For Laurie

[Guest guest]

,I am glad you shared this! I was going to write Laurie privately in answer to her questions about where the Bible stands on this, but you have done a very nice job! I would also like to add a few more scriptures to this, as I have spent hours and hours in prayer over this whole issue as related to my self-esteem (how I view myself) versus how God views me. (In Christ). I believe this is an area that takes much prayer and introspective meditation. As the Bible says, "My people perish for lack of knowledge." (Hosea 4:6) Knowing what God says about us is our best weapon to fight against those times when our self esteem wavers and falls. I also spoke at my church to a group of unwed mothers about this issue of self esteem, and how God sees us. Resolving this issue spiritually was instrumental to my whole healing

experience. And by seeking God's word and understanding where we stand with Him, therein lies the secret to joy in life. Because in the end, He is all that matters, and there is complete acceptance in the arms of the Lord. He loves us as we are, so desperately and completely. Here, then, are a few more scriptures that I found helpful in understanding why breast implants may be biblically wrong, in addition to the ones you already pointed out: Colossians 3:5-6 "Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is

coming." We have to ask ourselves what is "impurity"? What are "evil desires"? For different people these can be different things, but for many of us within the implant issue, we have created idols out of our breasts. Basically, by focusing on what is wrong with our breasts and desiring them to be conformed to a standard that is set by man and not by God, we were obsessed by them, which took our focus off of God and His truth. And that is not hard to do in our society. Hollywood has idolized breasts. We also idolize a perfect physical body, toned and firm. Anything that takes on a priority in our lives to the exclusion of God becomes an idol. We don't even have to be doing this willingly. It can happen to us without us being aware that we are falling into this trap, because it can seem to be so

benign or innocent or start with good intentions. By spending large sums of money on our breasts, we have made a statement about our priorities regarding them. We have, in fact, idolized them. There are many, many things that can become idols, and what may be an idolized object to one person may not be an idol at all to another. Things usually become idols based on lies we believe. Lies like: "if I get breast implants, my life will be so much better!" (whether that is sexually, career-wise, in self-esteem, or whatever). Here is a part of what I said in my speech to the Teen Moms: Self esteem issues are all about lies. It is a tragedy of believing things that other people say, or things that we tell ourselves, that have nothing to do with the truth. Rick Warren in his phenomenal book “The Purpose Driven Life” states, “Being controlled by the opinions of others is a guaranteed way to miss God’s purposes for your life…..What ultimately matters most will not be what others say about your life, but what God says.” And what God says is that He cares about our hearts. He cares about where we are spiritually as much as or even more than where we are physically. The Bible states in 1 16: 7: “The Lord does not look at things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. This is a statement of opposing viewpoints. "MAN.........,BUT THE LORD." Man looks at the outward appearance. God looks at the heart. And it is a statement to show us that God's viewpoint is the one we should consider more carefully. God cares more about our hearts and how we relate to him and each other. One is lesser than the other, and I think the point of this passage is that God’s way is the one that counts! Man, in our small, tunnel-visioned view, makes judgements based on outward

appearances, and these can be very painful judgements about one another that cause us to do things that are extreme in nature and sometimes very harmful. We are so focused on the here and now that we neglect God’s truth: that we are His treasured possession and there are eternal consequences at stake way beyond outward appearances that we neglect... to our peril. Romans 8:17 says that we will be joint heirs with Christ. If we believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, then we have an inheritance in the Kingdom of God. Yes, there is a kingdom waiting for you and me. And that inheritance is not based on our appearance, our goodness or anything we can do to earn our way there. It's based on our acceptance of God's truth. God completely loves and accepts us, and yet, we waste precious time, money and energy trying to change and morph our bodies to conform to a transient and fleeting standard that man has created, but ultimately will only turn to dust! We have to learn to acknowledge that there is more to this life than what we see with our eyes. We have got to get our eyes off of this focus on our outward appearances, and focus on eternity.....We

must learn to see the beauty within each one of us that God has created....you are HIS special creation. Oh man, I could go on and on....I'll stop here. I pray that this helps somehow! Love, Patty From Laurie Mon Feb 27 10:29:44 2006 > Well on Thursday (the 23rd) I spent most of the day trying to find out if it is Biblically wrong to get implants. Well I couldn't find anything (so far)

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