All that remains, is for you to repent, rise up and believe, and engage with Him. Be a great thing to do tonight wouldn't it, a great thing to do tonight. Why don't we close our eyes right now?
[Opening Testimony, by Tim Cashmore]
[Mike Connell] Fantastic, great to have you here tonight, and we're going to get Tim Cashmore to come up in a moment. Where's Tim? Tattoo Tim, come on Tattoo Tim, come on up here. Come on, and he's going to share a testimony just in a moment. It'll be fantastic testimony. How many know Tim or have met Tim before? You know Tim? Fantastic, he's a great guy.
Now I'm going to speaking tonight on tattoos, so I needed to get someone who's tattooed to come along and share a testimony.
Before we do that, I've got a video clip, and I'd like you'd to have a look at this little video clip. It lasts about 15 seconds, and it's for all of you who have a tattoo, or would like to get a tattoo. They look beautiful when you're 23, but they're something else when you get older. Have a look at this. [Plays video clip] ...lower back tattoo. Look, there's a really cool lower back tattoo, on an attractive 20 year old girl. Now watch what happens to that tattoo... So for those of you who have a back tattoo, welcome to what it'll look like in the future.
[Tim Cashmore] Good evening church. Oh wow. I sort of got a surprise on this one, because I was just talking to Pastor Mike yesterday, and he said: we'll have to get you up and give a testimony one day - well today's the day! [Laughs]
So first thing I want to do, really, is give the honour to God; because without God I wouldn't have a testimony, and the testimony is hugely important in my life - the transformation He's made.
Now I suppose I'd better give you a bit of background of where I came from. I came from a broken family, split up family. My father left when I was five, then I had an abusive stepfather that came in, and I pretty much got beaten up from the age of about seven all the way to about 13 when he kicked me out of home.
I was full of hatred of anybody in authority, so that's where my first tattoo came from. I was 14 years old, I was half way through high school and I decided I want a tattoo! So I went and saw my mate...
The other thing I was getting into was drugs, and I was actually make it a God in my life, so I wanted a picture of my God. You can't see it, it's under this one. Yeah, it's under this one - this is a cover up. It's actually a big dope leaf.
That was my first tattoo, and it was done with a matchstick, and a needle, and some ink, and it's just like donk, donk, donk, donk, donk.
Over the years, the funny thing about the tattoos: they're a story of my life, and what I was doing at certain parts of my life. Each tattoo's got a different reason, and a different story behind it.
Sort of fast-forwarding through life, I was getting more and more tattoos, and more and more and heavily into what I was doing, heavily into drugs, and even worse than what I started. Life was really not good, and then, fast-forwarding through it, I become a Christian, started learning about God, and God started doing a transformation in my life.
But it was only earlier this year - must be about eight months ago, nine months ago - I asked our elder at that stage in our church (Ian Clayton), about tattoos, and what they meant.
He went away, and he fasted, and prayed, and then came back and seen me. After church, we were sitting just in the row over there, everybody else had left, so there was nobody else here; and he started sharing with me about what I'd actually done.