What comes to your mind when you hear the word… Christian? Is it positive, negative? I know plenty of people who say they are Christians, they really believe they are Christians ….how they talk, how they treat others or are known to treat others, how they respond in difficult situations, what they post to their facebook wall…well it makes it a bit more interesting of a topic. Maybe in a sense, living in a free country we are just so comfortable that we’ve forgotten the  radical teachings of Jesus. Some of us don’t memorize scripture or even read scripture daily. I heard someone say once, the Devil doesn’t take a day off in attacking you so why would you take a day off from prayer and reading his word? If I were hired to be on a NFL team, let’s say the starting quarterback  I am not sure I’d get far without reading the game plan every week, or learning the play book. You wouldn’t want to hire me to be your investment adviser either if i didn’t have a weekly subscription to the Wall Street Journal and followed the trends of the market place. How would I be learning and staying current?

I am no longer comfortable calling myself a Christian. I just honestly believe it doesn’t represent who I am trying to be, I am calling myself a Christ Follower instead. Being a Christ follower, tells me all I need to know every single moment of my day..FOLLOW CHRIST. Jesus said “If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine.“(Matt 10:38). Did you get that? We aren’t even worthy of being his if we choose not to take up our cross and follow him. What does that mean, follow him, it means follow his word, follow his heart, his way of living, crucify your will and live God’s will, or in easier terms, pick God’s game plan everyday and leave YOUR game plan at home. This is pretty significant because the difference can be seen by others. The early church, the one talked about in the book of Acts was becoming known by their love for one another and because they were living lives, similar to Christ, they were preaching, teaching, reading God’s word daily, baptizing people, attending to the sick and poor….so people associated them with Jesus Christ and began calling them…”those Christians.”  We are talking about upholding the name of Jesus Christ by how we live. Let me add this here, we aren’t perfect, no one is…but we are being perfected by grace. My favorite Bible verse is in Phil 1:6, it’s God’s promise to continue improving our lives until we are ready to join him in heaven, the question is are we allowing him to perfect our lives, is there a sign of progress and improvement?

Jesus said “You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act.” Is Jesus judging a person? No. He is simply stating facts, when we hear the phrase, “don’t judge a person” we are trying to convey that we may not know everything about them, but based on what we DO know, here is the verdict. My desire is to live and glorify God in all that I do, with Jesus being my example, his word my guide and his spirit my strength. Yeah, I am a follower of Christ, radically saved, drastically obedient, I am a follower of Christ.

Which describes you best, Christian or Christ Follower?

Deep inner strength is required to hold on in life. We take things as they come and some of them knock us over. We can prepare ourselves for trials and tests, making us stronger mentally. We begin to get used to pain after a while, becoming tougher emotionally and we acquire what some say is “thick skin.” I have discovered that some of us are stronger than we think, we can take some pretty tough blows from life. Sometimes we are so good at being strong, we actually form a bad habit, a habit of holding on too long. We never get past some things and end up keeping them very near our hearts. I heard this said once, “when we don’t forgive, we allow the people who have hurt us to live in our hearts, rent free.”

The same amount of strength required to hang in there is the very same source of strength that allows us to let go. Problem is, we forget how to let go well, in fact we might actually forget how to rid ourselves of emotional baggage sometimes. As the years of struggle, pain and testing pile on, we end up carrying things around with us, things that reside in our past but because we don’t heal properly, we carry them around in our present, making it feel and seem like the incident is happening over and over, when in fact it happened already, it’s in the past.

In order to be really healthy, we need to be able to sit alone, meditate, pray and clear our minds from some things that have kept us back from emotional maturity, some things that just aren’t worth carrying around anymore. Maybe we hold on because it just feels better to still have someone else to blame, maybe we like being the victim. Either case, only in silence, getting on touch with spirit that lives inside can we find these things, address them, bring finality to them and once and for all decide that it’s time to let go.

Have you learned how to let it go?

You may have heard at some point in your personal development the term potential. Something along the lines of “try to reach your potential“, “live up to your potential“, etc,. While on the other hand purpose isn’t spoken of as much, or at least for my own experience I heard less about finding my purpose in life over reaching my potential in life. Let’s go deeper,let’s look into God’s word which is the final authority for us.

Jesus had many gifts, in his time of ministry he did many different things. He would heal people, teach, mentor, feed the hungry, perform miracles, challenge the Pharisees and he did this in many different places. The first passage we should look at is in Luke 4:42,43

“The crowds searched everywhere for him, and when they finally found him, they begged him not to leave them. But he replied, “I must preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God in other towns, too, because that is why I was sent.”

The people around Jesus would have LOVED for Jesus to reach his full potential in their town, they wanted to keep him right there but that wasn’t God’s will. Think about it, Jesus visits your town and people are getting healed, delivered from demonic oppression, people automatically start thinking, this guy is our mega evangelist! Let’s setup large rooms, gatherings where large numbers of people can gather and he can continue these works. But, Jesus knew HIS purpose and his purpose kept him moving in God’s will, in obedience.

Purpose is the why, potential is the effort IN the why. Let’s look at another situation Jesus kept to his purpose OVER his potential.

In John 6:14,15 “ When the people saw him do this miraculous sign, they exclaimed, “Surely, he is the Prophet we have been expecting! When Jesus saw that they were ready to force him to be their king, he slipped away into the hills by himself.”

Jesus slipped away often to pray and my guess is he did it to get his focus BACK on God and God’s will, God’s purpose instead of letting all the attention and success distract him and lure him away from his calling. Let’s read John 18:37

“Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Jesus knew his purpose, he realized  it and was committed to full-filling his purpose over potential.

You see, the LORD has given us many different abilities, and they are all fruitful and are blessings to many, but God’s purpose is the most important thing for us to know and understand because it keeps us in obedience to him rather than us following the direction my potential may take me. Potential is giving 100% effort and focus to maximize the gifts, purpose is giving 100% attention to what the will of God is. Potential is about the gifts, talents- it’s focus is there, purpose is about the will of the father, it’s focus is on him, not my gifts.

God may want me to do something according to his purpose that has nothing to do with my gifts, but I’d be doing it in complete obedience. Potential pulls me toward effort and focus for what I can do, rather than what God wants me to do according to his purpose. We are MORE than our Gifts, we are children of God. We are designed to live according to HIS purpose not according to OUR potential.

Romans 8:23 ” And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

Share your thoughts. Is it about Purpose or Potential?