TESTIMONY REGARDING TATTOOS

TESTIMONY REGARDING TATTOOS

When I was in high school I really wanted to get a tattoo and a body piercing. So, during high school I got a body piercing (in my bellybutton). Shortly after I graduated from high school I got a tattoo. Neither action was well thought-out, but more of a spur of the moment thing. In fact, I’m grateful that the man who did my tattoo wouldn’t do what I originally wanted. He told me to go home and really think about it until I knew what I wanted and where I wanted it. If he would have done whatever I wanted at that moment, I would be even more regretful at this point. So, I ended up getting something I thought I would want for the rest of my life on my ankle. Now, about five years after I got my tattoo I have a scar where my body piercing was and a tattoo that I wish I didn’t have.

I got a navel piercing and tattoo to be different and cool. After a while of having both, I didn’t care much about showing them off. It really surprised me in a way when people would point to me and ask me about my tattoo. It started to annoy me that when certain people noticed my body piercing or tattoo, I suddenly had become more cool in their eyes. I felt like they liked me more, only after they had found out that I was the type of person who would have a body piercing or tattoo.

Shortly after I got my tattoo, I realized that a lot more people from many different groups of society were getting body piercings and tattoos. The trend of tattoos and body piercings was becoming popular among more and more people regardless of what "group" they were in (i.e. the "rebellious" crowd, as well as the more average straight-laced group of people).

After a few years I got sick of my body piercing because so many other people were doing the same thing. Then it came down to deciding whether I wanted metal or a scar. I chose the scar.

Here’s why:

After I was touched by the Lord I was told by a friend that body piercing and tattoos were wrong because the Bible said so. I was immediately defensive and confused. I wanted to follow the Lord and do what was right in His eyes. So, while I was with my friend one time we decided to look it up in our NIV Bibles for ourselves. We found Leviticus 19:28: "Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord."

We couldn’t find anything that directly said you should not pierce your body. In fact, I was surprised to see in certain parts of Scripture that women wore nose rings in the Old Testament. For instance, Abraham’s servant gave Rebekah a nose ring as a gift when he knew he had found the right wife for Isaac (Genesis 24:34-51 NIV). I believe, however, that nose rings were common in their culture, just as common as earrings have been in American culture for a long time. Therefore, there is not the same reasons behind Rebekah wearing a nose ring as someone in America might have today. It would be as simple as her being given earrings today.

I decided to pray about whether it was right for me to have a body piercing and tattoo. During the time I was praying and seeking God about this the Lord led me to Scriptures such as 1 Corinthians 6:19 NIV: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body."

I was also convicted by 1 Corinthians 3:16 NIV: "Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple."

I felt that I had harmed my body by tattooing it and piercing it. I passed out when I got my body pierced and came close to passing out when I got my tattoo. Basically, I went through a lot of pain to look cool. I felt that it was wrong for me to have pierced and tattooed my body, especially because of the reasons behind both--vanity and pride. Between vanity and pride and harming my body that the Lord had created I knew that I had sinned. Now I can see that I was not honoring God with my body by piercing it and putting a permanent mark on it. Although I was able to remove my piercing, my tattoo is not something that I can just wash away. It is on my leg to stay.

I know the Lord has forgiven me. His grace and love are so amazing. I was living a sinful, ungodly life and then I found the Lord. Jesus died for us all and God raised Him from the dead so that our sins can be forgiven and that we may be cleansed of our iniquities. Now, we can enter into an amazing love relationship with Him. God did this all through Jesus! The point of this testimony is to share how I was convicted of sin in my life. It doesn’t matter what the sin was. We all need to repent and follow the Lord. If we love Him, we will obey Him.

John 14:15 NIV: "If you love me, you will obey what I command."

1 John 5:3-5 NIV: "This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God."

__

Contributed by a young Christian girl who asked to remain anonymous.

DESIRE

Don't just ask, 'What do I want?'

Ask, 'What price am I willing to pay for what I want?'

- Keith A. Craft

Don't Play the Blame Game - 3 Reasons to Move On

When there is a mess on the floor, it may feel really good to play "Who's to blame?!".

Do we do it out of some belief in the importance of accountability? Do we think pinning the blame will improve the behavior of the guilty? Do we think as a manager that we are somehow resolved of the responsibility of our team's performance? Did we get yelled at as children and this is our way of paying it back?

There are 3 main reasons why you should move past blame and into effective action.

1.It is far more productive to focus on corrective action and learning the lessons the situation offers.

2. It's less expensive to get on to the solution instead of investing good money after bad simply to point the finger of blame. Blaming wont put any money in your pocket and you will ruin whatever morale is left in the team.

3. Even if you can perfectly determine who was to blame (if anyone!) you still have the more important problem to solve and that is how can we move on, get better, learn from this, and make sure it doesn't happen again. You simply can't afford to lose the time in pointless inquiry; it's the one resource you can't replace, so make sure those precious moments are used for the good of the team long term.

Remember, your team, family, your peers and your friends need your leadership in times of crisis like this, and we have to be able to get past simple blame games and demonstrate positive leadership if we want to move forward.

Personality Test

CLICK HERE!!

Quiz: The Classic IQ Test

You know you're smart — but just how smart?
TestQ's free online Classic IQ Test is a scientifically accurate IQ test created by PhDs.
Previously offered only to corporations, schools, and certified professionals
- this personality-based IQ test is now available to you! Take it now to see how you rate!

CLICK HERE!!

Just 4 Laughs!!

Studying for Finals and Midterms - Stress Traps To Avoid

Studying for finals and midterms tends to be automatically linked with stress. In fact, where stress is already built into a situation where you need to call up all the important information that you’ve learned in each of several classes over the course of several months, the last thing students need to do is add to the stress of midterms and finals, right? Well, unfortunately, many students inadvertently do just that. Certain common practices that often make finals even more stressful than they need to be. Do any of these sound familiar?

Pulling “All-Nighters”

Many students —- especially those who work best with deadlines —- find themselves staying up all night studying. Going through the next day exhausted, many may wonder if it’s worth it -— do the benefits of an all-night study session outweigh the sleepiness and fuzzy thinking that generally characterize the next day? Recent research says ‘no.’ A study set to be published in the January issue of Behavioral Sleep Medicine found that students who regularly pulled all-nighters tended to have lower GPAs than those who didn’t. The study also found that most students didn’t stay up all night studying because they had to. They did it because it was ‘kind of fun,’ or a rite of passage. This is good news because it means that most students, armed with the understanding that all-nighters aren’t associated with higher grades, can stop.

Powering Down the Caffeine

Decades ago, truck drivers and students in the throes of finals season might consider taking caffeine pills or powering down the Mountain Dew to stay awake when they wanted to be up all night. More recently, many ‘energy drinks’ have sprung up on the market, and are gaining popularity with students who want to have extra energy for extra studying. While energy drinks may be tempting, and some evidence shows that they can enhance performance in the short term (especially for those who aren't habitual consumers), there are drawbacks as well. Caffeine can give your energy level a temporary jolt, but that can be accompanied by a later crash that leaves you feeling completely drained. Studies show that students who consumed energy drinks may also experience headaches or even heart palpitations. Also, caffeine stays in your system for many hours longer than you may expect, which can interfere with sleep, making it difficult to sleep when you need to. This can leave you exhausted rather than refreshed in the morning, and potentially causing a self-perpetuating cycle. Finding natural ways to get extra energy, such as a healthy diet and exercise, as well as quality sleep on a regular basis, is the best way to maintain enough energy to tackle finals.

Having Study Parties with Your Fun Friends

While it seems like a great idea to get together and study with your friends, if you’re not careful you may find yourself wasting valuable study time accomplishing nothing but some muted fun. With the wrong mix of people, group studying can turn into a gossip session.

Even meeting in the wrong place, such as a busy restaurant or worse -- a dorm room -- can offer enough distraction to sabotage your efforts. It's best to stick with the library or another quiet place that presents the right atmosphere and is conducive to studying. Study groups can be wonderfully successful, but be sure to think long and hard before organizing one. Choose people who are responsible and committed, and be sure that you maintain the same level of commitment to studying. You can all celebrate your good grades when finals are over.

Waiting Until The Last Minute and Going On Adrenaline

While many people swear by this method, it’s an obvious risk if you really think about it. First, you always run the risk of not finishing in time, and being unprepared. Second, you greatly increase your chances of needing to try some of the other items on this list, such as powering down the caffeine or pulling all-nighters. Finally, adrenaline and hasty ‘cramming’ tend to encode information into your short-term memory, but the knowledge doesn’t always remain memorized; you cheat yourself out of a true education. (And you may want to build on this knowledge later, rather than having to re-learn it at some future date.) A wiser choice for those who work best with deadlines is to give yourself a deadline that’s really a week or so before your ‘real’ deadline -- this gives you a burst of motivation, but also some wiggle room.

Constantly Reminding Yourself What’s At Stake

While remembering the importance of a test’s outcome can be a good motivator for studying, too much focus on the outcome can backfire. If you’re the type of person who is already pretty conscientious, and the idea of doing poorly on the test is starting to cause significant test anxiety, it may be time to shift your focus. This is because being overly anxious about a test’s outcome can actually cause you to do poorly, or to score lower than you normally would. To avoid obsessing, try some positive affirmations, visualizations, or tips from this article on overcoming test anxiety.

Now that you know the ingredients of academic self-sabotage, you know what to avoid.