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Whose side are you on?

As Joshua and the Israelites approached Jericho, they encountered a warrior with his sword drawn.

“Are you for us or for our enemies?” Joshua asked him.

“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.”

When you are living in conflict, ‘whose side are you on?’ can feel like one of the few questions worth asking. Everything becomes defined by lines and which side of them you are on. Everything is divisive. Everything is about labelling and judging. In conflict, people become wired to strike first and if they are not striking they are on the defensive.

The response from the commander of the army of the Lord changed everything. Joshua fell to the ground and worshipped before asking what his orders were.

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.

In the presence of God, ‘whose side are you on?’ became an irrelevant question! As he stood on holy ground, Jericho and the promised land was no longer what consumed Joshua’s thoughts. As he worshipped the living God, everything else melted away as he became lost in wonder, love and praise.

In the recent and ongoing discussion about the MR rules and the question about whether they should be changed or not, the language of sides has been dominant. I was delighted to read the recent email from our General Secretary, Lynn Green updating us on the consultation and it’s timescales. For me this is a helpful point where the focus can shift from whose side are you on to what is Jesus saying to his church! I will be praying for all of the churches who will engage with the consultation and surrounding conversations that this will involve because these discussions will not be easy whichever conclusion we reach.

My dominant prayer is that we won’t enter into these conversations from an entrenched position of having a predetermined side, but rather that we would  be willing to humble ourselves before God and his word. I pray that we would all want to dig down afresh into God’s word and mine for the truth of what it is saying. I hope that we would all want to move beyond scratching the surface and living in the depths and profoundness of what God is saying through his word.

I need to be clear. I am not for or against the changing of the ministerial recognition rules. What I am for is coming to God and asking him to transform us through his word and spirit! If we are meeting to discern the mind of Christ with our sisters and brothers on this issue, but we are starting from a heavily fortified, entrenched position then that we need to realise that this is not helpful. Rather than choosing sides, I hope that we can collectively dig into the truth of what God is saying in his word. We do this most effectively when we meet to listen to God and to one another.

If you are asking if God is on your side, I believe that you are asking the wrong question! Joshua seems remarkably relaxed about the answer ‘neither’ to his question about whether the warrior was on his side or the Canaanites. I expect that this is because he had already discovered that the most important thing was for his to be on God’s side!

Instead of asking God to be on our side, perhaps it’s time for us to work harder at making sure that we are on His!

You can read more about Joshua and his encounter with the commander of the Lord’s army in Joshua 5.13-15.

This latest Thought for the Week has been written by Graeme Ross, who is one of the Regional Team.