Summary of Releasing Your Potential by Dr. Myles Munroe
God created you with potential to fulfill His assignment for your life.
If you don’t release your potential, you rob humanity of the benefit you were made to bring and you rob yourself of the fulfillment releasing your potential brings
Once you understand your source, function, purpose and resources, and stay in the right environment, you can work to release your potential.
What Is Potential?
Your potential is what you can do that you haven’t yet done, where you can go that you that you haven’t yet gone, who you can be that you haven’t yet been, what you can imagine that you haven’t yet imagined, how far you can reach that you haven’t yet reached, what you can see that you haven’t yet seen, what you can accomplish that you haven’t yet accomplished.
God created everything with potential. There is always something bigger you can produce from yourself than you have produced at any point in your life, that you haven’t produced yet. This is because there is a residue of God’s potential in you.
What Does It Mean To Release Your Potential?
To release your potential means to make available to the world all the possibilities that exist within you; to have something to pass on to a generation. All that we see and admire today, exist because someone, although they didn’t see the possibility yet, chose to release their potential. Today’s potential is tomorrow’s inheritance; if you don’t release your potential, the next generation won’t inherit anything.
How To Release Your Potential
1. You must know your source
An understanding of where you came from is necessary for you to know all that you have and how you’re designed to function with them. Only the source of a product can give accurate and complete information on the value and potential of the product. God is your source and Him alone knows your value and all the potential you have. To understand your potential, you must therefore go back to God, your Source, to get all He thinks about you.
Firstly, you must go back to the Bible, the documentary of all God thinks about you and the potential within you. Since you come from God, you also carry all the potential that God carries. Understanding how God functions also helps you understand how you are to function because there is a residue of God’s potential within you.
2. You must understand how you were designed to function
A lack of understanding of how you are meant to function is going to limit your ability to maximize your potential. You cannot fully harness all you were designed to become until you understand the makeup that you have. A driver who does not understand that his car was designed to move at 200 km per hour will drive it at 80 km per hour because that is his only understanding of its function.
You were designed to walk by faith. Walking by faith means you don’t have to see everything before you move or take action. God sees you in terms of potential: what can yet be that is not manifesting. You must walk by faith (that there is so much more that you can bring forth although you haven’t seen them) for you to release your potential.
3. You must know your purpose
Your potential must be released in the direction of your purpose (the reason why you exist, your manufacturer’s intent for you life).
Since God is your manufacturer, you are ignorant of your purpose apart from God. You were created to express God’s image, to enjoy fellowship with God, to dominate the Earth, to bear fruit and to reproduce yourself. The release of your potential must be to fulfill these purposes. Releasing your potential outside God’s purpose for your life will abuse the use of your potential.
There are certain resources available for every individual to fulfill their purpose. This resources must be cultivated and, in the cultivation or proper use of these resources is the maximization of your potential. Abuse of your resources destroys your potential.
There are five types of resources that every individual has and must maximize to be successful: spiritual resources (the word of God and the gifts of the spirit), physical resources (your physical body), material resources (all the material around you), resources of the soul (your will, mind, emotions) and resources of time.
The garden of Eden is a perfect representation of the environment that best releases the potential of Man. The presence of God is manifested in the garden of Eden and the right information to feed man’s mind.
You can create that same environment by choosing your friends, choosing the books you read, choosing your hobbies, your musical appetites and who feeds you spiritually. You must set up an environment that is adjusted to feed, activate, enhance, and foster the release of your potential.
Man was designed to work. Work was created before the curse came. The release and maximization of potential cannot be attained without work. Work can be defined as the process of creating what you can create but does not exist yet. Work is the release of potential.
Since man was designed to work, man cannot be fulfilled except he works. Retirement is not part of God’s plan for man. You can retire a job but you shouldn’t retire from work. Working for fulfillment is better than working for money. The purpose of a job is work not money.
Personal Insights and Notes from Releasing Your Potential by Dr. Myles Munroe
It is not your potential (after you have discovered it) that determines your purpose. Rather, your purpose determines your potential. Discovering your potential, therefore, gives you pointers to your purpose.
Having ability is good but keeping ability is bad
It is not what you know that hurts you; it is what you know that just isn’t so (lies or error)
Understanding and releasing your potential is just about becoming yourself as God your creator intended you to be (righteousness)
Glory is the true nature or full essence of a thing. Falling short of Glory (sin) means to live below your full potential
What you have accomplished is no longer your potential
Knowing and living within God’s purpose is the difference between using and abusing the gifts of God and capabilities built into you.
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Olusegun Iyejare is a career coach and certified counselor. He helps individuals discover and maximize their potential to live satisfying lives regardless of obvious limitations holding them back.
