Praise for Undaunted

This book will be like an alarm clock going off in the depths
of your soul. The thread of Gods lavish grace and captivating mercy extended to usand then through usis woven
throughout every chapter. Chris has given us what the church
has been waiting for, dying for: a reminder of Gods love and
then a kick in the pants to get busy living differently!
Priscilla Shirer
Bible teacher and New York Times bestselling author
Undaunted is filled with compelling stories and life-changing
revelation. It will challenge you to let the light and hope of
Christ shine through you into the dark places of this world.
Joyce Meyer
Bible teacher and bestselling author
Christines devotion and loyalty are immeasurable. Her own
story of redemption frames the core of her belief system and
fuels her endless passion. We are confident that Undaunted will
unlock freedom not only in the reader but also in the individual
worlds we influence, resulting in multitudes being blessed.
Brian and Bobbie Houston
senior pastors, Hillsong Church
I love Christines undaunted heart. And I love this page-turning
message. These words will rattle loose the cords of fear and
uncertainty that hold us back from fulfilling our own calling.

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Then with carefully studied truth, Christine ignites a fresh passion deep within the soul of her reader. Dont let fear make you
miss out on the best in your life. Read this book today!
Lysa TerKeurst
New York Times bestselling author,
Women of Faith speaker,
and president of Proverbs 31 Ministries
If anyone can motivate you to chase after Gods calling in your
life, it is Christine Caine. Undaunted will stir you, challenge
you, and dare you to take a giant leap into the adventure of a
sold-out life for Christ.
Craig Groeschel
senior pastor of LifeChurch.tv,
author of Soul Detox: Clean Living
in a Contaminated World
Christine Caine dares to shine a light into the dark, grimy
places of life-altering circumstances: human trafficking, loss,
grief, identity, and abuse. A woman of undaunted courage, she
confronts the challenges with godly perspective and practical
application points, valuable for any reader dealing with the call
to tackle adversity and to affect true change.
Dr. Ed Young
senior pastor, Second Baptist Church
Houston, Texas

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ZONDERVAN
Undaunted Student Edition
Copyright 2013 by Christine Caine and Equip & Empower Ministries
This title is also available as a Zondervan ebook. Visit www.zondervan.com/ebooks.
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
ISBN 9780310743101
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission.
All rights reserved worldwide.
Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from The Message. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995,
1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright
1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois. All
rights reserved.
Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are oered as
a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor
does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmied in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or
any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the
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Published in association with the literary agency of David O. Middlebrook, 4501 Merlot Avenue,
Grapevine, Texas 76051.
Cover design: Cindy Davis
Cover photography: Shuerstock
Interior design: Sarah Johnson
Printed in the United States of America
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To my husband, Nick,
and precious daughters, Catherine and Sophia.
You are Gods greatest gifts to me.
I am forever grateful.gg

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For we are Gods handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do

good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Ephesians 2:10

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Foreword

ve wondered what it would be like to visit with the apostle

Paulthe globe-trotting, gospel-proclaiming, chain-breaking
trumpeter of grace.
Ive imagined a good chat with Mary, the mother of Jesusthe simple village girl who, upon learning that she would
be virgin and pregnant, told God: Whatever you say, Ill do.
Ive envisioned a conversation with Estherthe liberator
from nowhere. Out of the shadows she stepped, and because
she did, a nation was spared.
Paul. Mary. Esther. Turns out, Ive met all three in the person of Christine Caine.
She has the spunk of a Paul. Shes scarcely on the stage, or
at the dinner table, before you hear her passions: Jesus, her family, and the forgotten girls of the slave trade. You know where
she stands. And you know whom she loves. Its contagious, this
heart of hers. Wonderfully infectious.
She has the obedience of a Mary. Who would have pegged a
Greek-born, Australia-raised, blonde pistol as a world-changer?
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UNDAU NT E D
Yet, just like the mother of Jesus, she brings Christ to the nations. Everywhere Christine goes, from South Africa to Eastern
Europe, she radiates hope.
Especially to the girls to whom she is an Estherthe millions of teenage girls who find themselves in the throes of Satans cruelest concoction, the sex trade. These young women
should be becoming exactly that, young women. They should
be listening to music, reading books, and flirting with guys. Instead, they are locked into brothels, beaten, raped, and treated
like livestock.
Their only hope? Jesus Christ. And Jesus has chosen to
work through people like Christine. Christ appears, not just in
her name, but in her face, resolve, grit, and joy. She makes the
rest of us want to love the Jesus she loves in the manner she
loves him.
I pray you will read this book. If and when you do, youll
discover what I have: God has given our generation a Paul,
Mary, and Esther. And her name is Christine Caine.
God has given our generation the opportunity to make a
difference in the vilest atrocity of the century.
After reading this book, I resolve to do more.
I hope you will too.
Max Lucado

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chapter 1

Stopped Dead in My Tracks

he Greece I found that Wednesday afternoon in March 2010

was not the one I remembered from my trip there fourteen years
earlier. There were no stunning, whitewashed buildings. No
lapis-blue tile rooftops. No festive music. No outdoor market
with vendors selling freshly pressed olive oil, mouth-watering
feta cheese, and fresh cantaloupe.
None of that. This afternoon the streets were empty, black,
wet. The normally crystal-blue Mediterranean pounded dark
and rough against the Thessaloniki shipping port. Strange how
fear, not just the seasonthis long, hard winterchanged everything.
Is this how they see it? I wondered.
They were fourteen young women, mostly Eastern European, recently rescued from sex trafficking. But they hadnt
begun their journey as womentheyd been mere schoolgirls
when lured from homes in the Ukraine, Bulgaria, Georgia,
Albania, Romania, Russia, Uzbekistan, and Nigeria. Sixteenyear-olds. Seventeen. Eighteen. Girls who should have been
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UNDAU NT E D
giggling about music and basketball games, worrying about
what to wear to schoolnot how to survive the next minute.
Securely hidden in a safe house run by The A21 Campaign,
the rescue ministry my husband, Nick, and I had launched just
six months before, we were to speak face-to-face this dreary
afternoon about a part of Greece Id never known. I kept reminding myself: This is not a movie. This is not reality TV. This
is real. This is real.
The young women and I sat together in awkward silence.
How does one speak of unspeakable depths of shame and
agony?
Nadia braved the waters. Haltingly, she told how she had
been raised in a village in Georgia at a time of war and deprivation. Her family possessed an abundance of love but
not food. Poverty consumed them. For years Nadia lived on
dreams: dreams of escaping the hunger, dreams of a world
away from the ravaged village, dreams of becoming a nurse.
If she were a nurse, like the ones she saw dress the wounds of
soldiers in her village, she could get away. She would travel.
She would see a beautiful world, a world in which she had a
helpful role to play.
But girls in poor Georgian villages did not go to school beyond the second grade. They needed to learn only how to cook
and clean, not to read and write. What man, after all, would
want to marry a woman more educated than he? Wasnt that
all that was expectedto marry, keep house, provide children,
depend on ones husband for everything else?
Nadia, an obedient daughter who desperately wanted to
please her parents, tried to push aside her secret dream. Yet
embers remained in her heart.
So just three weeks before her seventeenth birthday, when
a man approached her group of friends at their bus stop and
told of opportunities to work in Greece, those embers began to
glow brighter. The man told the girls that Greece was beautiful and that people prospered there. He said there were many
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Stopped Dead in My Tracks

good-paying jobs for waitresses, hairdressers, shop assistants.
He said there were jobs just waiting for nurses.
The man gave her a brochure and said a meeting the following Friday evening would provide all the details.
For the next week, Nadia felt blinded by the light of opportunity. Her dream seemed so possible, so close. On Friday,
she arrived early at the village community hall and found a
seat in the front row. Several dozen other girls trickled in after
her. The room was filled with excitement, chatter. Some men
introduced themselves as agents and gave a compelling presentation of the opportunities in Greece. They promised a bright
future. They passed out the necessary paperwork for obtaining
passports and work visas and patiently helped the girls fill out
the forms.
Nadia left the community hall full of hope. She ran home to
tell her parents that she had the chance to start a new life. She
could not only get education and training as a nurse and live a
life of helping others, but she could soon send home money for
her entire family.
Her parents were concerned. Greece was so far away. But
the embers of hope burned in them too. Perhaps their daughter
would be able to get ahead as they never had. Perhaps she could
find a profession, earn a good income. She could be their key
to new lives too. After much discussion, they reluctantly agreed
to let her go. They drained all their accounts, selling what they
could, even borrowing, to scrape together the fee Nadia would
have to pay the hiring agents for her passage to Greece. Her
dreamhappiness, success, prosperitybecame their own.
Nadia was met at the airport in Greece by a woman from
the hiring agency who spoke no Russian. Nadia spoke no
Greek. But despite that confusion, she went with the woman to
an apartment building, where she was shown a room that she
supposed would be hers. The woman left, and Nadia began to
unpack.
Within minutes, her nightmare began. Several men rushed
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UNDAU NT E D
in and locked the door behind them. They beat and raped Nadia
repeatedly. She tried to fight back. She screamed for help until
she no longer had a voice. But for every protest, every scream,
she received more abuse, more torture.
Confused, scared, ashamed, in pain, and broken, Nadia
retreated to a dark place deep inside.
For two weeks, the beatings and rapes continued.
Finally, Nadia was told about her job. It wasnt in a hospital. It wasnt in a restaurant. It was in a brothel. Her new life
was to be a sex slave. If you do not do as we tell you, we will
kill your family, she was told.
Surely, she concluded, people this evil would make good on
those threats. Besides, they had taken all her papers, including
her passport, and she did not speak Greek, nor did she have
any idea where she was. Even if she escaped, she knew she
wouldnt get far, let alone make it all the way back home to
Georgia. Nadia felt utterly alone, though the men she had believed were hiring agents surrounded her twenty-four hours a
day, seven days a week. When they werent in her room, they
stood guard just outside her door and sent in a constant flow of
customers with whom she was forced to perform unmentionable actsup to forty times a day.
No longer sure there was a God in heavenwhy would he
have allowed this to happen?Nadia pled with him anyway.
Let me die, she prayed. Oblivion would be better than this. The silence, the horror, pulled her deeper into despair. No ember of
her dream remained, let alone any hope of returning to a life
with her family, to things familiar and free.
One day when the guard left her room, he forgot to lock
the window. Though her room was on the third floor of the
apartment building, Nadia scrambled onto the balcony. Maybe,
if I am lucky, the impact will kill me. Oh God, she prayed, let the
nightmare end.
She jumped.
A woman passing by saw a girl throw herself from a third16

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Stopped Dead in My Tracks

story balcony and crash onto the pavement below. Horrified,
she ran to Nadia, who, miraculously, was uninjured.
Nadia heard the woman speakand was amazed that she
understood that the woman was asking if she was all right.
Had she died? Was she in heaven? No. Another miracle. This
woman was real! And she spoke Russian! She wanted to help!
Quickly, Nadia told her of her plight.
The woman gathered Nadia from the pavement and took
her to the police station, where they filed a report. Then the police hid Nadia in a safe house to protect her from the traffickers.

A
One by one that March afternoon, the girls around me shared
stories like Nadias. Most had been raised in impoverished,
ex-communist Eastern European nations. Each had come to
Greece expecting legitimate employment. All had brought
with them dreams, hopes, and aspirations to do something
more with their lives than their own families had ever dreamed
possible. All of those tender, youthful dreams had been shattered beyond anyones worst fears.
What shook me most was the realization that, for each of
these young women I spoke to that day, there were hundreds of
thousands of others still trapped in the sex slave trade with no
way outhundreds of thousands of women whose unspeakable pain remained shrouded in secrecy. Silent.
Then Mary from Nigeria told her story. She and fifty-nine
other young women had come to Greece in a shipping container.
Wait, I interrupted. Do you mean you were contained
in a ship? I thought Id misunderstood, or that something had
been lost in translation.
Mary repeated: She and fifty-nine other young women were
brought to Greece in a shipping container.
A container loaded onto a ship? Like the one Id just had an
estimate on from a moving company for shipping my house17

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UNDAU NT E D
hold goods to our new home? A box? I pressed. A container
used to carry personal and commercial goods, not people?
Thats right, Mary assured mea box, a container put onto
a ship. When she and the fifty-nine other girls arrived at the
port the day of their departure, they thought they were traveling to good-paying jobs in a land of opportunity. Instead, they
were greeted by hiring agents who said there were complications with the paperwork. Either travel by container, the girls
were told, or lose your deposits and any future opportunity to
work abroad. Either make the voyage in a shipping container
or turn around and go home.
Our families had given everything they owned to pay for
our passage, Mary said.
So one by one, bewildered and frightened, the girls entered
the container. When the last girl was inside, the door was
slammed shut and they heard a lock snap into place. They sat
frozen in darkness.
Then the bubble broke! The bubble broke! Mary exclaimed.
What bubble?
The filter, she explained, that allowed oxygen to circulate
in the container. It stopped working, and the inside of the
cramped box suddenly became not only lightless but airless as
well.
I gasped, imagining the oxygen being rapidly depleted, the
heat building, the women gulping for air in complete darkness.
The journey in the sealed container was gruesome. Half
the girls died from lack of oxygen. The other half, the stronger
ones, were near death themselves. They had nowhere to sit but
in their own vomit and feces, since they were forced to relieve
themselves on the containers floor.
When the men at port opened the container, Mary said,
they recoiled, appalled by the smell of death, decay, excrement.
One of the dead was Anna, Marys best friend. Anna had
died an excruciating death, suffocating as if buried alive. But
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Stopped Dead in My Tracks

Anna was real, Mary insisted to me that day. Anna had existed.
And Anna must be remembered.
The hiring agents preferred to forget. More interested in
quickly getting what they referred to as their shipped goods
from the dockyard, they hustled the living to small apartments
nearby, where, like Nadia, the girls were repeatedly raped and
beaten.
Before sunrise one morning (Mary had lost all sense of the
passage of time), the girls were loaded into small rubber boats
and taken across the Mediterranean Sea to a Greek island. This
was the first time they realized that the original voyage had
not even taken them to Greece. They had been brutalized in
Turkey. None of the agents promises had been kept.
In the boat, Mary felt a surge of hope: The Greek Coast
Guard was doing a routine check that morningunusual for
that hour, Mary later learned. She hoped that, unlike the crew
on the docks, the Coast Guard could not be bribed to turn a
blind eye. Marys captors showed signs of panic. Though she
was freezing, sleep- and food-deprived, broken, and in shock,
Marys hope grew. Rescue! Justice! Once caught, the traffickers
would face a lengthy imprisonment.
And for that reason, these men would do anything to avoid
being caught.
They began throwing the girls overboard.
Only five of the approximately thirty girlsthose who had
been strong enough to survive the deadly voyage in the shipping containerescaped drowning that day.
Those five were hidden among their captors when the Coast
Guard came aboard. When they finally arrived in Athens, the
girls were taken to a brothel, where the nightmare of the Turkish apartment was repeated. Daily, Mary and the others were
forced to participate in unspeakable encounters with dozens of
men. Mary sank deeper into despair, wishing that she, too, had
suffocated in the airlessness of the container or drowned in the
Mediterranean Sea.
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UNDAU NT E D
The horror continued for weeks. Or maybe it was months
Mary couldnt tell. But one day, anti-trafficking authorities,
responding to a tip, raided the brothel. Mary and other girls
were herded into the back of what appeared to be a police
van. Were they being rescued? If hiring agents could be evil,
couldnt police be as well? Uncertain and broken, Mary and
a dozen other girls were raced to another apartment building.
Police rushed them inside, where the girls waited in fear and
resignation. But instead of beatings and rape, they were given
rest, food and water, peace.
Though no longer in a physical prison, Mary remained silent, constantly tormented by recurring nightmares. The daily
horror may have ceased, but the pain screamed nonstop.
Mary was safe but not yet free.

A
Stunned, I sat quietly for a moment after Mary finished her
story. Around me, the young women at the table remained
quiet too, almost reverent. Yet inside me, a storm of thought
surfaced. Questions hammered at my broken heart: How could
this possibly happen in our world today? No matter how much money
is involved, how can anyone be so depraved as to make sex slaves of
otherslet alone make it an international operation, enslaving not
just one girl but hundreds of thousands, again and again and again?
Sonia, a Russian girl who had arrived at the shelter the
previous day, interrupted my flood of thought. Why are you
here? she demanded, her eyes narrowed with suspicion. Why
did you come?
Her tone was angry, and I felt the distrust behind her question: Was I who I said I was? Was I someone who could help?
Or was I, like the hiring agents, untrue, unfeeling, evil?
How can I make her understand, I wondered, that I, too, know
what it is to be trapped, enslaved, with seemingly no way out, no way
forward, no way back? How can I make her see that, as bleak as her
enslavement has been, there are prisons just as black inside oneself,
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Stopped Dead in My Tracks

prisons into which Sonia and many of the girls sitting here may have
retreated? How can I make each of these girls know that I care in the
same way someone once cared enough to come to me in my pain?
Oh God, I prayed. Help me help them! I breathed deep and
looked at Sonia for a long moment.
There is only one rescuer I know, I told Sonia and the
rest of the women, with the power to free us from the darkest
prison. That rescuer is the God I love, who loves us so much he
left everything to come for us, to free us. He is the one who made
us, each of us, for a unique purpose and a magnificent destiny.
He makes right what the world makes wrong. His plans are for
good, not for evil. His ways are straight and merciful. He came
to give me a hope and a futureand to give you one too. His
promises are true. His love is full of forgiveness and peace, joy
and kindness, grace. He is the true rescuer. He saves us from any
prison, whether physical or emotional or spiritual, the ones were
forced into and the ones we fall into on our own. He chooses us.
He can make all things new. He loves us without condition, unrelentingly, forever. He loves us broken, and he loves making us
whole again. And he asks those of us who love him to love others
the same way. To choose them. To be agents of his hope, his
forgiveness, his grace. He asks us to join him in rescuing others.
Thats why Im here, I said. Thats why Ive come.
Sonias eyes filled with tears. I could see her grappling with
the concept of unconditional love, the meaning of grace, of all
things being made new. All the whys and hows of what Id said
furrowed her brow. All the what ifs and possibilities had died in
her long ago. Yet here I was, resurrecting them. What if there are
good agents and true promises and a merciful God who loves me and
chooses me and can lift me from the impoverishment, the betrayal and
fear, the hurt and horror? What if
No! Sonia could not believe all this. It was too good to be
true. She knew all about promises too good to be true. The risk
of allowing hope to reenter her life, only to see that hope dashed
again, was too much. Her anguish turned back to anger, and she
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UNDAU NT E D
pushed back from the table. If what you are telling me is true,
she yelled, if what you say about your God is truethen where
were you? Where have you been? Why didnt you come sooner?
Why didnt you come sooner?
The girls around me didnt move. No one spoke. But I could
feel their eyes on me, their minds screaming that same question. I felt like Mary in that container, the weight of such a
heartfelt cry pressing in on me like suffocating, airless darkness. I could barely breathe.
Why didnt you come sooner?
The question seemed to echo. In the emotional power of
the moment, the image of Sonia across the table, with her angry, anguished eyes, shimmered and morphed into that scared
nineteen-year-old girl trapped in a room for one year, forced to
service at least twenty-five men every day. That image morphed
into another: a girl confused, hurt, and alone, engaging in selfmutilation or substance abuse or binge eating as a way of dulling her emotional pain. And then another, poor and starving,
unable to feed or protect her family. And then another image:
of children this time, suffering and dying from malnutrition.
More images: depression, suicide, abuse 1
The faces became as grains of sand, so many. One hundred? Two thousand? A million? Too many. So many grains of
sand that they melded together, indistinguishable, flowing like
waters of the sea, an ocean of faces floating there for a minute,
bobbing in and out of focus, hazy, distorted in the depth of suffering, loneliness, need, despondency, hopelessness. An ocean
of faces going under, going down. I heard their sinking cry. I
heard myself cry out as well, going under in a black despair.
Why hadnt I come sooner?
On the surface, of course, there was a reasonable answer.
So reasonablean unassailable excuse: I hadnt come because
I didnt know about their plight. How could I have come before
I knew? How could anyone blame me for not fixing a problem
I didnt know existed?
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Stopped Dead in My Tracks

But I didnt offer that excuse. I didnt offer it because the
depth of their pain, the reality of their suffering at the hands of
cruel and evil men, deserved more than excuses. And I didnt
offer it because I was suddenly thrown into a memory that put
not only the suffering and plight of these women, but my reaction to it, in startling perspective.
A scene from the movie Schindlers List began to roll through
my mind. The movie, produced and directed by Steven Spielberg in 1993, is the story of Oskar Schindler, a Gentile businessman in Nazi Germany who saved the lives of more than
a thousand Jews by breaking the law to keep them working
in his factories. In a powerful scene at the end of that movie,
Schindler, played by Liam Neeson, is being thanked for what
he has done by a crowd of those he has rescuedjust before
he flees for his own life. The grateful Jews present him with
a ring on the inside of which is inscribed a saying from the
Talmud: Whoever saves one life saves the world entire. But,
distressed, Schindler says, I could have got more out. I could
have got more. I dont know if I had just I threw away
so much money. You have no idea I didnt do enough. He
looks at his car. Why did I keep the car? Ten people right
there. He pulls a pin from his lapel. This pin. This is gold.
Two more people and I didnt. I didnt. And then he collapses into tears, overcome by the realization not of all that he
did do, but that the pin in his lapel was apparently worth more
to him than the lives of two people.
This moment, sitting at that table in Thessaloniki with
those women so recently saved from slavery and yet still so
devastated, was my Schindlers List moment, which stopped me
in my tracks. What, in my life, had been my golden pin like
Schindlers, the thing so precious to me that it never occurred
to me to use it to ransom the life of someone else?
Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.
I would not offer excuses.
I dont know, I stammered at last. I dont know why I
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didnt come sooner. Such weak, small, light words for such
a weighty question. I am sorry. I am so sorry. Please forgive
me.
The silence became even more pronounced. Time seemed
to have stopped. Nothing else mattered to me at that moment
but these girls, their despairand what healing God could
bring to them. Though the silence seemed to last for an eternity, I felt so clearly present, so tuned into the now.
I want you to know, I said with new conviction, that I
have now heard your cries. I have seen you. I see you now. I
turned to Mary. I see you, Mary. And when I see you, I see
Anna. I turned to Sonia. I see you, Sonia. I looked intently
at each girl seated at the table. I see each of you. I hear you. I
know you by name. I have come for each of you.
I wanted to see these girls as Jesus saw themnot as a sea
of needs, but as individuals he had called by name and chosen
one by one and loved. I heard his words before I spoke my
own: Tell them I have their names written in my book.2 That I came
to give the good news to the poor. To heal the brokenhearted. To set the
captives free. Tell them these promises are for here. Now. As well as for
eternity.3
You will no longer be hidden, I told Sonia. From now
on, wherever I go, I will tell people you exist. I focused on
each girl, one at a time. I will ask them the very same question
youve asked me. I will not sit back waiting, hoping, wishing,
for someone else to do something. I promise you: I will be the
someone. Now that I have found you, I will find other girls like
you. I will do everything I can to stop this.

A
Long after leaving that meeting, Sonias question rang in my
ears, shook my mind, unsettled my heart.

Why didnt you come sooner?

I offered them no excuses that day, but I did know that there
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were reasons. Reasons that, when we hear Gods call, when we
feel that gentle (or not so gentle) urging of Gods Spirit for us
to make a bold step, take a risk, serve others, save a life, commitwe so often hold back.
Its because we dont feel ready.
We dont feel qualified.
We think we lack the guts, the strength, the boldness, the
know-how, the smarts, the support.
We feel like Moses when, from out of the burning bush,
God called him to speak for him before Pharaoh. And Moses answered, Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been
eloquent. . . . I am slow of speech and tongue. . . . Please send
someone else (Exodus 4:1013).
Not me, God. Im afraid. Weak. Poor. Stupid.
Unqualified.
Daunted.
Not long ago, that is exactly how I would have responded.
But it has never been my desire to be daunted, to be afraid,
to be unable to respond to Gods call. Is it yours? I doubt it. I
think that you, like me, want to be able to say instead, Here
am I, Lordsend me. We dont want to sound like Moses,
stammering around in search of excuses.
And we dont need to. Because, just as God gave Moses
exactly what he needed to accomplish great things for God, he
will equip us in just the same way. If he calls us to slay giants,
he will make us into giant slayers.
God doesnt call the qualified. He qualifies the called.
And that is what this book is about. It is about what I call
the normal Christian lifeliving boldly and courageously in
the face of great difficulty, and amazing the world by beating the
odds, for Gods glory. It is what the apostle Paul meant when he
told Timothy, The Spirit God gave us does not make us timid,
but gives us power, love and self-discipline (2 Timothy 1:7).
There is no shortage of ways life tries to daunt us, to render
us incapable of following the bold and valiant plan God has for
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us. This book is about how to move past thathow to become
undaunted.
And as I traveled away from that meeting that day, I thought
of my own story. If anyone ever had a reason to feel unqualified, to feel daunted, it was me. And the reasons for that went
back to things that happened before I was even born

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