I also believe the movie references add to the book in a wonderful way. they make it more relevant. Who has not had their heart skip a beat during a beautiful love scene in movies such as Pride and Prejudice? And who wouldn’t love to know that same love and desire to be with us is available from our Go,d who doesn’t send us roses but grew them for us,? I would understand your point if any of the movie scenes she mentioned were at all inappropriate or showing impure “love” but no every movie she mentions is a movie where true and pure love is shown.

All in all, I respect your opinion but caution readers not to base their reading or not reading of the book on this review alone.

Marie.

The warrior angel relied on God to fight. And we are to rely on God to fight for us. There is nothing that we can do to “assault spirits”, after all they are spirit and we are flesh. God’s got it covered, read the book of Job. Satan was allowed to effect Job but not beyond God’s limits, and when the ‘years of the locusts were finished’ God restored Job.

What faith can we say that we have in God when we do not trust that He has already got our situation worked out (and so much more than what we already had) and all we have to do is endure through the present.

May God bless you all,

I had to wonder exactly what you think people with depression are supposed to do if they can’t use medication, can’t get healing “Christian psychology” and can’t “assault spirits”. However nice it might be to believe, there are so many more factors determining our behavior than just choice. And that does not mean that we have no responsibility. Spiritual warfare, prayer ministry/christian psychology (as long as it is completely focused on Jesus) and even medication (extremely short term just to get people to a place where they can begin the healing process) are all essential for people that cannot escape depression.”

Just so you know I am not a random person talking about something, of which I have no experience. I am a disabled vetran, I broke my back while in the Army and had to contend with a lot of emotion and mental abuse. One of the things that probablly did the most harm was not being able to responde in the situation, depending on who you are confronted by if you roll your eyes you can be hit up with insubordination. (I should have warned you earlier I have horrible grammer and spelling skills.) So a lot of the anger and frustration becomes internalized. I have been diagnosed by the V.A with severe depression with steming memory loss and social anxiety. When I came out of the Army I lived in a very dark and dreary world, and while I became born again years before I entered the Army I was not walking with God at the time.

God blessed me with my wife and our children, and they were my anchor to humanity. It was through my wife and the founder of the martial arts I trained in at the time I became a born again Christian (It was an amazing out reach), that God began to get me to refocus my life back in on Him. I went from Eeore to having days were life seemed like it was good after all. I remember times when (before I quit) I would be standing, smoking a cigerette and imagine ways to kill myself so that it would appear to be an accident. Thoughts like, “Your a worthless husband and father, you can not provide for your family. You lost all your job skill when you broke your back, they’ll be so much better off without you.” would pop into my head. Followed by images of how easy it would be to pull the trigger on the 30/30 I owned. Thank God that when I had those ‘attacks’ where the depression sucker punched me, often leaving me so drained and exhausted all I could do is scurl up into a ball and sleep, a small part of me was able to recognize that those thoughts and desires were not truely who I am.
Fast Forward about three years
God had me back into a Biblicly based church, and highly active. I attended Sunday services, Tuesday nights men’s fellowship, and Wednesday Bible Study. If I missed either Tuesday or Wednesday my week was shot. I was in God’s word and life seemed so good. My depressive ‘attacks’ were far and few and my ever vigilant wife was always there to point out when I began to act like I was depressed.

I remember one night my Pastor called me, and we had a good conversation, had nothing to do with depression or anything related that would cause me to become depressed. As soon as I got off the phone it was like taking a sledge hammer in the gut, and once again I found myself alone/ exhausted and feeling completely helpless. The following Tuesday God blessed me with the courage to speak up to my brothers at the fellowship about my depression and the history behind it. They laid hands on me, praying for me. Then one of them turned to me and said;
“You know when that used to happen to me, I would just pick up God’s word and start to read, you should try it.”
It was after hearing him say this that I realized that I had gotten so busy with life that I had stopped my daily readings of the Bible.

If I am not mistaken it was the very next day. I was folding laundry when I felt a depressive episode start to creep over me. I had contemprary Christian Music on, and at first I tried to fight it like I usually did, when the words spoken to me at the fellowship echoed through my head. I sat down and grabbed the closest Bible to me… It happened to be my wife’s NKJV… I prayed that God would speak to me, show me something that would get rid of the depression for the moment or altogether. When I opened the Bible it opened to, I think, Isaiah 10. My eyes locked onto a subparagraph titled ‘ hope for God’s children’. Even though the verses had nothing to do with depression, by two verses the drepression was gone and after a couple more it was being replaced by as sense of peace and joy.

There is nothing in our lives that we have done or will do, that God will look at on judgment day and say. “You know I will let that go you were not incontrol of yourself and were completely lacked the ability to choose to do/ or not do that action.” It is all about our choices.

Spiritual warfare is a reality. Do not ever forget “Greater is He that is in you than he whom is in the world.” Prayer is a vital part of a Christians life, not only should we be engaged in it, but we should actively seek others to pray for us. I personally do not believe that there is a such thing as christian psychology. Marriage councelors have a near 0% success rate, and there is a reason why there is such a push on medication. I do nto know very many people who once they started medication were weaned off of it. And if they were, they were not off of it long before they had a need for it in their lives again. There should be something said for a persons mental state and the the effects of spiritual warfare. Though it is conveinantly over looked, that most of those medications create a dependancy. Which can be worse than the state prior to the use, and medication has no effect on spiritual warfare except to make it worse for the user.

The only real escape any of us has is through Christ. And it does not do any justice to what God, through Jesus Christ has done for us to call it an escape.

May God bless you,

For those of us who were wounded as children, perhaps we do have a better understanding of what the book’s message was. I grew up in a home where I was sexually abused by my father from the time I was 8 years old until I finally asked him to stop when I was 16 years old. Once I was able to conceive, I lived month to month waiting to know if I was pregnant or not, and if I was how I would carry out my plan of suicide. Unless you’ve lived in such horror, you cannot possibly know what it’s like. I am so grateful for those of you who had loving parents as God intended. My children have been blessed with a loving home and it has been a joy to my soul.

All I’m saying is that for those who have deep wounds, of whatever nature, perhaps our souls long for something different than yours does. I can only imagine what it would have been like to grow up with the confidence of being loved and protected by an earthly father. Thankfully, I know what it feels like to be loved and protected by my heavenly Father…and I’m enjoying every bit of it! Captivating helped me realize just how much my God loves me and treasures me. I’m so glad to have read it! Thank you, Stasi Eldredge!

For those of us who were wounded as children, perhaps we do have a better understanding of what the book’s message was. I grew up in a home where I was sexually abused by my father from the time I was 8 years old until I finally asked him to stop when I was 16 years old. Once I was able to conceive, I lived month to month waiting to know if I was pregnant or not, and if I was how I would carry out my plan of suicide. Unless you’ve lived in such horror, you cannot possibly know what it’s like. I am so grateful for those of you who had loving parents as God intended. My children have been blessed with a loving home and it has been a joy to my soul.

All I’m saying is that for those who have deep wounds, of whatever nature, perhaps our soul’s long for something different than yours does. I can only imagine what it would have been like to grow up with the confidence of being loved and protected by an earthly father. Thankfully, I knw what it feels like to be loved and protected by my heavenly Father…and I’m enjoying every bit of it! Captivating helped me realize just how much my God loves me and treasures me. I’m so glad to have read it! Thank you, Stasi Eldredge!