Waking the Giants

In the last few weeks or so I have been chewing on the idea of potential. It all started with a blog post from a seminary friend about some teaching he has been doing about money. The idea that struck me most in his thoughts was,

In week two of our series, I shared some stats. Discovery receives, on average, about $6450 per week. If each household earned $60,000 (which is much lower than our city's average household income) and each household tithed, which the New Testament would consider to be the very beginning point of generosity, Discovery would receive over $13,800 per week. More than double. Imagine what God could do with that? I asked our church to ask God that very question. "God, what could you do with an extra $7350?" I'd love to find out.

Those thoughts really dug into my mind. What potential is there really for any church if its people (me included) would do what we are capable of doing, rather than doing what we choose to do.

I shared the ideas with our staff here at South. We spent some time talking about it, drawing in some other quotes from some other reading. Our conversation spawned a sermon series idea called Waking The Giants that we decided to work on at a latter date. On the heals of that I spent time in South Bend with some students that I got to know at Michiana Camp. It was good to reconnect with them and to see what God is doing in their lives. As I sat and talked with them, it was evident that they were doing everything they could to achieve their potential and putting their whole selves into the reign of God.

At that point in my mental pondering, I was really self reflective. Am I achieving my potential? Am I moving forward with my life in a way that really puts my whole self in the reign of God? Is where I am in my life where I should be? Could I have covered more ground and done more? Unfortunately, I think I felt more regret than I did accomplishment. And, being the good human I am, I began thinking about who has held me back from achieving what it is I could have/should have achieved, rather than looking on the inside. And, for that moment, there was some slight change out of all of the thinking (see here), not that it lasted long.

Alongside all of these thoughts is a study that I am doing with some adults from South on the book of Leviticus. In Leviticus, there is a definitive focus on making sure the community stays pure and right with God, so that their sin doesn't contaminate God's space and remove him from their presence. There is an expectation that they are going to live to their potential, and when they don't they immediately make it right. The two ideas married themselves together in my mind and continued to haunt my thoughts. (Well, maybe haunt is too strong of a word, but it is very Octoberish!)

Over the last few days, there have been more conversations about this potential thing. Many of those conversations happened during a planning meeting for camp next year. I pitched the idea of actualizing potential that I have been pondering. We discussed, chewed, argued and came out with a week long theme for camp about it called What if? We'll be looking at ideas like:

What if the church worshipped with their whole life?
What if the church was a place of healing for sin, rather than a place of judgement?
What if we lived out our lives under the reign of God rather than just dabbling in it?
What if we learn to share God's love outwardly, rather than just reveling in it ourselves?

Finally, in my reading this morning (and the whole catalyst for this post) in Teresa of Avila's The Interior Castle, I came across this quote, which is yet another wrinkle/layer to this whole concept of potential. She writes in the First Dwelling,

Not long ago a very wise man told me that souls who do not practice prayer are like people whose limbs are paralyzed. Even though they have hands and feet, they cannot command them. And so there are souls so caught up in worldly matters that there is no hope for their recovery; they seem to be incapable of entering within themselves.

The entering here is to enter into the Castle of the Soul, where relationship with God happens - where the soul communes with the Father. She goes on to say,

These souls are so used to dealing with the nasty creatures that inhabit the outer walls of the castle that they have become almost like them. Even though they are naturally endowed with the power to commune with the Beloved himself, there is no remedy for them. Unless these souls strive to heal their profound misery, they will be turned into pillars of salt, just like Lot's wife was changed when she looked back.

Have I paralyzed myself by focusing too much on the world and not enough on God and his reign? Have I allowed sin too much of a foothold in my life so that it chokes away the potential that I have been endowed with? Even greater, how do I change to actualize this potential that I have? How do I grow some discipline so that my life isn't about brief moments trodding on a treadmill only to give up the next day? More stones to overturn in my chewing. . .

The staff here at South is going to hammer out the specific details on the Waking the Giants series that we will roll out in January. I'm beginning to think that its kind of a big deal since God hasn't let me move on from these thoughts . . . a big deal for me and a big deal for us here at South. Maybe it is be a big deal for you too. Are you actualizing your potential?