Articles
Fulfilling Our Potential for God
The history of the Bible is an account of God building great things with inferior tools. That is, so many of His achievements were worked through fallible, sinful and weak human beings. As Paul noted, such success through “earthen vessels” highlights the power of God (2 Cor 4:7).
While it is true that God accomplished His will through rebels, idolaters and others who were unconscious that their lives were being used by Him, this use does not make the instrument acceptable to Him. Each of us must willingly offer ourselves to God if a relationship is to be forged and we are to reach our fullest potential for Him.
There is both a challenge and a comfort in this. The challenge is to develop our spiritual capabilities, and the comfort is the understanding that our success doesn’t depend on us alone. Paul was clearly overwhelmed by his apostolic work, but he achieved great things by depending on God rather than himself: “To the one we are the aroma of death to death, and to the other the aroma of life to life. And who is sufficient for these things? … Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God” (2 Cor 2:16; 3:5).
Paul knew he was a small cog in a complex piece of divine machinery, and he knew that God’s purposes would be realized: “Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ” (2 Cor 2:14). But Paul traveled, taught, debated, served poor brethren, wrote epistles, exercised self-control, encouraged younger preachers, etc. in an effort to do all that was within his power to magnify the name of Christ.
Which brings us to our own level of commitment. Is yours as strong and vibrant as it needs to be? If not, what is missing? Are you as intent on developing your latent spiritual potential as you are, say, on expanding your job skills and increasing your vocational “marketability”? If not, what has compromised your spiritual ambition?
Perhaps we need to accept the responsibility that some things in this world cannot be done by others. God needs me to respond in a given situation since no other Christian may be present. I must be ready; I must be willing; I must be courageous; I must make myself available to Him and let Him work through me. Have you given Him full use of your life?
