Armour of God - Girding With the Truth, Take 3

Well, since nobody guessed the title reference in the last post, all bloggy points will be rolled over to next time.


Part One, Part 2A, Part 2B of this series on the armour of God.



So. They say practice makes perfect. And I did say that we needed to master the usage of each piece of spiritual armour. And that means the Lord wants to us to look at the belt of truth again. Or maybe He just wants me to look at it again and that means bringing all of you along with me. I do so appreciate your patience.

The last couple of times we saw that girding your waist with truth means that 1. Jesus is the Truth, and we cannot move about successfully in spiritual battles without knowing Him through salvation; and 2. We need to be spiritually sharp and alert, or in other words, always be walking in the Spirit, so that we don’t stumble when we are spiritually attacked.

This time I want to look at another way that we can prepare ourselves for spiritual battle, and quite possibly avoid stumbling ourselves, making us easy prey for the enemy.

These are some other definitions of the word truth: the state or character of being true; honesty; integrity; truthfulness; agreement with a standard; accuracy, fidelity or constancy.

Since our standard is our Lord Jesus Christ, and He is Truth, and since we need to be imitators of Him (Ephesians 5:1), our lives, within and without, need to be characterized as lives lived in all truth and integrity and sincerity.

It is when we begin to lie, or be dishonest, or deceive, give a false impression or in any way be a hypocrite to our faith and all we believe in Jesus Christ, that we will begin wandering into the territory of the enemy, who is the father of all lies, and be easy prey for his attacks.

When we begin to live a falsehood, deceiving others and even ourselves, we cannot be walking in the Spirit, and we will not survive attacks in our own strength.

“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” 1 John 1:5-7

In 1 Corinthians 1:11, Paul wrote, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”

Because Paul was an imitator of Christ, and lived his life in all sincerity, he was able to confidently tell others that they could safely be imitators of his life in Christ.

Can we do that? Do we walk in such a way as to imitate our Lord and His truthfulness in all things that we would be happy to have someone else imitate us, or even suggest to someone that they do?

Not that we could ever be perfect. Paul certainly knew that he wasn’t. But he was a true servant of the Lord, having nothing to hide. He admitted his weaknesses and he completely depended on the Lord’s strength for everything he was called to do and endure.

I pray that as we walk every step of our lives in the Spirit, that all we do in Him, whether in thought or speech or deeds, is wrapped in the truthfulness of God, so that we maintain lives that are humbly free of all pretense.