Girded with Strength
Remember we talked at the beginning of our Above Rubies series about how strong our Proverbs 31 woman is? She is worth more than rubies which are VERY STRONG and she is a WOMAN OF VALOR or STRENGTH. We see more about her strength in Proverbs 31:17 and we’ll look at the King James Version to get a little more insight into this verse:
She girdeth her loins with strength and strengtheneth her arms.
Well, no wonder she needs to make her arms strong; have you seen all she does with her hands? Sit down some time and make a list of all the things you do for your family with your hands and you will be amazed! “Strengtheneth” H553 here means TO BE ALERT PHYSICALLY, FORTIFY, MAKE STRONG. So physically we can make our arms strong through exercise-I definitely could improve on that one! How could we make our arms ALERT? Possibly by ALWAYS BEING READY to use our arms to serve. Have you noticed that being a mom means we often have to do things at inconvenient times-waking up in the middle of the night to feed the baby, stopping everything when we hear our child cry for help, answering question after question (if you have a 3 year old you know exactly what I mean!) in the middle of making dinner or working on a project? We can have physically alert arms, by always being ready to use them and not being upset or irritated when our work is interrupted to serve our family’s or children’s needs.
And what exactly does GIRD UP YOUR LOINS mean? In old times, men and women were not dressed like us. No tank tops or shorts; these men and women wore long flowing robes. So girding up the loins means pulling up all the flowing robes and tucking them into the girdle, so they are out of the way and we are ready to get to work.
Another place we see “Gird up your loins” is in Job. Job had a rough time and he took most of Job to complain about how God had treated him. After 37 chapters of complaining with his friends, God answered Job in Job 38:1-3 New American Standard Version (italics mine):
Then the Lord answered Job out of a whirlwind and said, ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now gird up your loins like a man, and I will ask you, and you instruct Me!’
After meditating on the verses from Proverbs 31 and Job, I realized that we have a phrase just like this-it is “Pull up your big girl panties!” It’s the same idea here, that the Proverbs 31 woman is a woman who pulls herself back up when she is down, who stands back up when knocked down and even lets God make her stronger through difficulties. And sometimes you might also need help pulling yourself back up by leaning on a friend or by seeing a counselor to help. Even Moses’ arms grew tired in battle and he needed Aaron and Hur to hold his hands up for him; check out Exodus 17:12-14 for that story. So how does the Proverbs 31 woman gird her loins with strength? Let’s look at Psalm 28:7 NASB:
The Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart trusts in Him and I am helped; therefore my heart exults, and with my song I shall thank Him.
So God is ultimately her strength. She girds her loins with the strength that she gets from Him. “Gird” means “to put on”. So how do you PUT ON the Lord’s strength? Prayer, reading the Word (Bible), meditating on the Word, singing spiritual songs, seeing a counselor, encouragement from a friend and I also ask God to remind me of His presence throughout my day (because I tend to run ahead of Him and forget that He is there! Am I the only one that does that?). I ask God to interrupt my day to remind me He is NEAR.
SO LET’S CHOOSE TO GIRD OURSELVES WITH HIS STRENGTH.
In His Love,
Suzanne
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