The concept of potential is one of the most important things that I have ever discovered in God. Potential is reserved power, unused success, and everything that you could do but have not done yet.
We describe God as omnipotent (all-powerful), but we do not understand fully what that means. The concept of omnipotence gives us a revelation of God that is beyond our simple minds.
God is all potential. In the beginning, everything was in God. Think about it. Before there was anything, where was everything? It was in God. The Bible states that God existed before everything else (Ps 90:2). Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” In the original Hebrew, this verse is translated, “In beginnings…” This is important because it implies that God began the beginnings. There was no beginning until God began it.
Sometimes we believe that God did not begin when the beginning began because He is inside time. But God always was. So everything that came in the beginning onward came out of Him.
John 1:3 says, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” The implications are profound. God was “pregnant” with everything before anything came into being.
Potential has nothing to do with things that do not exist. It has to do with things that do exist, but yet remain unseen. I am afraid that most of us are going to die with all this “stuff” in us.
My one desire in life is to die empty. As a matter of fact, I want to give to the grave something that no longer has any use because I am finished with it. Paul phrases it this way, “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering…I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race…” (2 Tim 4:6-7). Paul is saying that he used up everything that was in him. In other words, you have no right to die until you are empty.
Suppose Michelangelo died with the Sistine Chapel in him. Suppose Mary had an abortion. The greatest argument against abortion is potential because that child that was killed could have had the cure for AIDS-could have contained a solution to any one of the world’s major issues.
You never say that you are finished until there is nothing else that you can imagine. Why? According to Ephesians 3:20, if you can imagine it, God can do above it.
I wonder if we truly know who our children are. Oftentimes we do not know the people living in our house with us. It is common to be ignorant of the full potential of those who are very close to us because potential is not always revealed in the ways we expect.
This should encourage us to be careful in our treatment of people because we never really know what is lying dormant in them, waiting to be tapped and used for the good of the world.
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By Dr. Myles Munroe