Realizing Your Human Potential

Chapter One: Prolog Realizing your human potential is finding who you are in light of what God wants you to become. This necessarily means that the attainment of temporal goals, i.e., money, position, and family, while important, they are not an ultimate end. When God occupies a pre-eminent position in your life, you will not view your life through your own eyes but through God’s eyes. As such, your perspective will change in ways that you once thought unimaginable. That transformation, while a mystery, is nonetheless, nothing short of miraculous because it takes the traveler on a journey into the mind of God where there is unlimited potential. Focusing your life on glorifying God, through a spirit of humility, assures spiritual health. Consequently, earthly achievements have new meaning when your priorities are properly ordered. God must be the catalyst of all your efforts for His Glory. Otherwise, you risk the attainment of goals becoming the focal point of your life, usurping God’s rightful position. This is a noble endeavor, yet it is impossible to achieve this state of balance between body and spirit without a plan. This book delves into truths about nature, what makes us human, the consequences of our actions, and finally, fusing these principles into a personal plan for your life. In the end, I pray that you will better understand and relate to God, reflect the nature of Christ, and become empowered in all aspects of your being. Realizing your human potential is a difficult task because human beings are a fusion of body and spirit, dichotomous creatures in perpetual turmoil. We exist temporally but we seek the ethereal and the metaphysical. We are unsatisfied with our five senses, so we explore our sixth sense to peer beyond the physical boundaries of our existence into an unseen and untouchable world. Our disquieted journey though life compels us to understand our inner being. We seek our Creator; strive for earthly success as well as spiritual enlightenment in an attempt to improve our world and ourselves. Our mortality fuels this quest because we know that our physical bodies are not eternal; yet, we do not want to die. We worship and believe in God because we hope there is something beyond ourselves: a better place than the world humanity has fostered. We are compelled, twice over to explore our spirit nature as well as strive to live as complete, physical human beings. Shelter, food, companionship, accomplishment, and a sense of belonging to the societal collective are inherent to all human beings. The attainment of these universal goals, along with personal goals, instills within us a sense of worth. We derive satisfaction from being challenged with a task and completing it. However, for those who have mastered the physical components of life and have attained its treasures without cultivating their soul will invariably admit that something is missing from their lives. Too often, for many of us, we focus on feeding our physical natures while neglecting our spirit. This state of altered being, physical satisfaction coupled with spiritual destitution, is untenable because of our dichotomous nature. Though possessed of a quiet voice, our spirit is a caldron of unrelenting desire that longs for a relationship with its Creator. Amazingly, we have the ability to ignore that voice but suffer for that avoidance. We exist in a tenuous balance between body and spirit, but we have the ability to strengthen that balance. The price for that equilibrium is intense self-reflection explored through the prism of honesty and humility guided by a willingness to change who we have become into what God wants us to become. If I am a creature born of flesh and spirit, I cannot, by reason achieve my highest potential if I do not nourish both phases of my existence. By denying the power of God, I divorce myself from an unseen force that infiltrates and energizes the world. I, by virtue of my self-imposed ignorance, have become a one-eyed wanderer who is incapable of exploring the world completely or interacting on an interpersonal level fully. I have settled for less than what I can fully become because to achieve my human potential demands that I expend energy to move beyond my mediocre existence to achieve greatness. Just as hormones drive us through puberty and coax us to find a mate and reproduce, God has endowed each person with a desire to seek Him. It takes a concerted effort to ignore that desire; yet, regardless of one’s belief or disbelief in God, every human being faces the transient nature of life and the death sentence under which we all live. I know what I have written may make some of you feel uneasy, but that is my intent as I do not want you to be comfortable with your present condition. I want you to be uncomfortable, to step out of your comfort zone, and explore a new realm of personal possibility. I will not coddle you in your shortcomings by explaining them away as human frailties. I cannot do that because Christ never did that with anyone with whom He came in contact. Multiple examples in the Gospels demonstrate that Christ, though loving, challenged people to be better than what they were. Jesus expected people to improve their lives, put aside their hindrances, take the high road, not settle for mediocrity, and become all that they could become. A fundamental tenet of this book is that human beings operate within the parameters of inviolate physical laws that act upon our biology. When we attempt to apply relativistic concepts to our lives, we fail. Our physical reality is absolute not relative. For example, if I believe I can fly when I step out of an airborne plane without a parachute, the absolute law of gravity will override my irrational belief. As I reach terminal velocity and see the approaching ground, I will realize that my assumption was incorrect. By then, it would be too late. Belief in the Bible means that the believer accepts the laws of God, defined, and codified, differences between right and wrong, and the need for human beings to follow these tenets to improve their lives. They are concrete principles that give a clear path about how to conduct our lives. They are immutable, non-debatable, and not subject to alteration because human beings must function within narrow patterns of acceptable behavior. To do otherwise invites calamity because just as physical laws cannot change because I wish them to change, I cannot exist healthily outside of what God has determined best. However, some societies, clergy, and individuals have sought to interpret and modify these tenets depending upon the current societal and cultural prism through which they are looking. This has lead to confusion within the body of Christ causing what was once unacceptable to become acceptable. Debates have raged and continue to rage, but regardless of human debate, the fundamental truths that God has given us do not change even though we may try to change them. While such a debate may seem “progressive” as humanity becomes more “sophisticated”, it is an indisputable fact that the moral development of humanity has lagged significantly behind its technological advances. As such, sinful man remains sinful regardless of his computing capacity thus necessitating concrete tenets that bridle undesirable behavior that leads to detrimental consequences. God gave us laws to help us live productive lives. Those laws keep the fabric of society cohesive. However, if I reject the belief that there is a difference between right and wrong,and that the Bible is not the ultimate moral authority, I truly do not accept the God of the Bible. I become entangled in the quagmire of moral relativism. I believe that from my own consciousness I can create my own variable morality while sampling the tenets of God that are palatable while rejecting those that are unsavory.