Godward, Not Sideward

“My name is Christian, but my name is more than a name—it is a direction of the heart.”
John Bunyan

“Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.”
C. S. Lewis

“The destined end of man is not happiness, nor health, but holiness.”
Oswald Chambers

“Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.”
John Calvin

“The enjoyment of [God] is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied.”
Jonathan Edwards

“If Christ be anything, He must be everything. O my soul, make Him thy only object!”
Charles Spurgeon

It is easier than we care to admit to begin looking at one another rather than looking to God. The human eye is quick to catch movement, quick to track the expressions and actions of others, quick to measure by visible markers. The problem is that the Kingdom of God does not work by visible markers. Our eyes are not the standard. Our opinions are not the plumb line. The gaze that matters is the one set upon the throne, steady and unmoved by shifting human currents. It takes almost no effort to look sideward. That is the natural drift of flesh, to glance at what others are doing, to fixate on what others are saying, to compare and contrast, to measure gain and loss by human arrangement. Sideward glances feed pride and insecurity alike, depending on what we think we see. In the economy of heaven, neither pride nor insecurity is welcome currency. Godward focus, however, is deliberate. It is an act of will, a chosen fixation, a posture that does not happen by accident. Left alone, the human soul tilts toward the horizontal. We compare, we copy, we compete. It is the same impulse that drove Cain to rage when Abel’s offering was accepted; he measured himself by his brother instead of humbling himself before his God (Genesis 4:5–7). The result was not merely disappointment but sin crouching at the door. And Cain is far from the only one. King Saul, hearing the women sing “Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7, ESV), felt the sharp edge of comparison and let it shape his heart into suspicion and hatred. Israel, looking at the nations around them, decided they too should have a king “like all the nations” (1 Samuel 8:5, ESV). In all cases, sideward vision displaced trust in God’s sufficiency. The sideward gaze does not merely distract; it dethrones.

The Pull of the Sideward Gaze
We rarely call it what it is. We say we are being “realistic” or “informed.” We say we are “just paying attention.” In truth, we are feeding the hunger to know where we stand against others, not before God, but in the human pecking order. Peter did it when, after hearing the hard prophecy of his own death, immediately turned and asked about John: “Lord, what about this man?” (John 21:21, ESV). Jesus’ answer could not be clearer: “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” (John 21:22, ESV). In other words, eyes front. Do not compare callings. Do not rank outcomes. Your concern is obedience, not competition. The pull of the sideward gaze is old as the garden. Eve saw the fruit, but she also listened to the serpent’s insinuation that God was holding something back. The subtle suggestion was not only about the fruit itself but about what another might possess that she did not. That small sideward glance, at the tree, at the possibility of “more,” at the imagined withholding, dethroned God in her mind. Sideward always dethrones. Lot’s wife is another sobering example. The angel’s command was clear: “Do not look back” (Genesis 19:17, ESV). Yet in the moment of rescue, her eyes turned sideward, toward what was being lost, and she became a pillar of salt. Her heart revealed its true orientation, she was not fully Godward.

Vertical Keeps the Alignment
A vertical gaze is not merely pious sentiment; it is a safeguard against distortion. The moment our primary reference point is anyone other than God, our measurement system becomes corrupted. Horizontal lines only appear straight when aligned to the vertical, in carpentry and in the soul. Consider David in the wilderness, hunted by Saul. Every sideward glance could have told him that Saul’s men were stronger, that the throne was slipping from reach, that the anointing oil meant nothing in the real world. But David did not read the terrain horizontally. His psalms reveal a man measuring everything against the uprightness of God’s character: “For You have tested my heart... My steps have held fast to Your paths; my feet have not slipped” (Psalm 17:3, 5, ESV). That is vertical alignment; holding the plumb line of God’s truth against the crooked appearance of present reality. Elijah’s encounter on Mount Carmel is another example. Faced with the false prophets of Baal and a watching crowd, the temptation could have been to measure success by the reaction of the people. But Elijah’s focus was fixed upward: “Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that this people may know that You, O LORD, are God” (1 Kings 18:37, ESV). The fire fell, not because the crowd would be impressed, but because the prophet’s gaze was vertical. It is no accident that Scripture repeatedly commands the upward set of the heart. “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2, ESV). “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD” (Psalm 121:1–2, ESV). This is not poetic filler; it is divine instruction. A downward or sideward gaze cannot anchor the soul.

Sideward is the Language of the Crowd
Crowds almost always operate horizontally. The mob that shouted “Hosanna!” one day and “Crucify Him!” days later did so because they looked to each other for cues. Horizontal measurement makes it possible to be swayed by approval and intimidated by disapproval. The crowd’s standard is always shifting because it is self-referential, it has no fixed point beyond itself. Even among believers, there is a subtle temptation to orient by consensus. But spiritual health is not maintained by comparing ourselves among ourselves. Paul makes it blunt: “When they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding” (2 Corinthians 10:12, ESV). That is not merely unwise, it is a declaration of ignorance. The voice of heaven never says, “You are doing well because you are ahead of them,” or “You are behind because you have less than them.” The voice of heaven says, “Are you in Me? Are you walking with Me? Are you obeying My Word?” “Are you abiding in Me?” God’s metric is vertical, not lateral. Israel’s wilderness journey offers a warning here. When the people’s gaze shifted from the God who parted the Red Sea to the nations ahead of them in Canaan, fear overtook faith. The spies who brought back a sideward report, measuring Israel against giants instead of against God’s promises, turned the hearts of the people away (Numbers 13:31– 33).

Vertical Worship, Vertical Obedience
Worship is not about atmosphere or performance; it is about direction. The truest worship cannot be horizontal in its orientation. It does not begin by looking around but by looking up. When Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up (Isaiah 6:1), he was not comparing robes and thrones with the kings of earth, he was undone before holiness. The same is true for obedience. If we obey because we want to be seen by others, we are still operating sideward. Jesus warned about the Pharisees who prayed, fasted, and gave alms to be noticed (Matthew 6:1–5). The issue was not the act but the direction of the gaze. They were performing for horizontal approval rather than vertical recognition. The Father who sees in secret remains the audience that matters. Daniel’s prayer life under threat of the lions’ den was vertical obedience in action. The law of the Medes and Persians said, “No prayer but to the king for thirty days.” But Daniel opened his window toward Jerusalem and prayed as before because his allegiance was not to decrees or consequences, but to the God who hears (Daniel 6).

Keeping It Vertical in Opposition
It is when pressure mounts that our loyalty is most tested. Daniel’s refusal to stop praying, even with the lions’ den looming, was devotion anchored Godward. His trust rested in the God who hears, not in royal favor or self-preservation. Sideward glances would have calculated political cost and personal safety, but upward faith measures only the worthiness of the One prayed to. Similarly, Stephen’s final moments were marked not by sideward panic but upward vision: “He, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55, ESV). This was not detachment from reality but truest sight, vertical clarity that made sideward rage irrelevant. Paul’s chains in Rome provide another picture. He did not measure his circumstances by the freedoms of other apostles or the absence of suffering in others. Instead, he rejoiced that Christ was proclaimed (Philippians 1:18). Vertical joy cannot be stolen by horizontal inequities.

Sideward is Subtle
Few believers consciously decide to abandon a Godward focus. Sideward happens gradually. We start by noticing who is getting attention. We linger over who seems more “successful.” We begin to track opportunities, platforms, and influence. Slowly, the plumb line shifts from faithfulness to fruitfulness as measured by other humans. The tragedy is that this shift can happen while outwardly appearing faithful. Martha’s sideward glance at Mary was not rooted in laziness but in a desire to be validated in her serving: “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?” (Luke 10:40, ESV). She measured Mary’s worth, and her own, by horizontal contribution. Jesus’ gentle correction pulled her gaze vertical again: “Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42, ESV). The Corinthian church likewise measured spiritual value by the flashiest gifts, forgetting that the Giver was the measure, not the gift itself (1 Corinthians 12:4–6). Paul’s reminder reoriented them vertically: “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit... the same Lord... the same God who empowers them all” (ESV).

Vertical Requires Death to Self
Keeping it vertical demands that we die to the craving for human recognition. That death is not glamorous. It is the steady, hidden relinquishment of the need to be seen, understood, or celebrated. It is the quiet labor that is satisfied in God’s sight alone. It is refusing to enter the arena of comparison, even when provoked. Paul’s ministry was slandered, undermined, and compared unfavorably to others. His defense was not self-promotion but vertical orientation: “It is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court... It is the Lord who judges me” (1 Corinthians 4:3–4, ESV). To the sideward glance, such indifference might look like weakness. To the vertical gaze, it is freedom. Jesus modeled this in perfection. He did not entrust Himself to the crowd’s opinion, “because He knew all people... and needed no one to bear witness about man” (John 2:24–25, ESV). His mission and His joy were rooted entirely in the Father’s will.

The Cross is the Vertical Interruption
Nothing reorients the soul like the cross. At Calvary, all human ranking dissolves. The ground is level because the gaze is upward. You do not compare your wounds to the wounds of another; you are arrested by the wounds of Christ. You do not measure your worth by your neighbor’s, you are undone by the worth of the One who died for you. The cross silences the chatter of the horizontal. It confronts the pride that says, “I am better,” and the despair that says, “I am worse.” It replaces both with the truth that says, “I am His.” That is the core of vertical living, belonging that is defined by the gaze of God, not the murmur of man. The thief who turned to Jesus in his dying moments had no time to outshine the other criminal, no ability to prove himself among men. His only hope was vertical: “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your Kingdom” (Luke 23:42, ESV). That look Godward was enough to secure eternal life.

Vertical in the Everyday
Keeping it vertical is not limited to crisis or calling; it must be lived in the mundane. It is in the quiet choices, whose approval we seek, whose opinions we weigh most heavily, whose voice defines our direction. It is in the daily discipline of lifting our eyes before lifting our hands to any task. When Paul told the Colossians, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23, ESV), he was not idealizing piety, he was prescribing a way of life. The workplace, the kitchen, the hidden corners of service, all are training grounds for vertical focus. Israel’s gathering of manna in the wilderness was one such training. They were to collect what God provided, no more and no less. Hoarding was a sideward distrust; obedience was a vertical act of daily dependence (Exodus 16:20).

Dear reader, the call to keep it vertical is not a call to ignorance of others, but to a refusal to be defined by them. We may serve them, love them, and even learn from them, but we do not take our cues from them. We take them from the throne. Heaven’s direction has always been Godward. The seraphim are not circling each other to see who is more radiant; they cry, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts” (Isaiah 6:3). The twenty-four elders are not debating crown size; they cast them before the throne (Revelation 4:10). All true worship, all true obedience, all true joy is vertical. So fix your eyes. Refuse the subtle sideways slide. Let every act, every word, every thought take its measure from above. Keep the line straight by anchoring it to the unshifting plumb of God Himself. We must be a people whose faces are set, whose knees bend only in His direction, whose eyes are fixed where Christ is seated (Colossians 3:1–3). Because the moment you look sideward, you will drift, but the moment you look Godward, you will see clearly again.