Feeling: I feel unloved.

Truth: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16

     -I am part of the world. I am loved by God.

Truth: "As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love." John 15:9

Question: "How do I abide in Christ's love?"

Truth: "If you keep my commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love." John 15:10

Question: "Does the Father really love me?"

Truth: "...for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God." John 16:27

Feeling: I feel unwanted.

Truth: I have been "called...out of darkness into His marvelous light" 1 Peter 2:9b - The Lord wouldn't call someone that He didn't want!

Truth: He has chosen me. "You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another. If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." John 15:16-19

Feeling: I feel alone.

Truth: I am not alone. The Holy Spirit is always with me. "...if I depart, I will send [the Helper] to you...when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come." John 16:7b & John 16:13

Truth: "Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.' So we may boldly say: 'The LORD is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?''" Hebrews 13:5

Truth: I was dead. "And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins," Ephesians 2:1

Truth: God brought me to life. "God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did;" Romans 4:17  This verse stopped me in my tracks for awhile. Only the Almighty God can "call those things which do not exist as though they did" or, as another translation puts it, "calls into being that which does not exist."

Truth: I'm still dead! Christ lives in me. "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Galatians 2:20

Truth: Everything good that I do is trash with my justification in view. "I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain." Galatians 2:21  "Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt." Romans 4:4  "But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;" Isaiah 64:6a

Feelings can be extremely deceitful. If they don't line up with Scripture then reject them!

The movie then shows Richard's struggles at seminary. Richard has no real intention of becoming a minister, and doesn't even want anything to do with God. All he wanted was to study hard and get good grades so he could finish his probation and get back to his computer job, but he quickly discovers that the school president has more in mind. The school president wants him to pave the way for future black students at the seminary. Shortly after arriving at seminary Richard meets Samuel, the gardener, and over time they develop a friendship that in someways resembled a father-son relationship. Throughout his time at seminary, we see prejudice on several different levels, and Richard's struggles to rise above it. Ultimately, the story is about redemption and doing what is right regardless of the cost.

I've been mulling this over for the past few days, trying to flesh out this post in my head before sitting down to write it. I knew what I wanted to write about, but never quite figured out the details. Today it morphed into something a little different. Namely, a post about my 2011 Goals. I've never been big on making New Year's Resolutions, but I certainly have a number of things I need to be working on in my life so I figured this is as good a time as any to get started!

-Become better organized. This one just occurred to me the other day while I was digging through one of my many piles of paperwork, looking for a receipt. I spend so much time searching for this or that piece of paper. Receipts, bills, insurance records, user manuals, notes, and so on. If it exists in paper form, I probably have it or something like it buried in a pile somewhere in the house. Part of my problem is that I save a lot of paperwork that really doesn't need to be saved. I need to learn to discern better what paperwork I really need to keep, and what I can safely throw away.

-Work on my spiritual walk. Over the last month or so our pastor has preached a number of excellent messages that were geared towards helping us improve our spiritual walk. Most of these were part of a series titled "Loving God Holistically." He preached a message each about loving God with our heart, our soul, our mind, and our body (strength). I felt like I gleaned quite a bit from these messages that would help me in my spiritual walk, but as of yet I haven't really taken any of that information and worked on it in my own life. The new year is a good time to focus on this aspect of my life. I'll probably write a little about some of those sermons in the future as I work through applying them in my life.

-Physical health/weight gain. Over the last couple of months I have all but stopped working on gaining weight and exercising on a regular basis. I actually dropped a few pounds during that time period, so now I have to work all over at putting them back on again. I also plan on getting back to using the weights and hopefully something for cardio as well.

Tonight I keep thinking back to this night exactly one year ago. My wife and I enjoyed pizza from our local B.C. Pizza for dinner, and then later that evening went to bed wondering (as we had every night for the past several weeks) if this would be the night that our son would make his entrance into the world. It was now several days past his due date, and we were rather anxious to meet him! Little did we know what the following morning would bring.

The story of Immanuel's Veins takes place in 1772 in Moldavia. Toma Nicolescu and Alek Cardei are sent by Catherine the Great, empress of Russia, to the Cantemir estate for the purpose of protecting the Cantemir family. The Cantemir family consists of mother Kesia, and daughters Natasha and Lucine, each strikingly beautiful. What should have been an easy assignment quickly turns into a very complex and dangerous situation. Toma hides the love he has for one of the daughters because his highest duty is loyalty to the empress, who had commanded him to not get involved with the daughters. He soon realizes that the daughter he loves is in grave danger and he sets out to attempt to save her in the face of incredible odds.

Overally, I really enjoyed reading this book. It grabbed my attention with the first couple of pages and held it through to the end. It is a tale of redemption and sacrifice and love, and of good ultimately winning over evil.

A couple of things I didn't necessarily like:

-Vampires play a big role in this book. As one who is concerned and disturbed by the vampire craze that seems to be sweeping the country and even some of our churches, I appreciated the way that Ted Dekker incorporated them into this book. I don't want to give away too much so that's all I'm going to say about that. Had I known the book contained vampires I wouldn't have requested it. Having read the book, I'm really glad I didn't know about the vampires because then I would have missed out on what I think is a great book.

-The Christian message in this book doesn't show up until pretty much the very end of the book. So don't start reading it expecting the entire book to be a Christian novel. It's rather worldly for much of the story.

Thomas Nelson asked me to voluntarily include the following question, along with my answer.

Sacrificial love is the kind of love that is solely focused on meeting the needs of another, regardless of the cost. The greatest example of sacrificial love we will ever know is Jesus Christ's sacrificing his life on the cross for us - for me.

Thomas Nelson also printed a limited number of t-shirts for this book. If you're interested in winning a free "Spread the Love" t-shirt, simply comment on this post and I will select a winner randomly on Saturday, September 18. (Grey t-shirt, sketch of a heart in black, with the words "Spread the Love" in red.)

You can purchase a copy of Immanuel's Veins by clicking on the book image above.

Anne talks about her own experiences growing up as a pastor's kid, and her later struggles with certain sins. She discovered at a young age that many Christians/churches are very unforgiving of sin in people's lives. Through her own experiences and the many responses from her blog readers she discovered that people everywhere are in desperate need of compassion and healing, but we're all too scared to share our struggles with anyone else. She talks about the freedom that can be found in confession and how we can help so many people by encouraging this mindset. Anne explores why so many Christians hide behind their masks of fineness, instead of being honest about the struggles in their lives. By confessing our sins and struggles to like-minded Christians we can both help others and be helped ourselves. When we hide our struggles from everyone it's easy to start thinking that we're the only ones walking through the valleys. But when you speak up and reveal the brokenness in your own life you soon realize that there are others all around you that are just as broken as you are, and you all help to carry each other through. In the end, it all comes back to each of us being a sinner in desperate need of the Savior. Don't look down on someone that is broken, for we all are broken in different ways. Pick up the broken, and help them to see the love and grace that Christ offers.

This is a really good book. You can buy one here, should you be so inclined.

As mentioned, I enjoyed reading this book. However, I think the recommendation shown on the front cover is a bit overstated - "Gallops along with all the drama and intrigue of a great novel." This is a good book, but it did not grab my attention and pull me in the way a great novel typically does.