Maximizing Your Potential

when God demands that you should not gratify your physical desires by engaging in intercourse outside the marriage relationship, He is applying to daily life the law He established at creation and the commandment He gave at Mount Sinai. He is specifying how we should behave in a given situation. God’s demands are always based on His laws and commandments. He is not capricious, nor is He out to destroy our pleasure. He knows that we cannot fulfill our potential outside His laws , so He gives us commandments relative to those laws and He makes demands on us that apply His commandments to our situation. If we resist His demands, we bring upon ourselves the natural consequences of His laws. The law of love is a good example of this principle. God created us to be loved by Him and to love Him and others in return. Love is an innate quality of His nature and of ours. The commandments “Love each other as I have loved you” (John 15:12), and “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44b) direct our efforts to understand and apply that law of love to our lives. When we disregard this law, we bear the consequences of loneliness, alienation, and internal turmoil that naturally come to those who fail to love. We cannot choose whether or not these consequences will come to us, since they are inseparable from the law. Our only choice is whether or not we will love. Thus, we see that God’s commandment to love, like all His commandments, is given for our good. Those who obey it are spared the pain that irrevocably assails those who fail to love. God’s commandments are given for our good. The effects of God’s laws cannot be avoided. They are constant and unchangeable, even as He is. Yet, you control the impact of God’s laws on your life because the decision to obey or disobey God’s commandments and demands is wholly yours. In this manner, you control your destiny. Read the Fine Print Nothing can function at its maximum performance if it violates God’s laws or the laws laid down by the manufacturer. These laws set the boundaries or limitations within which all things must operate. There is no recourse. The preestablished consequences always follow the failure to fulfill the law’s obligations. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Books and television shows may tell us that we are free to sleep around, but they don’t caution us about the guilt and the misery that come from such actions. Pro-choice groups may persuade us that we are free to abort our babies, but they do not warn us of the severe depression and never-ending sense of loss that plague many women following an abortion. Cigarette ads may portray healthy, laughing men and