El­der Arnold Gopeesingh

And the an­gel of the Lord ap­peared un­to him, and said, The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of val­our.  And Gideon said un­to him, Oh my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this be­fall­en us? And where are all his mir­a­cles which our fa­thers told us of, say­ing, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord has for­sak­en us and de­liv­ered us in­to the hands of the Mid­i­an­ites.  And the Lord looked up­on him and said, ‘Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Is­rael from the hand of the Mid­i­an­ites: have not I sent thee?’  And he said un­to him, Oh my Lord, where­with shall I save Is­rael? Be­hold, my fam­i­ly is poor in Man­asseh, and I am the least in my fa­ther’s house.” (Judges 6:12 to 15).

Gideon was very dis­ap­point­ed be­cause of what Is­rael was go­ing through be­cause of the Mid­i­an­ites.

God’s plan was to de­liv­er His peo­ple, and He chose Gideon to lead the peo­ple; how­ev­er, Gideon be­gan mak­ing ex­cus­es, and al­though God saw him as a “mighty man of val­our”, he saw him­self dif­fer­ent­ly.

How of­ten do we un­der­sell our­selves, not ful­ly un­der­stand­ing who we are? I have seen peo­ple sat­u­rat­ed with gift­ing, tal­ents and God’s grace up­on their lives sit­ting down and not ris­ing to their full po­ten­tial.

Some of them, be­cause of what was said to them con­sis­tent­ly in the past, be­came vic­tims of the words of oth­ers. Al­so, past ex­pe­ri­ences cause peo­ple to give up on try­ing to move ahead in life. This, my friend, can hap­pen to the best of us, but we must know that it is God’s in­ten­tion to see us all suc­ceed.

We read in Je­re­mi­ah 29:11: “For I know the thoughts that I think to­ward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an ex­pect­ed end. God wants you to win and to be a bless­ing to your gen­er­a­tion. Do not judge your­self for where you are at present; this is on­ly one chap­ter of your life. There are many more to come. Re­mem­ber, you have the pow­er to in­flu­ence the fi­nal out­come.

I want to share with you a few things that can as­sist you to rise to your full po­ten­tial, be­com­ing the best you.

First­ly, you must dis­cov­er what good gift God has blessed you with. I be­lieve that in every one of us there is some­thing good which God places in us to be a bless­ing, not just to our­selves but to oth­ers. James wrote, “Every good gift and every per­fect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Fa­ther of lights, with whom is no vari­able­ness, nei­ther shad­ow of turn­ing.” (James 1:17). What is im­por­tant is that you dis­cov­er this gift that was giv­en to you by God; it may be in the area of sports, writ­ing, singing, or aca­d­e­mics, and this list can go on and on. It’s up to you to dis­cov­er it, for you will see it man­i­fest­ing it­self in your life. We are not all gift­ed in the same way, so there is no room to en­vy any­one; walk the path giv­en to you by God.

Sec­ond­ly, there must be self-de­vel­op­ment. That which was placed in you by God is not al­ways in a per­fect state; some­times it is in seed form and must be nur­tured and al­lowed to grow. We read in the book of Luke 2:52: “And Je­sus in­creased in wis­dom and stature, and in favour with God and man. This is the Son of God hav­ing to grow and de­vel­op just like us in the nat­ur­al world. Nev­er find your­self run­ning ahead of God, but af­ter dis­cov­er­ing the gift­ing that God has placed in you, judge your­self and see if there is a need for you to be trained fur­ther. Noth­ing is wrong with that; af­ter all, you want the best of you to come forth. I have seen peo­ple make a mess of a good thing be­cause they be­lieve that they have ar­rived and would not lis­ten to any­one, even those who were very suc­cess­ful on the road; they too want to trav­el. You do not have to take all the ad­vice giv­en, but noth­ing is wrong with lis­ten­ing.

Fi­nal­ly walk­ing in your full po­ten­tial, this re­mains a do­ing on your part; you have to rise and work, trust­ing in God is the way to go. You can­not be “lazy” and ex­pect to be suc­cess­ful in life. The scrip­tures tell us that “the soul of the slug­gard de­sireth, and hath noth­ing; but the soul of the dili­gent shall be made fat.” (Proverbs 13:4).

There is no back­up plan when it comes to ris­ing to your full po­ten­tial; you must be pre­pared to make it hap­pen. I en­cour­age you; the world awaits your pos­i­tive in­put to so­ci­ety; do not fail them.

You have what it takes to make a dif­fer­ence and a time lim­it to get it done.

May God rich­ly bless, strength­en, and keep you as you fight the good fight of faith.