Christine Caine - Developed, Not Discovered - Part 4
It's so tempting to judge people from the outward appearance, but God doesn't look at the outward appearance. He looks at the heart. There is some amazing things that God wants to do through your life, but it's vital that you first allow him to work in your heart, to prepare you for your purpose. I'm Christine Caine, and I have a personal mission to Equip and Empower people like you to connect with your God given purpose and potential. I'm so glad you're joining us today. Let's get right into the message.
Hey everyone. I'm loving this. Welcome back. I'm so enjoying looking at the life of king David as we discover together what it is to have the character of God forged on the inside of us so that we could fulfill our God-given destiny and our God-given purpose and for sure we have that really it's God that chooses what it is that we're going to do and who he puts in position. And I think sometimes it's great to dream dreams but it is important to make sure that our dreams are aligned with God's purposes and that we would be a lot less frustrated if we got into alignment with what God wants us to do, rather than constantly clawing for something that we think we want to do and you know, I really enjoyed looking at the fact that David was on the side of a mountain while all of Jesse's sons were being paraded before the king and before the prophet and at the end of the day, God still had his way. He got David from the side of the mountain and he brought him before the prophet to be anointed.
And you know, the Lord was very clear to say, man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart and we need our hearts to be functioning in a healthy way. We need our hearts to be strong, because you know what? It is our hearts that grow weary in doing good, so we've got to keep our heart strong. If we're going to run our race, if we're going to finish our course, if we're going to do what God has called us to do, then we have to ensure that our hearts are strong, that our hearts are at peace, that our hearts are full of joy, that our hearts are full of love, and our hearts are full of grace because honestly a healthy heart leads to a healthy life. And sometimes people always think, you know, if I could just get my behavior right. Christianity is not a behavior modification program. Because you can act like your behavior is right, but your heart is really wrong. Christianity is a heart transformation program.
God transforms the human heart and then out of a healthy heart, you build your life, and you build your destiny. The thing that I've discovered here is that, you know what, there is no such thing as an overnight success. David is definitely the nobody that nobody noticed. And David gives me so much hope for my life because I was that nobody, nobody would've picked it. I remember when I went to Bible college, my Bible college lecturer after I hear the dean of the college, I had spoken the first time in a chapel, which is kind of like a public forum and you can imagine how nervous we all were, like these young Bible college students. And I already was so full of shame and so full of guilt and didn't even really know what I was doing at college but I just wanted to learn more about Christianity because I just didn't understand anything. And I'd got up with fear and trepidation to give my first talk.
And, I spoke at chapel and you know, the Lord really did move, but the dean of the college stood up after I finished and he said, Christine Caryofyllis because that was my name then. Christine Caryofyllis. After that pathetic effort, nobody would ever invite you to their church to speak. You will never speak publicly. That's what he said to me. That's how to win friends and influence people right there. But you know it was a process. It was devastating. I can't even begin to tell you how many months of confidence that took from my life. And just having to work through internally. But remember that crushing process. I mean, God knew that he was preparing me to have a voice that would reach, you know, so many different people in so many different nations of the world. But the fact is I had to learn resilience then. I had to learn to trust God then. I had to learn to depend on God then. I had to learn how to deal with negativity and with credit criticism.
And that was before social media existed. I mean nowadays you can just tweet it back at somebody and be negative. So God was, people go, well, how come some of that negativity doesn't worry you? I'm going, oh, you don't know where I've been. When you know where I've been and what I've heard I'm like, whatever. That's like a look. But the truth is that there is a process of development. I started and I turned up one day, the assistant youth pastor said, you know, I want volunteers to come and help with the cleanup day next Tuesday. And so there was a couple of hundred of us, I think in the youth ministry. And so that next Tuesday I decided that I would take a day off university. I was so happy to do that because it was for the Lord. So I thought that the, you know, that God wouldn't mind that I didn't turn up to school that day because it was for his service of course.
And so anyway, I turn up to the church, on the cleanup day but the point is, I was the only one that went. So that day the assistant youth pastor came to the cleanup day and he said to me again, how you Christine Caryofyllis, they like to call me that back then just Christine Carry off was, it's like now people go Christine Caine, they said both of my names together. So even when they're talking to my husband, they go and you know Christine Caine and he's like, yes, I do know Christine Caine. But anyway, so it just started that by amuse myself. And at that point the assistant youth pastor, he goes, you're Christine Caryofyllis, ain't you? And I said, yes. And he was at the top of the stairs and I was like in this broom closet cleaning. And he said, you're majoring in psychology, aren't you? And I wasn't, I was just the only person in my youth ministry at the time that was in tertiary education. And I said, no, I was getting a minor degree in psychology, but my major was in English and economic history.
So basically, I can read golden books and count to 10. And so I said, not really, it's just a monitor. I said, well, anyway, we are starting a Youth Center and I'm going on a missions trip for six weeks and I need someone to help me start a Youth Center. So would you help me start the Youth Center? I didn't even know what a Youth Center was. I had never prayed about a Youth Center. I had never prayed about youth ministry and I just, but I was there cleaning. So I went, okay. So I said, okay, because I had said to God, here I am, send me, I'll do anything. I didn't know that anything was cleaning the closet. I didn't know that anything was that I would be asked to start a Youth Center.
So with that, he threw me a pager and he said, well look, this pager is going to be your contact while you're gone so that people think we have an office. So I want you to know the whole formation of my ministry was a lie. I want you to understand this, that it was sort of a page was someone would call and someone would answer and say, hi Hills District Youth Service, can I help you? And the person on the line would go, you know, is Christine Caryofyllis there? No, I'm sorry. She's unavailable and she's not currently in the office. That's the lie. There was no office. And so they then would send me a page so it would reverberate on my belt. And then I would go to a phone and call somebody and I would equally lie, hi, I just got back in the office. But there was no office that I was back in.
And in those six weeks we began to form what he now is, you know, maybe almost 30 years later, the youth center still exists in Sydney, Australia. And we started, it didn't exist when we started. What I was doing then was preparing me for what God had prepared for me. But so many of us, we do value it and we diminish it. And the scripture says, the prophet Zechariah says, despise not the day of small beginnings. And so many of us, if we don't see the connection. So what I did with the youth center was preparing me for the community and the government, and I'm doing that with A21. What I did with youth alive was preparing me for evangelist rallies and gatherings and interdenominational church work while I'm doing all of that with propel. What I was doing way back then was preparing me for what God had for me now.
The way of the righteous scripture says winds upwards so you can't always see around every turn. I want you to know that God has not forgotten you, God has not forsaken you. God is orchestrating your path. God is orchestrating your purpose. Don't get off course. Don't despise where you are now. Don't despise the season that you are in now. Don't think what you're doing is insignificant. You might be raising children, you might be working in a youth ministry in the back of nowhere and you think God has forgotten you. You might be just starting a business and you've got dreams for a huge, huge entrepreneurial enterprise to take off and you can't see how it's going to happen. I want you to know that he who is faithful in small will be faithful in much and God will make a way where there is no way. Stay faithful where you are and God will take you to your destiny and purpose. It's the way that it works with God.
We confess it, we proclaim it, we declare it, we decree it, and we say, I've got my faith out there. I've got my faith out there. I'm putting my faith out there. And yet the scripture says it takes two things: faith and patience. And in a generation that does not even know what patience is, you may have all the faith in the world, but you will not fulfill the purpose of God if you do not have the patience of God. And the Bible says, let patience have its perfect work in you because then you're going to lack no good thing. Oh look, I'm not being a hypocrite here, in is my worst spiritual gift. And I think I have decided that, you know, I'm going to go into heaven with part of that really not redeemed at all, but I do know that you can't rush God. You can't rush the timing of God, and that everything he makes beautiful in its time. But there is time, for that to happen.
The thing we have to understand is also that some things are just not fair. Some things are just not fair in the preparation process. I wish I could say it otherwise to you, but I've made a decision that what I want to build is resilience and tenacity and endurance into you. I don't want to make false promises. How am I still standing today? It's because I've just had to accept some things are just not fair. Some things that you look at it in the natural and go God, I don't understand this. I don't understand why you haven't vindicated me in this situation yet. God, I don't understand why you haven't taken them out yet. I'd have an understand why this continues to happen. But the truth is that you've got to understand some things that just don't fit.
In 1 Samuel 17:29, I just wanted to read you a couple of scriptures. You know Eliab, David says to Eliab when he comes in in verse 29 right here, he says, and David said, what have I done now? He comes in to bring the lunch when they're supposed to take out Goliath. You remember, and Eliab is starting to complain about David, and it's like typical little brother syndrome. What have I done now? But I had to laugh because I thought in there, he says, what have I done now in 1 Samuel 20 where he's talking to Jonathan about Saul and he goes, what have I done now? What did I do wrong? He says it to Saul himself in 1 Samuel 26 what have I done now? And in 1 Samuel 29 he says it to Achish. What have I done? This isn't fair. That's what he's saying. This really isn't fair. And the degree to which you are going to be able to navigate this ain't fair, is the degree to which you're going to fulfill your destiny.
God is just, but everything that happens here is not fair. And for someone like me that is so black and white, it is really hard. I hate really any form of injustice, but I particularly hate things that I perceive to be unjust towards me. And so at the end of the day, it is amazing how we all go and you're like, God, this isn't fair. And when you're watching somebody else who didn't do it the right way, end up with what you think is the right result. You're like, God, this isn't fair. It's not fair to be honest or integrous or faithful or to be loyal or to be patient or to be waiting because they win and I lost.
Navigating that tension and coming back and going, okay God, you're good, you do good. You're going to work all things together for good. This does not feel fair and I feel really, really betrayed right now, but God, I'm still going to trust you. The ability to be able to say, I'm going to still be able to trust you God. I'm still going to trust you. Even when I don't understand what's happening around me. Even when I've been on the receiving end of unjust treatment. The ability for you to navigate that will determine whether you get to the finish line or not having done what God has called you to do. I think in most situations the bottom line is I'm just still standing and things haven't been fit, no.
And you know what? In some of them I still haven't even got an answer from God on why? On certain things. Some I have but a lot haven't. But they haven't been fair, but I hung in there. And I always say this to this, I think by my age now God has just run out of options. It's just like that scene when I turned up for that cleaning day at the youth center, there was nobody else. Who else was going to throw the page to? Nobody, 'cause I was the only one there. And I tend to think that that's what happens if you just keep turning up. God just runs out of options. It's like, well tag you're it. I'm going to look good. I guess I'm going to get some glory through your life.
So what you've got to do is keep turning up and the enemy wants you to stop from turning up, 'cause they'll tell you it's not fair and you won't be treated right and you've been misjudged, and what you've got to do is continue to turn up and knowing that God is going to come through with you for you. And so at the end of the day, you've got to remember this is a war and the enemy wants to take you out. It is a battle for your faith. And you've got to sometimes depersonalize it. You've got to step back from the crowd and that person that hurts you, that person that betrayed you, that person that seems to be getting ahead instead of you, you have got to somehow in your emotional realm. Step back from that and go, God, what they did to me was not right. But what you did for me wasn't right either. I didn't deserve what you did for me, so God, I'm going to make what you did for me bigger than what they did to me. And the only way forward it's the only way I know to move forward. Is the fact that I didn't deserve what Jesus did for me on the cross. Therefore, I've got to make that bigger, than what those people did to me.
And again, anointing I want you to understand of course does not mean instant appointing. We go from 1 Samuel 16:13 to 2 Samuel 5:4, and I just want to walk you through what happened during this process. What happened to David because for a lot of us, if you would just understand what happens in the process for you, then you're going to not try to short-circuit the process or step away from it. When David was anointed, here's the frustration, the Spirit of God came upon him in power. In front of his brothers, they saw it. What happens when you're anointed in front of everyone? And everyone knows the anointing is on you? And not only that, scripture tells us that the spirit of the Lord left Saul.
What do you do when the anointing comes on you and the anointing has left your leader? What do you do? 'cause a lot of us, we want to say, well, I'm going to step into that place. You all saw that I was anointed, and you all saw that the anointing left him. But David didn't touch him. He let God remove him. It takes 20 years and 20 chapters. What kind of man is that? What kind of leader is that? That in front of everyone, the anointing of God comes upon you, and in front of everyone, the anointing of God leaves your leader, and you are not going to displace your leader, you're going to allow God to remove them.
Now that takes trust at a whole other level. That takes confidence in God at a whole other level. But what happened in that process? Well he was anointed, and then he went back to the sheep, and sometimes we think, well, what else do you do? Well that's what you do. I've just got a bit prophetic word in the youth group and I'm going to be the next Billy Graham. Well, great. Go and clean the toilet. But we just think I've got this word, I've got this sense, I've got this dream, therefore I should be put on the stage straight away. And yet he went back to the sheep, because he still had a bear to kill. He still had a lion to kill, because there was Goliath in his future. So he still needed some battle practice. So God may have anointed you right now, but there is the process of preparation. He's got to develop you into who you need to be to be who you already are. Go and work that one out.
And so what happens is he anointed him and he went back to the ship, God was teaching him how to be faithful. He then he went into Saul service and you can read through all our 1 Samuel 16, 17, 18 you'll see all of this in 1 Samuel 16, he went into Saul service as a musician. He went to suit the king, and he became a musician. Well, you know what he was learning then? He was learning the protocol of the palace because he was a shepherd boy. He'd never walked into a palace before. How does a shepherd boy learn to be king? Well, you better start serving the king so that you understand what the protocol of the palace is. Some of you, you want to go and step riding at the top level and God says, I need you to learn how to clean the restrooms because you need to go through the process to understand the protocol of where you are.
Until you serve someone else, you're not going to understand the system, so that you won't know who to be when you become who you're supposed to be. If David didn't understand all of the process of the palace and the protocol of the palace, how could he ever be king of the palace? He was a shepherd boy, and so a lot of what you don't realize is that you are being prepared for it in that. Well, he became a lunch boy and he took his lunch to his brothers because Goliath was in his future. He became one in the spirit with Jonathan remember. He said that they were like, they became like soul buddies, you know. David and Jonathan were armor bearers. They were inseparable. Well, what was he learning by becoming Jonathan's beloved friend? Well, what he was learning, was sonship because Jonathan was Saul's son.
How would David know how to be the son of a king and to raise the king's sons of his own. If he wasn't close to the son of a king, what was he learning when Saul appointed him to be the high rank in the army? Well, he was learning to be a leader because one day he was going to be a leader of an entire nation. Well then he had to learn to lead the army. Remember he was only a shepherd boy before this, I don't know what you think. Like it's just he's going to snap his fingers and become a king. He's got to learn how to become a leader. What happened when the people loved him and said, Saul has killed a thousand, but David has slain 10,000. Well, he was learning what do you do with favor and success? When Saul was jealous and tried to kill him, he was learning how not to become a victim, but how to continue to come back when he acted like a madman to stay alive at Gath, he was learning survival techniques.
Let me just say as you go through the scripture, when he was in the cave of Adela, he learned how to lead people that were disenfranchised and distressed and discontent, and he took that band of men and turned them into a mighty army. At every stage, we resent the stage we're in, but God's preparing us for what he's prepared for us. He learned so much when he spared Saul's life when he could have killed him. And he said, we touch not God's anointed. He was learning at that point about loyalty and honor and anointing, and over all of that time I could take you through chapter after chapter when it looked like God had forgotten him. God was preparing him and for so many of us it seems like God has forgotten us, but God has not forgotten us. God is preparing us for the thing that he has prepared for us.
So the key to it all is stop waiting to be discovered by man and allow yourself to be submitted to the process of being developed by God. If you allow the character of God to be forged on the inside of you, then the Spirit of God will well up on the inside of you and you will go and do all that God's called you to do. He will put you in a place that no man can remove you from and you don't need to worry that it's going to be anything less than anything you could imagine 'cause your eye is not seeing, your ear has not heard, nor has it entered into your heart the things that God has for you. Your God is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above and beyond anything you could ask, hope or think according to the power that works in us in Jesus' name. Amen and amen and amen in Jesus' name. Amen.