The Belt of Truth

We are more vulnerable to Satan and his forces deception than to any of their other schemes, because when they tempt us or accuse us, we can recognize it, but when they deceive us, we do not always know it, that is their strategy, to keep us in the dark.

We cannot expose their deception by human reasoning; we can only do it by the light of the truth, it is the only valid piece of the armor against the darkness of deception. It is critical that when we put on the armor of God, we start with the belt of truth, because the only thing big about Satan and his forces are their mouth, they are habitual liars.

When we put on the armor of God we are really putting on Christ, and when we put on Christ, we take ourselves out of the realm of the flesh, where we are vulnerable to attack, it is not wise for us to live on Satan and his forces level. Since their primary weapon is the lie, our belt of truth is continually being attacked. 

If they can disable us in the area of truth, we become an easy target for their other attacks. We stand firm in the truth by relating everything we do to the truth of God’s word, and when we learn to live in the truth on a daily basis, we will grow to love the truth because we will have nothing to hide. 

If Satan and his forces can deceive us into believing a lie, they can control our life in that area. God’s protection is that our role is not passive, God requires us to be active participants in the defense that he has provided for us. 

The belt of truth challenges us to be mentally active, not passive, because unlike our day-to-day emotions, which are the product of our day-to-day thought life, the emotional baggage from the past is always there. Years of exposure and experience in life have etched emotional grooves inside us, which produce a decided reaction when a certain topic is introduced. 

We may have grown up with a physically, emotionally or sexually abusive parent. We may have suffered through a painful relationship in the past: a broken friendship, the untimely death of a loved one, a divorce. When a present event activates one of those emotional grooves, we believe what we feel instead of believing what is true. 

Perceiving those events from the perspective of our new identity, which God sealed in Christ, is what starts the process of healing those damaged emotions, because we have the privilege of evaluating our past experience in the light of who we are now, as opposed to who we were then. 

We must learn how to resolve previous conflicts or the emotional baggage will accumulate as we continue to withdraw from life, the past will control our life as our options for handing it continue to decrease. Those who have had major traumas and have learned to resolve them by wearing the belt of truth know how devastating the past can be to present reality. 

When we do not understand the doctrinal truths Paul taught pertaining to our sealed position in Christ, we have no ground for success in the practical arena. When we get our eyes off our new identity, and try to produce in our daily experience the acceptance God has already extended to us, we will struggle, because Satan and his forces will try to convince us that we are an unworthy, unacceptable, sin-sick person who will never amount to anything in God’s eyes. 

We are saints whom God has declared righteous, believing their lie will lock us into a defeated, fruitless life, but believing God’s truth about who we are will set us free. It is imperative to our growth and maturity that we believe God’s truth about who we are. 

Our old pattern for thinking and responding to our sin-trained flesh must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, it is our responsibility to change our behavior by putting to death the deeds of the body. The battleground we face is in our mind, and Satan and his forces are at the heart of all sin, and deceive people into believing a lie. 

The most dangerous and harmful detriments to our growth is passivity, putting our mind in neutral and coasting, sitting back and waiting for God to do everything is not God’s way to maturity.