A New Creature. . . an Apostolic Pentecostal blog

Marion/Harrison Street As I had mentioned I had a thought of Solomon (my golden retriever) pulling my little red wagon and accompanying me on my street ministry walks. To explore the feasibility of that on Tuesday, a day of steady rain, I took Solomon with me on the Middlebury Street ministry route and he did very very well. He was very well behaved and people who wouldn't have paused for a moment for me and my message, walked across the street to see Solomon. I was kind of torn about taking him with me on Marion/Harrison Street. I thought about it much of the day. My main concern was that there are a large number of pit bulls in the neighborhood and could I protect Solomon if one was loose and attacked him. I ultimately decided there were advantages to having him along and that I would depend on God for His protection. . . It wasn't raining, so more people would be out and unlike Tuesday, I really needed to take the wagon. The wagon carries a little box of my Bible verse...

In an earlier writing I explored the difference between a trial and a test. . .The differences between the two are in the attitude and thereby the perception of the one undergoing the experience. There is indeed a difference between being tempted and being tested. A test is a measuring device, like a ruler or weight scales. You can be tested by someone else or you can and should test yourself. A test births an increase in knowledge. Tests can be constructed from virtually any raw material. They are not limited to any set form. Any life event can be viewed as a test, if you learn something about your self from it. Every test is valuable in that there is always value in gaining knowledge about yourself. While a test is most often independent of you, think of a hurricane or the present economic crisis, millions of people are being tested at once by single causative events. A temptation on the other hand is intimately bound to you, for indeed temptation is internal. It arises from...