Undaunted by Christine Caine

I enjoyed this book.  But I will admit, the beginning was tough to get through.  It starts off strong.  Mrs. Caine begins in a safe house in Greece where she meets with some women who have escaped from human sex trafficking.  Their stories immediately drew me in, but from there, she goes on to detail her own story:how she discovers in her 30s that she was adopted, and how her father is listed on her birth certificate as Unknown, and that her birth mother didn’t care enough about her to name her, instead she is identified by a number, Number 2508 of 1966. She also describes how she had to overcome years of abuse, and later after marriage, how she deals with a miscarriage.  Parts One and Two were a little dry and preachy, and I wasn’t quite sure where Mrs. Caine was heading with this.

She starts to pull it all together, though, in Part 3.  She describes having to overcome her fear of flying because of the opportunities God provided for her to travel the world preaching.  She tells us, “When you allow fear to dictate how you spend your days, you allow life to pass you by.” In doing this, you miss out on what God is providing to you.  She tells the reader, by loving Christ, we can overcome fear.  She points out, that the bible tells us to fear not 350 times.

Part 4 is where the book really grabbed me.  Mrs. Caine describes visiting Auschwitz, the Jewish concentration camp used by the Nazis in World War II to exterminate millions of Jews.  She describes how the Jews were given a number that was tattooed on their arms.  “The numbers dehumanized them, desensitized the guards to them. How much easier for the guards to ignore suffering when it did not have a name, when it was merely a number.” Just like she was, “Number 2508 of 1966.”Unwanted.  Mrs. Caine describes the awakening of her spirit as she walked the buildings of Auschwitz.  How we as a society tour places such as this, and think of it as history.  We wonder how the Germans who lived in that country closed their eyes and allowed the injustice of the concentration camps to happen.  But Mrs. Caine becomes awake to the fact that injustice is all around us every day.  It is there in the children who are hungry, in the people who suffer poverty, women and children forced into slavery, and many other social and political injustices.  

With this awakening, she describes being stuck in an airport in Greece, and while looking at the posters of missing women and children, she is convicted that God wants her to widen her ministry to rescuing those who are victims of human trafficking.  She describes how she begins this ministry in Greece, and though the consultants she hires advise her that they will fail, she moves forward because she knows that God is calling her to begin here.  She describes how through faith, and through prayer, her ministry begins in Greece, and that the first woman rescued is brought to them by a man who had paid for her services, but couldn’t go through with it after seeing her plight.  

This book paints a picture of one woman’s Undaunted, but not untroubled, walk with God.  It is a calling for all of us to awaken to opportunities God is providing to us, and to walk Undaunted with God.  She personifies difficulties, and excuses, as Daunt, but that in Christ, he has overcome all difficulties.  That Daunt will always try to stop God’s plan, but If we join with God, in his plan, we can walk Undaunted.