But this is what would happen: if a spirit of death came into you, you would find emotional numbness. You would find disconnectedness. You would find it difficult to form relationships. You'd find it difficult to flow from your heart in an intimate relationship. Why? Because the spirit of death had wrapped itself around you and now had a grip on your heart.
Sometimes the Indians used to tattoo themselves with pictures of animals. Then they'd call on the spirit of that animal to enter them, and to give them the abilities that the animal had.
Tattooing is directly connected with the spirit realm. It opens a gateway, through blood-letting, for you to allow demons to come in. That's what the problem is with it.
If you've opened yourself up, if you've got sexual pictures on there, you’ve opened yourself up to a tormenting, unclean, spirit. So when people get tattooed, very often it's in rebellion or pain, and they do it to try and find an expression somehow; and in doing so, open the gateway for the demonic.
So what do we do about that - if you've got tattoos? Well, some people want to get them all taken off. I just said: Tim, why bother about it? It's a great testimony of God's grace in your life.
Here's the thing: God wants to tattoo you! In 1 Corinthians 1:22 it says: “now God has marked us, stamped us like stamping with a signet ring”.
Now the way they used to have an ownership of things, in the New Testament days, and Roman days, is: they'd have some wax on something, and they'd take a ring that's got an engraving on it, and they'd stamp it on there - and you had a mark of a signet ring on you.
It was a sign of ownership. It was a seal of governments etc; and the Bible says: now God has sealed you; not putting marks on your body - He's not wanting to do that. God has sealed you with the Holy Spirit of promise - so God has got a mark to put on you! He wants to put His spirit on you! He wants to fill you with His spirit! He wants you empowered with the Holy Ghost, marked by this person's mark, the spirit of God is with them!
The Bible says in Acts 1:8, He said: “you shall receive power of the Holy Ghost coming on you”! God's desire is you be stamped, that you belong to Him, just like you have been purchased out of a marketplace. His stamp is the stamp of His spirit in your heart.
Now you should be glad you don't live in Old Testament times, because they had a different way of stamping, that you belong to God. One or two know about that... You would have to be circumcised, to have to have your flesh cut away and bloodshed - a very, very painful process.
Today the circumcision is one of the heart - putting our heart right with God, receiving the stamp of His spirit. Whatever we've been involved in, we can be set free.
If you've opened your life up through tattoos, drugs, sexual sin, video games or whatever - it's very, very simple. You just need to come and repent before the Lord, and renounce the covenantal agreement you made.
You say: I didn't know I was doing that. Hey, the devil doesn't care whether you know or not. He knows if you do it - because he's got a legal right to be there - and that right has to be cancelled.
It is cancelled by the blood of Jesus Christ, the blood of a greater covenant. It's the blood of the king of kings, who came to earth!
You know why He shed His blood? So whatever you got into with the devil - He has got something stronger than it!
When Jesus shed His blood, He broke the power of the devil, broke the list of ordinances against you! He broke the power of tattoos, witchcraft, sorcery, all those kinds of things.