“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.”
gird up the loins of your mind
The Greek for “gird up” means that this girding up is to be decisive — “having girded up.” Make up your mind! Pull yourself together! Roll up your sleeves and go to work. It is like a worker who tightens his belt when he has some special tasks to do. Make up your minds decisively instead of letting your thoughts, purposes, decisions hang loose.
Do not let yourself move along slowly in life as occasion and impulse may move you. Take your situation in hand. Gird up your mind like you mean business, decision, and action. Do not let little bumps in the road jar your progress. God does not want us to drift by impulse. Many little worries will keep us from advancing. A penny held close to the eye will blot out the sun. The trivialities of time, the trifles of earth held close will prevent us from applying the promises of God.
To gird up the mind means freedom from fear. Pull out of the way anything that impedes free action of the mind. Pull out of the way worry, hate, fear, jealousy, and unforgiveness. If we harbor these in our mind, they will impede our progress in the Christian life.
The Christian mind must be like that. We cannot let thoughts hang loose around our minds. Christians often neglect these thoughts and let them hang for years.
PRINCIPLE:
God wants us to decisively deal with the loose ends of our minds.
APPLICATION:
If the Christian is to conquer his thoughts he must put out of his mind fear and worry. Disengage your minds from the things that would detract from dynamic Christian living.
If we gird up our mind, we will free our minds from fear, tension, anxiety, worry, doubt, indecision, insomnia, feelings of helplessness, inferiority, guilt, futility, sensitivity, and loss of confidence.
No amount of worry will change the circumstance. We cannot change circumstance but we can change our attitude toward the circumstance. This is Peter’s point. Maybe you cannot change the circumstance at work. Maybe you cannot change the neighbor’s criticism of you but you can change your attitude toward your problems.
Tensions are the result of attitudes. If you have distress and apprehension, it is because you think about problems too much. We live in our choices. What we choose to think about will ultimately possess us.
When a salesman sets out to sell his product, he must forsake any tendency to be lazy. He must make the contact. As well, the Christian must set aside any distraction or hindrance. Fickleness and irritation cannot get in the way. We cannot prepare ourselves for service if stress dominates our lives.
