We’re all familiar with the concept of shoulder angels and shoulder devils. There’s that voice inside that urges us to do the right thing, and the voice that tempts us to do the wrong thing. Sometimes both of these voices can be very persuasive. When we are pulled by equally strong forces towards the good and towards the evil, we may find it difficult to make a decision. If only there were a third party that could weigh in on this debate. As a matter of fact, we do have access to a third party. The word testament, and by derivation the word testimony, comes from the Latin words for “three” - tres - and “to stand” - stare - because a witness would stand as a third party in a litigation. When we develop our testimony, we can have that third party to help us decide between the voice inside telling us to do the right thing and the voice telling us to do the wrong thing. We don’t have to use up all of our willpower and tear our hair out trying to figure out which is the good and which is the bad. Whichever side our testimony lines up with will help us to make the right choice. Now it is two voices for good against one for evil and the decision becomes so much clearer. I hope that we can all work to build up our testimony as a third party to help us when we get caught up in a debate between our shoulder angel and our shoulder devil.
