"Be on your guard against men; they will hand you over to the local councils and flog you in their synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you."
This is Jesus speaking to His disciples as He sends them out to do ministry, but Jesus is clearly also speaking to others who would be sent out later (us). This is part of the same admonition to be as gentle/innocent as doves and as shrewd as snakes. Jesus advises those doing ministry to "Be on your guard against men." There is a difficult line here we must learn to straddle as we do ministry. We need to cooperate with other people. We need to love other people. We cannot do effective ministry from a position of wounded distrust -yet, at the same time we must always be aware that people are sometimes going to let us down. Occasionally people are going to hurt us. Sometimes people betray us. Sometimes we find ourselves in difficult situations because of bad choices "friends" have made.
It is in these difficult times when my natural instinct is to be angry and bitter that I most need to rely on the Holy Spirit to empower me, give me comfort and courage, and give me the words that express the heart of God. When I begin to understand that because of my fears and my hurts I cannot trust my own thinking and I cannot trust my own words, I then realize God is willing and wanting to speak through me if I will submit my heart, mind and mouth to Him.
On the other hand, when I am frightened and wounded, if I do not submit myself to Him, I am very likely to lash out and feel justified in doing so. Even though in a natural sense I may be justified in defending myself with righteous indignation, when I lash out in my own thinking using my hurt feelings as my guide, I will always end up doing harm to the Kingdom instead of good for the Kingdom.
Jesus gives us this warning ahead of time because of another reality. If we do not cultivate a relationship with God during the good and easy times -if we do not learn to hear from God and obey His still small voice when things are going well, we will never hear Him during the crisis. We need to tune our hearts to hear from God and commit ourselves to obeying today because tomorrow our lives may depend upon it.
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