Potent means to be powerful and mighty. In terms of your potential, potent is taking it from the invisible state it lives in to the visible. Your potential is currently in an invisible state. It has not yet been made visible. Think about it, everything that you see today, the home you live in, the building your office is in, your car, your coffee cup. All of it started as an invisible idea in someone’s mind. That invisible idea in their mind was potential. But until they acted on it, it remained just that: potential. What made their potential potent (powerful and mighty) was when they began taking action to make the invisible visible.
Everything that currently exists began in the state of potential. God has created you as His masterpiece, in other words, He has placed within you the potential of masterpiece living. The potential of living life as a masterpiece is invisible, but it is very real within you. To make your potential potent (powerful and mighty) you must take action to make it visible in your life.
1. Speak It
Speaking something is not just saying something out loud once or twice. To speak invisible potential into a visible reality requires that you continually speak it. What you speak is the foundation for how you live and what you do.
Let me illustrate: I am sitting in a comfortable office that did not exist just a few years ago. In fact my office sits on what once was a piece of raw desert land full of cacti. After acquiring the land, I began to speak about the building we were going to build. I spoke about how it was designed for ease of access for the community, and how the community would see it and use it.
I spoke about what it looked like. It wasn’t long until someone said that I needed to get an architectural drawing. I did. I kept speaking about what it would be like once we were in the building. At the time our organization had no money to build a building, the more I spoke about our life in the building, the more people started seeing the invisible in my heart and mind in a visible way. It wasn’t long before others began to speak it, the contractor was hired and construction began.
The invisible potential in your life becomes potent (powerful and mighty) and visible when you begin to take action by speaking it.
“The tongue can bring death or life…” (Proverbs 18:21 NLT)
2. Organize It
Once you begin to speak the invisible to make it visible, you must take the action of organizing. This may not be a natural strength, but it is a necessary action to releasing your potential and making it potent.
No idea goes from invisible to visible without organization and reorganization. How you go about it doesn’t matter as long as the action is taken. For me, as an artist, organization is not my greatest strength, so I enlist others to lead the charge and help me in this part of the process.
Every masterpiece is an organization of values, colors and composition. You are God’s masterpiece; your potential masterpiece life is inside of you waiting to be organized into reality.
“…a man of understanding and knowledge maintains order.” (Proverbs 28:2 NIV)
3. Work It
Potential is wasted on those who are not willing to work. Work is a good thing. Work is an action that will cause potential to become potent. Work will transform the invisible into the visible. You may have heard the phrase “ideas are a dime a dozen.” How true. The ideas and potential that is deep within you has no value unless you are willing to work it.
To be willing to do the work, you must see the benefits. Go back to number 1, keep speaking it, then reorganize and continue working until potential is being released.
“…use your hands for good hard work.” (Ephesians 4:28 NLT)
No one can do this for you. You alone are the one who has to have the motivation to work at making your God-given potential a reality. You may enlist others to coach and to help develop and guide. But the desire to see the invisible potential become a visible reality, (making potential potent) is an inside job.
How can you know this process will work? Because it’s not new, it was proven by the one who created you with potential, it is how God took the invisible and make it visible in the beginning and continues to this day: “In the beginning God…” (Gen 1:1 NLT)
Next Steps:
- List 3 desires that you have as potential that you want to see become a reality.
- Choose 1 and begin to speak it, organize it and work it. What is your action plan?
Question: What do you think is the most important step in turning invisible potential into a visible reality? Why? You can leave a comment below.
Want to discover more of how to develop your potential? Get a copy of my book Life Palette and begin to live life as the masterpiece God created you to be.