Christine Caine - Divine Assignment - Part 3
And the Lord says, "Sometimes I call you to do hard things, but my presence will be with you. My power will be with you. My anointing will be with you. My grace will be with you". So do you want comfort without the presence of the Lord or do you want purpose with the presence of the Lord? With the enablement of the Lord, with the divine empowerment of the Holy Spirit, purpose with presence far outweighs comfort without presence. I am so excited that you've joined me for today's episode of Equip and Empower. What I'm about to share with you is a message that's so near and dear to my heart. It's all about your purpose and your calling and empowering you to live on mission for Jesus. So let's not wait another moment. Let's dive into today's message right now.
I am so grateful that you've joined us today. I don't believe that you've tuned in by accident. I believe that you have tuned in by God's divine design on purpose, because he has a word for you that could literally change your life. You know, we're in a series looking at the character of Jonah in this scripture. Now I love this book of the Bible and we are starting right in Jonah chapter one versus one to three. As we discover what it takes to step into your God-given destiny, what it takes to step into your God-given purpose, because I believe every single one of you is created on purpose and for a purpose, I want to remind you today that you are not a result of your past.
You are not a result of your failures. You are not what your worst mistake is. You are not who that teacher said that you were, you are not what that parent said about you. You are what God says about you. You are a son or a daughter of the King of kings and the Lord of lords. You are filled with God-given purpose. You are filled with God-given destiny. You are created on purpose, for a purpose. And I want to inspire you today through the Word of God, to step up and into your God-given purpose, to say yes to God, and to stepping into your divine assignments, you were created for so much more. We were not created for just a small lives, but we were called by God to be his salt and his light in a lost and a broken world. He has sent us into a lost world to live a life on mission, to live a life on purpose for the glory of God that you and I together would see his kingdom come. His will be done here on earth as it is in heaven.
So it is my heartbeat and my prayer that you would step up and into the purpose of God. The Bible says in Jonah chapter one, "The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai. Get up, go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because they're evil has come up before me". Now Nineveh was an evil city full of darkness and inequity, crime and violence and pain and suffering. And it's like so many of the cities and villages and towns in which we live all around the world. So the Lord was calling him to go to this place of darkness. There was a lot of conflict between the Ninevites and the Israelites. They were constantly at war.
So a Jewish man is not thinking I want to go into a war zone. I want to go into a place where they hate me. They are our enemies where I might lose my life. And very often God calls us to those very places that we think we should never go in order to bring his light and his hope and his mercy and his truth into a lost and a broken world. Yet, dare I say, sometimes that's in our own homes, our friendship circles, our schools, our communities, our universities, wherever it may be. We all have a Nineveh. We all have that place that we're like, whoa, really God, that's where you want to send me? Now look at the attitude of Jonah. It says, "Jonah got up". So the Lord said to get up, he did get up. "Jonah got up to flee to Tarshish from the..." You see, he thought, "No Lord, I'm going to go to the Spanish coastal town of Tarshish. I don't like Nineveh. I don't want Nineveh to repent".
And sometimes we don't want to go and offer that forgiveness or that grace or that mercy, because we know God in his infinite grace, infinite love, infinite kindness. Infinite mercy is going to forgive those people. And sometimes we think they don't deserve forgiveness, that they don't deserve God's grace. Now we want God's grace. We want God's forgiveness. We want God's kindness, but you know what? We just don't think that person deserves it. And so often in our cancel culture, that's exactly what we do. We want to cancel people for the very things that we have done in our own past. We want to cancel people because they've got different opinions to us because they vote differently to us because they don't look like us because they don't like the things that we like because they would do things a different way to us. And we think we are going to cancel you. And we don't believe that God should forgive you, or God should love you. And yet you and I want the mercy of God in our own lives. We want the grace of God in our own lives. We want the love of God in our own lives.
So we need to be a culture that doesn't just call people out. We need to call people up and into the purposes of God. But what happened is the Lord told Jonah, I want you to go to Nineveh and Jonah says, "No, thanks. I'm going to go to the coastal town. I want to go to Spain. I want to go to the resort town". Some of you are in situations right now, and the Lord's asking you to do the hard thing. And you're like, "No, I want to do the comfortable thing. I want to do the easy thing. I want to do the safe thing. I want to do the secure thing," but God has not called us to comfort or safety or security. He's called us to himself. He's called us to obey him. Don't sacrifice your purpose on the altar of comfort or security. Don't sacrifice your God-given destiny on doing what you want to do or your own ease or your own comfort. What we want to do is obey God, because when we obey God, it leads to the abundant life that we truly are pursuing in our innermost beings.
So it says the Lord called him to Nineveh, but he got up and he fled to Tarshish from the Lord's presence. Can I just remind you that every time you say no to God and get up and go the other way, you're actually walking away from the presence of God. And I would rather be with the presence of God in a difficult situation than to be in a situation that's comfortable, but lacks the presence of God. I don't want to be anywhere that God isn't. I want to be smack bang in the will of God, with the presence of God, with the empowerment of God, with the grace of God, to do what God has called me to do in that situation, rather than getting up and saying, "God, I don't want to do what you want me to do. I'm going to go here and do my own thing and then not have the presence of God with me".
I do not want to be in that place. And can I just tell you? Neither do you. It might seem comfortable for a season. It might seem easy for a season. It might be a sense of relief for a season, but eventually that absence, that sense of not being in the presence and the purpose of God is what causes incredible anxiety. It can at times, cause just such a sense of purposelessness and hopelessness when you are not in the center of the will of God. So I encourage you. Don't flee from the presence of God. Don't pursue comfort, safety, security, stability at the expense of your purpose or your destiny. It says, "He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. He paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the Lord's presence". He just kept moving and moving away from the presence of God, see often a simple, no, a small no, keeps leading to more and more nos. No one just sort of wakes up one day and says, man, I'm out here. I'm out of the will of God. I'm out of the purpose of God. I'm out of the presence of God.
What normally happens is we say no to one thing. No, I'm not going to forgive that person. No, I'm not going to reconcile in that situation. No, I'm not going to restore that relationship. No, I'm not going to stop gossiping. No, I'm not going to stop lying. No, I'm not going to stop cheating. No, I'm not going to stop slandering. No, I'm not. We just do that one small thing. 'cause we think in this circumstance it's okay. And then one year, two year, three years later, we end up right here, way outside of the purpose or the plan of God. It normally starts with one small no. And then the big nose get a lot easier when you get comfortable with the small nos. So don't devalue natural obedience because a yes to God, being obedient to God, even when we don't understand it, even when we don't want to do it, it becomes part of our supernatural purpose. And it becomes part of our supernatural destiny.
I want to remind you that you are always going to find something going the other way, right at the moment that the Lord says, "Okay, this is what I want you to do. I want you to go to Nineveh". You are going to find a ship that's going to Tarshish. It's always going to happen. I have found at every crossroads in my life where the Lord's like, "Chris, I want you to do this". I am going to conveniently right at that moment, find a ship that's going the other way. You will always find a ship going the other way. You're always going to find somebody that's going to agree with you going the other way. You're always going to be able to take some Bible verse out of context to go, yep. This is the Lord telling me to go there. You're going to be able to find some preacher, some teacher, some sermon, something that's going to take you the other way. The enemy will make sure that something's coming to take you the other way.
In over 30 years of ministry in my life, I have discovered that when you want to flee the word of the Lord, when you want to flee what God has told you to do, and you're like, "No, that's just too hard. I don't want to do that". You're always going to find some temptation that's going to come and go the other way. Now I'm not always saying that it's a simple temptation that's going to come or a bad thing more often than not the longer you walk with the Lord, it's going to be a good thing. That's going to come by to take you the other way. It's going to make sense in the natural. It's going to seem extremely reasonable to all the people around you, but ultimately, when it comes to your purpose, when it comes to God's plan for your life, this thing is actually a distraction. It could be a God. A good thing.
I have found in my experience that often it is the good things that end up sabotaging the God purpose for your life. You go, but Christine, it's not a sin, but Christine, it's not bad. It's not that bad. No, the issue isn't whether it's bad or good, is it God? That's the issue at stake. That's the thing that's on the table today. Is it God? And if it's not God, sometimes good is the very thing that's going to take you out of the will of God. I've noticed that distractions have thwarted more people's purpose than overt sin.
The devil will always make sure something is going the other way. That wants you to jump on board, to take you away from your purpose. You're going to say it makes financial sense. It makes sense for my family. It makes sense in this. It makes sense. But there are times when you've got to trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Sometimes when it comes to the things of God, it just is not going to make sense to anyone around you, but you have got to say yes to God. The thing that we need to remember, it says that he found a ship going to Tarshish. He found a ship going the other way. You will find a ship going the other way, but it says, "And he went down into the ship". He paid a price and went down. He said, so he paid the fare and went down. So he paid the fare.
Can I just remind you? There's always a price to pay for going the other way. See the Lord called him to go to Nineveh. He decided to go to Tarshish and he had to pay a price to get on the ship that was going the other way. See, sometimes you think it's going to be a free ride out of the purpose of God, but there's always a price to pay. Verse three says, "So he paid the fare". Jonah, paid a price to get on the ship that was taking him away from his purpose. Can I remind you today that the price of compromise or the price of disobedience is far greater than the price of obedience? You think it costs you a lot to obey God, the price you're going to have to pay for disobeying far outweighs the price for obeying. I'm in my mid fifties now. And I see this more and more as I get older, when I first said yes to Jesus, it meant walking away from a job at the time that was very well paying, many relationships. And one in particular, that was an ungodly relationship.
Now a lot of my family did not understand me pursuing the call of God. So for a season, it meant that I was even estranged from my family and it seemed like a huge price to pay. And I found a lot of ships going the other way that were just like, Christine, you don't need to pay that big a price. Why don't you do something more comfortable, something more convenient. God really wouldn't be asking you to lay it all down. But the fact is I had to forsake it all to follow Jesus. Now, decades later, I see the fruit of those decisions. I see the faithfulness of God. I see the provision of God. I see the wisdom of God and you know what? I would never have been able to please all the people and please God, at the same time, I had to continually say no to people and no to really good opportunities so that I could say yes to God and I've lived long enough.
Now, please hear me on the other side of the screen, to be able to tell you with every ounce of my being that the pain of regret is far greater than the cost of obedience. I have lived long enough to see the pain of regret of friends that entered into relationships or they were not God's greatest choice for their life. And now we're getting into our fifties and approaching 60 and you could see the devastation of that, people that were like, no, I won't really follow God's will in this situation. And it didn't seem like a big deal, but three and four decades later, you and I sit with them and we talk and the regret time and time again at my age and stage, the biggest thing I hear from people is their regret. The regret of not having done it God's way as hard as that might have been. The pain of obedience is a lot less than the pain of regret.
So I wonder if there's something in your life right now that God has been speaking to you about. And you've been saying no, because you're choosing comfort and convenience over obedience, because it seems like your way is just going to make it just easier and less painful. But I wonder right now, if right now would be the best time to stop saying no and to say yes to God, to go ahead and just do that thing, to go ahead as painful as it is and just say, okay, I'm going to obey God and I'm going to trust him. I can't see where this outcome's going to lead. But the fact is that I trust the character and nature of God. When you cannot trace God, you have to still trust him. And you have to believe that Psalm 119 says, "God is good and God does good". Romans 8:28 says that, "God works all things together for our good and for his glory".
So I wonder if you would be willing to trust the character of your God, who is for you, who loves you, who adores you? Who's not asking you to do something in harm you or withhold something from you. The Bible says he withholds no good thing from those who love him, but he knows what's best for you. And if your heart's cried to fulfill the purpose of God in your generation and for your generation, then there are some things we need to say no to. There are some patterns and there are some habits and there are some relationships and there are some lifestyles and there are some things that we must cut off and say no to. So that we can say yes to fulfilling the call of God, even when it seems that I'm going to Nineveh.
Even when it seems that I'm going to a hard place that God's asking me to do a hard thing on the other side of your obedience is revival. On the other side of your obedience is breakthrough. On the other side of your obedience is the very thing that perhaps you have been praying for. But sometimes it's just a lot easier to go to Tarshish. And in the day and the age in which we live, you're going to have a whole lot of people going the other way. And if you keep scrolling through too many people's lives, you're going to just see exactly the pictures and the images of no, that's exactly what I want. And that's what God wants for me. And if they can have it, I can have it. And if it's that easy for them, it's going to be that easy for me.
And a lot of us are sabotaging our purpose on account of someone else's Instagram account, on account of some image we see. God's calling us to Nineveh and we are looking and we are filling our feeds with pictures of Tarshish, metaphorically speaking. And so we're are thinking, no, no, if it doesn't look like Tarshish, if it doesn't look like a Spanish resort town, it mustn't be God, it has to be comfortable. And we see this, we see this in the culture. All the culture is about do, what's going to satisfy you. You do, you boo. You fulfill your best life now. You live your best life now. You satisfy your yourself. You gratify yourself. You actualize yourself. You discover yourself. You find yourself. Everything in our culture is go to Tarshish and live for self. But you're running out of the presence of God, out of the purpose of God, out of the will of God.
And the Lord says, sometimes I call you to do hard things, but my presence will be with you. My power will be with you. My anointing will be with you. My grace will be with you. So do you want comfort without the presence of the Lord? Or do you want purpose with the presence of the Lord with the enablement of the Lord, with the divine empowerment of the Holy Spirit? Purpose with presence far outweighs comfort without presence. And I just sense there's someone on the other side of the screen right now. And as I'm speaking, you know it's God speaking through me directly to you because everything in you has wanted to run to Tarshish, but you're going to pay a big fare to go the opposite way. Maybe you don't need to marry that person right now and you know in your heart that God has been saying this. And you have just been thinking, but Tarshish, but Tarshish looks so good, but to be in a place without the presence and the provision of the Lord ultimately is not going to be great. And it's going to bring you more pain than it is going to bring you satisfaction.
But here making the hard choice and saying, you know what, I'm going to deal with that sin. Maybe I need to end that relationship. Maybe I need to stay in this job that I've just wanted to leave. Or maybe I need to go and say, sorry to that person or, maybe I need to change how I conduct myself on social media, or maybe I need to deal with that secret sin. Maybe I need to confess that habit. Maybe I need to go and get help for this situation, Lord, I can no longer allow this offense or this bitterness or this anger or this lust or this greed to just take rain in my heart. Lord, I need to stop running to Tarshish without your presence. And I need to say yes to going to Nineveh with your presence, with your power, with your provision Lord, with your grace on my life. I believe that if you say yes to God today, a pattern will be broken. The power of that thing over your life will be broken in Jesus' name.
I believe that the Spirit of God will set you free in the name of Jesus and it's for freedom that Christ has set us free, not freedom from hard things, but freedom to be able to do hard things for the glory of God, in the strength of God, empowered by the Spirit of God so that we can become more Christlike in our lives. Don't run to Tarshish when God has called you to Nineveh, stay in the presence of God, stay in the purpose of God, continue to be empowered by the power of God. When we run to Tarshish, we run from his presence. You saw that twice in the text, the Lord says of Jonah, he ran from the presence of God. He ran away from the presence of God. Every time we say no, we're going from the presence of God. We're going from the empowerment of God. We're going from the peace of God. We're going from the joy of God. And we have to rely on our own strength and no wonder it all untangles eventually. But when you go and do what God has called you to do, you can be assure of his presence. You can be ensured of his power. You can be assure of his provision. You can be assured of his grace in Jesus name.