Christine Caine - Drop The Anchor, Part 2
And so when that moment came, I was still connected to the anchor. And so yes, the current came. Whoa, did it throw me? Yes, but I couldn't go further than that because I was already connected to Jesus. There are moments in life when we face things we were not expecting. A bad report, the death of a loved one, the loss of a job or relationship, an unexpected financial burden. How on earth do we handle these moments? When the waves of life come, threatening to take us under, the Bible says that we have an anchor for our soul. This anchor keeps us steady and secure, no matter how big the waves may get. I'm Christine Caine and I have a personal mission to Equip and Empower people just like you to connect with your God-given purpose and potential. I am so glad that you're joining us today. Let's dive right into the word.
Hey everyone, I'm so excited that you've joined us again today. Thanks so much for tuning in. I believe that God's got a word for you that's gonna transform your life. We are continuing on this week with our series on dropping the anchor. Now you all remember that I've got this huge anchor that is great for my muscles and we learned last week that Jesus is this hope that we have as an anchor for our soul, both firm and secure. And I wonder whether you've dropped your anchor in the right place. I wonder in your life whether the chains that are connecting you to the anchor that is Jesus are strong and firm because if you're not, we learned last week that trials are gonna come, Jesus said. Tribulation is gonna come. He didn't say it might come. In the world in which we live, there is so much chaos, there is so much change that the winds and the waves and the currents will shift us if we are not firmly anchored in Jesus.
I remember that two weeks before my 33rd birthday when my brother George called me and he told me that he had received a letter from the government that said that he had been adopted. And it was shocking news to me, absolutely shocking that I was 33, my brother was 35. So there was this 35 year old family secret. So can you imagine, can you even just imagine all of the stuff surrounding that that my mother never came home pregnant but I lived in one house for 30 years, which meant I had the same neighbors either side for 30 years. All of my cousins knew, all my relatives knew, so everybody knew except for us. Now one of the greatest mysteries is how nobody ever told us, 'cause you know, when you're a child that in one of those sort of childhood fights that somebody didn't say, well, you know, you're adopted.
So it's a great testimony to my mom and dad that they obviously loved us so much that we never even realized that that happened. But the fact is, it is very discombobulating, for want of a better word, to find out that you are not who you thought you were. And so when my brother told me that news and I went to support him at my mother's house to kind of, as he went to confront my mom, I thought I was gonna be the little sister supporting him. There was no way that I was expecting to find out that same day when my mother walked into the kitchen and said, by the way, Christine, since we're telling the truth today, do you want to know the whole truth? And I just remember when I just turned around and she's like, you're adopted as well.
Now to find that out and then to receive a birth certificate when you thought you had a birth certificate for 33 years and you receive another one that says, unnamed, number 2508 of 1966, you won't know what you really believe about God until you find out that you're not who you thought you were. And in that moment, I had a choice to make. Well, this is how I know that my relationship with the Lord in that moment had come to a certain place. This is how I know that I was truly anchored in Christ and this chain was connected. Now had I gotten that news maybe 10 years before, I would have unraveled, because these chains were not linked to the anchor. And if I had of found out that my mother had lied to me for 33 years, if I had of found out that on top of being abused, on top of being hurt, that this other thing, the enemy would have had a field day and he would have taken me off course. That's what happens with a lot of us. We receive news, news that is not a shock to God but it is a shock to us.
So if we're not connected to Jesus and we're not connected to that anchor, we are going like that ship, like that boat, we are going to drift way off course. Jesus is still anchored. It's not that he was in heaven, going, I had no idea. Peter, did you know that Christine was adopted? Why didn't you tell me? Okay, so it's not that that's what Jesus was doing but my soul and my emotions had I not done a whole lot of work in the years leading up to that moment, then you know what, that would have been enough for me to go, I'm outta here. How many of you watching this today, you're out of here because you received some shocking news and you weren't anchored in the word of God and you weren't anchored in Christ. And so what that news did was it fed the broken link in your chain and it caused you to be disconnected from that anchor and to walk away from the purposes of God.
So in that moment when my mother told me, I turned around and out of abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So I said to my mom, oh well, mom... And I mean, I was devastated. I remember my heart was racing. But literally the words that came out of my mouth, I went, oh well, mom. Before I was formed in my mother's womb, whosoever womb that was, he knew me. He knitted to, I said this out loud. He knitted me together in my mother's womb. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. And that day every fact that I thought to be true about my life changed. What my name was, what my history was, every fact changed, but the truth actually never changed. And because I was anchored in Christ, because he is this hope I have, not what's written on my birth certificate, not the womb that I came out of, but Jesus is this hope I have as an anchor for my soul.
In that moment, I did not waver. Sure, it was a shock. Yes, I cried. Yes, I had a season of just like, wow, what else is not true. I felt like the Truman show, have you ever seen that? Where like, you just go, whoa, 'cause it is weird to live in a house for 30 years and no one's told you. Nobody's told you. And so I went through all of that but I knew where I was anchored. I knew that Jesus was this anchor and I knew that the links in my chain, what once maybe a decade before the devil would have used to destroy me. Actually I didn't take one second off course. I remember a couple of years ago when I got the phone call when I had landed in Australia for the Hillsong conference and I had done a biopsy because I had felt a growth on my throat. I had felt another lump in my throat. I wasn't sure what it was. And I had just within 24 hours I had a couple of different biopsies. I had a laryngoscopy, I had two of those.
And then I caught a plane to go to the conference and then when I landed in Australia, I got the phone call from my doctor that said, Christine, I need to tell you that your biopsy's come back and you've got thyroid cancer. No one's expecting to get that news in that moment. Nobody is expecting that. Now the fact is, if I was not linked to the hope of Jesus, that, how many people waver with the c word? Somehow they think this is like a death sentence. Cancer isn't a death sentence. Life is a death sentence. You're dying from the minute you're born so seriously, and so I said to her, out of my mouth again. This is where I knew. This just reveals what's on the inside of me. Instantly, I said to her, it's okay, Leslie. Cancer can't kill me. I said this literally in the phone. Life is gonna kill me. That's all right. Just stay alive long enough and you'll die. It'll happen to everyone. And so the fact is is that it can't kill me. I said, my fight is not against cancer. My fight is against fear. What the devil wants to do is cripple me and, that revealed to me, you know what? This link, it's pretty strong.
Now, yes, I have got a 15 year old daughter and a 11 year daughter and of course, I want to be around for them. But here's the bottom line, if it was my time to go home, Jesus has got them because I'm anchored in Christ. So I don't need to freak out. If I believe that Jesus can restore. Sometimes we deal with five and six year old girls in A21 that have been taken and are the victims of human trafficking and they have just been molested and violated in ways that are unspeakable. But I believe that Jesus can restore them. Do I then not believe that Jesus could look after my kids if he decided that it was time for me to go home? Do I not believe that my husband is anchored in Christ? So people freak out. What will happen to them? What will, well, they'll be okay. They'll be okay. Not that I've got any plans to go anywhere anytime soon, just so that you all know. But what it did was it goes, Christine, do you really believe this? Trials will come. Bad news will come. You can't avoid it. And there's no point sitting around, going, oh no, what did I do to let the devil in? What did I do to let the devil?
Life just happens, people. Life, we live in a fallen world. You can do the best that you could do. I work out every day, I'm doing the best I could do with what God has given me, but at the end of the day, Jesus said, in this world, you will have tribulation. And we need to become the kind of people that can look the eye of a storm in the eye and go, uh uh. Jesus that is in me and the Jesus that I'm connected to is greater than anything that is gonna come at me and I am not gonna waver and I'm gonna continue to believe the word of God. So that's what I did. I got out, I downloaded my rhema Bible app and I would just confess those scriptures of healing and at the same time, went to the doctor. At the same time, had surgery. At the same time, did everything that needed to be done in the natural, as I continued to believe that my healing was coming from God.
I was celebrating my 50th birthday with 150 of some of my closest friends. We were on a boat, we were dancing and having just a great time of fellowship and enjoyment. It was awesome. Well then as I got off the boat that morning, my mother was in hospital in Australia. I had Facetimed with my mom, I had Facetimed with my brothers and I had just a moment with her. It was awesome. But then as I was leaving the boat that night, I drove home, pulled my phone out of my purse and I had 26 missed phone calls from my brothers to tell me that my mom had died that night while I was on a boat, dancing, zorba the Greek, eating feta cheese, which is how she would have wanted it to go. But let me just say, you can't avoid trials. I'm a preacher. I travel the world. It doesn't mean I'm exempt from the pain coming. It doesn't mean I'm exempt from trials happening. So in that moment, and it couldn't have come like most tribulation, at a more inconvenient time, in terms of schedules and travel and children and husband.
I don't know if you've noticed but trials and tribulations, they don't check your schedule. They don't go, let me just look at your calendar in your app and see if today would be a good time. It never happens. If the kids are gonna throw up, it's just when you've put the clean dress on and you are running late already for that thing. It's just how it's gonna happen. And so you better get good at going, okay, how am I gonna navigate this? It was just on the eve of I had to go and speak at Joyce Meyer's Women's Conference, I had to navigate a funeral in Australia, I had to be there for my brothers. That's just life. I had to talk my daughters through losing grandmother. I had to process my own grief. If you don't think I had mother issues, I was left in a hospital, abandoned at birth and then I was adopted and not told about it for 33 years. I had plenty of my own stuff that are, thank God, I had processed a lot of that with Jesus.
So what could have untangled me when my mother died, that could have been one of the greatest things in my life. Talk about a mother wound with my background. But you know what? I had done a lot of hard work. And so when that moment came, I was still connected to the anchor. And so yes, the current came. Whoa, did it throw me? Yes, but I couldn't go further than that because I was already connected to Jesus. Did it hurt me? Yes. Did it go, you know what, Christine, you need to go and talk to someone and just work through some of this stuff because you could potentially somewhere along the line have a weak chain and you don't want to pass that on to your daughters. And the fact is, you don't want your children to pay for something you have never resolved. You don't want your spouse to pay for something you have never resolved.
So many of us, a lot of the storms and the trials and the tribulations we go through have got actually nothing to do with what's going on out there. It's that we have chosen not to deal with certain stuff and so our links are really really very weak, very very weak. So the minute a small thing comes, someone doesn't talk to you, someone doesn't look at you the right way. Your girlfriends go out and you have a look at Instagram and go, they didn't invite me to lunch. Or you look at someone else's Pinterest account and get depressed about your bedroom. And so, I mean, while people are dying and major global crISIS, Pinterest could wreck your whole day. Like seriously, get off social media. That's all I can say. And so, at the end of the day, get some of these chains a little bit more secure. So then you know what, when it comes, you're not gonna waver. And so that your children and the next generation and the people in your workplace and your friends, it doesn't matter what season you're in, whether you're single or married or whether you have got children or not children, one of the greatest testimonies to this generation will be for Christians to not waver when trials and tribulation come, because we know where we have been anchored.
We are anchored in Jesus Christ and that means that news comes and trials come, well, eight weeks to the day that my mother died, my brother calls me and my sister in law who's my age, who was my age, 50 years old, her bowel ruptured and her spleen ruptured her bowel and that was it. In the midst of all of that and she had had this rare form of cancer. And my brother called me and I was in London, speaking at our church, at Hillsong Church there in London. And he called me from the room where she was dying. I had never heard the death rattles before. I had never heard someone dying like that. And it was the most hopeless feeling to be from Australia, 27 hours worth of, I mean, had I instantly got on a jet at that moment, I would not have made it back in time. And so again what I'm saying is you can't time when things are going to happen. So in that moment again, because I was anchored, I didn't expect two deaths in eight weeks that close to me. I didn't expect to have to talk to my own daughters about how that is, but the fact is, my strength in the midst of a storm was able to calm everybody down around me.
How are you in the midst of a storm? Are you anchored to Jesus? Because he's stable. He's not going anywhere. The fact is it's our instability that makes people think that God is unstable. And so, if Christians would learn to be stable, if we truly stay anchored in Christ, then the people around us would not freak out when something happens politically that they weren't expecting, when something happens economically that they weren't expecting. But if we get on our blogs every time we don't like something, if we get on Twitter every time we don't like something and we start Raving and we start ranting and we start going off like it's the end of the world, what do you think the world is gonna think? Then they're gonna think we're just crying wolf when it really is the end of the world. Because what we need to do is be really stable 'cause see, just in case you're wondering, what we really believe is that that sky is gonna split and Jesus is going to come back and that is the hope. That is the hope.
So if you are freaking out every time something, people are not going to listen to you when you go, you know what? Those birth pains are happening. Some of us, the way we're freaking out, it's like all you're having is a few Braxton Hicks and you're only in the second month of your pregnancy. Get over it. Like seriously, get over it. When I start to really listen to a chick thinking you're gonna give birth to this baby? It's like in the ninth month when those contractions start happening like every three minutes, you're like, whoa. Okay, now I'm gonna listen. So Christians need to stop yelling and screaming in month number three with a few Braxton Hicks. Get over yourself, okay? The baby's not coming yet. And what we want to do is be alert when people come.
And so, the fact is, we have to just make a decision. Imagine if I freaked out every time someone didn't write something nice on my Facebook page. Well the fact is, I don't even read them so if you're not gonna write something nice, it really doesn't matter. But life just happens and if you are just gonna, if you cannot cope with your girlfriends going out to lunch without you and you've seen it on Instagram, get off Instagram. If that is gonna break your peace, if that is what it's gonna take, you need even need the devil. The devil's in Cuba smoking a Cuban cigar, going you know what, it's awesome. I'm just gonna let the Christians knock themselves out because they're all comparing and competing and so jealous with each other on social media. I can just enjoy my cigar, honestly. You're not even gonna be up for the fight when real trials come. When real, so get your chains strengthened. Deal with your insecurity, deal with your fear, deal with your doubt because there are real storms coming.
There are real storms coming. Read the Bible. I'm not a prophet of doom but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't tell you what is in the word. And Jesus himself said, hey, you will, you will have tribulation. James tells us when the fiery trials come. Not if but when. And if you cannot cope with seeing something on social media without that ruining your whole day, then how on earth are you gonna keep your peace and your testimony in the midst of true trials, true persecution? We just teach our people how to witness to their prison guard on the way to their execution. I'm like, oh, how about I just get on my face and you pray for me? How about you actually pray for me while you are teaching your people to witness to the prison guard that's gonna take their life.
Awesome, awesome. In the 21st century. Jesus is this hope we have as an anchor for our soul both firm and secure. So it's time for us to grow up. It's time for us to get stronger. It's time for us to get those links in those chains strengthened and to understand that although people around us change, Jesus never changes. And that there is no expiry date on the promises of God. If he said, he will do it. You just have to have faith and patience, the scripture says. Abraham waited patiently. If we had a generation that could wait patiently instead of wanting everything tomorrow, we would not disconnect from the only hope that we have that will take us to the promise anyway.
A lot of us, we disconnect from our anchor because we want to trust our gift, our talent, our connection. We want to try to market our way into our destiny and Jesus says, would you just stay connected to me? I am this hope you have as an anchor for your soul and I will catapult you into your God-given destiny and your God-given purpose. It is Jesus that does that. So what do we do? If you wait patiently, when I look at A21, nine years ago I started. Always had a hope to start a work in Pattaya in Thailand, the pedophile capital of the world. Well, it took nine years but we've got an office there now. Imagine if I didn't wait patiently. I'd been serving women in women's ministry for 25 years before I launched propel. Everyone wants to run and do their thing. Imagine if I didn't wait patiently. I had prophetic words about television 30 years ago. At 50, I'm doing it. I waited patiently.
Some of you can't wait two minutes. We get frustrated. Do you know how many friendships have ended because we've texted someone and they didn't text us right back and we actually even saw the bubbles on the phone. And we're like, the bubbles then went away and we're like, we have ended our whole friendship over bubbles. And especially if we're sitting next to the person next to us that got the text and we didn't and we saw the bubbles. That's how ridiculous we are. That's how ridiculous we are.
So I'm asking you, how do you take care? Nick goes down to the boat and what he does is he removes the anchor from the locker down there in the boat and he washes the anchorage line and then he inspects every chain, to make sure that this thing is secure. And what we're gonna do over the next couple of weeks is start inspecting every chain in our spiritual life to say, are we anchored in the hope that is Jesus? And if we are, no matter what comes at us, we will not waver because Jesus is our security, not my emotions, not the people around me. Not the circumstances around me. Not the economy, not the government, but Jesus. So I wonder, are you gonna check the chains with me over the next few weeks as we trust that Jesus is this hope we have as an anchor for our soul, both firm and secure in Jesus' name. In Jesus' name. Amen, amen, amen.