admire in yourself and which you borrow from others. Your self-ideal is the person you would most like to become, if you could be the perfect you in every way.
These ideals guide and shape your behavior and actions. Great men and women, leaders, and people of lasting impact, are very clear about their values, their visions, and their ideals. They know who they are and don’t compromise on those standards. In everything they do, this becomes their mission statement for theirlife. During his sermon, the preacher said: "There's no such thing as a perfect person. Anybody present who has ever known a perfect person, please stand up."…..Nobody stood up. But after a pause…
Finally, one little Italian woman stood up. And very surprised, the pastor asked… "Did you really ever know an absolutely perfect person?"
"Well, Sir, I didn't know her personally, replied the little woman," But I have heard a great deal about her, she was my husband's first wife!"
The second part of your self-concept is your self-image. This is the way you see yourself and think about yourself. It is often called your “inner mirror.” It is where you look internally to see how you should behave in a particular situation. Because of the power of your self-image, you always perform on the outside consistent with the picture you have of yourself on the inside. Every improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your mental pictures. Your internal images influence your behavior, your attitudes….even the way other people respond to you.
The third part of your self-concept is your self-esteem. This is the most important factor in determining how you think, feel, and behave. Your level of self-esteem largely determines much of what happens to you in life. Your self-esteem is best defined as how much you like yourself. The more you like yourself, the better you perform at anything you attempt.
Your level of self-esteem is largely determined by how closely your self-image— or your current performance and behavior—matches your self-ideal—which is the picture of your very best self.Whenever there is a wide separation between the person you are atthe moment and the ideal person you want to be, Your self-esteem causes you to become frustrated, disappointed and on yourself.
Self doubt comes in because your self-ideal keeps reminding you that you are never enough…Never good enough, never capable enough, never spiritual enough, and you will always fall just short of the mark.
Transformation is not about what happens to us in life, It is about how we interpret what happens to us. When our inner core is healthy, we will have a healthy response to what is going on around us. We are freed up, to see life as the wonderful thing, full of potential that it really is!
I would like everyone to tell someone the following… (go ahead…find one person, and get ready to repeat after me…)
“You are a thoroughly redeemed and transformed person. You are honest, decent, truthful, and hardworking. You treat other people with courtesy, respect, and warmth. You are dedicated to your family, friends, and your work. You are strong, confident, and responsible. You are knowledgeable, intelligent, and experienced. You are important not only to the people closest to you, but to your community. You were born for a special reason, and a special season. you have a destiny to fulfill. You are created by God for every good work”.
Dr. Phil, was conducting a group therapy session with four young mothers. "You all have obsessions," he stated.
To the first mother, Mary, he said, "You are obsessed with eating. You've even named your daughter Candy." He turned to the second Mom, "Lucy and said “Your obsession is with money. You even named your child Penny." He turned to the third Mom, Joyce: "Your obsession is alcohol. This too shows itself in your child's name, which is Brandy.
At this point, the fourth mother, Susan, got up and said, forget this bunk, I’m getting my daughter, Fanny, and I’m out of here!!! Their children were a reflection of their “inner mirror.”
In the book “ In His Steps”, Charles M. Sheldon tells of an entire town that agreed, prior to every act or decision, to ask the question, “What would Jesus do?” and then to behave accordingly.
The eventual outcome for the townspeople was that the problems that had divided them and seemed unsolvable were soon solved and the town became united, peaceful, and prosperous.
One of the major causes of negative, toxic emotions, is the blamegame. Blame, in turn creates a vicious cycle, in the roller coaster ride between anger and guilt. The quickest way to stop the blame cycle, is for someone to be the champion and say “I am responsible for my own actions, not someone or something else”!
A father with three boys, asked them who had broken the living room lamp… they all blamed each other, so he sent them all to bed without supper, no television or game boy. The next morning he told his wife that he hadpunished the guilty son. She said, you mean he finally admitted it… No, said the dad, I just looked for the one the other two had beaten up! (Don’t let the devil keep beating you up!)
James 1:2 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various temptations; v3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith works patience. v4 So, let patience have her perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, wanting in nothing.
Healthy self-esteem always finds a way, the Loser always finds anexcuse… Healthy self-esteem says, Let me help you do it, The Loser says, that’s not my job. Healthy self-esteem sees an answer for every problem, the Loser sees a problem for every answer.Healthy self-esteem sees a green near every sand trap, the Loser sees two or three sand traps near every green. Healthy self-esteem says, It may be difficult but it’s not impossible, the Loser says, It may be possible but it’s too difficult…
"So, Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Psalms 34:4-9 “I sought the LORD, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. They looked unto Him and they were not ashamed. The LORD heard them, and saved them out of all their troubles. The angel of the LORD encamps round about them that fear Him, and delivers them. O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusts in Him. O fear the LORD, all his saints: for there is no want to them that fear Him”.
Let’s get free, to reach our God given Potential in 2020!
Pledge to Christ….
I pledge that with God’s help, I will be so strong that nothing can disturb my peace of mind. I will talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person I meet. I will make all my friends feel that there is something special in them. I will look at the sunny side of everything because faith is stronger than feelings.
I will think of the best, work for the best, and expect only the best. I will be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as I am about my own. I will forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
I will wear a cheerful countenance and give everyone I meet a smile.
I will give so much time to the improvement of myself that I have no time to criticize, envy or judge others. I will be too strong for fear, and too happy to allow trouble to control me. In Jesus Name!
