Maximum Potential

I don't know if it was the sleep deprivation from staying up too late on Saturday night, or the slight cold I may or may not have, or the Benadryl I took to combat said cold, but today I felt a strange melancholy.

At church I realized it was actually a feeling of deep spiritual longing. I've always tried to be a good person, and do everything the way the church teaches, bla bla bla, but for the past few years sometimes I've felt like I've just been floating along, not paying attention to my spiritual life the way I should. Paying attention to temporal things, that don't really matter in the long run. Sometimes you get comfortable and don't want to change things, even if it would be a change for the better.

But today in each lesson taught at church, each talk, or comment made, I felt those pangs that some of you may be familiar with. The pang you get when you know that the Lord is telling you something. The pangs that make tears come to your eyes for no apparent reason during the hymn, for example. The still small voice.

What is preventing you from reaching your maximum potential? This is the question asked by the teacher in class, and I've been answering it in my mind all day. It's simple--I am preventing myself from reaching my maximum potential. God wants me to succeed. He loves me, shows me the way to go, gives me all the tools I need, and then its up to me. But I don't always follow through as best I could. I haven't always paid attention to that still small voice. I've brushed it aside and forged my own way ahead, not caring.

The good news is that I know exactly what I need to do to make those changes in my life for the better. And the other good news is that I really want to do it, and I'm listening now. I believe in God, and I believe that he has a plan for me, which helps me to find the courage to make steps into my future.

The other thing that I know with certainty is that no matter what I've done, there is still my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ believing in me, desiring my success, and reaching out to draw me closer to them. As it says in Isaiah, "his hand is stretched out still." He will never turn away or move.

So now I have a renewed desire to live my life more spiritually. I've been renewed today, and refreshed, as if the scales have been removed from my eyes, and I see the splendor that the gospel can bring me. Let me feast! I will go, I will do. I will not hold myself back.