The Key to Success is believing YOU have the key

What if a tree was to decide one day that it didn't have what it took to be a tree, or that it changed its mind and only wanted to be a seedling for the rest of its existence; what would you think of that? Well, you would think that was ludicrous being that trees don't reason and if they could reason, why would they deduce that they should be anything other than trees? It sounds crazy that something created to shield from the heat of the sun, produces oxygen for other living creatures to breathe, and is in most cases beautiful to behold, produces delicious fruits for us to eat and beautiful flowers for us to adorn our homes and bodies, would want to be anything other than itself. If you look at the world around you, nothing created tries to be anything other than what it is: with the exception of mankind.

We are probably the only living thing that tries to be everything but what we were designed to be. And what's that you ask? Well, God said that He created us in His image. We can't see God, we can't physically feel Him with our hands, so this is a hard concept for us to grasp. I believe it is the reason why we spend so much time tearing each other down and picking ourselves apart. How can so many different individuals have spawned from the same source and all be created in that sources image and all be capable of achieving great things? It seems impossible, so therefore there must be only a selected few of us that are true representations of what God intended, right? This stance has lead to genocide, and World Wars, the oppression of many peoples, and the self-oppression of even more.

Well, my personal take on it is that when God gave us life, He gave us a piece of Himself; everything good and unique about you is your gift from God Himself. This is a being that just with a thought created an entire universe and breathed life into it by just thinking it. If God gave us just a tiny slither of His power, is it any wonder to behold some of the great accomplishments of the human race? In a world that functions in perfect order (when uninterrupted by us) why do we often act as if our small individual lives are spinning out of our control? We blame our circumstances on a silly thing called chance, and we leave our future up to the same culprit.

But if we are created in Gods image, a God that created Heaven and Earth and everything in between, a God so genius that He was able to create a planet that can sustain life…if we were created in the image of this very same God, wouldn't it make sense to deduce that we are able to be whatever it is we want to be and that we have the power to change whatever we want to change about our own circumstances? History actually has provided us example after example of humans, both good and bad, who were aware of their tremendous ability to impact their world and they did it, and it all started with a thought. Look at ordinary people who permanently left their mark on history: Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Alexander the Great, William Wallace, and the list goes on and traces back all the way to the beginning of time. But many of us insist that greatness discriminates and has passed us by, but when you look at all those examples they all have one thing in common; they were flesh and blood just like you and I, and we would've never known there was more to them if they didn't at some point realize it for themselves.

Mary Mary, a popular gospel duo, has a song called, "God in Me." In it they sing about a young woman that has it "going on" by most people's standards, but that what people don't see is that she has tapped into the God inside of her. When you tap into that God inside of you, you cannot be anything less than what you are, which is great. When we neglect, ignore or shy away from the natural talents God placed inside us, we are like a tree deciding it no longer wants to be a tree, or that it was perfectly content with just being a seed. See, the tree is here now, it has no choice but to grow up and perferm the function it was designed to perform, and that is probably how we should conduct ourselves. We should act as if we have no other choice but to use the design God has placed in us, that every tool we need, every answer to our problems and every key we need to unlock any door before us, has been placed strategically inside of us. We have it now; everything that we are supposed to ever be is already in us, we just have to tap into it.