A Line in the Sand

A line in the sand. 

The urban dictionary says it’s,"Something that you refuse to do, or something on which you will not compromise. A point that you will not pass in any situation."

You might call it a defining moment. 

That moment you firmly choose which way you’re headed at a particular crossroads of life. 

It’s the place where ideas are birthed, visions are cast, declarations are penned, challenges are accepted. Mediocre is not welcome, mundane has to flee, and uncertainty is exiled. 

That is what happens when you draw the line in the sand. 

You decide that you will go no further in that same old way. No more compromise. It stops here. 

And the new mindset begins. 

But sometimes you need someone to remind you that you are worth that line in the sand. 

And I think that is where I was when I received this message from my friend.

A picture of my name and 2017 in the sands of a Hawaiian beach that brought me to tears.

What was just a simple gesture, a rake of the finger across granules of earth, a mere moment in time for her…that became a defining moment for me. 

What I had desired in my heart, was drawn in the sand for me.

She stooped down to drawn lines in the sand that spelled out a future not dictated by my past, but a future declared by the passion and positioning of my present. 

And in that moment I was reminded of Another who once did the same for a woman caught in sin and faced with a past so insurmountable that she could not imagine her future. I can only imagine that she stood before her accusers and could not find the hope to grasp in that moment. 

But Jesus.

“But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.’ Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ ‘No one, sir,’ she said. ‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and sin no more.’” (John 8:6-11)

Jesus drew lines in the sand that changed her future from condemnation to grace. 

And the line that Grace draws? It changes things.

He drew a line in the sand of her present that declared her future untainted by her past. 

A defining moment. 

A woman on the doorstep of condemnation, now a woman on threshold of transformation. 

She simply had to remember that line in the sand.

That place where Jesus stooped down, raking his finger across granules of earth, and spelled out a future not dictated by her past, but a future declared by the forgiveness of her present. 

A defining moment that defined her life.

A defining moment that didn’t tell her she had to stay in the familiar- it unleashed her into the freedom of her present and the promise of her future. 

That’s what a line in the sand will do: unleash you from the ordinary into the extraordinary, from the mundane into the insane, from the past into the power, from the mediocre into the marvelous, from the safe into the spectacular. 

And sometimes God uses another to draw that line in the sand of your heart. 

To remind you, you are worth that finger scraping the earth.

You are forgiven.

You are called to GO. 

You are worth that defining moment where a thing is birthed, a vision is cast, a declaration is penned, a challenge is accepted. 

All you have to do is believe. 

Believe that you ARE who Jesus says you are and you will DO what He has purposed and prepared for you in advance to do! 

A line in the sand.

Let the new mindset begin. 

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works , so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:8-10

“…being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6

#SimpleTruth