There is a difference between potential in God and potential in man. My potential changed when I got saved and surrendered my life to the lordship of Christ. Natural barriers like gender, where I grew up, my educational background, and the color of my skin are now subject to the mightiness of God, not just what I can accomplish by the grit of my teeth. However, we often evaluate our potential in the context of our own innate abilities rather than the righteous, God-given enablement we obtain through our relationship with God.  When we elevate our natural proclivities, we sell ourselves short.  We give into man’s version of greatness, which is always based on performance. We weaken our hope in God’s goodness towards us by disqualifying ourselves from it.

If you want to be grow in your awareness of your God-given potential, here are a few places to evaluate:

1. Evaluate your work in comparison to the capacity God has given to you, not in comparison to those around you. It is possible you may seem better than most, have gone farther than most men or women in their field, but are still living under the value and potential God had granted for you. One of the worst things we can do to the Lord is not use everything He put in our tool box out of loyalty to our present environment or out of disregard to our growth possibilities. We always have to look at our capacity according to God’s expectation of us and not our own.

2. Evaluate your motivations.  Why do you want to do more, go farther, and see bigger?  Sometimes it is our own unrighteous desires to prove to others that we are able to do it.  We look for ways to “show up” others by using our God capacity for man-made victory.  When we evaluate our motivations, we conquer the competitor in us through submission.  Motivators are powerful and they sometimes propel you to do good things for the wrong reasons.  I have known many great leaders who lead incredible businesses or churches but their hearts are so competitive that everything revolves around “being first, most innovative, and the best pioneer”.  Those achievements may be satisfying but they often come at the expense of their health, home, spouse, or children. Get your motivations in the right place.  Matthew 5 tells us that only the pure in heart see God.  Take an inward inventory to examine if your heart is pure and identify what is truly motivating you.

3. Evaluate your view of God in YOU.  Sometimes we do not grow in our potential in God because we misjudge God in our lives.  We see Him as distant and unengaged in our daily decision-making, not realizing that God is always present and just waiting on us to engage with Him.  When we evaluate God in our lives, we start to realize that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways.  Soon we start to see what possibilities lay in front of us.  Peter’s ability to see God as the Son of the Living God in Matthew 16 set the stage for “bigness” to grow in Peter.  Yes, it was still a journey for him as it is for you and me but nonetheless, Peter changed his views that day.  He saw through a different set of eyes-his spiritual eyes! Those pivotal changes in our sight help us to see God as limitless. We see ourselves empowered by Him.  How many times did God tell someone in scripture “I am with you…?” He is present. 

His possibility over your life is present.  When He gets bigger in you- you get better and bigger too!  Possibility in God is always hiding inside our ability to see God BIGGER!