Cross & Gavel: Prayer, Peacemaking (Not Peacekeeping), & the Christian Lawyer, by Michael C. Kelley (Partner, Lawson Huck Gonzalez (Orlando)):

Every lawyer knows the feeling of stepping into someone else’s chaos.

A deal has fractured. A partnership is collapsing. A board is divided. A family business is bleeding mistrust. A contractor, owner, architect, regulator, lender, or public agency has reached the point where ordinary conversation has broken down and formal process has begun. By the time many matters arrive at a lawyer’s desk, chaos is already in the room. So is pride, fear, anger, anxiety, resentment. So is self-protection. Often, so is exhaustion.

Lawyers are hired to enter that space and do something useful with it.

That is why Joshua 5 may be one of the most important texts for Christian lawyers to consider. Joshua looks up and sees a man with a drawn sword and asks the natural question: “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” It is, in many ways, the lawyer’s question. We want to know where God stands in relation to our client, our cause, our risk exposure, our desired outcome. “Yahweh, are You with us? Will You help us win? Will You vindicate our side?”

But the answer Joshua receives refuses that whole frame. The Lord does not come as a partisan. He does not present Himself as an ally for Joshua’s cause. He comes as Commander. And Joshua’s response is not calculated strategy but spontaneous worship: he falls on his face and removes his shoes, because the place where he is standing is holy ground.

That stark, seemingly brutal reality—“God may not be on my side” —should reorder the imagination of every Christian lawyer.

Because if this moment for Joshua teaches us anything, it is that the places of the most hostile battles can be holy ground. The mediation room can be holy ground. The conference room where accusations are exchanged can be holy ground. The jobsite trailer, emergency injunction hearing, deposition, board meeting, settlement call, late-night conversation with a frightened client—all of it can become holy ground. Not because conflict is good. Not because every claim is righteous. But because God is not absent from human brokenness and conflict. He is Lord there too.

That changes everything. …

The profession catechizes us into habits of soul that reflect love of the world more than love of the Father. We begin by wanting to serve, and somewhere along the line we start to crave control, to fall for that old lie, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” We begin by wanting justice, and somewhere along the line we start wanting victory more than to see things put right again. We begin by wanting to produce peace, and somewhere along the line we settle (apathetically) for managed process. We begin by wanting to protect clients, and somewhere along the line we begin accepting—if not downright encouraging—every fear, grievance, and demand that comes through the door.

A lawyer can become very skilled at navigating and profiting from conflict while becoming spiritually deformed by it. We move from idealistic optimism to experienced pragmatism to hopeless cynicism.

And in our present age, that danger is heightened by speed. We move faster than we can pray. We answer before we discern. We are tempted to optimize instead of abide. We delegate labor to systems and tools and then slowly begin outsourcing judgment and authority as well. In that kind of world, prayer becomes less practical, patience becomes less plausible, and the slow work of wrestling for moral clarity begins to feel inefficient and wasteful. Yet Christian vocation has never been sustained by efficiency and maximization alone. It is sustained by presence, obedience, and truthful dependence before God.

So yes, the system is broken. But the Christian lawyer must also ask a harder question: What is this work doing to me? …

Joshua 5 answers that question by repositioning us before it instructs.

Before I am counselor, advocate, negotiator, or litigator, I am a mortal before the living God. Before I ask God to bless my strategy, I must ask whether I have mistaken my strategy for God’s plans and purposes. Before I seek divine help in defeating an adversary, I must remember that I too am under authority. Before I speak for a client, I must learn again how to listen in reverence, wait in quiet patience, and live only by every word that proceeds from God’s mouth. Like Joshua, lawyers are warriors, prepared for battle and capable of extreme violence. As Christian lawyers, we must be submitted to the authority and instruction of the Master—true examples of meekness, not weakness.

That is what it means to take off our shoes and fall to our knees in humble adoration and without guile.

For Christian lawyers, the first task in conflict is not triumph but consecration. Not, “How quickly can I gain leverage?” but “Abba, what do You want to accomplish? Search my heart and see if there be any wickedness in me.” Not, “How do I secure the ruling?” but “Father, what in me must be removed before I enter this room in Your name? Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, in this moment as it is in heaven.” Certainty, self-satisfaction and what seems right in our own eyes must fall away. Our God is holy. He is love, yes, but He is also a consuming fire. Ego must come off. Contempt must come off. Vanity must come off. Fear must come off. The hunger to be impressive must come off. The desire to weaponize truth rather than serve it must all come off.

This is where the old biblical command becomes newly concrete: do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

Justice without humility becomes severity. Mercy without truth becomes sentimentality. Humility without courage becomes passivity. But when all three are held together in meekness under the lordship of Christ, a different kind of legal presence becomes possible—clear-eyed, restrained, brave, honest, and useful in the Master’s hands.

A Christian lawyer is not called to be passive. But neither is he called to be spiritually casual. He is called to enter conflict reverently, but because he stands where lives, relationships, reputations, institutions, and futures will be deeply affected. And he enters conscious of God’s presence and God’s ultimate authority.

That is holy ground. …

The Christian lawyer is not called to float above conflict nor to sanctify every adversarial instinct as zeal. He is called to enter the middle of human chaos and remember that he is standing on holy ground.

And perhaps that is where renewal begins: not first in a better tactic, though tactics matter; not first in a better argument, though arguments matter; but in a recovered posture before God.

Take off your shoes.
Get on your knees—invite God into the battle.
Seek His face—wait on Him.
Listen for His voice.

Take a step in faith—speak holy truth to chaos.
Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly and in the restrained strength of meekness.
This is what it means to be a Christian lawyer.
This is what it means to be peacemaker.

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