The Holy Spirit, during my communion time with Him, brought back to me many truths and reminders about our position in Him and spoke of the responsibility we have to steward what He reveals to us. One of the key questions He raised was concerning how we are prioritising our time: We need to watch what we are spending our time doing, and what things we need to stop because they are not profitable for our lives, wellbeing, or our Kingdom assignment? We have been called to use the time the Lord gives us each day wisely and profitably.

Following the Holy Spirit’s daily leading does not mean we should become comfortable with what has already happened through our lives. We must not rest on our laurels because the Lord has already done mighty things for us but instead, we are to press in for more of what the Lord has prepared for us, by maintaining our already gained spiritual momentum and continuing to advance. The time entrusted to us each day carries a Kingdom responsibility which is to establish and multiply the Kingdom of Jesus through our lives and to produce fruit that remains. Which glorifies the Father.

The Holy Spirit brought to my remembrance Jesus’ words in Luke 12:35-38 which read these words: “Let your waist be girded and your lamps burning; and you yourselves be like men who wait for their master…” Jesus describes the servants who remain ready and watchful for their master’s return as being blessed because when the Lord comes and knocks, they are prepared to open the door for Him immediately. Whether He comes in the second watch or the third, the faithful servants are still watching.

This word reveals an important principle for us that although Jesus had taught His disciples about what the Lord had provided and made available to them, He also expected them to respond faithfully in obedience to His instructions. Jesus always pointed out that their faithfulness would be tested at various points in time, and that they would not know exactly when those moments would come.

Therefore, we as His followers cannot afford spiritual complacency because we must remain alert, prepared, watchful, and ready at all times for whatever the Master requires us to do on His behalf. The question is not merely what the Lord has already done for us, but whether we are positioned to respond when He gives the next instruction. Jesus’ command to have our waists girded points to the necessity of us always being prepared for action through truth.

The Apostle Paul emphasises this fact in Ephesians 6:14, where, as part of putting on the whole armour of God, we are instructed to first have our loins girded with truth. The word to gird means in real terms to ready oneself for action by encircling or securing oneself with the truth so that one is prepared to move with it. This means truth cannot merely be something we know intellectually but we must actively establish truth in our hearts and minds.

The enemy on his part continually surrounds us with lies, deception, accusations, and false interpretations. Therefore, we must be confessing and establishing the Lord’s truth with equal or greater intensity in our hearts because we can never defeat lies if we passively tolerate them. We certainly cannot cast down imaginations and high things that exalt themselves above the knowledge of God if we continue to permit them to remain in our thinking process.

So when a thought contradicts the Lord’s truth, we must actively rebuke and reject its right to establish our mindset or control our actions. We must refuse to allow falsehood to pass through our minds unchallenged. The truth that we know and apply is what makes us free and keeps us free. John.8:32 because truth that is not applied remains dormant. It cannot produce its intended effect merely because we have heard or intellectually understood it. That is why Jesus, Paul, and Peter all emphasise the active necessity of us being girded with truth.

Peter makes the same point in 1 Peter 1:13 which reads these words: “Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Again, this is an instruction which requires action. Peter speaks of the reproductive or productive part of our minds being deliberately surrounded and secured with truth. We are to be sober-minded, not presumptuous, arrogant, foolish, or controlled by careless thinking.

At the same time, we are to rest our hope completely upon the grace that the Holy Spirit brings to us through revelation. This produces a practical spiritual posture where our mouths must actively declare the Lord’s truth and establish it within our hearts so that we are continually prepared to take whatever action the Holy Spirit requires from us when the appointed moment of manifestation arrives.

The preparation must happen before the moment of manifestation arrives, meaning that the girding we do happens before the assignment. The truth must already be established in us before the situation demands a response. Peter’s experience in Acts 10 provides a powerful example of what it means to gird the mind with newly revealed truth. In Acts 10:9, Peter goes onto the housetop to pray around the sixth hour.

Peter first had to take the initiative to pray and engage with the Lord because it is during this time, that he enters into a trance and receives a revelation from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit goes on to confront Peter’s existing mindset and brings him into a truth that he had previously struggled to fully understand that Jesus always taught them. Peter was a Jew, and his established religious understanding would have made the actions he was about to take extremely difficult.

Yet the Holy Spirit was now bringing him into a greater understanding of what Jesus had already been teaching them. So Peter had to gird his mind with this new truth to then take the necessary uncomfortable action. The Holy Spirit essentially brought him to the point where he could obey the instruction to go with the men who had arrived without doubting.

This was a decisive moment in Peter’s life, so Peter could either cling to his previous understanding or gird his mind with the truth the Holy Spirit was revealing and thank God he chose the latter. Thus that one act of submitting his thinking to the Holy Spirit became a catalyst for something enormously significant which was the Gentiles receiving the message of the Kingdom. Peter eventually went on to declare in Acts 10:34-35 these words: “In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him.”

This revelation had enormous consequences because Peter’s obedience opened the way for the reality of salvation through Jesus to be demonstrated among the Gentiles. The truth he received was not merely an intellectual adjustment because it changed the course of his ministry and contributed to making the Gospel available to people beyond the boundaries of his previous understanding.

Then, while Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit manifested powerfully. Acts 10:44-48 records that the Holy Spirit fell upon everyone who heard the word. The Jewish believers who had accompanied Peter were astonished because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out upon the Gentiles as well.

They heard them speak with tongues and magnify God causing Peter to respond by saying these words: “Can anyone forbid water, that these should not be baptised who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” He then commanded them to be baptised in the name of the Lord, and they asked Peter to remain with them for several days.

The Lord knew what Cornelius had done in honouring His name and living righteously, and the Lord was determined to reward what He had seen, and Peter’s previous bias could not prevent the Lord’s purpose from being fulfilled. So Peter’s willingness to receive and act upon the truth revealed by the Holy Spirit changed him eternally.

I declare that I am a faithful steward of the time the Lord has entrusted to me. So I will not waste my days on things that are unprofitable, distracting, or contrary to the Lord’s purpose for my life. I receive grace to prioritise what matters to the Kingdom and to use every season wisely.

I declare that I will not rest on yesterday’s victories but I will continue pressing forward into the greater things the Lord has prepared for me. I decree that my spiritual momentum will not stop because I will remain hungry, watchful, alert, and ready for the next instruction of the Holy Spirit.

I declare that my mind is girded with truth and according to Ephesians 6:14 and 1 Peter 1:13, I am prepared for action, sober in my thinking, and fully established in the truth of the Lord. Every lie, deception, accusation, and false thought that opposes the Lord’s truth in my heart is rejected and cast down and it will not control my mindset, words, decisions, or actions.

I declare that the truth I know will become the truth I apply because the Lord’s truth is active in me, making me free and keeping me free. So my mouth will declare the truth, my heart will embrace it, and my life will demonstrate it in Jesus name. Amen.