farlowd's profile - StumbleUpon

Last login: 7 days agoFarlowd: David is a 33 year old married guy from Belfast, N Ireland, UK.; Likes 37 pages, 5 videos, 1 photo • 39 fans • Received 23 reviews; Member since May 05, 2006

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Berean Bible with ESV. Christian Freeware - BerBible: May 8, 9:51am 2 reviews software, search, free, bible, scripture
http://berbible.org/; Great Bible software. Simple to use. Particularly useful for quick scripture searching. A real blessing. Can also copy and use on a pendrive as portable software.

YouTube - Jirehcakes.com - Finest Cake Design: Jan 25, 10:41am 1 review crafts, video, wedding, spongebob, bratz, occasion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtxO8muwcfI; Video showcasing some of My wifes Sugarcraft Cakes.

YouTube - Jirehcakess Channel: Jan 25, 10:27am 1 review ecommerce, wedding, spongebob, bratz, occasion, squarepants
http://www.youtube.com/jirehcakes; Nice videos of even nicer cakes

Jireh Cakes - Finest Cake Design - Northern Ireland - Weddings - Birthdays - Occ…: Jan 25, 10:16am 3 reviews wedding, spongebob, bratz, occasion, squarepants
http://jirehcakes.com/; Really cool sugarcraft cakes, if you live in the UK you could try them out!

Shakadoo - everything to do with your home: Jan 18, 2:33pm 14 reviews home-improvement
http://www.shakadoo.com/; Very Cute site, Everything about the home - Check it out!

Jan 1, 2:48pm: Great words about the greatest book!

When I Read the Bible Through
by Amos R. Wells

I supposed I knew my Bible
Reading piecemeal, hit and miss,
Now a bit of John or Matthew,
Now a snatch of Genesis,
Certain chapters of Isaiah
Certain Psalms (the twenty-third);
Twelfth of Romans, First of Proverbs
Yes, I thought I knew the Word;
But I found that thorough reading
Was a different thing to do,
And the way was unfamiliar
When I read the Bible through.

Oh, the massive, mighty volume!
Oh, the treasures manifold!
Oh, the beauty of the wisdom
And the grace it proved to hold!
As the story of the Hebrews
Swept in majesty along,
As it leaped in waves prophetic,
As it burst to sacred song,
As it gleamed with Christly omens,
The Old Testament was new,
Strong with power,
When I read the Bible through.

Ah! Imperial Jeremiah,
With his keen, coruscant mind;
And the blunt old Nehemiah,
And Ezekiel refined!
Newly came the song idyllic,
And the tragedy of Job;
Deuteronomy, the regal,
To a towering mountain grew,
With its comrade peaks around it
When I read the Bible through.

What a radiant procession
As the pages rise and fall,
James the sturdy, John the tender
Oh, the myriad-minded Paul!
Vast apocalyptic glories
Wheel and thunder, flash and flame,
While the church triumphant raises
One incomparable name.
Ah, the story of the Saviour
Never glows supremely true
Till you read it whole and swiftly,
Till you read the Bible through.

You who like to play at Bible,
Dip and dabble, here and there,
Just before you kneel, aweary,
And yawn thro' a hurried prayer;
You who treat the Crown of Writings
As you treat no other book
Just a paragraph disjointed,
Just a crude, impatient look
Try a worthier procedure,
Try a broad and steady view;
You will kneel in very rapture
When you read the Bible through.

Jan 1, 2:46pm: Returning to my first love...

Keep me true Lord Jesus, keep me true.
Keep me true Lord Jesus, keep me true.
There's a race that I must run,
There are victories to be won.
In Thy power, ev'ry hour,
Keep me true.

Nov 7, 2007 3:55pm: My Testimony

I will give a simple testimony, and some thoughts about seeking God.

I was not brought up in a Christian Home.

Indeed my Mother who raised me on her own (My Dad died of a heart attack when I was 6 Months old.) had decided to have nothing to do with God ever again after a bad experience with some religious folks.

When I was five and we prayed in assembly in school (The Lords Prayer I think), I came home and told my Mum about it, she said "Who did you pray to?"

I answered "Just Ourselves" - I had never been told that there was a God.

Now moving on until I was about 10-12 Years old, I began to have a feeling that there could be a God.

I asked my Mum to take me to a Church. She went White and was not happy about this, but she still took me. She took me to a Baptist Church.

The Minister / Youth Leader / and Christians told me that, If I wanted to go to Heaven When I die, I need to ask Jesus into my heart and I will get the free gift of Salvation, Jesus will save me and I would go to Heaven.

The condition was that I needed to believe in Jesus and that He died on the cross for my sins.

My thoughts were along the lines of "A free ticket to Heaven - Yes please", "I believe He died for me and I believe in God"

I prayed for the Lord Jesus to come into my heart and save me.

Nothing seemed to happen.

I went to Church for a few more weeks and tried to read the bible. I couldn't understand much of it, and it seemed strange and irrelevant.

I found Church to be boring.

I remember clearly when I decided to leave.

We were singing a song that went like this.

There's something more than gold,
There's something more than gold,
To know your sins are all forgiven is something more than gold

I thought to myself, "Well, I'll take the gold any day"

So I left.

I was quite miserable as a teenager and often had thoughts of suicide. I cried myself to sleep on many nights in my youth.

My reasoning was that nobody loved me, so life was not worth living, I believed my Mum did not love me because she had not been there for me as a child (She was working), No girl loved me - I couldn't get a girlfriend. And God (if He existed) most certainly did not love me; otherwise he wouldn't have given me this awful life.

I decided to ring a girl I had fancied in the Church to ask her out (I was about 13 or 14).

If she said no, I decided in advance that I would kill myself.

I rang, she said no, so I the next morning I walked out of school before classes and got the bus home and stole all the pills I could get my hands on (about 500+ minimum pills)

Sleeping pills, paracetamol, all different kinds.

I walked to the local park and swallowed, all the pills, using the water from the sink in the park toilets.

I walked around the park briefly, suddenly everything looked better, the sun was out, the kids were laughing and playing on the swings.

I thought maybe life is ok for some. But not for me I wanted to die to escape the pain of living.

I had the thought, what if there is a hell.

I answered in my mind - "If there is I'm stuffed, out of the frying pan into the Bl***y fire, stuff it I can't stand living here anyway."

So I went to a thick thorny hedge and crawled into the middle of it so I wouldn't be found for weeks.

This was not a cry for help, I wanted to die!

I felt terrible pain in my body, as though my blood felt dirty, everything began to fade out and I said to myself, this is it I'm a dead man.

I woke seemingly instantly somewhere else. I couldn't see anything, other than a yellow colour (like when you shut your eyes and see black, only yellow).

Then I heard a voice - I have never heard any voice so powerful before or since. It was incredible; it was terrifying but also full of love. (I didn't know it then but a perfect description would be "as the voice of many waters")

I will never forget the words that it said.

Continued in part 2

Nov 7, 2007 3:55pm: Part 2 Continued From Part 1

I will never forget the words that it said.

"YOU ARE NOT TO DO THIS, THIS IS WRONG, I HAVE A PURPOSE FOR YOU, YOU ARE NOT TO DO THIS, THIS IS WRONG!"

As soon as the words finished, I woke up, and to my amazement felt fine. Then I sat up and about 5ml of liquid came out of my mouth and landed on the leaves on the ground.

I thought I was hallucinating and would soon die, because the liquid was like paint, in separate colours red, yellow, blue, green etc. like a rainbow, I was really puzzled by this.

Somehow now, I didn't want to die.

I thought about the voice and wondered in my mind - Was that GOD?

I went home to my empty house, Mum was at work, I went home expecting to die any moment. A couple of hours passed, nothing happened to me.

Mum came home and asked how I was and why had I not been at school.

I told her that I had the cold.

I never had any medical treatment and never suffered any side effects.

My life continued, I did not become a Christian or a better person, I was still miserable.

Some years later I met a girl that I liked a lot called Alison, she was going out with my best friend, but they seemed to breaking up.

One night walking home after a party (I was about 19-20) I said to God (Not Jesus, I did not believe in Him because I had tried asking Him to save me and nothing happened so I knew He didn't exist). "I want Alison!"

I immediately heard a voice in my head which said - "BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR, YOU MIGHT JUST GET IT."

I was stunned to hear this - so I though about whether I wanted to go out with her or not? - I decided I did, and I said to God - "I still want her."

Within 1 week, I was sitting at home watching MTV - Dream Lover by Mariah Carey - I think, I said to myself, if I don't get to go out with Alison, I will kill myself.

I had dismissed the experience of the voice as due to the drugs I had taken, on my first suicide attempt. Although I couldn't explain to myself why I had not died or even been ill.

That Night to keep a long story short - I did get Alison as my girlfriend.

We went out for years - I loved her and we bought a house together - I idolized her, she was all I wanted in a girl.

I got an easy Job and a nice house, I wasn't rich, but I didn't want to be. I had got all the things I had wanted - someone to love me and a nice life.

We had a lot of friends in the street who were our age and we would have parties in our houses - lots of fun - drinking, watching TV, eating out.

It was at this time when, I had got everything I thought I ever wanted, that I started to consider life.

I still felt unfulfilled even though I had all that I wanted.

I said to myself, there must be more to life than this...

I began to look at the fields and lake that I lived beside, and I thought there must be a higher power that made these things, I always loved biology and science at school, and desired to be a vet or a scientist. But when I considered the evolution theory, it seemed to me to be so ridiculous that random chance would produce great order and structure, and anyway I thought what banged in the supposed big bang, I dismissed it as foolishness in my mind.

So that left me thinking, who or what made the world.

It was the 1st of January in the year 2000; I had been at a new year's party the night before, drunk etc.

I woke up and a revelation just hit me - very clearly a crystal clear thought "GOD IS REAL". I was 24 years old at the time.

I was so shocked by this that I think I mentioned it to Alison, she said maybe we should go to Church, I dismissed that idea. I knew that the Christians didn't know God, they were all wimps who couldn't get any miracles or do anything, and I had tried it and it did not work!

I started to think about what God must be like, I decided, after thinking through suffering and various other things that happen in the world that God must be one of two types of God.

Continued in part 3

Nov 7, 2007 3:55pm: Part 3 Continued from part 2

1. All good, but not all powerful. - Yes powerful enough to make the world, and all the stuff, but now things had gotten out of control for Him, and even though He was a good God, Who was doing His best for the world, there was a lot he couldn't manage to fix - like starving millions in Africa etc etc etc.

2. Not all good, but all powerful. - Yes all powerful, but more of a personality, like a man likes some people, hates others, hence if He liked you, you got a good life, and if He hated you, He gave you a life of misery, suffering and a horrible death. I thought he could be prone to mood swings, get easily angered or be unfairly good to others.

I decided on a bus to work that no matter what God was like it would be best if possible to know Him. I thought, if He is all good, I want to know Him; and even if He isn't I think it would be better to be His friend rather than enemy.

So I said in my heart - "God, If you are real, I want to know you!"

I immediately thought of praying but I answered that with a quick response --- "and I don't mean talking to the wall, I mean I want to know you. If you have made people able to talk, then you can talk, if you created speech then you can speak!" "If you reveal yourself to me, I will do what you want."

Nothing seemed to happen.

Thinking about this, I decided to look into who might already know God. I thought about religion, I knew it wasn't Christianity that was right, so I thought about Islam, maybe they know God (there was no terrorism stuff from Muslims that I was aware of back then.)

So knowing that I was ignorant of many things, and didn't yet know God, I went to the town's main bookstore to buy a copy of the Koran.

I located a copy and stretched out my hand to lift it, but as I did so my whole arm went ice cold from the shoulder to the tips of my fingers, it seemed as cold as if someone had poured dry ice on it.

Startled and frightened, I looked around the shop to see if there was anything that could have made my arm this cold. There was nothing, everyone else was calmly going about their business. I immediately decided not to try and buy the Koran after all, and hastily left the shop.

Instead, I began to read books by Carl Jung, he claimed to have spiritual experiences - strange dreams and was rated by many as a great thinker.

I read one of His books which described a dream about God, I thought it was too strange and I decided this guy did not know God.

I also read some of Freud; I quickly realized this man was sick in the head.

None of this helped me at all, and since I had said in my heart - "God, if you are real, I want to know you!" I had been thinking about what God must be like a lot of the time, and whether he was all good or not.

Then it happened, I was lying under a sun bed in my house and I heard a voice inside my head - say two words

"READ JOB"

I knew it wasn't my thoughts because I thought in my ignorance the word was pronounced Job as in get a Job.

But the voice pronounced it correctly saying read JOB as in the book of JOB (pronounced Jobe, like lobe).

I was very surprised by this, and was not a person who regularly heard voices in my head.

I told Alison, she was surprised and said, maybe you should read it.

Next day I strangely forgot about it and opened my Carl Jung book, all I could see down the page I was reading was Job.......Job...Job, Job. Carl Jung had never mentioned the bible before or any books in it that I had noticed. So I said to myself, I'm definitely going to read Job tonight after work.

During the day I considered that God had told me to read Job, and thought this must mean that The Jew's knew God or the Christians.

I was astonished to think that the Christians could be right, and still dismissed that, but when I thought of being a Jew, I sure didn't fancy wearing black coats and having a strange beard.

Continued in part 4

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