Growing into Our Full Potential

What if we truly begin living like our chains are broken? With the assurance of forgiveness? With new eyes to see? With a renewed commitment to prayer and God’s Word? What if we have seen God answer so many prayers that we'll never stop praying again? What if reading through Psalms has become one of the sweetest parts of each day?

Redeemed people begin living every day better than before, not because we have new strategies or new plans, but because we’re being changed by God. Because we’ve learned to trust His grace.

We long to be transformed.We long for His presence.We long to be like Him.We long to bring Him glory.

I’ve been learning not to fear searching for what my soul wants and desires. If I seek the presence of God, stay in the presence of God, and return to the presence of God, all that concerns me is being redeemed—including my wants.

God isn’t interested in a bunch of us learning to manage our struggles in a more godly way. He wants us to understand we’ve been cured! We are free. The victory is certain. Our future is secure. Thankfully, God in His grace is not impatient with our humanity. Depending on how you count it, the Old Testament says at least 196 times that the steadfast love of the Lord never ends. Why does God use repetition in the Bible? To emphasize His point! He’s not mad that we’re slow runners sometimes. The steadfast love of the Lord never ends.

You and I can be redeemed, yet not steadily growing in all God has called us to become. As a matter of fact, we can lose sight of the goal. Lose our sense of awareness. Forget to remember that we need to keep growing in the Lord!

We all still need to be changed. Our focus will continually need readjusting. We have new potential just waiting to be set free, but new potential requires continued spiritual growth. We realize new potential as we push deeper into our commitment to grow in godliness. The Bible warns about one of the ways it’s easy to become sidetracked.

“The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe”

(Proverbs 29:25)

They say whatever you think you need the most is the thing that eventually controls you. Many Christians are kept from their new potential in Christ because the fear of man controls our hearts. And we can stir that thing around with enough spiritual words to almost make our choices seem right.

Like a fatal flaw, the fear of man is sneaky, weaving itself through our humanity. The ways we allow others to control and guide our lives can be huge or subtle, but every time we worry more about pleasing man more than pleasing God, we are sacrificing the potential growth, potential fruit, and potential freedom God wants to bring to our lives.

The Bible has a different answer. It says the fear of the Lord is the way to deal with our fear of man, trusting in God above everything else.

“The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man”

(Ecclesiastes 12:13)

To fear the Lord means putting God in His rightful place in our lives. That means God must become bigger than people.

The redeemed are learning to live what we have become in Christ. We are new people with a new life, new hope, and new potential. We learn to grow into what we can be: a new creation with brand new potential. Because the steadfast love of the Lord never ends, we can be changed. We will be changed.