Crossing the Red Line

I once heard someone say, “When God calls someone, He calls them to come and die.” Although I understand the poetic thrust behind these type of statements, dying is not the end of God’s call – it is the introduction to life! Most often, it is the life you never knew you wanted!

You see, when God calls you, it's true He is beckoning you to come, die to the world and separate yourself unto Him. This process is what I have termed, ‘Crossing the Red Line’. The red line represents your maximum threshold – the point in which you don’t think you have what it takes to go there, or if you do, it will cost you everything, and this very well could be the truth! The red line is a representation of hitting your limit, and it also doubles as a line in the sand that you can see, but you cannot see beyond it. It is the leap of faith that God calls you to take. It's the step that brings you into the true person He has called you to become. After this crossing, all daydreaming is over, and all the ‘what if’s’ come to a head. This is a place of action, it is a place where all calculations must come to an end and the risk must be taken. You can now, at this point, step into what the Holy Spirit has lead you toward all your life. Or choose to leave it.

It is at this point that most people stop directly on the line and looking upon it, they become conflicted within themselves, unwilling to part suddenly with their own motives. They formulate their action of non-action by mental gymnastics and create grand explanations such as, “The Lord is just dealing with me over an area,” to keep others from recognizing their stagnant state. The longer you stand at the line without stepping over, the longer you are acting on concern for intentions of self-gain and self-preservation. Someone may say, “I’m not going to act,” but in choosing non-action, they are indeed acting. Choosing this action based in self-preservation, is a deception that can only show you a shadow of what you should become, but the actual results of what you will get are typically far from your highest potential.

Most individuals that remain in this position of self-preservation talk a great game and are experts on all kinds of the hypotheticals involved in life, yet they themselves have never taken that step to pass into the raw uncertainty that lies within the path to destiny. Cloaking their timidity with the label of humility, the individuals that choose not to cross over become stunted in their growth trying to live their life to the best of their own ability and not the hundred-fold purpose God created them for.

When God calls a person to, “Come and die,” it is really a call to live and to live fulfilled. “….He who would lose his life will gain it.“ (Matthew 16:25). Those that cross the red line are those who heard the voice of God, stepped out in faith and thereby attained the life they were purposed for. Another way of saying it would be they attained everything they never knew they wanted! Those at the red line that are waiting, by living in self-preservation and excusing themselves from the greater picture that lies ahead of them, are trying to protect a number of things that they assume are ‘best’ for them. In doing this, they keep from allowing God to show them what the greater things for their life actually are.

He made you. It is He that knows your purpose and passions in life! You, in all your wisdom, can never attain what it is that He can give you by you simply following His leading. If you have been waiting, come now! Receive the life you never knew you wanted. Cross the red line, and let the world benefit from everything God wants to deliver through your purpose! 

For the Glory of Jesus,
Joseph Zupetz