Potential.

It’s one a pretty cool word.  I was introduced to the idea of potential back in the day playing vdeo games.  See, when I created a player there was a rating called “potential.”  Over time I realized what it would do.  If the rating was high, the player would have a better chance of improving over time.  It would not always happen–but usually with a high potential, that average player would turn into a very good one.

The great dictionary.com defines it as this:

1. possible, as opposed to actual: the potential uses of nuclear energy.
2. capable of being or becoming: a potential danger to safety.

I don’t there is anything that frustrate me as much as the potential I see in myself and others.  I feel like I can do so much–but I do so little.

It sounds like Romans 7:15-25 where Paul says this:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
      So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

It’s weird to think that Paul was frustrated at who he was.  He was at a place he did not want to be, and saw a place he dreamed to be.  And yet he is all over the New Testament doing stinkin awesome stuff!

The potential we have as Christians will blow your mind.  Check out this song by Jars of Clay as they sing about the same idea!  And also check out them providing a clean water well for some people in Africa.  Notice the potential to change a person, to change a village, and to change the world–if we had two hands doing the same thing.

CAUTION:  Be careful and wise when using “YouTube”.