Belt Up

Get a sturdy belt, fasten it around your waist, walk out in confidence. The belt keeps your clothes together, things in place, enabling you to stand fast.

Paul advised wearing the 'belt of truth' (Ephesians 6) - the sure knowledge of God and Lordship of Jesus to hold it all together as you stand and go out. Get centred on Him and then add the rest of the armor around you.

The promised Anointed One himself was to go out with righteousness as his belt (Isaiah 11), together with faithfulness as a sash. Truth and Right naturally associate - you cannot have right living without being based on the truth, and you cannot be properly fastened in the truth without then desiring to live right.

Yet Jeremiah is told to buy a linen belt (chapter 13). He was to wear it - around the waist as normal. Yet then he was to take it off, to hide it away. Later it was to be dug up again, where it would be discovered to be ruined, useless, not fit for purpose.

For Jeremiah and his audience this was to be a picture: Even a whole people can metaphorically belt up - be usefully and purposefully bound together with the truth of God. Properly belted up the people collectively would be able to stand tall and confident, secure in Him. This would be a positive example, a people to be like, a nation whose ways are those for others to aspire to. The spin-off of such example would lead others to God, bring praise and honour to Him.

Yet if those people abandon their fastening to the truth of God, if they let it drop and even hide it away ... then ruin naturally follows. The people will prove to not be fit for purpose, of no use.

Time to belt up ...