Reaching Your Fullest Potential in Christ

 

Crowds of folks constantly flocked to Jesus Christ wherever he went. He is pure love and light, and he walked the face of this earth when humanity was at their worst. Men and women were indulging all manner of sin, and because of this, satan had a field day with disease, dysfunction, and destruction. Jesus Christ intercepted satan’s plans. He said in John 10:10(NKJV), “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” In this verse, our Lord and Master sums up the reason he came to the earth. We were doomed, on a course to death and destruction, and he came to give us life, and not just life, but a more than abundant one.

The key to having the more than abundant life that Jesus Christ came to make available is accepting it, and in order to accept it, we must accept him; for he is life itself. He tells us in John 14:6 that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one can come to the Father except through him. He shows us that life is love and walking in God’s love is life to us. We must have faith in the truth of this reality. Walking in God’s love is the way you and I express our faith.

The mindset of humanity before Christ walked the earth is still present in many of us living today. 2Corinthians 4:4(NLT) tells us, “Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.” This was true over two thousand years ago when Jesus came, and it is true today. People are blind to the ways in which they are still operating in behaviors, attitudes, and actions that go against God’s love. We don’t wake up or ‘get woke’ to how we’ve been operating in darkness until something occurs in life to shake us up, and usually, our wake-up calls are not pleasant.

For some of us, a wake-up call forges a crack in our consciousness. It is just large enough for light to get through. The truth is that we need more than a crack, our hearts need to be flooded with God’s love so we can be all He has called us to be in Christ. The Apostle Paul prayed the prayer all of us should bring before our Heavenly Father every morning. He prayed in Ephesians 1:18(NLT), “I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance.” Heavenly Father, the God of glory, wants to make us spiritually intelligent in knowing Him intimately, so that our eyes are focused on Kingdom realities instead of being consumed with what the unbelieving world is doing. When we are focused on God, we can be clear and see exactly what He is calling us to do on this earth. It is a glorious way of life, with glorious rewards not just on earth, but in the life to come. There is no end to how God rewards us—no end to His goodness and power. All of it, He worked out through His Son, and is passing on to us as we love through Him.

Most of us won’t allow the flooding of light that our hearts need. Its why God has woven these wake-up calls within the way He has designed the universe to operate. When people become so hardhearted that they allow nothing good to get into their hearts and nothing good to come out of their hearts, life stops cooperating with them. This non-cooperation shows up in various ways, and some of those ways are very alarming.

Things don’t just happen randomly. There is a reason for everything that happens. Proverbs 16:4(NLT) tells us, “The LORD has made everything for his own purposes,
even the wicked for a day of disaster.” When we step out of alignment with God’s purpose, and we can’t seem to catch a break, it’s a wake-up call that something about the way we’re operating needs to be examined. Either it’s time for another spiritual growth spirt, or we are venturing away from the path we’re destined to walk. In either case, our responsibility is to humble ourselves before God so that we can be taught and led by His Spirit.

We need to ask God what the wake-up call is all about. We must not try to blame Him for our missteps and mishaps, but to acquire an understanding about where we need to tighten our spiritual growth and maturity according to His divine purpose. Wake-up calls are never about punishment. They are about elevating our consciousness so we can learn more about loving unselfishly through Jesus Christ. God is committed to see us reach our fullest potential in Christ, and His commitment is relentless. He tells us in 1Corinthians 13:7(NLT) that, “Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”  God is love and He will never give up on the dream He has for us to let His love flood our hearts so that we can be like Christ.

Our Heavenly Father knew what He was doing when He transferred us from a thought in His mind to living, breathing replicas of His Son, Jesus Christ. He shaped and molded us in His very own image using Jesus Christ as the blueprint. He hasn’t rushed us to be love. He has taken the time to show us love and given us the choice to model our thoughts, conversations, behaviors, and actions after Him. Through Christ, God put everything on the line for us, because He knows what we’re destined to become. He knows we’ll transform into all He created us to be. So, let’s not waste our time on all the stuff that doesn’t matter. Instead, let’s embrace the highest and greatest version of ourselves and seek to fulfill our greatest potential in Christ. If we will walk by faith and stay focused on our relationship with God, He will cause all things to work together for our good.■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

“Reaching Your Fullest Potential in Christ” written for Christian Encouragement and Inspiration© 2021. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.