It’s audio devo day!
What if negative comments bounced off of you and fell to the ground, void of power? Join me here this week and we’ll talk about God’s secret for making this possible! 👇👇👇
(Know someone else that needs to hear this today? You can either share today’s blog link with them, or look up my Feeding on Jesus podcast for sharing and subscribing. You’ll find it at these links on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and most other podcast platforms, with episodes identical to these audio devos!)
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“Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth…” (Eph. 6:14, NLT).
A few months ago, I had a dream that meant so much to me. In the first part of the dream, I was embarrassed about something I felt I had done wrong. However, in the second part of the dream, I heard God’s voice speaking to me so gently and tenderly. He was reassuring me that it was okay. And then He began to show me photographs of myself that He had taken. Each of these pictures portrayed me the way He sees me. Through each of them, He was showing me something sacred and precious that He treasures in me. My spirit thrilled with joy as I wrote the dream down and processed it with Him.
The next day, an angry person left a comment on my new blog post. In it, they said some particularly hateful things about me. Now, usually I would not bother to even mention that here in this context. But I need to do so to illustrate a vitally important truth for you. You see, in general I have a very sensitive nature. Words of affirmation are one of my main love languages. Conversely, words of criticism tend to stick their barbs into me and trouble my thoughts and emotions. So normally, a blog comment like that would have taken a lot of effort for me to shake off.
That day, though, the hateful comment quickly bounced off of me and was gone. It barely affected me at all. What was the difference there? The dream from the day before had activated my spiritual armor. God had spoken His viewpoint to my heart of hearts. He had girded me about with its unbreakable truth. He had shown me the way He thinks of me. He had filled and enveloped me with His perspective, the one true perspective that governs reality. His truth is real amor. Wrapped in it, I was unreachable by the enemy’s attempts to hurt me.
For this reason, the very first piece of armor that Daddy gives us in His Ephesians 6 list is the belt of truth. He knows what an amazing provision He is handing us when He says, “Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth…” (Eph. 6:14, NLT). When we find out what God’s truth is, we really can stand our ground victoriously every time the enemy comes against us.
Where does a belt go? Around the waist. Around the part of us where so many of our organs are. These organs are not covered in protective bones as the heart and lungs are. This symbolizes those parts of our soul that are particularly vulnerable. God wants to cover and protect our vulnerability. So He gives us His truth as an impenetrable armored layer for our inward parts. When His truth is in place, no weapon can get through to even the most sensitive, susceptible parts of us.
Remember this, too. When we put on the armor of God, we are clothing ourselves with Jesus Himself. (For more about that, make sure and check out last week’s episode, if you didn’t yet get a chance to). When we put on the belt of truth, we are putting on the Savior, the Light of the World. We are putting on the Person of Truth. Jesus beautifully expressed about Himself, “…And you shall know the Truth, and the Truth will make you free” (John 8:32, Weymouth).
I love how the Weymouth translation capitalizes “Truth” in this verse, because Truth is a Person! Truth is Jesus. He disclosed this to His disciples, explaining, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.” (John 14:6, Weymouth). So it’s Jesus Himself that protects your most vulnerable places with the resplendence of His nature. When you wear the belt of truth, you wear Him.
Notice how He brought our attention to the importance of “knowing” the Truth. “…And you shall know the Truth, and the Truth will make you free.” The Greek word He used for “know” was ginosko, which means to know something personally, intimately, and experientially. In other words, we need a personal and intimate relationship with the Truth. We need to experience Truth for ourselves.
How? The Holy Spirit makes this accessible to us. One of His names is the Spirit of Truth. Makes sense, right? The Spirit of Jesus is the Spirit of Truth. Here is what Jesus promised us about His Spirit: “But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me” (John 15:26, NKJV).
One of Holy Spirit’s main jobs is to testify of Jesus. He comes to live inside of you when you get born again. From then on, He actively, dynamically begins the life-long process of revealing Jesus to you. The more you come to know Jesus intimately, personally, and experientially, the more Truth makes you free. A direct result of this is that you learn better and better how to wear Truth every day into your battles.
Here’s something amazing to think about. 1 Corinthians 6:17 teaches us, “But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (ESV). Have you given your life to Jesus? Then you are one with His Spirit. You are one with the Spirit of Truth. It is from this place of oneness that we experience this promise from Jesus: “But when the Friend comes, the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is” (John 16:13, MSG).
How we need this! God’s truth protects us against the onslaught of lies that the enemy sends against us every day. Lies are one of His main weapons. He is the father of lies. The worst pain he inflicted on humanity came through a lie when he said to Eve, “You will not surely die.” From then on, he has been wounding us through His deceit.
He has two favorite things to lie to us about: One, God’s identity. And two, our identity in God. If he can get us to believe lies about these two fundamental building blocks of our existence, he can seriously stunt our growth in God. So he puts all the energy of his being into trying incessantly to do so.
When we come into intimate knowledge of the Truth, he can’t fool us so easily any more. How vital it is for us to progressively grow in the knowledge of God’s Truth! Most especially, we need to grow in the heart knowledge of who He is. This is the Truth that will set us free.
So every day, ask to know Him more. Every day, ask Holy Spirit to testify to you about Jesus. He will. Remember, you are one with Him. You are one with the Spirit of Truth. How it delights Him to take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is! As you cultivate your relationship with God, every day you will come into deeper, personal, experiential knowledge of Jesus the Truth.
As you do, wear Him every morning. Put on the belt of Truth. Step into what He says about you, His precious treasure. His opinion of you – wrap it around your most vulnerable places. What He shares with you about Himself, His nature, His ways – fasten that around your inmost being. The more you walk intimately with Jesus the Truth, you just watch – those lies will no longer be able to penetrate. They won’t reach the susceptible places of your soul. They will bounce off of you and fall to the ground unheeded, trampled under your feet.
So buckle up that belt, mighty warrior. Jesus has victory for every one of your battles. Today, and every day moving forward… the Truth is making you free!
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What is your favorite Scripture about who God is? What is your favorite Scripture about God’s view of you?
Feeding On Jesus 
Thank you so much for this. You are truly an answer to this morning’s prayer. I was in Proverbs 20:27, asking God to help me understand how our spirit is His search light of our inner most being. Now, I get it: it’s because we are One with His Spirit that our spirit, joined to His, searches and knows our inner most being to declare us His. Even your dream shows me how God searches and knows us. It is so beautiful how He prepared you like that.
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Wow! What a powerful insight, Anna! I had never seen that verse quite like that before. I absolutely treasure how the Holy Spirit uses each other’s words in the Body of Christ to reveal His truths to us in deeper ways!
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Good day sister, EXCELLENT piece! I am so glad you are writing specifically about the armor. May Jesus continue being the INK to YOUR PEN, in Jesus name, Amen. We would like to know more about each piece of the armor, plz. I love the experienced you shared.. how that negative feedback bounced right off, because of the activation of the armor. I visualize every piece, in detail, and placing it on. I do NOT do this every day, which demonstrates a lack of discipline and consistency, but it is extremely helpful when we do. Who goes into battle without the armor? haha. David does. But He did have armor-weapon- a rock- and a slingshot. —
Regarding the helmet- as I place it on I say- ‘may it be receptive of the good, and reflective of the bad’.
“When we come into intimate knowledge of the Truth, he can’t fool us so easily any more. How vital it is for us to progressively grow in the knowledge of God’s Truth!
So every day, ask to know Him more. Every day, ask Holy Spirit to testify to you about Jesus. He will. Remember, you are one with Him. You are one with the Spirit of Truth.”
What you write in the above paragraph- i wantd to comment on- intimate, progress, know Him more, grow in, all are key- because the more TIME WE SPEND WITH JESUS, THE TRUTH, the more familiar we are with THE WAY TRUTH FEELS, ITS TEXTURE, VIBRATION, COLOR, RESONANCE, and it fine tunes our faculties and senses.. making it easier to discern and detect TRUTH, kink of like turning us one of those hand held metal detectors. Yes we will still make mistakes, always, but jeeez, it is like using a 10x power microscope to see the bacteria, then switching to 500Xpower. Have a blessed weekend!
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“The more TIME WE SPEND WITH JESUS, THE TRUTH, the more familiar we are with THE WAY TRUTH FEELS, ITS TEXTURE, VIBRATION, COLOR, RESONANCE, and it fine tunes our faculties and senses.” I really REALLy like how you expressed that, Ben. You put into words such a critically important principle, brilliantly!
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**ugh sorry but this is very important**- when visualizing the helmet being placed on visualize your ears being covered, with the same concept, like an ear filter that allows the Truth to pass, but filters out the lies, deceit, the WORDS THAT are spoken directly at YOU with an intent to ‘plant inside you and grow doubt, curse and hurt you. When we are firing on ally cylinders in the HOLY GHOST- get ready- the light of Christ and the tools He provides us are extraordinary!
( Im sorry for the length- but I literally just sat up, and got on fire about this)
I recall my ears becoming sensitive, I think I might of prayed for like an alarm to activate within my ears or something like that. Because I was out in the field going from town to town and being attacked every single day. And it was my first time, lacking experience and with so much to learn. Basically- WORDS carry a package upon them, an ‘intent’ by each person that speaks them. A phone call is a direct line of sight. Point A to point B. The strategy of our enemies is to create a LINE. What do you mean a line? You cannot catch a fish without a fishing line. What do we do when we want a bad person or situation out of our life permanently? We cut ALL TIES WITH THEM, RIGHT? Exact same principle.
When we are rolling and on fire for God, we are doing are upmost to keep all doors closed, shut, to the enemy. All affiliations, links, ties, bonds with people, things, behaviors, etc. Why? It is not just to shut them. It’s because if we do not shut them, something we do not want can continue to walk in or through.
And it is through these open doors, these open lines , and the NEW ONES that the enemy continuously uses to attack us. We are so unsuspecting, blind, and naive. Therefore, pray for discernment and fine tuning of the ears. Then we can experience for ourselves just how many times we are spoken to by others, with them knowing or not knowing but either way the words they speak ‘carry an intent’ from the enemy, to plant grow and cause harm in our lives. Exactly like the scriptures says
16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
Now, I understand a little more of what this scripture means. Fiery arrows are ONE type of fiery arrow the enemy shoots at us, TARGETING our ears. EARS are an open hole to our insides.
With the filter on our ears, we are then able to MORE QUICKLY AND IMMEDIATELY identify when the words we are hearing ‘carry such an intent’ to kill, steal, and destroy. And we can immediately hang up the phone, say goodbye, or cut the dialogue. Anybody can be a carrier. Just like we can call carry a virus or bacteria. God bless.
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Again, I really really like how you explained this too! Thank you, Ben! I’m curious, have you posted some of these insights onto your site?
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Thank you, so much Jennifer. Going to share this with a few friends. I recently wrote a post about the wrong armour I’d been wearing! https://dawnfanshawe.wordpress.com/2021/05/01/the-wrong-armour/
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Once again, it’s so amazing how Holy Spirit confirms His word! Thank you so much for sharing that with me, my sister. Sending much love!
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(Catching up on comments after hosting a couple of missions teams from the U.S.!)
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Gratitude and honor to you!
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Don’t give attention to those evil comments . You are doing noble work. You will face that kind of arrogance on your comment section. Everybody has right to commit on your blog post as it is the internet right to say but in appropriate words are not accepted by internet laws. What my point is when we start something beautiful in our life that makes us happy something unusual may distract us but it’s our constant and continuity that makes us who we are . You are great human being with purifying thoughts. God is with you .
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Thank you so very much, Avran, for your kind and encouraging words. I receive them gratefully! Grace and peace to you today, and always 😉
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My favourite scripture about who God is, can be found in Isaiah 40:31: “But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
God gives strength and guidance, if we are with Him, if we wait near Him, as often as we are able.
I am not able to easily recall many scriptures of God’s view of me, but John 4:14 is a useful one: “…but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
God loves us, and eagerly seeks for us to receive the gifts He has for us.
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Beautiful, uplifting, edifiying Scriptures! Thank you so much for sharing them 🙂
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