Christine Caine - A Life Unleashed - Part 1
Hey, it's Christine. I believe it is no accident that you are tuned in for today's episode of "Equip and Empower". I truly believe this is a timely word that God has given me to encourage you, to strengthen you and to help you to give birth to the dreams that God has placed on the inside of your heart. So, let's not wait another moment. I can't wait to get started and share this message with you.
Hey, everyone. I am so grateful that you have joined us today. I believe that you are going to hear a word from God and it's going to help catapult you, into your God-given purpose and destiny. I couldn't be more thrilled about today. And I want to remind you from the outset that God loves you. God's got a planned purpose and destiny for your life. God sees you. God knows you. God cares about you. And I believe that each and every person, was born on purpose and for a God-given purpose. You were created by God to glorify God and to make a difference in your generation. I want to remind you that your life's not a divine experiment, but it is a deliberate project that's been designed by God to fulfill a purpose that your generation needs.
So, many of us think we're just here by accident, but I want to remind you, you are here on purpose, for a purpose. We read in the scripture, in the book of Ephesians 2:10, that "We are God's workmanship and that we've been created for good works that God prepared beforehand, that you and I should walk in them". I want you to catch that. We are God's workmanship. We've been created for a purpose. That purpose is good works and these good works were prepared for us, before we even got to planet earth. We have been saved by grace for good works. I want to remind you, you are not the result of some cosmic accident. And for me this means the world to me. And I'm sure it's going to mean the world to you, because there is so much going on in the earth today that we got to think, "Are we just here by accident? Like, how did I get here? What am I here for? And where am I going"?
And for me this is deeply meaningful. I personally have never met my biological parents. I was left in a hospital on the 23rd of September, 1966, my birth certificate actually on it, it says child's name, unnamed. So, I was unnamed. And my social worker report implied that I was unwanted when I was born. So, I've got to tell you, it means the world to me to know that God actually created me on purpose and for a purpose. And maybe you're on the other side of the screen today. And you know what that feels like as well. You know what it feels like to perhaps not be wanted or to feel like you are abandoned or to feel like somehow you were a mistake or a failure or simply unknown, perhaps a parent said to you, I wish you were never born. You're just a mistake. You should never be here.
So, many people have heard that, lovers have walked away from them. Ex-spouses have walked away from them and said to you that you are not worth anything. And we've internalized that. And we believe that. And we somehow think I'm just a cosmic mistake, but I'm here today to remind you that your Heavenly Father knows you. He loves you. He created you and has a plan for your life. God has planted a unique and fascinating dream in the heart of every person. Your world and your God eagerly, await and anticipate the fulfillment of that dream. There is more in you than you realize. So, you might say to me today, "You know what, Chris? How do you know that God's got a dream for my life"? I had someone say this to me, I was out speaking. They're like, "How do you know Chris? Like, what are you? A fortune teller? How do you know that God's got a dream for my life"? And so many people just say, "I can't see anything beyond just getting through this day. Man if I just make it, if I just make it, if I could just pay the bills, if I could just get to bed. And I sort of still go my mind, if I could just make it through Chris, that's all I see. I can't even imagine a greater purpose".
Well, I want to remind you that Jeremiah 29:11, it shows us, the scripture says, "'for I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope.'" God knows the plans he's got for your life. And my purpose in this teaching in this series that we're going to do is I really hope that you are inspired to find out what God's plan is for your life. You see so many people, they live their lives by default and not by design. Let's not just let life pass us by. Let's make a decision from the outset that we are going to live with intentionality to bring great glory to our God. We've only got one life and we need to make it count for the glory of God. I believe that Jesus came to give us a victorious, overcoming, passionate, purpose driven life that makes a difference in our generation. And in John 10:10 he says, "I came that you might have life and not just normal life, but life that is more abundant".
I believe that fulfilling the dream that God's placed in your heart is what gives purpose and meaning to life. You're really not even living, until you find God's purpose and you fulfill it in your life. God's got a vision and a dream for you that are supposed to be carried out right into eternity, because that's what's pulling it. What's pulling our ultimate purpose is eternity. Paul said, as he came to the end of his race, he said, "I have run my race. I have finished my course". You see there was a purpose for his being on the planet. There's got to be a why to our life, a reason for why we are here. You and I, we're a product of eternity and God has positioned us in time. And he's given us gifts and talents for the purpose of serving our generation.
I want to remind you today, you are not a mistake. You are unique, you are special, you are irreplaceable. There is a job that only you could do on the planet, God, specifically and specially designed you for it. We're each unique and we each have a distinct purpose. There are over 8 billion people on the planet, but not one of them has got your fingerprints. I want to remind you today, you are an original, you are one of a kind, God wanted you to be perpetually valuable, so he made you permanently rare. In this series, as you can tell, I'm excited about this series. It's my prayer that you're going to discover how to give birth to the dreams that God has placed within you. I want you to know that giving birth to our dreams is very similar to giving birth in the natural. So, now all the guys are already freaking out, but I want you to stay with me. There is when you are giving birth, when you're going to get pregnant, there's conception. There is you carrying it, you're carrying the child.
And then there's labor, there's a whole lot of stretching and growing that happens in between the labor and the conception. That's what we're going to talk about. You see the conceiving part is the fun part and the laboring, well, that's the hard part, but every part of the process is necessary to give birth to those dreams. I really want to encourage the guys to hang in there with me. I know that kind of all this talk about giving birth is making you queasy, but trust me, the process is the same for you as it is for us girls when it comes to giving birth to your God-dream. So, let's start this process. That's what I want to do over the next couple of weeks. I want to unpack this process, because we're living in a time where people either think, the world is full of so much conflict, so much chaos, so much pain, so much suffering, so much grief, so much loss and all that is true. That it's very hard to think beyond today.
We're so busy living in the urgent, we're living in the immediate, we're living in the now moment that we can't even imagine that God's got a purpose and a plan for us. I want to stir that up for some people in this series. I want to remind you that God looks back into time from eternity and we could always look forward to Jesus, but there are others of us that we've got so many dreams and so many plans, but the fact is that we're not prepared to commit to the process. Let me just say giving birth to your God-given dream is not like a snap and upload on Instagram. It's kind of like, I've had this little dream and now I'm going to post a picture of it and that's it. There is a process from conception, to labor, to birth and it doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter how gifted you are, how talented you are, how connected you are, how resourced you are.
All of us have to go through a process of conceiving the God-dream, carrying the God-dream, laboring to birth the God-dream and then birthing the God-dream. And then raising the God-dream. It's actually a process. And your commitment to the process, will determine whether you actually give birth to the dream that God's got on the inside of you and see that dream realized. See, it's one thing to conserve. It's one thing to carry. It's one thing to labor. It's one thing to birth and it's an entirely different thing to see that dream grow to maturity, to flourish, to thrive and to become all that God has called it to be.
Many of us have believed the lie that we are a mistake or that we're just literally not good enough to make any worthwhile contribution to this life. People throughout the course of our past and it could have happened at school, it could have happened at home, it could have happened in your community, in your workplace, but people have belittled us or perhaps overlooked us, devalued us or disesteemed us, perhaps even disastrously abused us or silenced us. I know what that feels like. I come from a background of many, many years of being the victim of sexual abuse. And I come from a background of being marginalized, because of my ethnicity and my gender and my socioeconomic background. And for so much of my life, I felt like I had no value, I had no purpose.
I understand what for some of you on the other side of the screen, you're like, "Chris, you're talking about dream and purpose and destiny, but you don't know my story. You don't know where I've come from. You don't know what's happened to me," but I'm here to tell you, I'm here to tell you that there is a God in heaven that loves you, that sees you, that knows you, that cares about you. He sees you and he created you with intentionality. I know that people may have hurt you, but God created you for a purpose. So, because of the hurt of others, what has happened is we've shrunk back or stopped hoping or expecting God to use us, because we've been disappointed. We sort of believed it, maybe you'd heard a sermon like this, somewhere along the line and you thought I'm going to dare to believe God. And then people disappointed you. And then the opportunity closed or the economic situation around you changed or just the world changed around you. Covid came and shut the world down. And you're like, "Chris, I don't even want to believe God anymore. How, could I believe God"?
You're living in disappointment, but here's the deal. I do want to remind you today. I don't believe that you've tuned in by accident today. I want to remind you. You are not a mistake. Ephesians 2:10 says that you are God's workmanship. You've been created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, where? In eternity. That we should walk in them, where? Here on earth. You see, I remember feeling like when I found out I was adopted, "Man, I'm just an accident. I was never meant to happen". I don't even no to this day. I don't know if I'm the result of a rape or a one night stand. I don't know if I'm the result of an ongoing adulterous affair. And I could spend every day on my planet thinking through this going, "Man, it was just an accident. I shouldn't be here. I don't deserve to be here. My biological parents didn't even want me".
And I could be rehearsing this and rehearsing this and never fulfilling my purpose or I can make what Jesus did for me bigger, bigger than anything that was done to me, said about me. And I can begin to understand that I'm created in the image of God. I am filled with God-given purpose. God made me, before I even got in my mother's womb, God made me. He knitted me together in my mother's womb. He fearfully and wonderfully made me. So, instead of spending all of my time on this earth, lamenting the fact that I don't know my biological parents or the pain of being unnamed or marginalized, because of my ethnicity and gender, I can elevate the fact that I've been created in the image of God that he intricately knitted me together in my mother's womb. And I'm his workmanship and I've been recreated in Christ Jesus. And because of that, I was planned with intentionality, no matter what I might see around me. And I want to say the same to you.
Some people think, "Chris, it's just so easy for you". I want to say I've had to work through this, like many of you are working through it, fighting to believe that you matter, fighting to believe that you are seen, fighting to believe that you are known, but I want you to know there are no accidents. Even if the circumstances surrounding your conception, just seem to be like, "Chris, how could you even say God made me on purpose". I'm here to you, he did, he did. He intricately wove you together in your mother's womb and he has a plan and a purpose for you. And he put in you and me, all of the potential to do the very thing that he has called us to do, everything about us has been determined by the purpose that God has for us. I want you to catch that. I want you to catch that, everything about you and me, our gifts and talents and our abilities and the way we've been wired up and our past and everything that combines to make us, us is determined by the purpose that God has for us. God built and designed us, giving us the right makeup to do everything that he has called us to do. He has wired you up, like you have been wired up, so that you could do what he has called you to do.
We spend so much time, often lamenting how God has made us. And God said I put all that in you, so that you can use those things for the purpose I have for you. And so that you can bring me great glory. See your heritage, your ethnic mix, the color of your skin, your language, your height and all your other physical features are made for the fulfillment of purpose for your life. You were built for what you are supposed to do. You are perfect for your purpose. I say this to myself, "All 5'3" of myself, with my Greek mix in here that was born in Australia, that was left in a hospital unnamed, all of those things are woven together, they're not by accident and God's not going to use me despite those things, but God is going to use me because of those things". So, this means that your ability and my ability is not dependent on what we perceive as our limitations, because that's what we often think.
I know that so many people think to themselves, "Listen, I'm not educated enough to do what's in my heart. I'm too short or I'm too poor or I have a long list of all the things I can't do. I'm not smart enough. I'm not gifted enough. I'm not talented enough". And Christine, "I have all of these dreams, but the fact is I don't feel like I'm enough to do the thing that I believe that God's put in my heart for me to do". And so then we stopped dreaming, because we think this can't be real, but I want to remind you today, none of these excuses are valid. You see, everything that God gave you to do, you are able to do in Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit. I want you to get that. The thing that God has called us to do is going to be impossible for you and me to do in our own strength, because it's a supernatural purpose. And we serve supernatural God. And we often want to limit our supernatural purpose, because of our natural abilities, because we're looking at what we can't do, what we don't have, what we are not and we're not good enough. And we're not this and we're not that.
And God's saying, "I already knew that about you. I already knew that about you, but I've put in you in seed form, everything that you need to do, the thing that I've called you to do". You will always and I will always utterly depend on God to do the thing that is called us to do. You see the fact is if you and I can do it in our own strength, I don't think it's God. I don't think that's the God plan, because we can do plenty of things in our own strength that is not going to give glory to God. We're just going to get the credit, because we're smart enough, we're talented enough, we're gifted enough, we're resourced enough. People go, "Yeah, I see how that can happen," because of who you are. I want people to look at my life and go, "I have no idea how that happened through her life". And I can say, "Oh, let me point you to the one that made it happen".
Ephesians 3:20 says, "Now to him who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we ask or think," what? "According to the power that works in us". God in you is able to do exceedingly more than you or anyone else thinks is possible. I want you to never, ever, ever underestimate what God can do through you. Never limit what God wants to do through you. He has put God-given potential in you and God-given potential in me and the Holy Spirit of God is the one that is able to outwork these plans and these purposes. I pray that throughout this whole series, that what you do is elevate your eyes, to lift your eyes off your own limitations, of your own fears, of your own doubts, of your own insecurities and you lift your eyes up to your supernatural God, who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond anything you can ask or think, according to the power that works in us. Greater is he that is in us, than he that is in the world.
The same spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, lives on the inside of you and lives on the inside of me. Therefore, we can do all through Christ Jesus who strengthens us. You were born for more than you know, there is more in you than you realize. The same spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, lives on the inside of you. I want to inspire you to not desire to live just a small life or an insignificant life. I want you to fulfill the potential that go God's put on the inside of you, so that you live a life that brings glory to our great God, because the Bible tells us, it is to our father's great glory, that we bear much fruit. I pray that our lives are multiplied and our lives bear much fruit, so that people look and think, "Only God could have done that".