Who's side are you on?

While reading an online post, previously cited in an earlier blog post, I came across this quote: "Abraham Lincoln once said that he was confident that God was on the side of the right. He added, however, that 'it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation may be on the Lord's side.'" It really got me thinking.
How many times do we pray that God is on our side? How many times do we sing "God bless America" without thought as to whether or not God should bless America?
But I'm not going to go into that issue in this blog post, i'll probably comment on politics at some point, but not now. What I want us to think about is individually; individually as a person, individually as a family, individually as a Church, individually as a Denomination, individually as The Church.
Are we confident that God is on the side of the right? I believe He is, was, and always will be on the side of the right because He IS.
And so, if we are confident that God is on the side of the right, can we really ask God to be "on our side?" I mean, shouldn't we be asking God to be on His side?
Think about this for a minute, if we are all out on the playground at recess and decide to play kick ball. God is one of the team captains, and Joe Schmo is the other captain. Now we know that every time that God has played against Joe, God has won, like a million times, and God has won every time. Now, instead of asking to be on HIS team, we decide to ask God to be on OUR team. Now, we know that God has beaten Joe every game they have ever played, but we want to go on our own and form our own team and have our own strategy. So we ask God to leave His team and come over and join our team. (I'm aware that this analogy has several flaws about it, but it was the best way I could think to illustrate this principle.)
Now here's the flip side of this equation, every game Joe has played against any other opponent except for God he has won, true he has "lost" a few innings, but he has won every game. But we decide that we know better than any team that has ever played before, and we can go it out and beat Joe, but we just need God to play for us, to field and go up to "bat" for us, and we can win, as long as it's OUR team, and OUR strategy.
Isn't that a lot how it happens in life? We get this vision for how we might be able to reach people for Christ, we have a cool new thing that will bring people into the church, we have a new idea to help people grow. So we put all of this together, and then we go and we pray that God will be with us as we embark in this new ministry for Him.
But shouldn't we START with asking to be with God? Shouldn't we ask to hear from God what He wants us to do, and THEN go and do it? I know that we do do this sometimes, we seek for God's guidance a lot when we don't know what to do; but shouldn't we do it every time? Shouldn't we seek for God to guide us and guard us when we feel like we know what to do? Shouldn't we ask God to make sure that we are on His side and not ask God to be on Our side?
Well, just a thought. And I sincerely pray that I am always on God's side, and that you are always on his side as well.
God Bless.