Maximizing Your Potential

Chapter Four

Guard and Protect Your Potential You were created to perform for an audience of one, the Lord Jesus Christ! The boy sighed with satisfaction as the last of the four towers stood firm and tall. Now all he had to do to finish the sand castle was to draw the design on the top of the walls. As he worked, he watched the approaching waves. Before long they would be up to the castle. The surf had been far down on the sand when he started building four hours before, but he had known that the time would come when the waves would approach where he worked. Hence, he had built a large moat with an opening toward the sea to help the water stay in the moat instead of coming up over the entire castle. He hoped the moat would protect his castle for a few minutes before the waves completely destroyed it. As he finished the last of the walls, the boy also kept an eye on his younger sister. Twice she had come to “help him.” The first time she had smashed an entire section of the wall with her shovel before he could stop her. The last time he had been on guard and had seen her coming. Thus, he had protected the castle from major destruction by catching her hand. Now he was especially guarding against her attack because he knew that the time he had been looking forward to the whole time he had built the castle would soon be here. Water would soon fill the moat. Because he planned to play with his boats in the moat of the castle, the boy hoped the moat was wide and deep enough to prevent the first waves from destroying his morning’s work. The Two Stages of Defense The boy building the sand castle was wise. He recognized the approaching waves and the misguided help of his sister as enemies of his goal to build a castle and to play with his boats in its moat, and he defended against them. The defense of something occurs in two stages. The boy’s first step was to guard his castle by building a wide, deep moat that would keep the first waves from sweeping over it and by keeping a watchful eye on both the waves and his