Be All You Can Be: A Challenge to Stretch Your God-Given Potential Read Online Free PDF Page A

counselors; many counselors bring success. (Prov. 15:22)

It is dangerous and sinful to rush into the unknown. (Prov. 19:2)

A sensible man watches for problems ahead and prepares to meet them. The simpleton never looks, and suffers the consequences. (Prov. 27:12)

Any enterprise is built by wise planning, becomes strong through common sense, and profits wonderfully by keeping abreast of the facts. (Prov. 24:3–4)

    Plan ahead, chart your course, and if God is going to be your partner, make your plans large.
E—E XPECT P ROBLEMS
    Paul Harvey said, “You can always tell when you are on the road to success; it’s uphill all the way.” If you find a path that has no problems, you will find that it leads nowhere.
    I’ve talked many times to leaders about “sap strata.” Sap strata are those levels of living beyond which it is hard to rise. It happens in churches, organizations, and in individual lives. Have you ever felt that you just weren’t making any progress, as if you were hitting your head up against the wall? We have to make an extra burst of effort to get through those strata that keep us from being what God wants us to become. There are two ways to meet our problems, two ways to get through those sap strata. One way is to change the problem . This is only a temporary, partial solution. We can try to make the problem more manageable, but it will get out of hand again tomorrow.
    The most effective way for us to overcome our problems is to change the person. Adversity is not our greatest enemy. The human spirit is capable of great resiliency and resourcefulness in the face of hardship. It’s not problems that mess us up. Someone said, “Cripple [a man] and you have Sir Walter Scott. Lock him in prison and you have John Bunyan. Bury him in the snows of Valley Forge and you have George Washington. Raise him in poverty and you have Abraham Lincoln. Strike him down with infantile paralysis and he becomes Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Burn him so severely that doctors say he will never walk again and you have Glen Cunningham, who set the world’s record in 1934 for the outdoor mile. Deafen him and you’ll have Ludwig van Beethoven. Call him a slow learner, retarded, and write him off as uneducatable and you have Albert Einstein.”
S—S TAND F IRM ON Y OUR C OMMITMENT
    The Word of God encourages us in 1 Corinthians 15:58, “Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.” Someone asked James Corbett, the heavyweight boxing champion at one time, what it took to be a heavyweight champion, and he said, “Fight one more round.” When asked how he had been so successful in his inventions, Thomas Edison said, “I start where other men leave off.” Napoleon Hill, in his book Think and Grow Rich , records that he studied five hundred of the wealthiest men in the world and concluded that all wealthy men are persistent. When Winston Churchill went back to a childhood school to speak, the audience anticipated a great speech from the prime minister. He stood before them gave a speech titled: “Never Give In, Never, Never, Never.” And that is probably the speech for which he is most remembered. Stand firm on your commitment. Don’t be a quitter.
S—S URRENDER E VERYTHING TO J ESUS C HRIST
    Don’t ever forget that although you may succeed beyond your fondest hopes and your greatest expectations, you will never succeed beyond the purpose to which you are willing to surrender. “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all of these things will be added to you” (Matt. 6:33).
    The secret of the surrendered life is giving God the first part of every day, the first day of every week, the first portion of your income, the first consideration in every decision, and the first place in all of your life. When we surrender to him, then we have a power that really caps off the formula for success. Surrender is what brings power. We fight for power