Christine Caine - A Life Unleashed - Part 4
Hey, everyone. I am so grateful that you've joined us again today. I believe that God has a word for you today. We are in the midst of series of talking about how to unleash the God-given potential on the inside of you. Do you know there's more in you than you even realize? That God has placed his plan and his purpose in your life and that you and I have the potential to bear much fruit for the glory of God. You know, there's very little else I love to talk about more than seeing people fulfill their God-given purpose and seeing people fulfill their God-given potential. Jesus said, "I came that you might have life". And guess what the kind of life is that Jesus came to give us? Life more abundant. It is the will of God that you and I live an abundant, passionate, purpose-driven life.
Now, in order to see the dream realize that God's placed on the inside of us, there is a process. We've been learning over the weeks and I hope that you've had the opportunity to catch up on all of the episodes before this one, that you and I don't just wake up one day and step into our dream. All dreams start in seed form. There is seed. There is time. There is harvest. And you and I have to grow to where we need to go in order to fulfill our God-given purpose and our God-given potential. And we talked about what it is to conceive the God dream. Of course, all conception happens out of moments of intimacy. I talked a little bit about when I found out that I was pregnant with my first born Catherine Bobbie, and just freaked out like so many people do and kind of just fell to the bathroom floor and went, "Well, this suddenly just got real".
And so, we talk a little bit about what it is to conceive, to believe. There is a fact that you and I have to believe that God is who he says he is and that God can do what he says he can do if you and I are going to fulfill the God dream that God has placed on the inside of our hearts. And not only do we can see, not only do we believe, we have to envision the future that God has for us. We have to fix our eyes on Jesus. We've got to see beyond the temporal into the eternal. We've got to understand there is a process and envisioning the future is a huge part of that.
Now, I truly believe that as a part of what's been going on and a part of the plan of the enemy is to make us the church, to make us as believers, get so caught up in the here and now that we forget to look up and that we forget to look to God and that we forget to look to the future. And this is a time, I know we have come through so much, but this is a time where we have to start looking up. This is a time where we have to start looking forward. The Lord said to Joshua, remember, "See, I've given you this city". We've got to have the capacity and the potential to lift our eyes up off our present circumstances and to look to the future.
Some of you, so much of what you've been feeling, the despair and the discouragement and disappointment and the disillusionment is because you've become consumed with the here and now. You've become consumed with looking at what is just happening. It's time to stop scrolling and time to start praying. It's time to start looking up and it's time to start limiting the kinds of voices that you're listening to, what you are filling your heart with, so that you've got people around you that are going to help you to look up and look forward into the plan and the purpose that God has for you. What else is important is that you and I strategically position ourselves in every area of life.
Now, coming out of a global pandemic, I think so many of us have just spent the last season, well, trying to survive, but also trying maybe to numb what's been going on and just binge-watching different things on and different programs and just kind of playing a whole lot of games or just kind of wasting a whole lot of time. You are not going to fulfill your God dream if you don't position yourself strategically, and if you don't get caught up in doing things that really matter for the glory of God. See, when you want to give birth to something, you've got to monitor everything that goes into your body, and you've got to place yourself in positive, proactive environments. I remember I did this. I'll tell you, okay, this is how serious you'll know I was about this when I got pregnant, both with Catherine and with Sophia. I actually gave up caffeine for nine months when I was pregnant and just actually for a little bit longer while I was breastfeeding. I gave up caffeine.
I have to tell you that's how much I was monitoring what was going into my body. I was so strict about the environments that I walked into because I didn't want anything to adversely affect my kids. I was careful about the things that I ate. I was very, very strategic about how much I slept. You see, I wanted my babies that were in my womb, I wanted them to have the best environment in which to grow and to thrive. Now, in exactly the same way, if you want to see your God dream realize, you have to make adjustments to the environments that you place yourself in. You have to adjust your consumption habits of certain things. You can't just hang out with anyone and everything. And you can't just go anywhere you want to go and do anything you want to do. You live with different intentionality and you live with different boundaries when you have purpose in your life.
It's not like people saying, "Well, are you just trying to be legalistic"? Or "Are you just trying to be religious"? It's like, no, I want to fulfill my purpose and so, I want to create an environment in which my life can flourish. So, you know what? There are some negative and some toxic people that I just cannot have in my life. It was okay. When I was not living with purpose, it didn't matter. It really didn't matter that much to me who I was hanging out with. But once I decided that I want to get on course with my God-given purpose, well, who I hung out with mattered greatly. The friendships I have mattered greatly. I wanted people that were going to help take me to my destiny, not hinder me from getting to my destiny. I wanted people around me that actually believed in me and believed in the God dream that God had put on the inside of me. So that means we've got to be prepared to just really monitor the people that are in our inner circle.
Now, of course, we're going to be friends with people and we've got lots of people that are in our lives, but I'm talking about those friends that are close. I'm talking about those friends that are going to help you go to your destiny. We've heard it said so many times and it is true. Show me your friends and I'll show you your future. So surround yourself with great life-giving, passionate people, people that are for you, people that are in alignment with your values and are going to help you get to where you want to go. I remember that maybe there's some things you're going to have to do and this is a good time to do a little bit of a self assessment.
A lot of us, I guess, just because we've been at home and we've been in a time of a shutdown, perhaps we've picked up some habits that are not going to help us get to our destiny. Maybe we spend an inordinate amount of time binge-watching different series on TV, or playing a whole bunch of games, or just scrolling through social media. Well, you know what? Basically, we've got to create some margin and some time in our lives and maybe it's time to stop doing some of those things so that I can focus on my God-given purpose. In lots of times, maybe we need to change our diet. Maybe we've gotten into a whole lot of negative eating habits and we haven't been exercising. And I mean, I know these are very natural things, but it's often the natural things that are going to help us to get to our spiritual purpose and our spiritual destiny. So maybe it's like, "You know what? I've got to get off the couch and I've got to move my little rusty dusty and go for a walk. And I need to start exercise".
I think one of the things that I've done during this pandemic is I began to climb mountains because I thought, well, I can't fly internationally anymore and I don't want to get into bad habits. So in order for me not to get into bad habits, I've got to formulate some new good ones because I couldn't do the ones that I was doing before. So, I began to climb. And gosh, it was so good for me to get out and to get into nature and to get into some altitude and to start climbing some mountains. It's built muscles I didn't know I've had. It's built endurance that I didn't know that I have. And my training through the pandemic was to climb mount Whitney, which is the tallest mountain in the lower continental us. And I would never have believed that I could do something like that - 22 miles over 6.000 feet of elevation of 14 and a half thousand foot mountain. You know why? Because I didn't sit on my rusty dusty and think, well, I've got nothing else to do. I'm just going to binge-watch TV and I'm just going to eat a whole lot of unhealthy food and I'm just going to scroll through social media and get involved in whatever the negativity is there.
No, I thought I don't want to do that. I've got a purpose. I've got a plan. I've got a destiny. When this thing passes, I want to be on the front lines of what God has called me to do. I want the work of a21 to go forward. I want the work of propel to go forward. I want to continue to inspire people. I want to continue to encourage people. So, rather than get caught up in negative things, I am going to begin to climb a mountain. Sometimes you just got to decide, "Okay, I'm going to get myself in environments and around people that are going to help take me to my purpose".
I've got a whole new group of friends I didn't even know they were people that were like into mountain climbing things and long hikes. My friend, Dawn, she taught me a whole new way of being and we were outside and she taught me how to train and she taught me how to climb these mountains. And then there was a whole group of friends that came alongside her. I am so glad that I just didn't waste my time scrolling, didn't waste my time binge-watching. But I got stronger during a time of great adversity. I was able to maintain vision during a time of great adversity. I realized that I had to keep looking forward and I had to keep being prepared for what God had prepared for me on the other side of this.
The fact is that you've got to position yourself strategically, and you don't just do that once. You do that consistently throughout your life. Here, I was in my mid fifties, we're in the middle of a pandemic. I normally travel nine months of the year and internationally mostly. Well, that all shut down. So I had to position myself in a life-giving, positive, affirming environment that would help me to flourish, that would help me to keep growing, that would continue to stretch me, that would continue to challenge me so that I didn't go into atrophy. And then when the whole thing was over, it would've been so hard to get going again into the things of God, because I would've stopped the very things that were giving me strength and courage to keep going.
I wonder today whether you would just consider everywhere that you're positioned and say, "You know, when it comes to my friendships, when it comes to my eating habits, when it comes to my exercise habits, when it comes to my world, do I need to reposition myself? Do I need to reposition some relationships in my life? Do I need to reposition some of my eating habits, some of my exercise habits? Do I need to develop some better habits so that I can be who God's called me to be and I can do what God's called me to do"? You know, in the book of Luke, and I love the Gospel of Luke chapter one, verses 39 to 46. Mary went straight to Elizabeth. You remember when Mary conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit? She conceived Jesus.
Well, what I love in this passage in Luke chapter one is that one of the first things Mary did was she went to straight to Elizabeth. I want to read you this part of the scripture because when Mary conceived Jesus, she could have just stayed where she was. But she ran to Elizabeth's place. And it says, "In those days", in verse 39, "Mary arose and went with haste". She went with haste. Some of you after this program, you're going to go with haste to some people. "She went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and she greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, 'blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord'".
It goes on, the song of Mary. We come out of that in verse 56, "And Mary reMained with her about three months and returned to her home". So when Mary has this powerful encounter with the angel of the Lord, Mary conceives Jesus. The first thing that she did, she didn't sit around in an environment where all the naysayers were going to say: "You've just dream this up". "This isn't real". "This can't be true". She runs to Elizabeth. She's in a positive environment where that dream is affirmed. Elizabeth says, "Blessed is the mother". She immediately affirms what's going on. And then the Bible says that Mary stayed there three months. For any woman that's pregnant, of course the whole pregnancy is important the whole nine months, but particularly, statistics would show if a miscarriage is going to happen, it normally tends to happen within the first trimester.
I think spiritually, the enemy loves to come in right at the beginning and try to steal that seed, steal that dream, destroy the God-given purpose and destiny. So can I just say to you, even if through this series, the Holy Spirit's been speaking to you, something's come alive on the inside of you. Be careful who you position yourself around. Be careful who you share that dream with. Be careful who you talk to because the enemy will try to abort that dream before it ever comes to fruition. So you've got to be careful. I know when we started a21, when we started propel, in those early conversations, I was so careful who I shared that with. I'm careful to this day who I share what's in my heart with, that there are only certain people that can nurture that dream in seed form. I've got to position myself in a place where that dream can flourish.
So then it's strong enough and it doesn't matter by the time I brought it to you, it's already been nurtured and strengthened. It's so important that we all understand. If you're going to fulfill your God dream, you got to remember that relationships are crucial. I cannot emphasize this enough. Proverbs chapter 13 verse 20 says that he who walks as a companion with wise men is wise, but he who associates, and I love this and I amplify, he who associates with a self-confident fool is a fool himself. So we have to understand that we need to build relationships with those people who are going in the same direction as us and who share the same values as us. And I'm talking about our intimate circle. A wise mentor once said to me, "Chris, if you show me your friends, I will show you your future".
God often brings people into our lives, so that they're different to us. And so that they will stretch and expand us, but they've got to be for us for this to happen. People that are going to strengthen our weaknesses and that they're going to build healthy, diverse, and challenging relationships. It's so important that are going to help us to step into our future. But the point is, make sure that you're in a circle are people that are for you. You know, I've done this and I think throughout my life, I have some very, very dear friends. One of my closest friends, Lisa harper, many of you know her and love her. But a few years ago, I was going through such a challenging time, such a challenging time in my life. And there was not that many people that I could just call on the phone and really share my heart with and say to her, "You've got to give me a reason today not to give up. You've got to gimme a reason to keep going. You've got to help me to see why I'm in this and why I'm doing this and why I should get up again and keep going again".
You need those kind of people, the people that are going to be on the other side of that phone, or that are going to get in that car, or jump on that plane and say, "Oh, I'm going to come and see you. And I'm going to be with you and I'm going to remind you why you got in this. I'm going to remind you that God has called you. I'm going to remind you that God's got a plan for you and a purpose for you. I'm going to give you 10 reasons why you shouldn't give up and why you should keep going". And I am a great believer that you've got to have those kind of people around you. Not the people that in those moments are going to say: "You know what? I told you this Christianity doesn't work". "I told you that you should just give up. You should just walk away". "I told you that the cost is too great". Or, "You shouldn't be doing the", you need people that are for you.
You need people and to position people around you and to position yourself in alignments and relationships where people are going to, yes, stretch you, yes, challenge you, yes, hold you accountable, but ultimately, are for you and are going to strengthen you. And not just for you, but for the call of God that is on you. That they care enough about you. That they're going to continue to call you up higher into the purpose that God has for you. I just feel that I'm speaking to someone today that you have got some people in your life and they are just encouraging you in your disappointment and in your discouragement and in your disillusionment. They just encourage you to just walk away. And everything in you wants to listen to them because you feel so broken and hurt on the inside.
And I'm not devaluing or dismissing the reality of what happened. But I am here to remind you and I believe that God's dropped me into here, this moment, to remind you that God's called you, that God's got a plan for you, and that God's got a purpose for you. And that there is someone in your life. And this one person that's walking with the Lord, has been bugging you and you've been avoiding them. And they've been texting you and you've been avoiding them because you don't even want to hear it because they're saying to you, "Come on, you can do this".
Stay with it. Don't give up. Don't quit. Keep going. And you haven't answered their text. And I'm just sensing, as I'm talking to you, that you are literally going to pick up your phone and you're going to text them back and you're going to tell them to come over. And you guys are going to pray together and this is going to be a turnaround moment in your life because there are defining moments. And the people you surround yourself within those defining moments will determine whether you're going to run your race and finish your course or whether you're going to quit. And it's the enemy that wants you to quit. The enemy does not want you to finish. The enemy does not want you to cross that finish line. And yet, it's the will of God that you run your race and you finish your course and you can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens you.
And God has position the person right there in alignment with you. You've just been avoiding them because you don't want to do the thing that you know you should do. And so, you're not answering their texts. And you've been interacting with the people that are telling you what your flesh wants to hear. And I believe that I'm here talking to you today to say, "Listen to your spirit and not your flesh". We walk by faith and not by sight. And this will literally be a life transforming decision for you. This will literally be the difference between you crossing that finish line or not crossing that finish line.
We've got to position ourselves in environments and around people that are going to take us to our God-given purpose, not keep us from our God-given purpose. We've got to position ourselves and position around us people that are going to, at times, maybe even cut a hole in the roof and drop us at the feet of Jesus cause we don't think we can get there ourselves but they love our us enough that they will carry us. They are not going to drop us. They are not going to let us go. They are not going to leave us to our own devices. They're going to carry us to the feet of Jesus, so that we can get strong again to run our race and to finish our course. Position yourself well and position the right people around you, in Jesus name.