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Deception and Leadership

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JasonBuursma
Jul 06 2003
10:18 pm

2) Q: Is it appropriate to try to accomplish something good with immoral means and claim that you are doing God’s will?

God’s Will is for us to be pure reflections of him, not twisted ones, so the obvious answer is no.
The problem is, we’re all sinners, so even when we are trying our best to do something good, we can sin. Sometimes I get frustrated with a kid in sunday school acting up. Does that mean that I should never discipline them because I might have anger in my life and I should take the plank out of my eye before taking the speck out of theirs?
Of course not. God speaks to our hearts and convicts us of things we should do. Many times we will fail and stumble while carrying out God’s Will, but if we don’t do it, God will use someone else to do it.
So since we know God is working out his plan, we should desire to be active participants in it, not just watching from the sidelines wondering what’s going on.
Some in this thread have presented two options for living
1) Being passive and just waiting for God to carry out his will
2) Being proactive and using our brains to figure everything out
There is a third option. It involves seeking God’s will and it is not passive and it does not exclude using your God-given talents.
The problem is that we don’t really believe God speaks to us and wants to let us know what’s going on. Sure, we may profess that doctrinally, and we may even be able to lead a Bible study on it, but many people (myself included) struggle with believing that God is really for them and things will really be better if they lay down their independence and trust in God.

To go back to full circle, just because someone (ie. Pres. Bush) sins, doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s not doing God’s will. Any good debater could pervert that last statement in a number of ways, but I think you understand my main point.