Perfect document - Imperfect document

I think that when dark spirits whisper to us, they are rarely nefarious. Even if all they can do is cause us to spin our wheels until it is too late, that is enough. It is often very difficult to know if we are listening to one of them, to our own pride/fear, or to the Spirit of God. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter as it relates to the mess we are presently creating for ourselves, taken from an email conversation this morning.

It is very frustrating, to be sure. I don't think any document is or will be without defects.

I think Adrian means well.

What I think is happening is that dark spirits (devils) are among us galore, and they are doing everything they can to prevent us from agreeing on this, even using people's good intentions. If they can keep us from coming together on this until it is too late, and God rejects us, they will have won.

The same pattern has played out over and over again in regards to the Governing Principles, Guiding Principles, and now Guide and Standard. Mutual agreement, then someone (or several someones) come along and either says, I didn't really agree, or they say, I never agreed - and they want to do it a different way, then everything is in an uproar again.

I think Jeff is trying to be agreeable, noncontentious, willing to do anything to try to get people to agree on something. I think that is why he has teamed up with Adrian. I think he is willing to do almost anything if it's possible that we will actually agree.

The reason I support going with the 91% vote we had is because we need to have a stopping point, and that 91% is the most agreement we've had. I doubt it will be much better (I could be wrong; I hope I'm wrong).

We also seem to be woefully lacking in trust in God. He can fix it if we ask Him to. In regards to that, though, there are those who don't want to involve Denver at all, not even to ask him to take a finished product to the Lord, thinking that will violate the Lord's commandment to Denver to not participate. They want to have a random generator choose who should take the finished product to the Lord. I can see all hell breaking loose with that if the person is a nobody like Jeff was.

Before I got your email, I was pouring out my soul to God, begging him to step in and do something for the sake of those of us who are willing to be united. No document will be perfect. The test we failed 3 times, in my opinion, is not "not getting the document right," but in rising up to fight and contend in our pride or fear wanting "my" idea put forth.

I get being afraid of potential abuse of a document. I get thinking that our ideas for something "better" will work. I get being afraid to ask Denver to present our finished (91%) document to the Lord for approval, rejection, or correction. But I think, at some point, our time will run out because this cycle we've been going through for 6 months can realistically continue for decades or even centuries, but I don't think God is giving us decades, let alone a century or two. Nauvoo got 3 1/2 years if I'm remembering correctly, to build a temple. I doubt he is giving us that long for the baby step of agreeing on a little document that he can then approve of or correct.