The rectangle you see above is the pitch (field). Imagine that you are a football coach with a team competing in a league. The league has come to you with a new rule - your team and only your team must only play on the defensive half of the field - for the entire season – every single game!

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What is going to happen to you, to the players and to your team? How would this make you feel? Are the players going to be happy or sad? Will their behavior and attitude change – to what? Where do you think God is in all this? Does God care for you in this situation? Does God even recognize you exist? 

 

When I look at all of these things I realize that I was living in this prison. I call this prison LIVING BELOW THE LINE. This is where I see all coaches and even many Christian people are living. Living below the line prevents us from responding from a place of love, joy and hope. 

It is centered on pride and is manifested in feelings and behaviors like loss, anger, jealousy, gossip, fear, confusion, shame, guilt, blame, drug, or alcohol abuse, physical, verbal or spiritual abuse, rejection and many others. All these ultimately lead toward destruction and death.

Living below the line is the result of our sin and flesh. Most people do not realize that they are living blindly below the line. Satan is a deceiver, and he tries to blind us to this reality. If this is most of us, do you want your son or daughter playing for a coach who has broken relationships, full of sin and flesh and living below the line? 

 

Questions to Ponder: 
How do you see your actions, thoughts and emotions living below the line? 
What are you experiencing today, what are those chains that keep you below the line?
 

​Romans 7:1 Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives?

Romans 7:5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
 

Proverbs 11:2 When swelling and pride come, then emptiness and shame come also, but with the humble (those who are lowly, who have been pruned or chiseled by trial, and renounce self) are skillful and godly Wisdom and soundness.​