God’s Side

“When the truth is preached, the Spirit of God brings each person face to face with God Himself.”— Oswald Chambers

The difficult task for believers is not that of preaching truth. Most believers are quite capable of vocalizing unsolicited truth. The difficult task for believers is to preach the truth without acrimony or rancor. The difficult task is to speak truth in a way that is completely severed from our personal opinions. This severing must be so, because if we preach a truth that just so happens to line up with our personal opinion, we bring people face to face with ourselves rather than God.

This does not mean that our personal opinions won’t or mustn’t align with God’s truth. In fact, as we go on with the Lord, there should be an ever-increasing giving-over-of-self to the mind and heart of the Lord. But we must learn how to preach God’s truth in a way that is never validated by our own opinion. To do so is to subtly portray ourselves as right, and others as wrong. We must remember the words of Abraham Lincoln: “..my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.”

Right before Joshua invaded Jericho, the angelic commander of the Lord’s army appeared. When Joshua saw him, he asked, “Are you for us or our enemies?” And the angel answered, “Neither.” He then told Joshua to take off his shoes “for the place where you are standing is holy.” He drew Joshua’s mind away from the “us vs. them” perspective and put it on God’s perspective— God is on God’s side and He alone is holy. The angel of the Lord brought Joshua face to face with God’s holiness and reminded Joshua where he stood in light of that. 

O Lord, we confess our need to be humbled by your Spirit and taught Your ways. May acrimony and rancor be cast away from us, and may we be filled with that which is “peace-loving, gentle, impartial, and sincere.”

(James 3:17) But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.

(Joshua 5:13-15) Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” And he replied, “Neither, I have now come as Commander of the LORD’s army.” Then Joshua fell facedown in reverence and asked Him, “What does my Lord have to say to His servant?” The commander of the LORD’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.

(Matt 5:3-11) Blessed are the poor in spirit… Blessed are those who mourn… Blessed are the gentle… Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… Blessed are the merciful… Blessed are the pure in heart… Blessed are the peacemakers… Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness… Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.