God is Kind and Merciful

“For as the heavens are high above the earth, ​so surpassing is His kindness toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, ​so far has He put our transgressions from us.” Psalm 103:11-12

The circumstances of our life may be very hard. People can be cruel. Life can deal us a bad card. But it won’t change the fact that God is kind, gracious, loving, faithful and we can always expect Him to show up for us. I always learn something when I listen to Christine Caine. Compared to her life, my life is a fairytale. 

When she was born, no one cared enough to give her a name. On the line which says “Name” in her birth certificate, is written “unnamed”. She was adopted by a very poor Greek immigrant couple who lived in public housing in Sydney. For 12 years she was sexually abused by different men. She was just covered in shame, rejection, insecurity, fear, and anger. 

Today, she is a powerful, very talkative and joy-filled Christian speaker and author. In 2008, she and her husband Nick Caine founded the A21 Campaign, an NGO that fights human trafficking in several countries.  They also started Equip & Empower Ministries, to help Christian churches develop and grow. If that isn’t enough, in 2015, Christine and Nick founded an organization to celebrate every woman’s passion, purpose and potential. Propel Women is designed to empower and equip women to lead, and respond to God’s call. 

The road from being unnamed to being secure in God’s love and blessing for Christine was bumpy. Today she can proclaim that yes, God is kind and He is faithful. But first she had to surrender to God, and she had to offer Him all the broken fragments of her life. Like the boy in the story of the “Loaves and Fishes, and the Feeding of the Five Thousand” in Matthew 14, Mark 6, Luke 9 and John 6, she gave her brokenness to God, and He did something miraculous. She forgave all the men who abused her, she broke down and cried and cried and cried and then cried some more. But God used all her experiences, all her pain, to enable and empower her to save many women today from sexual abuse and slavery in Ukraine, Greece, Bulgaria, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Norway, the United States, South Africa, Thailand, the Netherlands, and Australia.

May we give God our brokenness, our pain, all that we are, that in His kindness and compassion, He may mold us, and make us into the men and women He has envisioned us to be.