THE GIRDLE OF TRUTH

By Jemima Rayan

This is the first equipment in the whole armor of God. When a Roman soldier was required to do something active, such as use his weapons, he would need to take care of that loose garment. If he failed to do it, its flaps and folds would hinder his movements and prevent him from using the rest of his equipments effectively.

Truth literally means honesty, sincerity and openness. We live in a culture and society where people say things without really meaning them from the bottom of their hearts. Why do they say something and do something else? …simply because, they want to sound good. In other words, instead of God pleasers we often become men pleasers.

Often times, we say we will pray for you, brother and then totally forget about that brother. That is a bunch of insincere words and they are like the loose, hanging garment. It gets in our way and prevents us from doing the kind of thing that God ask us to do. Not only that, it becomes a stumbling block for the other items of equipment.

We must put away sham, hypocrisy, saying and doing things we do not mean. Often truth is painful. But it is time to confront the need for real truth, openness and frankness. You need to put on the girdle and tie it around so that the religious insincerities and shams no longer hang around you and become a stumbling block in the way of things God would want to have you do.

“Loins” is often used in the context of reproduction. When we gird our loins, we clothe ourselves in a way that our loins are covered in the spiritual sense. Every Christian married or unmarried must have spiritual children. It happens by “Words”. Words are the seeds to produce spiritual children.

Proverbs 13:14 says, “The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life.”

Proverbs 18:21, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit”. We need to give life with our words.

Jesus spoke about girding your loins with truth:

The Lord said in Matthew 12:33-37:

"Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. "You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. "The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil. "But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. "For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned."

What was Jesus talking about? He said in effect, if our words are truth and life, then we must wrap ourselves in the truth. We must love truth as we love our life. Truth should become our treasure.

We are living in the last days. The deceiver is let loose. People are talked into things that are not truth anymore. If we, as God’s elect want to stand by the truth, we need to love the truth. That is why 2 Thessalonians 2:10 says, “…the love of the truth”. Only the people who love the truth will not be deceived in the last days. This is the way we wrap our selves with truth to prove that we love the truth. Or in other words, we love the truth so much that we wrap ourselves in it continually.

A practical way to girdle the truth is to meditate the word of God, the first thing in the morning. It is so important to girdle our loins with the truth.

Just like the people in uniforms get up each day early morning and get ready for that day’s battle, we as a soldier in God’s army need to put on the full armor of God. The first thing we need to do is wrap ourselves in the word of God.

In the Old testament days, the priest needed to wash themselves in the laver first thing each morning. That means the cleansing of the Word.

The children of Israel need to gather manna the first thing in the morning that represents the word of God.

In the biblical times, barrenness was such a reproach. In the spiritual sense barrenness is even worse. We literally loose out ability to reproduce if we do not have enough seed (the word of God) in us. We must protect our ability to reproduce and we can do it only with the “Word of God”. Amen.

May the Lord help us to girdle our loins in Jesus’ name.

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