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

and we lose it; we surrender and we find it.
    Jesus Christ has not only shown us the righteous life—many great and good men and women did that before his time—but he has given us the power to live this righteous life. He not only shows us the beauty of God, as others have done, but he gives us the means by which we can become part of that beauty. We can learn the power of hourly surrender to the living Christ. Change in our lives is not brought about by our tense tinkering. It is brought about by the radiant, immeasurable energy of Christ, which has never left the world since he first said yes to God. His “yes” was complete; he kept nothing back for himself.
    As Flora Slosson Wuellner says, “There is nothing so tragically ineffectual as trying to live the Christian life without the Christian power. Try turning the other cheek without using the spiritual weapons of Christ’s power to love and see what destructive situation develops. Try going the second mile with a neighbor without going all the way to surrender to Christ and see the damage done to the neighbor’s personality and your own.
    Try to love and pray unceasingly without turning daily to the living water of Christ and see how quickly the personal well runs dry.” Surrender to Jesus Christ.
    Success is a word that is greatly misunderstood, and we need to grasp what it means biblically to be a success—to love God with all of our heart, our mind, our soul, and our strength; to allow him to unlock the imprisoned potential in our lives; to set godly goals and not be content to settle for second best when we realize that God gave everything he could give so that we could have the very best of life; and to realize that one of the greatest sins we commit against God is not reaching the potential he has placed in us.

chapter 3

    STRETCH TO SUCCESS

    R UBBER BANDS COME IN DIFFERENT SIZES AND different colors and different shapes, but they all work on the same principle: They must be stretched to be effective. Like rubber bands, our personalities, talents, and gifts are different; we’re also not effective unless we’re stretched. If you’re not stretching in your own personal walk with God and in your leadership abilities, then you’re not going to be able to be as effective for God as you really need to be.
    Leonard Ravenhill relates that a group of tourists were in a village in Europe, and one of them asked an elderly villager, “Have any great men been born in this village?” The old man replied, “Nope, only babies.” Every person who has ever achieved anything has stretched for it. There’s no such thing as a self-made person; there’s no such thing as a person who comes into the world fully equipped for success. Every person who has ever made it to the top, every person who has achieved anything for God, every person who has been effective has learned to stretch.
    One of the most common mistakes, and one of the costliest, is thinking that success is due to some genius, some magic something or other, which we do not possess.
    Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them. There’s no such thing as a man who was born great.
W HY D ON ’ T W E S TRETCH ?
    I would guess that 95 percent of us try to avoid stretching. When we come up against something that is bigger than we are, we tend to back off. What keeps us from expanding? Why do we avoid these stretching experiences?
    Fear has to be the number-one reason. The unknown out there can really paralyze us. Another reason is that we’re satisfied . Why stretch? We already like where we are; we have it made. Or perhaps there’s a streak of laziness in us. There are times when we would just rather take it easy. I have found that self-esteem has a lot to do with one’s willingness to stretch. A lot of people with low self-esteem have above average ability; they just do not see themselves in the proper light. Some of us just don’t want to be