HOME EXPLOSION
“How To Reach Your Potential” Part –2
Matt. 14:22-33
Pastor Jeff Seaman
Matt. 14:22-33
“Immediately after this, Jesus made his disciples get back into the boat and cross to the other side of the lake while he sent the people home. Afterward he went up into the hills by himself to pray. Night fell while he was there alone. Meanwhile, the disciples were in trouble far away from land, for a strong wind has risen, and they were fighting heavy waves. About three o’clock in the morning Jesus came to them, walking on the water. When the disciples saw him, they screamed in terror, thinking he was a ghost. But Jesus spoke to them at once. “It’s all right,” he said. I am here! Don’t be afraid. Then Peter called to him, “Lord, if it’s really you, tell me to come to you by walking on the water.”
All right, come, Jesus said. So Peter went over the side of the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus. But when he looked around at the high waves, he was terrified and began to sink. Save me, Lord! He shouted. Instantly Jesus reached out his hand and grabbed him. You don’t have much faith,” Jesus said. Why did you doubt me? And when they climbed back into the boat, the wind stopped. Then the disciples worshiped him. “You really are the Son of God!”
When you look at this story I always ask, why didn’t the other disciples walk on water like Peter did. Peter was a man how reached out for his full potential. He was the only disciple who got the change to walk on water. What did it take to walk on the water? What is it that we have to do to reach our full potential?
When your life is over and people talk about you at your funeral what will be said of your life? Are you someone who wants to walk on water, or are you someone who wants to sit in the boat and watch others do the great things for God. All the other disciples could have said the same thing, but chose to sit and watch.
When you look all through out the word of God you see people who reached their full potential, and we see people who did not reach their potential. What is the difference of a walker and sitter?
”HOW TO WALK ON WATER”
1. You Must Realize God Wants To Use You.
Eze. 22:30 “I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none.”
Isaiah 6:5-8 “Woe to me! I cried. I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the alter. With it he touched my mouth and said, see, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us? And I said, here am I send me.”
Eph. 2:10 “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
If we are going to reach our full potential, we must realize God wants to use us for his purpose. Most people never do any great things for God because they think that God doesn’t want to use them.
You are more than you think you are. You are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. But God will not force you, it your chose to either walk on water or sit in the boat.
One day when you have to give an account of your life, what will you testimony be. Will you only have a title, or testimony? Peter has both that day.
Don’t listen to the lie that God can use you; the devil has been robbing many Christians, telling them that God only uses the gifted.
There was a time in my life that I listen to that lie, and I run from the idea of doing anything for God.
There are two things that help me realize that God wanted to use me.
1. God gave me some gifts and abilities to be used for him.
Rom. 12:6 (LB) God has given each of us the ability to do certain things well.”
2. The God who calls is the God who provides. I realized that if God wanted to use my life he had to give me his anointing to do his work.
Heb. 13:21 (LB) “God…will equip you with all you need for doing his will.”
Once we realize that God has a purpose for our life, and that he has given all we need to successes, we can take that big step and walk on water.
Some of you are only looking at your life through your eye, may I sub jest that you look at your life the way God looks at it.
Moses had a hard time realizing that God could use him, even though he had a speech problem. But he finally realized that God could use his life to lead the Israelite to freedom.
One of the greatest men to be used to heal many people was a man named Smith Wigglesworth. He was a plumber who could not read or write, but he realized that God didn’t need for him be able read or write I
N order to be used to heal the sick. He had one of the greatest ministries in the world.
How many people could be in the church today, and have a relationship with God if we simply realized God wants to use us.
2. You Must Enlist In God’s Training Course.
Prov. 19:8 “Do yourself a favor and learn all you can; then remember what you learn and you will prosper.”
Eccl. 10:10 “If the ax is dull and it edge is unsharpened, more strength is needed but skill will bring success.”
When I was wrestling I learned that it didn’t take a lot of strength to be able to win the match, but it took skill, learning the moves more than your opponent. So I started to meet in the evenings with some one who started to train me.
When it comes to reaching your full potential you must start training your self. The more you learn of God’s word it brings more skill.
Most people don’t do any thing for God because they feel inadequate.
2 Tim. 2:15 “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workmen who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”
I remember when I was younger in the Lord and I didn’t know too much about the word and how to us it to direct people to him, and how it made me ashamed.
If you are ever going to do great things for God, you must not be ashamed, so get some training.
Heb. 5:14 “But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”
I remember my first sermon I preached, I just started Bible College and my youth pastor asked me to preach in the youth service. I felt so inadequate; I started to preach and got so nervous I almost quite. I remember the feeling almost paralyze me. Many of you are paralyzed and are not fulfilling your potential because you feel inadequate to share your faith.
Prov. 19:8 “Do yourself a favor and learn all you can; then remember what you learn and you will prosper.”
3. YOU MUST MAKE YOURSELF AVAILABLE
If you are to reach your full potential in God, you must make some sacrifices. You need to make available your talents and time.
In the Book of Matthew we see two very strong passages on our time and talents and what we do with them. Most people don’t like to read about this but that doesn’t mean that it will go away. We find that God demands from his children, an account of our time and talents.
The first one is Matt.25:14-30 The Parable of The Talent. Vs. 24. “Then the man who had received the one talent came. Master, he said, I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you. His master replied, You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I return I would have received it back with interest. Take the talent from him and give it to one who has the ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Here we see that God is looking for the faithfulness of his people of the gifts he has give them, and he expects a return, for them to bare fruit.
How do you reach your full potential, you must allow the talents God gave you to be available to be used?
The second is Matt. 25:31-46 and this is the parable of the Sheep and the Goats. Vs. 31- “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angles with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
Vs. 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
Vs. 41 Then he will say to those on his left, Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angles. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.
Vs. 44 They also will answer, Lord , When did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?
Vs. 45 He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me. Then they will go away to eternal punishment , but the righteous to eternal life.”
Why were the sheep and goat separated, for what they did and did not do.
We must make available our time and talents if we are going to reach our full potential. When we give God our time and talents for him to use, he not only gives us more but we are also storing up treasures in heaven.
If you would give God your time and talents, I can promise you that you will never regret your chose, but if you chose to not let your time and talents you my be regret that someday when you stand before your God.
“MY AVAILABLITY GIVES GOD THE OPRTUNITY TO DO A MIRACLE”
There is a boy who made his lunch available to Jesus one day, and his lunch feed five thousand people. What are you holding back from God that he needs to do a miracle?
For some of you God is asking for you to give up some of your time, time you feel is yours. We need to start to live our live on convictions and not preference , we need to start to realize that we don’t have al the time in the world to reach someone for Christ. We fill our time up with things sports and careers and fun, and even family, but there is the time made available for God to use us to save one soul.
We have even used our families as an excuse that we don’t have time for ministry. We must at some point if we are going to reach are full potential bring some Godly perspective back into our time.
I believe that the greatest example that our kids can see us do, is invest our time in what really makes a differences in eternity. You see when you give God your time and seek first his kingdom he has a promise for you.
Matt. 6:19 “Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourself treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not break in and steal. For where your treasures is, there your heart will be also.”
Matt. 6:33 “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and these things will be given to you as well.”
4. YOU MUST CLIMB OUT OF THE BOAT BY FAITH.
The reason most people stay in the boat is fear. The devil has stopped the work of God with the power of fear. Fear is the opposite of faith.
What most people fear the most when it comes to being sued by God is the fear of failure.
One the things God looks for when he wants to use you is faith and fear, and doubt.
Matt. 17:20 “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, move from here to there and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
Jesus tells us if we will just step out by faith, God will do his part. Peter acted on a spoken word from Jesus, you and I can see the enter word of God and how he always goes before you.
Heb, 11:1 (NLT) “What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.”
When my wife and I started this church we had to step out of our comfort zone, our paycheck, our ministry. We had to believe that God was going to take care our family, and that he who send people to this church.
Where God calls he provides. By Faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice.
When Moses by faith put his staff down into the water, the water separated and made a path for the children of Israel of dry ground.
Joshua 6:2-5 “Then the Lord said to Joshua, see I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priest carry trumpets of rams horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priest blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in.”
Sometimes when God tells you to do something, you have to look at the situation with the eyes of faith. Faith is the things hope for…
When you feel that God wants you to minister to someone and you are in fear of failure just remember that the God who ask will give you the power to successed.
Joshua 1:9 “Be bold and strong! Banish fear and doubt! For remember, the Lord is with you wherever you go.”
5. YOU MUST HAND OVER ALL AREAS OF YOUR LIFE.
If you want to reach your full potential you must hand over all areas of your life to God. If there is one thing that will stop you from reaching your full potential it is a life that is not fully surrendered to Jesus.
2Tim. 3:5 “They will act as if they are religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly.
Rev. 3:15 “I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, I will spit you out of my mouth!”
Some people never reach their full potential because they never give God the hole life, they want to keep the rains of there life, and have a form of godliness. God wants to be the one on the thrown of your life, because he knows what is best for you.
Jer. 29:11 “I will bless you with a future filled with hope—a future of success, not of suffering.
Ps. 37:4-5 (GN) “Seek your happiness in the Lord and he will give you your heart’s desire. Give yourself to the Lord, trust in him, and he will help you.”
God has great thing plan to do in and through your life, but you must be the one who lets him bring it about. Will you be someone who walks on water or will you be one who sits in the boat!
