Give Shape to Your Potential

A Leader in the Making: Essentials to Being a Leader After God's Own Heart
by Joyce Meyer

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Noah Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language defines potential as “existing in possibility, not in act.”

Potential cannot manifest without form. Like concrete, it must have something to be poured into, something to give it shape and make it useful. What is the form into which potential is poured? Decisions. To develop potential properly we must have a plan and pray over that plan, we must have a purpose and we must be doing something.

I believe that many people are unhappy because they aren't doing anything to develop their potential. In fact, many of them never develop their potential because they don't do anything except complain that they're not doing anything!

If you want to see your potential developed to its fullness, don't wait until everything is perfect. Do something now. Start laying your hand to whatever is in front of you. You cannot start at the finish line. You must start at the starting block like everybody else.

Many people want to start at A, blink their eyes twice and be at Z. It doesn't work that way.

Give your potential some form. Do something with it. You will never find what you are capable of doing if you never try anything. Don't be so afraid of failing that you never take a chance. Don't stay in the safety zone doing nothing, thinking that as long as you do nothing you are safe. You may be safe, but you will never succeed at developing your full potential or feeling fulfilled in what you are doing. Step out into what you feel God is leading you to do, and you will soon discover what you can and cannot do.

So many people are frustrated about not knowing what their gifts are or what God has called them to do with their life. All you have to do to find out what your call is, is to start doing a few things related to an area in which you are interested. God is not going to make you spend your whole life doing something you hate. Although I have children and grandchildren whom I love and enjoy very much, I have also-discovered that my gift and calling is not working with small children. But there are people who love to do that. My daughter Sandra is one of them.

There is someone who is anointed for everything that needs to be done. The smart leader knows what he can do and what he cannot do and surrounds himself with people who do well what he cannot do at all.

DEVELOP YOUR SEED

I believe God puts seeds in us. Even Jesus is referred to in the Bible as a Seed. We often talk about all the rights, privileges and victories that are ours in Christ, along with all the other blessings like peace, righteousness and joy. I believe all of those things come into our spirit as a seed when we receive Jesus as our Savior. (If you have never done that, and you would like to, there is a prayer you can pray at the end of this book.)

One reason some people never have manifested in their lives what the Bible tells us we can have is that they never develop their seed. It never gets out of the seed stage because it just sits in them; they don't do anything with it.

I have experienced a lot of victory in my life. I come from an abusive background where I endured many years of sexual, verbal and mental abuse, failed relationships, hurts and emotional pain before I married my husband, Dave. I was quite a mess when I got into a serious relationship with the Lord. I can say that what I read in the Bible has worked in my life. But I can also say that it had to be developed. None of it fell on me like ripe fruit from a tree. I had to take potential and turn it into reality - by developing it.

Copyright © 2001 by Joyce Meyer

About the Author

JOYCE MEYER has been teaching the Word of God since 1976 and in full-time ministry since 1980. She is the bestselling author of more than fifty inspirational books, including How to Hear from God, Knowing God Intimately, and Battlefield of the Mind. She has also released thousands of teaching cassettes and a complete video library. Joyce's Enjoying Everyday Life radio and television programs are broadcast around the world, and she travels extensively conducting conferences.