10 Specific Ways to Put on the Belt of Truth (Part 2)

In my previous post I shared the first five of ten specific ways to put on the belt of truth. In Paul’s famous Ephesian passage on spiritual warfare, he instructs Christians to gird themselves with truth. More than simply a metaphor, this command is for Christians to saturate themselves with truth as a protection against the attacks of the evil one. Here are five more specific ways you can saturate yourself with truth:

6. Challenge your thoughts. When you make the choice to saturate yourself with truth you’ll begin to find a rebellion forming from he most unlikely place: your mind. For years, your mind has been the playground of the enemy, where the lies and deceptions of the enemy have been allowed to fester unchallenged. When you shine the spotlight of God’s truth into the darkest recesses of your mind, you’ll begin to discover that many of the thoughts you have about yourself, about God, or about others are untrue. This helps explain why the enemy has been able to be so victorious in your life. When Paul tells the first century Christians in Rome to be transformed because of what Christ did, he tells them that their first battlefield will be their minds (Romans 12:1-2). Quite simply, if you can change the way you think, you can change the way you live. When you challenge your thoughts, you’re choosing not to accept any and every thought that pops into your head at face value. Make sure that every thought you allow to simmer in your head lines up with the Word you read and the fighter verses you have memorized. If your thoughts don’t line up, reject them as deceptions and dive deeper into the Word.

7. Cultivate authenticity in relationships. When you become someone you’re not to try and impress other people, you’re inviting deception into your relationships, which will always spill over into the other areas of your life. Deception needs to be rooted out in every area of your life, including your relationships. If you can’t be yourself in your relationships, you need new friendships. Ask God to send relationships into your life where you can be truly authentic. Fostering an environment of truth in your friendships and other relationships is a key part of saturating yourself with truth.

8. Stop lying. When we don’t have authenticity in our relationships, we’re compelled to lie to maintain our deception, and speaking any lie is speaking the native tongue of Satan (John 8:44). Where are areas of your life where you’re currently lying? Are you lying in your family to maintain a secret addiction? Are you lying at work to get ahead? Are you lying in church to maintain the picture perfect image that other people expect to see? Even little white lies or failing to follow through with a task you promised to complete gives the enemy a foothold in your life that he does not deserve. If you want to saturate yourself with truth, stop lying.

9. Confess something. Saturating yourself with truth isn’t just avoiding lies, it’s intentionally cultivating an atmosphere where truth is celebrated and championed. There may be a lie or deception that you buried deep within, something you haven’t spoken of in years, something that needs to be confessed. It may be something that happened to you that you’re ashamed of, or something you did that you’re afraid may see the light of day. Confession is a critical part of spiritual warfare because it’s all about allowing light into the dark recesses of your life. When you live in the light, you live in the power of God’s Spirit. When you allow dark areas to fester in your life, nothing good ever grows in the dark. Target some of those authentic relationships you’ve cultivated and take them to the next level. You will be overwhelmed at the weight that’s lifted and the freedom you feel when you confess your sins to one another (James 5:16).

10. Speak the truth in love to those around you. In Ephesians 4:15 Paul gives the first century church a timeless principle about the power of words. The truth, spoken in love, has an incredibly powerful ability to shape and heal the lives of those around you. That is how you can take spiritual warfare on the offensive and begin to take back ground from the enemy. Become a Christian that intentionally speaks the truth (in love) into the lives of those around you. Jesus is wanting you to be the fulfillment of John 8:31-32 when he says that the truth can set you free. Wage war on behalf of those you love. Speak the truth in love and watch the lives of those around you change for the better.

Here’s a simple way that you can know that you’re actively saturating yourself with truth: you can immediately detect falsehoods when they enter your mind, and those falsehoods bother you. You’re constantly being bombarded with deceptions from the enemy. As you saturate yourself with truth, those falsehoods will begin to stand out like intruders entering your home. And when falsehoods enter your mind, you will quickly counter them with the truth you have saturated yourself in.