Maximizing Your Potential

For something to be a sacrifice, it must be valuable and worth giving. You cannot effectively honor God if your body is too heavy or your heart is weak because you have filled your body with cholesterol-producing foods. Preserve your body by understanding and obeying the Manufacturer’s directions. You are responsible to protect your physical temple. Cultivate your body. Cultivate Your Soul Your soul consists of your mind, your will, and your emotions. What goes into your mind always influences what comes out. If your children watch disrespectful, smart-mouthed kids on TV, they will learn to talk and act the same way. In fact, they won’t even know that they are being disrespectful because their values and wisdom will have been skewed by the things they saw and read. Be careful, then, to convert your mind by filling it with godly, uplifting materials. Feed it God’s Word instead of junk novels. If you spend much time reading ivory-towered romantic fiction, you will come to have unrealistic expectations of your spouse and you will either degrade or destroy the marriage relationship through unfaithful thoughts, words, and actions. Turn on a teaching tape instead of the afternoon soaps. Take part in a small group Bible study. Use your moments of leisure to uplift rather than tear down. Likewise, cultivate your mind. Spend some time each week in serious Bible study or research a useful topic you know little about at your local library. Attend concerts and lectures, or take evening classes at a community college. The whole purpose of encyclopedias, formal education, and other sources of knowledge is not to make you smart, but to give you the opportunity to make yourself smart. Use the resources available to your mind to inspire you to activate your dreams and reach for new goals. Your mind is a powerful tool created by God for the good of mankind. It’s a pity to die with water when people are dying of thirst. Yet it happens every day as people who have the answers to the world’s problems refuse to feed and cultivate their minds so they can reach into the deep wells of their possibilities and pull out what the world needs. Look to the careful cultivation and feeding of your mind. Remember, the person who doesn’t read is no better off than the person who can’t . It’s a pity to die with water when people are dying of thirst. The cultivation of your soul also includes the discipline of your will. Discipline is training or teaching someone or something to obey a particular command or to live by a certain standard. The discipline of your will is particularly important because the will is the decision maker. If you refuse to discipline your will, you won’t be successful in fulfilling your potential because your will determines your decisions, which govern your potential.