Do You Know Your Features?

I once heard a pastor say that everything is a sermon illustration. That may or may not be true, but I believe everything has a lesson to teach if we will take the time to learn. Let me illustrate:

I have a tablet that I carry with me every day. Not the pen-and-ink kind, but the electronic kind. I bought a case for it from Wal-Mart, choosing the one I bought for the color (purple) and the reasonable price. I also liked the contraptions used to hold the tablet in place. I got it home, ripped it open, put the tablet in, and never looked back.

I have carried this thing for months, day in and day out. I have propped it up on my desk at work for music and for break-time YouTube viewing. I have connected the tablet to the sound system at the church almost every Sunday. I have folded the cover a million ways. But one day I pulled my tablet out and it was different. It was at a slightly different angle inside the case – one I had never seen before.

As I began to try to straighten it out, lamenting that I had broken it somehow, I discovered something that I had not known all this time. The base the tablet rests on swivels! I can adjust the tablet to stand vertically or horizontally, and I never even knew it. I found out through experimentation that it is actually capable of a full 360-degree rotation.

It’s obvious that I missed that detail when reading the cover’s features. I can’t imagine the creator would leave out such an important detail. I never even tried to move it in a different way. Had it not gotten off balance, I might have never known.

Of course, that taught me a lesson. Some of us are not living up to our full potential because we have never thought we were capable of moving in a different way. We’ve always operated in a certain position, and have not grasped the fact that there is more to us than meets the eye. We are capable of moving in different directions, but we’ve never even tried. The one direction, the one move that worked for us at the beginning has always been enough. Or has it?

Maybe we missed the part, like I did, in our packaging that explains all that we can do. I think it was Dr. Myles Munroe who once said the best way to know the purpose of a thing is to consult its creator. Most things come with an instruction manual, or at least a listing of features. If we don’t consult it, we miss out on some of the benefits the creator built into the creation. In the same way, God left us an external manual, the Bible, and an internal guide, the Holy Ghost, to help us understand all the ways we were created to be used. When we fail to consult our creator’s instructions, we limit our usefulness based on what we can figure out on our own, or based on what others perceive we are designed to do. Worse than that, we open ourselves up to misuse and abuse because we don’t know, and cannot appreciate, all that we are meant to be.

We go about our daily business, thinking this is all there is to us. Our current job, ministry, or assignment is working for us. We are doing what we know to do. But some of us, I would dare say all of us, are capable of more. Believe it or not, it usually takes something knocking us off balance for us to find out what that more is, because it’s usually a problem that sends us scrounging for the instructions that we had all along.

I told you – it was not until I noticed my tablet off balance that I discovered it could move in a different way. For many of you reading this little note, let me say that your feeling that something is off in your life is actually God’s way of getting you to move in a different direction. He wants you to try something you have not done before. There is more inside of you than realize. But this time, instead of guessing your way through, consult your instructions. Go to the Word of God to find out the intent of your Creator. Ask the Holy Ghost to show you how to unlock your hidden potential. You are flexible and versatile! Dr. Munroe also said, I believe, that if you don’t understand the purpose of a thing you will always abuse it. I said that to say this: Don’t let anyone who has not consulted the instruction manual handle you!

Get familiar with your built-in features and the additional power available from your Creator, and prepare to be used by God in new and exciting ways.

[Isa 43:19-21 KJV] Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, [and] rivers in the desert. The beast of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls: because I give waters in the wilderness, [and] rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen. This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise.