¹³Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Three applications we need to keep before us, three commands to sharpen our thinking, three encouragements to strengthen our souls: Prepare, keep sober, and fix our hope. The apostle Peter stops at this juncture in his teaching on suffering and faith to summarize how knowing leads to acting. Cognitive understanding should lead to behavioral change.

First, “Prepare your minds for action.” The NKJV translates this, “Gird up your loins,” a reference to gathering up your garments to your waist in preparation for battle. Christianity is a religion of the mind as well as the soul and the spirit. While we are not to “lean” on our own understanding (Prov. 3:5), we are to bring our thoughts into captivity to obedience to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5). So here, we are to marshal our minds for action. We need to THINK! This is one of the hardest things we have to do. Of course, we all think as a normal course of daily living. But we need to think clearly and carefully, particularly when we are in the middle of great suffering and difficulty. We must not allow our minds to become clouded with useless thoughts. We must think through how we will respond to our circumstances rather than just react to them. We need to weigh options for how to behave and be shrewd without being foolish or fleshly.

Second, we need to “keep sober in spirit.” We must not lose hope, becoming intoxicated with false thinking that harms us deeply in our spirit. When we put ourselves under the influence of ungodly thinking, we are prime candidates for becoming the fools or scoffers of Proverbs. We must not allow ourselves to drink in doubts or unwise thought patterns. James warns that when seeking wisdom, we “must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind” (James 1:6). Just as a person should not allow alcohol or other mind-altering substances to control his thinking, so we should not allow anything other than the wisdom of God to influence our behavior.

Third, we need to fix our hope on the grace of Jesus Christ—completely. We cannot accept only part of God’s grace, as though we can handle the rest of our difficulties ourselves. That is like only partially holding onto the lifesaving ring after finding ourselves overboard in a storm. No, we either need God’s help or we do not. Pity the person who thinks the latter. Likewise, we cannot only partially look forward to the Lord’s return, which is the epitome of His grace. We fix our hope on the fact that He is coming back for us, whom He saved.

Lord, I am preparing, keeping sober, and fixing my hope in You. Come quickly!