(Submitted By
Kerry Patton)
“Stand firm then,
with the belt of truth buckled around your waist…” Ephesians 6:14
“You can’t handle the truth!”
I love the quote above. You may recall it from Jack Nicolson’s rant
as General Jessup in the motion picture “A Few Good Men.” His point is that many would rather hide
their heads in the sand than face life as it really is.
While for many this may resonate
as true, for many others life is not a matter of not being able to handle the
truth. It is a matter of never learning
the whole truth, or following a lie and believing it to be true.
The truth about a belt...
Not long ago, I needed a new brown
belt. I liked my brown belt, but it was
way past time to purchase a new one. The
belt was a laminate of leather and man made materials and as it had aged it
began to break. And I wanted to purchase
a new one, but it just kept not working out. Schedules being what they are, I
never could seem to get to the store and purchase a new belt. I just kept wearing the old one.
One day, I had what I thought was
a stroke of genius, and I used staples to repair the places that had
broken. The repair worked famously, and
the breaks were in places that were hidden when I wore the belt. The staples would keep the belt together
until I could get a new belt…I hoped.
Oh my goodness…had anyone known
that I had stapled my brown belt I would have been so embarrassed! Had the staples failed and my belt come apart
in public…Oh my! I would have been
mortified!! So every day, I would look
at the cracks in that old belt, check the staples and hope they held one more
day…and every day I said to myself “I really need to get a new belt.” And every day, I hoped no one could see the
cracks I was hiding.
One day, I finally got to the
store and bought me a new leather belt!
I couldn’t wait to put on the new belt.
No longer would I have to worry about the staples. No longer would I have to be concerned about
the cracks showing. I remember tossing
that old belt in the trash. What a
relief it was to be rid of it!
The Belt of Truth
Once, I was trying to encourage a
friend of mine who felt she would never get ahead in life. She had made some really bad life-affecting
mistakes through the years, and felt like her past disqualified her from ever
becoming all that she felt the Bible was teaching her to be. She felt like her life had lots of
embarrassing cracks…cracks that she had managed to patch here and there…and for
the most part, keep hidden from the rest of the world. She lived in fear of people finding out who
she had been.
I told her that she needed to
ignore the voices of the past and pay attention to the Truth of God for her
life. She insisted that what the voices
of the past were saying was the truth, but I disagreed. I told her that while her past was true back
then…and was certainly a part of her testimony, it was most certainly NOT the
ultimate truth for her life. She asked
me what I meant and I sang a very simple verse to her: “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that
saved a wretch like me! I once was lost,
but now am found. Was blind, but now I
see!”
The truth is that every one of us
has a past that we’d rather keep hidden.
Every one of us has made really stupid mistakes, and carry with us the
cracks and scars of those mistakes. We
all have those moments when the memories of who we used to be creep up on us
and haunt our minds. So we are tempted
to patch up the facades and staple the tears, and pretend that no one can see
our vulnerabilities.
But the ultimate truth is that
every one of us are covered by the blood of Jesus Christ! The ultimate truth is that because of our
relationship with Jesus, by faith, our portion is not shame and condemnation,
but forgiveness and eternal reward!
Speaking to the Christians at
Ephesus, the Apostle Paul encouraged his readers to “stand firm, with the belt
of truth buckled around your waist…” but the truth he is directing them to gird
themselves with is not their truth…but that of the Lord Jesus Christ! That which tells of redemption, of grace, and
of love and life!
Scripture to claim:
“Then you will know
the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:32
