Making The Most Of Your Potentials

There is no gainsaying the fact that we all want to be successful in life, in our careers, marriages, businesses and in all other spheres of our lives! I don’t think there is anybody who is comfortably allergic to success, and if there is, I wouldn’t want to touch them with a ten meter pole!

However, no matter how much we strive to succeed; no matter how we try to satisfy that part of us that always craves for success in all that we do in life, we can hardly accomplish much if we don’t make the most of our God given potentials - that capacity to develop, to succeed or to become something positive!

A time comes when we look ourselves in the face and ask that all important question, “Do we really have potentials?” Yes, we do! We all have those innate potentials! God himself imbued them as a gift in each and every one of us; but what comes afterwards is a result of how we effectively make the most of such potentials. And doing so has nothing to do with working against other people but it all begins with being satisfied with ourselves, doing away with the need to compare ourselves with others, being aware of our own progress and setting our own standards.

Who are you and what value do you place on who you are? People are wont to respect and work better with those they perceive to be responsible and dependable.

2 Peter 1:1, begins thus, “Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ”; James 1:1, says “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” and Jude 1:1 states, “Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called”.

The fact that these men all knew who they were, had an enormous value placed on that which they were, endeared them to people of their generation and beyond. They worked with others but not against them and that brought their potentials to the true light.

Who are you and what value do you place on who you are?

Since it’s not hard to imagine the reaction of people if some others introduce themselves in a gathering and goes further to say that they are servants of a well-known fraudster, members of a terrorist organization, kidnappers or armed robbers, I believe that it will not also be hard to have an idea of the kind of potentials that need to be maximized!

There is a plethora of professionals who help people to get the most out of their potentials but then, no matter the learning techniques, management styles, mental skill development and self motivation methods you subject yourself to, little or nothing will be achieved if you don’t first of all acknowledge who you are and what you do!

It is only then that you can have the confidence to make critical decisions, accept your mistakes, stay focused and even trust your own judgments. And with that come self-esteem and the ability to look for positive potentials in yourself and others.

Proverbs 18:16 says that a man’s gifts maketh room for him and bringeth him before great men! Allow your gifts and potentials to bring you before great men!

What Love Is

In our limitations as humans, love has had varied meanings or holds diverse definitions for different people and as such, what a loved one may offer us as love may not quite feel like what we know as love. But how could this greatest gift and luxury ever given to man hold as diverse meanings to him as we see today.

Love is love and has neither degrees nor shades. If it’s not love, then it’s not love. It is believed that God is love and since he created man in his own image and likeness, man therefore is, essentially love. He desires to be loved and cannot function properly without love. Even those that don’t believe in it do so out of fear of a previous experience or one that is witnessed

In our quest to get the purest of the essence of love and make it different from that which we already know, we fashion out those soothing words we often hear such as “unconditional love”, “perfect love”, “true love”, “real love”. All, in an attempt to define that special feeling that we yearn and always search desperately for!

We are however, our own obstacles to understanding love because any time we think about love, what first comes to mind is how that man is going to take care of me or how that girl is going to submit to me in bed. In all the fancy names we call love, our thoughts are always in the direction of what to get out of a relationship, and conveniently forget that love contends the soul and makes it ready to give instead of seeking to be given. To be in love is to place ones personal needs and wants after that of the beloved one without complaining and without expecting any remunerations and to be fully involved in the fulfillment of the self interest of the loved one.

The best person to write a manual for a gadget is the maker of such a gadget and since God is love, we should look up to Him for the meaning of love. Until we look up to our maker for a clear understanding of what love is, we will desperately continue to seek that which we vaguely understand from each individuals experience.

Love your neighbour even as Christ loved his church. He died for his church. Has this any place in your definition of love?

In the long and winding journey of life, when infatuation, beauty, sex, wealth and other such details that influence our definitions of love slowly vapourize and it dawns on us that we do not have that commitment and understanding that only love can give in a relationship, we withdraw into our shells and lick our wounds of heartbreaks and then, try to convince ourselves that we don’t believe in love. It is only in love and after love has grown in our hearts that we see and experience physical attraction, desire for marriage partners and friendship that can boast of commitment and understanding.

And God did say what love is and it goes thus

If i speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don’t have love, i have become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

If i have the gift of prophesy and know all the mysteries and knowledge; and if i have faith, so as to move mountains but don’t have love, i am nothing.

If i dole out all my goods to feed the poor and if i give my body to be burned but don’t have love, it profits me nothing

Love is kind and is patient

Love doesn’t envy

Love doesn’t brag

Love is not proud

Love doesn’t behave itself inappropriately

Love doesn’t seek its own way and is not provoked

Love takes no account of evil and doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness

It rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things

Love hopes all things, endures all things

Love never fails

That is what love is.