Joshua

And then kill yourself if you lose all that, since it could be taken away from you? Or else just kill yourself when you realize how meaningless it all was? There are a lot of people who've taken such routes before.

Firefox Download Also, thanks for all the tips everyone! I tried the first one plus the fasterfox and purgefox, both look to be working great

Lol, well there you go Amanda, it seems our devious friend may have a point there

How I found it? A long journey I wasn't always as you see me. 5th grade involved me being taken from my family and placed in a foster home. The next 6 years or so my parents weren't around, my dad was in prison and my mom splitting time between jail and an insane asylum. I was a ward of the state whose grades plummeted after the events started. I took up boxing and worked on a new martial art for 8 years that looked like a lot of judo/boxing moves with the footwork from karate, and used a new fist that I hit brick, concrete, fiberglass, and stainless steel with without breaking it. I used to enjoy pain since the adrenaline let me ride a high almost that blocked out for a while the pain within. My knuckles are still purplish even though it's been 3 years since giving up the boxing and weightlifting even as exercise. Everything turned around in 8th grade. I flunked, lost all my friends, my family was gone, I was a ward of the state to be moved from school to school, I was on multiple antidepressants that I now realize were making me suicidal (didn't know St. John's Wort with other stuff was bad back then). In my misery I became an avid observer of ironies and searched for God. I realized there were too many ironies, some of them very great, finally to pass off as mere coincidence. That summer on August 5, 1998, I heard the Gospel preached in its entirety, and it blew me away. I had no problem accepting the first part, that there was a problem. I had no problem accepting I needed to change and was an evil sinner, indeed I'd recently thought myself the most evil person on the planet because of my fights with my brothers who before all this had started I had cared for so much. I trusted in Jesus and no one else on the planet to save me, and trusted that He'd died for my sins on the cross and risen again. I asked Him into my heart that day to lead my life, to forgive me, to change me utterly... and all with sobs that I doubt anyone but God could interpret, for He sees not as men see, He sees the heart and not the outward appearance. Salvation isn't always experiential or involve what I felt that day, but I felt like the world had fallen off my shoulders, all my guilt and emptiness within me was gone. I couldn't have imagined life without it before that. And my nature was changed, I had a desire for God's will and an utter... will to obey Him and please Him that I still can't fully explain. Because I'd been saved in that Christian summer camp and was being moved from school to school I didn't affiliate with a church for several years (though I was able to attend one with some relatives once in a while) and wasn't baptized for even an even longer period. For a long time I didn't even know what a "denomination" was But I loved God and told everyone around me of how He'd changed my life, I witnessed to my brothers constantly of the new life and heart I'd found. I was on fire! Everything I've found of true meaning or value came from that one day, when I found God When I found everything my heart, my soul, was searching for And best of all? This isn't just a story, it's a reality of God constantly walking with me, the relationship I have with Him, and a daily interaction with Him as He works in my life through circumstances, other people, prayer, and His Word, the Bible I can't say it's been easier, as 2 Timothy 3:12 says, all who'll live godly in Jesus will suffer persecution. But I wouldn't give it up for ANYTHING in this universe because it means life so full and free that I don't even like to think of life without it -Jz

Yes, I both believe in God and I believe Him as concerning the Bible. Believing in God is essential to coming to Him: But at the same time, that kind of faith isn't enough, even the devils have it. Certain religions do as well, I'm sure you could think of some: But that's not the saving faith the Bible says is needed, it's only a starting point:

Maybe because girls keep thinking they can change the guy? They care about him for who he is inside which is admirable, but God created all of us with something inside us capable of being loved. It's pointless to love someone who won't love you back, and if he loved you why would he keep hurting you? If amanda can take it, she's probably well off with a lot of the great advice she got so far. (although to avoid legal issues she might want to avoid Mike's kicking advice ) You can know who loves you and is your friend by what they will go through for you, and what they'll give up for you. If they are completely self-centered, they're not worth the effort. Don't go for people based on the outside, that can change, what needs to be there is on the inside.

Right now I'm listening to "Joy" by Newsboys. I'll probably switch over to "Grace Like Rain" by Todd Agnew sooner or later. "Sea of Faces" by Kutless and "Voice of Truth" by Casting Crowns might also get thrown into the mix.

I always thought I had pretty good grammar and spelling until I got on my college newspaper this year. Now I'm finding out I need to use commas a lot more often then I do, along with not saying "it" instead of a more descriptive word. Sometimes I could rephrase or reword things better, and you'd be surprised how much newspapers abhor parentheses Ah well, that's what humility is for, right?

Earth is a testing ground between two planes, Fallen world of people's pain Hopeless world of darkened rain Could this race of life be won? Righteous here? They number none Life a lie of liar's puns? Life and victory comes Conqueror ever undefeated Thinks Death and Hell can yet be cheated Love and justice meet unheeded In Him we're all completed He's everything we needed Comes a'bringing life's new leases Name of glory, name of Jesus He who fashioned us in love Is it He who's from above? Can risen dead be proof enough For He who's signaled by a dove? Faultless love and guiltless life Can we so full of sin and vice Attain this wondrous sacrifice? Our precious earth attacked and raided Heaven's majesty's invaded Man's redemption oh so fated Creation's King for whom it's waited Creator stands with His created Such mercy flowing unabated Why, oh men, is He so hated? So vile as is, oh cruel mankind Impossible to be so blind You can't imagine such a crime! Do you know you're crossing such a line? Who is dying? Who you're crucifying? Of whom your wicked lips are lying? For who His loving eyes are crying? Satan, now you've had your way How you've waited for this day Almighty God, who all so dread Precious drops for mankind shed Purest mercy's teardrops bled In your power, at this hour Counted here among your dead Have you waited for so long Just to let your enemy escape? Surely He can't be so strong That even death could break But of course you can't be wrong Death and earth to you belong Oh vain prince, thy great mistake Prince of Peace, the King of Heaven Ascending back where He belongs From the trials of death and men Bearing records of His wrongs Oh such victory in His voice! Bow the knee, and hear Him tell "I Have The Keys Of Death, And Hell" Risen King, oh Risen Lord Thou eternal saving Word Thou our Master and our God Dare we tread as thou hast trod? Send us forth to tell the story Of your love and of your glory And faith in you means "do not worry" Hallelujah, sins so cleansed! Empty hearts He fully mends! Full forgiveness fully paid Trust just in Him, this saving faith Full atonement, what a trade! Life before is just a wraith New and whole the me He's made Life so full and bought by Him Now I can't lose, but only win Sorrows turned to joys Losses turned to gains To ever lift my voice Freed from all my chains Complete within, He'll come again

I've never put any drugs in my body, the closest I've come to drinking alcohol is in 8th grade or so when they cooked some in a dish for a home ec class, and when I use mouthwash. Never used cigarettes. Now here's the funny part In spite of all that, I got a serious eye injury playing basketball this year and they had me use this steroid cream for it. What's funny is that I love baseball and my last name is that of a baseball pitcher for the Cubs (local major league baseball team). So I've never used drugs, cigarettes, but I have used steroids and am connected to baseball in several ways

God created us to share a loving, personal relationship with Him He gave us one chance to reject Him since love forced with no choice is no love at all. Well, we messed that up, and mankind is condemned to be eternally separated from Him since God can't tolerate evil in His presence. There's one solution, and that His perfect Son who is the beginning of His creation, and by which all else is created. Jesus descended from His place in glory to pay the price for our sins on the cross and fulfil all the prophecies. Now through repenting and trusting in Him to save us through that sacrifice, we can be reconciled to God and have our sins "paid for in full." Accepting Him into our hearts we can become once again in the right relationship God made us for. He will come into our hearts and fill that God-sized void within us, He'll give us a new heart, a new spirit, and a new mind. We are born again! And He not only died, but He descended into Hell and took from Satan the power over death and then rose from the dead as the ultimate Conqueror! He has the keys of death and Hell and eternal life and forgiveness more complete then we can imagine is His to give to whoever comes to Him. To "whosoever believeth in Him." Without Him we're nothing, life is so hopeless. With Him, all the victories have already been won, Hallelujah!

Music for me is a great way to get caught up in God Nothing like listening to Grace Like Rain by Todd Agnew or Joy by Newsboys It lets me stay focused on God and caught up in His joy more often so that it comes out more in my time around others

I love MySpace, aside from those dumb ads. I actually put in a suggestion to them that they might try a new system where a person can click a privacy option to not get those ads, but different ones that are more family-friendly. Also, it's a tad annoying that my younger brother can't sign up until he's 14 (he's almost 13). But I spend the majority of my online time on MySpace, Xanga isn't even comparable for finding friends. It's like having a personalized website up that lets you contact friends instantly and you can put music, calendar events, etc... on it. The bulletins and blogging stuff is sheer genius since you can let all your friends see stuff instantly through the bulletins on each person's home page. Now they've got the kudos system and most popular blogs, sorted by sections... The way they organize the profiles with all the different sections is awesome, along with letting you rate so much stuff and comment on so much.Now if they'd just get rid of those stupid ads...

Ok, thanks BR, Goosestaf. I've made quite a few editing changes now, the black bar is gone, the Apologetics and Poetry sections have the links in cool looking tables, the buttons are in the same style as the site title now, there's new pages, a shoutbox, and I put the stepping stones section in a nice looking textbox with a scrollbar. So yeah, I went with a lot of your ideas as best I understood them. Sorry about the misunderstanding BR, I'm used to thinking of banners in ads, noob mistake I guess I did try the validator thing a while ago but it gave me some error about line 41 on the main page not having the right coding or something but I couldn't see anything wrong with it and the faq's didn't help, so...

Ciroxyz, alright, I toned down the font size to 12's and 14's. The 10/12 font sizes looked too small on the 1024 by 768 resolution which is why I bumped it up. I guess the verdana does look a bit better then arial, a bit more impersonal which worried me a bit at first and I'll have to think about which font I want more. I'm actually thinking about verdana on some pages and arial on others, depending on which mood I want for which page. And I'm a bit hesitant to mess around with gray on the page since I'm not looking to make the site look more somber, and kind of like the look as it is. I've been thinking about redoing the text for those buttons as well like you suggested. I was wondering, why do you think I should try gray on the site? I was wondering how to get a slight border near the picture too on that left side so the text wouldn't run up against it like that, do you know what the code for it would be offhand? Also, yet another reminder to people out there, the site is http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ , not http://jzyehoshua.8m.com/

Umm... BR, my site doesn't have a banner, unless you mean the title? There are no fonts to my images, unless you mean the ones for the layout. I'm not sure about the validator url, I'll have to look into that. You are looking at my new site at http://forums.xisto.com and not my old, old one at http://jzyehoshua.8m.com/ right? Because there was a database error right after I forgot to put the site link in I wasn't able to correct the issue and everyone's been replying to the wrong site this whole time. I was hoping this issue was corrected, but... If noone is reading the last posts, maybe it would be a good idea to repost this as a new topic...

K, thanks for the advice. I'd been noticing a basic text error on the Apologetics pages, I'll need to fix that. I'll have to look into the font sizes, might take your advice on that. Interesting idea about the gray text, but I'm going to want some parts of the text to stand out. With filling in the white spaces, I'm not sure if it will affect loading time, but since the site is apparently loading at a decent speed it might also be something for me to look into. Oh, and that first site was junk I'd been working on it last year when I gave up on it, was just starting out then. I started working on this site but had some trouble with the coding to get the graphics in the right place and didn't start working on it again until just recently. The big reason I did was because of finding out about Xisto. Hopefully this new site can have even better content then the first one while having info spaced out more so it loads better, and have a better look to it as well. Right now I'm mainly just worrying about making pages for the site and once I start getting more info in I'll begin worrying more about the look and functionality of it. Thanks for the ideas though!

Alright, thanks for the feedback Good to know it's loading well, it's been something I've been focusing on but with this computer being slow lately I wasn't sure about it. I plan on getting a lot more pages in, and once I get enough articles in the Apologetics section I plan on putting them in a nice table very similar to the one at the top of this page: http://www.teachinghearts.org/dre03propchristnotes.html Yeah, it is a personal site and I'm hoping the baseball info might attract additional interest in the site it wouldn't otherwise have. I plan on adding in the baseball info and some other stuff, like a hymn database in a section called "Christians" or maybe "Christian Corner" Anyway, I have a lot of ideas for the site and like I said, it's a pretty barebones structure right now. As I start getting the info on it I might try playing around with different menus or looks to the site, for now I'm just trying to get the info on it. Good to know it has promise at least, thanks!

I'm not sure if it's a nice work, maybe if he done it in 5 minutes, it's indeed a nice work. See ya. 182155[/snapback] Sorry, realized as soon as I made the first post I'd forgotten the link and then reported it. The jzyehoshua.8m.com site is NOT my new site. My new site is at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Because I have been unable to access Xisto the last few days (some kind of SQL database error it's been saying) I haven't been able to see what happened on this topic or do anything further about the link mistake. Sorry about the confusion. Now how about some actual reviews of my actual site at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ? Notice from BuffaloHELP: Edited as requested. Please use the PREVIEW POST for confirmation.

I just finished up the layout and finally have it about how I want it, I expect I should be able to start putting in the informative pages pretty quickly now that that's over with. I haven't even put in the link buttons yet on the 2nd page but you can get an idea of what the basic look of the site will be anyway. I heard from some graphic designers that the dark blue doesn't fit in but frankly I like it that way and I'm doing it to express myself through it, so if it suffers a few points in color cohesiveness as a result, so be it. Anyway, what're your thoughts on the site speed, look, etc...? LINK: http://jzyehoshua.8m.com/ Notice from KuBi: Link added. Next time put it in your post to avoid confusion and spam.

Hmm... so the reward is ceasing to exist? Doesn't seem like a reward to me, but oh well. I guess I see the problem as whether or not we can have an ultimate purpose or meaning to our lives if there is no ultimate authority. If there isn't one, allpowerful God in control then what is our purpose and meaning for going on and for doing good? Just because we should? If everything just keeps continuing on, what's the point of going on? Because we can? Because it can't be helped? It seems such a belief would breed not only a sense of futility but that it would be fear motivating good deeds, rather then any compassion for others. Wouldn't people often be doing them so they wouldn't get turned into a snail for their next life? It seems to me that's the ultimate extent of motivation for good deeds in such a belief system. Correct me if I'm wrong please, I am only speculating here.

As light crept hastily through the windows, a sudden howling brought trepidation to dogs, shambling aimlessly

My name, surprisingly, is Joshua It means "Jehovah is Salvation" and is a variation of Jesus as well. If you look up Jesus in Webster's it says the Hebrew for it is "yeshua, contr. of yehoshua (Joshua), help of Jehovah" Anyway, I love my first name since it not only proclams that God is salvation but is also related to Jesus. And of course it's a name for a great warrior too, which is pretty cool. My middle name is David meaning "beloved" and of course is the name for a giant-killer, also cool And then my last name is Zambrano and since I'm a pitcher it's a great last name for me. Oh, and I have my full name posted on a ton of profiles including my yahoo one anyway, so... *shrugs* http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

As light crept hastily through the windows, a sudden howling brought trepidation to...

I'm saying He is vengeful and that He loved us enough to die for us though we weren't worthy of such kindness. (Romans 5:8) A righteous, holy, and just King cannot tolerate rebellion since it would come at the expense of a just kingdom. The loving side of Him however made Him die so we could be changed from rebellious to obedient, from hateful to love, from unrighteous to righteous. Christ doesn't just save us, He changes us, it is often said that Christ is in the business of changing lives, and in my experience at least I have found this utterly true. He doesn't just let you enter eternal life and that's it, He also replaces your desires, your frame of mind, your very soul. You still retain the essence of who you were, but it's as if your heart is now capable of love, your yearnings have changed to do His will rather then your own... Christ doesn't just forgive people, He gives them an extreme makeover of the heart so that they're people not only fit for His kingdom but who will fill it with love and joy and peace, and not hatred or evil. God can't permit the unloving to destroy the righteous universe He wants to create, again, and so the only way we can enter is by being "born again" (John 3:7) by faith so that we are creatures who no longer tend towards evil but to good. That's why I say if someone still dwells in hatred of others and hurts them they are most probably not saved, since love is perhaps the defining evidence of a saved heart, and the Bible says whoever hates their brother is a murderer and has no eternal life in them. (1 John 3:15) And the fulfilling of God's commandments is love, and love does not hurt others. (Romans 13:10) God is omnipotent or all powerful, He is often called the Almighty, but the word "omniscient" is never once used of Him. Also, God is all powerful but cannot be contradictory, and He will not do that which is contrary to His nature. For this reason it is written that it is impossible for God to lie. (Hebrews 6:18) It is clearly possible for God to look into the future, but I have wondered before if it's like looking through a window, He first has to choose to do it. For example, Christ did not inherently know what the Pharisees would be thinking until He chose to look into their thoughts and thus perceive what they were thinking. (Mark 2:8) Whether internally or externally it seems He first had to look. That He was well acquainted with future events as with present seems plain. What I'm saying is I suspect God doesn't know the future unless He decides to look at it. Concerning the devil, it would seem Satan's great influence involved him getting some kind of rulership over the earth, and perhaps why he is called the "prince of this world." (John 12:31) It would also seem Satan was given some power over death as well, for Michael the archangel had a dispute with Satan over the body of Moses, suggesting perhaps Satan had power over that body. Note also that when Christ escaped Satan's grasp from Hell He returned with the keys of Hell and of Death, so apparently He gained power to free the dead so that they were under His control. (Revelation 1:18) From the above verse Christ apparently could not be Lord of the dead until He died and rose again. It would seem some power over death was stolen from Satan and that thus Christ arose with the keys of Hell and of death. So my response is, that He couldn't destroy Satan until taking the power of death from him, else the souls of those who died including those of His faithful servants and prophets would not be freed. And so He had first to trick Satan into trying to capture Him in death and then taking the power from Satan, He is now free to destroy the prince of this world. It would seem His only reason for waiting is to see who will side with Him and who will remain with Satan, that He may have a chance to save more that they may enter the kingdom of Heaven. Just my thoughts. Notice from cmatcmextra: Edited as per request