“23 years as a born again believer and I've never felt a thing.” ·
It wasn't you. It wasn't God. It was the version you were handed.
If you do everything right in church and still feel nothing by Monday, or lie awake asking whether you are really saved, or keep changing churches looking for one thing that hasn't changed.
The missing part may not be faith. It may be something Christians were handed every day for two thousand years.
And The Orthodox Faith Made Clear is the 240-page hardcover that hands it back.
Don't trust us: the dates, the verses and five free pages are below.
The answers to the most common questions the modern Christian has.
You feel nothingA way to pray that isn't just performance
“Five minutes kept every day is worth more than an hour attempted twice and abandoned.” (page 174)
You're afraid you aren't really savedA hospital, not a courtroom
“They are not in a courtroom at all. They are in a hospital.” (page 203) The guide Am I Really Saved? is emailed the day you order.
Everything keeps changingThe one thing that hasn't
“Not improved, not updated, not adjusted to the age, but received and guarded and handed on, unchanged, for two thousand years.” (page 17)
If you have ever typed something like this, keep reading
I read my bible everyday … and I pray every night but feel like I’m missing something I don’t really feel God
Reddit, r/Christianity
i am so tired of going through the motions, please help me Lord please
YouTube comment, 101 likes
I was physically present but mentally checked out. Just warming a seat.
Reddit, r/TrueChristian
saved then unsaved several times a day I’m really exhausted with it all
YouTube comment
It doesn’t feel like a season…more like a state of being.
YouTube comment
I must be a mutant as I can't make my heart do anything.
YouTube comment, a believer for 42 years
Real comments left in public under worship songs, sermons and Christian forums. The spelling is theirs.
The picture story
1Sunday · 10:14 AM
There's a little lamp inside you.
Everybody has one. It was made to burn. And You can tell when it's out, even if you wont admit it.
2Sunday · 10:31 AM
Then On Sunday, somebody strikes a match.
The music is powerful, the room is full, the sermon lands. For about an hour it flares up bright, and you think, this it, this is all I need.
3Monday · 7:02 AM
By Monday it's out again.
You pray, and it feels like talking to yourself. So you reach the conclusion nobody says wants to say out loud:
something is wrong with me.
4Every year since
So you go looking for more matches.
Then you ask, and they tell you to
“just have more faith.”
Somebody else says it's only a season.
Except it has been a season for years.
You do everything right, and Monday still comes
Every one of these was a match that burned out.
Tick the ones you've tried.
✓ The quiet timeYour own words every morning, including the mornings you have none
“All I know to do is just read the bible and pray..but it feels so forced and lifeless”
✓ The daily devotionalYou can think about Christ, and have nothing to do with your hands, your feet or your mouth
“I do devotionals daily and seek and pray daily.” And still felt disconnected.
✓ The conferenceIt was real while you were in the room, until you drove home
“i went to a christian conference hoping it would make me feel closer to God, it didnt”
✓ The next churchA louder room with the same Monday after it
“I went to over 60 churches in a 3 year period.”
✓ Saying the prayer againYou were asking one moment to carry a whole life
“I got saved when I was 5 but it didn’t take so I got saved for real at 13”
✓ Videos and testimoniesEvery one of them was sure, and no two agreed
“…only to end up more confused.”
None of them was oil.
The part nobody adds up
It costs more than your Sunday mornings
You start performing.
One person wrote: “I smiled. I served. I even led. But inside? I was crumbling.”
It reaches your kids. “I raised my kids with little to no spiritual guidance although I was raised in church.”
It makes you lonely in your own house. A mother wrote:
“I love that my husband and child are so devout. … but why can't I have that for myself?”
And it doesn't wear off by itself.
One man wrote: “I an now 58 and this has been with me since i was 18.”
Forty years is a long time to wait for a feeling.
The real reason
“I was told I needed to pray, but they never taught us how to pray.”
A man raised Baptist wrote that, years after he became Orthodox.
It is the whole thing in one sentence.
You were handed moments.
The altar call.
The retreat.
The song that wrecks you.
And when the moment wore off, you were told to believe harder. One person put the advice like this: “just have more faith” with no further instructions.
Nobody gave you anything to do on a Monday morning when you felt nothing at all.
So the only thing left to blame was you.
Or that God abandoned you.
That's the lamp. You kept striking matches at a lamp nobody had put any oil in.
And it isn't your pastor's fault either.
He can only pass on what he was given. And Somewhere between the early Church and the churches most of us grew up in, the daily part stopped being handed to ordinary people.
The how.
How to live like a Christian.
How to live like Christ lives inside you.
How to live in a way that shows you love God.
So no. It wasn't you, and it wasn't God. It was the version of Christianity you were handed.
There is a how, and where it is may surprise you. It is in the Bible you already own, and you can start it in the church you already attend.
You only do one thing differently.
A match is a moment. Oil is something you do every day.
What nobody showed you
5The missing part
A lamp doesn't run on matches.
It runs on oil. A little, poured in every day, whether or not it looks like anything is happening.
6Since the year 33
THe house where the lamps never went out.
In the Orthodox Church this was never optional. A new Christian is still given a morning and evening rule of prayer.
Most of us were never given one.
How the oil works
It has a name: a rule of prayer
It isn't a bigger feeling. It is smaller than that. The Orthodox don't wait for a moment. A new Christian is handed a short rule of prayer and told to keep it.
A set timeShort, and kept every day
Morning and evening, short enough that you will really do it. A habit doesn't wait on your mood.
The Orthodox Faith Made Clear · page 174
Words handed to youSo you never start from nothing
The Psalms, and prayers Christians have handed down for centuries. On the mornings you have nothing to say, you still have something to say.
Orthodox Faith Made Clear Page 172
Your body, not only your headYou pray with your body, the way Daniel did
You stop trying to think your way into a feeling.
Orthodox Faith Made Clear Page 174
What to expectIt will feel like nothing at first
The book says so plainly. One convert wrote that it took “a good two years” to wrap his head around it all.
Orthodox Faith Made Clear Page 174
Side by side
What you were handed, and what they were handed
Most of usMatches
A moment to look back on.
Your own words, every morning, from scratch.
“Believe harder” when it goes quiet.
A feeling to chase.
Christians for most of 2,000 yearsOil
A set time, morning and evening.
Words handed down, so you never start from nothing.
Something to do with your body.
A way that expects the dry mornings and tells you to keep going.
Don't trust us. Go and check.
Where it was kept, and why nobody told you
A claim that large shouldn't rest on a nice story about a lamp. These are in any encyclopedia.
The year 1502People started taking books out of the Bible
The year 1453Why you never heard of it
Constantinople fell in 1453. The old Orthodox heartlands were then ruled for centuries by powers that were not Christian, and in the last century much of the rest lived under governments that set out to destroy religion.
All made clear, in the Orthodox Faith Made Clear
7Monday · 6:10 AM
Five minutes of oil, every morning.
No waiting to feel it first. You fill it, and it burns. On Monday too.
The book does not offer a certificate.
It offers what the ancient Church has always offered:
“a humble and living hope in the mercy of Christ,”
and it gives you something to do on the mornings you doubt.
It was never a bad lamp.
The book
The Orthodox Faith Made Clear
It's a 240-page illustrated hardcover. Plain words, one idea at a time, with charts, diagrams and illustrations.
Part Five is the oil: repentance, prayer, the Jesus Prayer, and how to keep a rule on the mornings you feel nothing.
It tells you plainly what the Orthodox Church believes and leaves the weighing to you. In its own words: “This book will not ask you to believe.”(page 17)
240-page hardcover. Bracelet and booklet in the box, two guides emailed today. Questions first? Write to support@unbrokenvine.com. Milan or Archangel answers.
What's in it, and what each part does for you
Five things the book gives you
Pages 172 to 181The rule, and the words
How to start, what to say, and the Jesus Prayer you can carry “into any room, any sorrow, any hour of the night.” So you never face a silent morning with nothing in your hands.
Page 188What to do when you fall
And get up, and fall again. So a bad week doesn't end the whole thing the way it used to.
Pages 115 to 121A Sunday in the ancient Church, in order
What you would see, hear and smell. Nearly half our buyers asked for this. And it tells a visitor plainly: “You are not required to cross yourself, to bow, to kiss anything, or to sing, and no one will watch to see whether you do.” (page 119)
Part SixThe hard questions, answered from Scripture
Tradition, faith and works, Mary and the saints. So you can keep your own Bible open next to it and check.
One idea at a timeA book you actually finish
No Greek word is left unexplained. The five prayer pages are free at the bottom of this page, so you can judge the reading level yourself.
Also inside: the four things a visitor is never required to do (page 119). The soldier and his mother's photograph (page 135). Why the Christian East says we are born “sick, not guilty” (page 79). The one question to test any church with (page 26). And the five minutes the book calls “worth more than an hour attempted twice and abandoned”: page 174, free below.
Who wrote this book
The two people behind this book
Milan Djuric
Belgrade, Serbia · Co-founder
Archangel Luniw
Melbourne, Florida · Co-founder
So many people grow up in church, love God, and still feel that something is missing. They ask how one Church became thousands of denominations, and what the first Christians actually believed. The answers exist, but they're buried in long, academic books most people will never open. So we wrote this one.
It is written only from established Orthodox sources: Scripture, the Nicene Creed, the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and writers such as Metropolitan Kallistos Ware and St. Nicholas Cabasilas. Nothing in it is invented, and every source is listed at the back of the book.
Our mission: to help people who feel far from the faith they grew up with discover the ancient Christian Church, its history, its worship and its prayer, explained simply, honestly and beautifully.
30-day money-back guarantee · One copy ships for $4.99 · Two or more ship free
Before you decide
Or read the five pages on how to start. Free.
Pages 172 to 176, exactly as printed. They are enough to begin tomorrow morning. The other 235 pages are for the mornings after that.
Page 172Set prayers, and why they helpPage 173Do not wait to feel like prayingPage 174How a person actually startsPage 175What prayer isPage 176The Jesus Prayer
No. It will not mock your church or ask you to leave it. It is an honest book about what the Orthodox Church believes, including its claim to be the Church the Apostles founded, and it leaves the weighing to you. You can start praying this way in the church you are in.
Who wrote it, and what is it based on?
Milan Djuric and Archangel Luniw, the two founders of Unbroken Vine. Milan grew up Serbian Orthodox. Archangel grew up Catholic. It is written only from Orthodox sources: Scripture, the Nicene Creed, the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and writers such as Metropolitan Kallistos Ware and St. Nicholas Cabasilas, all listed at the back. A priest who ordered copies for his parish called it “a beautiful starting point for inquirers.”
Isn't this basically Catholic?
It is Eastern Orthodox: the Church of the Greeks, Russians, Serbs, Romanians, Antiochians and many others. The two were one Church for a thousand years. The book sets out what happened in 1054, with the dates, and lets you weigh it.
Why $45.99?
It is a 240-page illustrated hardcover, with a printed booklet and a prayer bracelet in the box, and two guides emailed the day you order. Kept the way the book says, it is about ninety mornings in the first three months, under 60 cents a morning with shipping. If it isn't worth that to you after 30 days with it, we refund you in full.
I've started books like this and never finished them.
This one makes a single point and then moves on, and no Greek word is left unexplained. The five prayer pages are on this page, so you can judge the reading level before you order.
When will it arrive?
This is a pre-order. The two e-guides are emailed today. The book is printed in batches and ships with the next one. Most orders arrive 5 to 14 days after it ships, and tracking is emailed to you.
What if it isn't what I hoped for?
Read it for 30 days after it arrives. If it isn't what you hoped for, email us and we refund you in full. You've got nothing to lose by reading it.
