“Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body has finished with sin.”NIV

It’s interesting that an ‘’attitude’’ can be an armament – a part of our spiritual armoury.

In this context, Peter is writing about fortifying ourselves with a certain attitude towards suffering. Okay, we don’t like it; we don’t want it; we wouldn’t choose these trying circumstances, but we recognise they can have a purifying effect upon us. They can wean us more and more off the world, and press us ever more closely to the heart of God. It can have such a positive outcome. This result is not inevitable, but it is possible. This is the essence of what Peter is saying here: not that you stop sinning altogether if you suffer, but that it can be a means of making you more holy. So we should ‘’arm’’ ourselves with an attitude towards it that recognises God can use it to make us more like Jesus; that realises He may have precious gifts for us in the midst of it.

Extending the broad principle that an attitude can be an armament, in what other ways do you need to ‘’arm’’ yourself?

One example for me is that I have learned to ‘’arm’’ myself with the attitude that I will set the alarm clock early, get out of bed, pray, read my Bible, do some exercise and listen to good Christian content, before I get into the other demands of the day. If I did not ‘’arm’’ myself with such an attitude, it probably wouldn’t happen.

I once heard a preacher who just kept repeating, ‘It’s a fight all the way, but fight on.’ Maybe many of us are feeling something of this at the moment. It’s a daily plod. It’s a fight to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. In the hymn ‘Jerusalem’, there is a line that says, ‘I will not cease from mental fight…’

So many key battles are fought and won in our minds. Let’s remember that attitudes can be armaments.

PRAYER: Lord, when I think about the darkest places you have taken me, I have met you there, and I believe you have done something in me that may not have happened any other way. Help me Lord to always have that mind in me which was also in Christ Jesus…