But I Was Doing It For God! - The One Year Father-Daughter Devotions

But I Was Doing It for God!

Is it possible to do the wrong thing for the right reasons? The answer’s not as simple as you think. For thousands of years, people have blamed their sins on having good intentions.

Of course, sometimes our disobedience is blatant. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve basically had one rule: Don’t eat the fruit on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What’d they do? Ate the fruit. Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpent. The serpent hissed—well, probably. But other times in the Bible, people tried to reason away their wrongdoings, saying, “I was doing it for God.”

• Abraham was promised more descendants than all the stars. But he was getting old and didn’t yet have a child. So he started a family with his wife’s servant. That did not go well.
• God told Moses specifically to speak to a rock to make water come out for the thirsty, desert-wandering Israelites. But whether out of anger or pride, Moses struck the rock. That did not go well, either.
• Then there’s the disciple Peter. When Jesus was arrested, Peter, wanting to protect Jesus, drew a sword and cut off a servant’s ear. (Jesus quickly healed the man.)

What do these stories show us? Our good intention to do something for God doesn’t make a wrong action right. God is not honored when we sin, no matter our intentions. Just like it says in Psalm 139:23-24, we should ask God to test our motivations and to lead us “along the path of everlasting life.”

Daddy-Daughter Time

The popular radio drama Adventures in Odyssey featured a great game that showed this concept. In the episode “Rights, Wrongs & Reasons,” Whit, Connie, and Jenny discuss real or pretend situations and see if they agree if there’s both a right action and a right motive. If you’d like to hear that show, you can download it at whitsend.org. Just search for “Rights, Wrongs, Reasons.”

Our goal in life should be to honestly assess when an action and a motive are both right. If not, you may end up doing the right thing for the wrong reason or the wrong thing for the right reason. Then there’s the wrong thing for the wrong reason—but that should be obvious.

What’s The Word?

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.   Psalm 139:23-24