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THE
HELMET OF SALVATION: |
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Rom 13:14 The Helmet of Salvation is such an important part of your spiritual armor, I cannot yet get away from teaching on this subject. There are other things I need to emphasize about the Helmet before I feel I can move onto the next topic. Romans 13:14 says to "Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ". This is not some figure of speech Apostle Paul is using, this is a literal thing that occurs in the spirit realm. To clothe ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ literally means to clothe ourselves with the Word of God. Jesus is the Word, so we must understand that apart from clothing ourselves with God's Word, we cannot clothe ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ. If you will notice, our entire spiritual armor and even the weapons we use are all made up of the Word of God. There is no part of the armor that exists apart from God's Word. Therefore, we cannot clothe ourselves with the whole Armor of God without clothing ourselves with the whole Word of God. When we find ourselves clothed in the Armor and Word of God, we will also be found clothed with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. You and I cannot defeat the kingdom of darkness, any of our enemies, or overcome any sin without first being clothed with the Lord Jesus Christ. To the degree that we are clothed with the Lord Jesus Christ (the Word of God), that is the degree of victory we will walk in on behalf of ourselves, others, and most importantly the Kingdom of God itself. Romans 13:14 goes on to say, "do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature." The Apostle Paul is pointing out that our sinful desires are fulfilled by our thinking. Remember, God wants to change us into a New Person by changing the way we think. If we constantly think about God and how to please Him, then our bodies will correspond with actions that match our deeply engrained thought patterns. This is a spiritual law. Your actions cannot just automatically happen without a thought first coming to your mind. Your body is controlled by the thinking center of your body called your brain. Your body, independent of your brain, CAN DO NOTHING! The only way we can stop ourselves from thinking about how to fulfill our sinful desires is to clothe our thinking with the Word of God and thoughts of adoration and worship toward Him that result in godly living. It is only by clothing ourselves with Him through His Word that we can stop sin in our lives and effectively advance the Kingdom of God on earth. Rom 8:5-7 The Word of God clearly points out that if we want to live according to the Spirit, then we must set our minds on the things of the Spirit or the things of God. The Word of God also clearly points out that if you have your mind set on the things of the flesh, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to live according to the Spirit. In order to achieve higher standards of godly living we must first achieve higher standards of godly thinking. I have never found anything as exciting in life as the Word of God. Many years ago I heard a preacher say, "How can you say you love the Lord if you don't love the Word of God? Jesus is the Word, so if you are going to love Jesus, then you MUST love the Word of God also." (paraphrased) Our love for Jesus is actually measured by our love of God's Word. The two cannot be separated. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1) The Word is God! It is that simple. If you love God, then you must love His Word too! Sad to say, it seems that a lot of Christians say they love God, but too many neglect reading and studying His Word. I don't see how they can do this. To me, it is the very air I breath. Without the Word and getting into the Word regularly, I would simply just die inside. Remember I shared with you that I came from a very depressed background BEFORE I met Jesus. The Word of God has been the #1 source of Joy for my life since I met Him! Before I was saved I had NO self confidence. Now I have confidence, not because of me, but because of who I am in Christ. I have clothed myself with the Lord Jesus Christ and I want to keep clothing myself with Him more and more until every fiber of my being is completely like Him and completely clothed with Him. The beauty of knowing that I can have not only my Lord living inside me, but He loves me so much that He wraps Himself around me like a warm blanket on a cold winter night. I remember one time I had a vision in my spirit about being inside God the Father's pocket and He was walking around with me in His shirt pocket right next to His bosom. It was just like how you would put a pen in your shirt pocket, I saw myself inside His pocket like that. My Big Daddy! If I could give anything to any person in the Body of Christ or the World for that matter, it would be my love for the Word of God. I love writing about Him, I love talking about Him, I love hearing Him in His Word. Sharing God's Word with others is the climax of my prayer and study time alone with Him. Giving others the things God has shared with me is what fulfills me the most. I am not satisfied just to get Him and keep Him all to myself, He is so wonderful to me I have not let others know, "Wow, check this out! This is God! God is His Word. Listen to this..." When I met the Lord, I had no father or mother. My mother committed suicide when I was 3 years old and I didn't go live with my natural father until I was 11 years old. I met Jesus when I was 19 years old and He became my Father and my Mother. My natural father was alive, but not a living father to me. All the things I had been missing in life, I have found in Him! Isn't that true for all of us? God is better than anything we had ever imagined. I remember when I got saved just thinking, "Wow, God actually exists and I can talk to Him!" The only words I could describe my relationship with God at the time is like finding out that there are other beings out there and you can actually talk to them. Aliens are just Satan's counterfeit for what we can actually do with the living God. The only difference is we have a Close Encounter of the Living Kind!!! We are not abducted into some space craft and analyzed by some freakish beings, we are abducted and caught up in or snatched away into the Love of God! ALIENATED FROM GOD Col 1:21 From Colossians 1:21 we can clearly see the things that keep us separated from God; evil thoughts. Another translation says, "And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, {engaged} in evil deeds." (NAS) We were alienated from God and "hostile in mind", which caused us to be engaged in evil deeds. The word hostile means to be "aggressive, unfriendly, unreceptive, unsympathetic". We were separated from God because we were aggressive, unfriendly, unreceptive of the Gospel and unsympathetic toward God and others. Our hostile thinking causes us to reproduce fruit (or deeds) after its own kind which causes us to be "engaged in evil deeds". Jesus came to reverse this process. Instead of being hostile towards God, the Word of God can change our thinking processes and cause us to become gentle instead of aggressive, friendly instead of unfriendly, receptive of the Gospel instead of unreceptive, and sympathetic toward God and others instead of unsympathetic. It is by no longer being "hostile in mind" that we become engaged in righteous deeds or actions of love. When we clothe ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, our hostile mind is being taken over and run out! As we become clothed with the Word of God in our constant thinking patterns, we then become engaged in righteous deeds and acts of love and we draw closer and closer to God! Eph 4:17-18 If you are not convinced by the above Scripture of how important it is to read and study God's Word, then I don't know what will convince you. The Word of God says that non-believers live in the futility of their thinking. Their lives are controlled by vain thoughts or thoughts that are void of the will and purpose of God. In the end, all of their thoughts add up to nothing. Everything they are doing apart from God is empty, meaningless, and has no lasting value. Their lives are literally a waste of time until they come to know Him. As Christians, we cannot afford to be wasting our time in futile thinking. We must clothe ourselves in the mind of God's Word and have productive thought patterns if we want to be of any use for the Kingdom. We don't want to be Christians standing around doing nothing, just wasting our time until we get to Heaven. The only way to do this is to read and study God's Word. This doesn't mean that prayer and other aspects of our spiritual walk are no longer necessary, but isn't it even the very Word of God that gives us fuel to pray and ammunition for prayer? Prayer apart from the will and Word of God is futile. The first thing we do to become Christians is to pray God's Word. (See Romans 10:9) Everything we do as Christians comes from God's Spirit and out of God's Word!!! Apart from God's Spirit and His Word, our actions are futile. Another thing the Word of God says robs people of the life of God is being darkened in their understanding. When we become born again, we do not instantly know everything we need to know to live a victorious Christian life. The Word of God says that non-believers are not only futile in their thinking, but they are darkened in their understanding because of ignorance. All three of these things that cause people to be separated from the life of God come from a state of mind. Futile or meaningless thought lives, darkened understanding, and ignorance. Knowledge of the Word of God is the cure for all three things. When we clothe ourselves with the Word of God our thought life becomes meaningful, our understanding becomes enlightened and our ignorance is replaced with accurate spiritual knowledge. The end result of all this is that we come closer to God and we do not seem so far away from Him. We can begin to see Him as always right there with us, in us, and around us as we cloth ourselves with His Word. Aren't you tired of being ripped off by the devil? Through ignorance, by keeping you in the dark as far as understanding God's ways are concerned, and by keeping you bound by your meaningless thought life, he is trying to rip you off of being closer and closer to God. 2 Cor 4:4 Satan wants to blind not only the minds of those who don't believe, but he also wants to blind the minds of Christians so they won't see who they really are in Christ. He wants Christians to just be satisfied with just going to church on Sunday so that he can rob them of the glory of Christ that is revealed in His Word. You will never get the complete revelation of who you are in Christ and never receive the fullness of the Glory of God that He has for you by thinking about the Scriptures and diving head first into the knowledge of God just once a week and occasionally at a Bible study. An hour and a half a week is just not going to do it. Truly spiritual works can only come by truly spiritual thinking! If we think we can do spiritual works apart from spiritual thinking, and if we think we can become like Christ apart from putting on the mind of Christ as the Helmet of Salvation, then we are only deceiving ourselves. We cannot walk in the shallow waters of just having a little knowledge of the Truth and expect to grow in leaps and bounds spiritually. I remember when I use to be heavily into weight lifting and body building. I use to see people in the gym working our really hard year after year, but they weren't making very noticeable gains of size and strength. I could tell that most of them were either overworking their bodies, not eating enough of the right foods, or a combination of both. With lifting weights, if you want to see any noticeable change in size you have to make a change in your diet. You cannot eat like a 155 pound person and expect to go to the gym, work out regularly, and come out a 210 pound hulk. I remember when I was at my strongest and leanest, I had to maintain a very strict diet. If you ask professional body builders (I never go that serious), they will tell you that to be at the top of the game, every calorie has to count. Professional body builders do not indulge in what is called "empty calories". They want every calorie they consume to have as much nutritional value as possible. It is only in their off season that they relax their diet a little bit and have a bit of chocolate and other junk foods, but even then it is a very limited amount. When I was at my strongest and leanest, my strict diet consisted mainly of drinking approximately 1 gallon of non-fat milk per day along with a strict diet of steak, chicken, rice, and I remember eating a lot of potatoes. For a while, when I was single, that's all I bought at the market. Even today I do not have a real big craving for sweets, even though my diet is not as strict as it should be, and it shows. To be at the top of my game, I had to consume at least 100-110 grams of protein per day. I always made sure my body got the proper amount of protein and a minimum amount of fat. Fat is necessary for growth, but you have to have a limited amount. I also took what was called an "Animal-Pak" of vitamins, minerals, and various other nutrients as well. On top of my body building (weight lifting) training, I also did 20 minutes of aerobic exercises every time after I finished my weight lifting. I would get on the Stair Master and ride it up the hills as it increased the pace I had to walk up and down on it (it was a stationary device). This is what we have to be like in the Spirit, if we want to look our best and have maximum strength in Christ! What does your spiritual diet consist of? 3-5 hours a day of television junk food and an hour and a half of church and bible study each week? We want to be like Superman in the Spirit but we train like Al Bundy who is famous for sitting in front of the television with his remote in one hand and the other hand under his belt. Do you train like a couch potato or more like Arnold Schwarzenegger? God wants to change who you are, but He can't do it with your hand on the remote sitting on the couch or whatever else it is you are doing that is distracting you from getting into God's Word. We need to eat the food of the spiritual generals who have gone before us. We need to find people with teachings loaded with spiritual protein so that our spirit man can have enough of the right nutrients to grow. We need to make sure we are limiting our spiritual junk food and eating enough of the right foods that do not have empty calories, or high calorie foods with little nutritional value. The other aspect of training properly that I mentioned is to be sure not to over train. I would see people in the gym bragging about how they worked out their same body parts 5-7 days per week. When you work out with weights, you are literally breaking down your muscle and it is the rest in between workouts where the growth actually occurs. If you do not give your muscles enough rest, then you are doing nothing but constantly breaking down your muscles. It is the same in the spirit. If you are constantly doing the work of the Lord but you are not getting enough of the rest of God through fellowship with His Spirit and the Word and just simply resting from your labor, then you are doing nothing more than constantly draining your spirit man without resting in fellowship with His Spirit and the Word, in order to allow noticeable growth to occur. There was no doubt about the commitment these people had in seeing their bodies grow and develop, but without eating enough of the right foods and without getting enough rest in between work outs, their bodies had very little change as far as size and strength are concerned. I have known of some body builders who on their non-training days, were so concerned about giving their bodies the rest that the needed that instead of walking up a flight of stairs, they would take the elevator to avoid working out their muscles as much as possible. They were just as strict about their rest as they were their eating habits and hard training. Heb 4:9-11 I remember one job I had where I easily worked 70-80 hours a week for about 2 years straight. There are some people so zealous for God that they work just like that and then wonder why they get "burned out". Getting rest is not an option, it is a commandment. When I was working that many hours, I believed that the company I was working for was going to collapse if I didn't stay on top of things and work that many hours. Well, I quit that job and found out 2 years later that the company did just fine without me. After quitting that job, I will never EVER allow myself to work that many hours again. I don't care if I have to get a job at a fast food restaurant working part time to avoid working that many hours. Working that many hours did nothing but rob me of time with God, time
with my family, and time for myself. I was an emotional zombie. I had no
feelings left. I got to the point where I was so burned out and so
stressed out, nothing mattered anymore. God doesn't need us laboring in
ministry to the point of absolute exhaustion in order for His Kingdom to
be advanced. In fact, when we are working that many hours in the
ministry for too long a period of time, we will find ourselves
eventually doing more harm than good. Along with a good diet of healthy
spiritual food, a hard workout of doing the works of ministry, remember
we also need rest in order for our spirit man to recuperate and grow.
Even Jesus had to withdraw from the work of ministry to recuperate and
restore His depleted strength in His Spirit Man. Jesus always made sure
He got enough rest and spent plenty of time alone fellowshipping with
our Father. We are still focusing on the Helmet of Salvation. Did you know that we even have to focus our minds in order for us to do the work of God? You can't do the work of God without your mind in the right place and focused on the right things. John 6:28-29 Hebrews 11:6 says that, "it is impossible to please God without faith." Just about every Christian knows that faith comes by hearing the Word of God, or hearing the Lord speak to you, over and over and over and over, again and again. Jesus said that in order to do the works of God, you must believe in the One He sent. How can we believe the One He sent if we don't read what He has to say in His Word? You have to know what it is you are suppose to believe in order for you to actually believe it. You must have understanding first before you can apply faith. Faith comes by hearing God's Word and you cannot get it apart from engaging your mind in reading and studying the Word of God (or by listening and various other mediums used to proclaim the Gospel). The Word of God says that without faith (believing in your heart with the correct understanding and righteous thoughts in your mind), it is impossible to do works that please Him. Unless our minds are actively engaged in hearing God's Word, we can never have the correct beliefs and convictions that move us to truly righteous actions. This means we have to engage our minds in learning if we want the faith that results in godly living. Jesus knew that if He could get others to believe Him, then their actions would correspond to the genuineness of their faith or belief in what He says. What you constantly think will create your beliefs, and your beliefs will generate your actions. Your thought life produces your faith life which produces your acting out life or your deeds. You cannot be ignorant in understanding God's Word and expect to exercise great faith and live the life of a great man or woman of God. Jesus, at the age of twelve, astounded and amazed the learned scholars of His days. He did not get that way simply by being the Son of God. I guarantee you, Jesus, even at age 12, spent time in the Word. Whether He was listening to His mother and father on earth, praying and listening to God in His spirit, reading from the Scriptures that were available to Him in His days on earth, going to the synagogue and listening to the latest sermon, JESUS WAS CONSTANTLY IN THE WORD!!! His education showed it. In order to live genuinely righteous lives, we must first correct our thinking in order to establish a sound belief system. God has to destroy the strongholds of wrong thinking in our minds before He can destroy the strongholds of unrighteous deeds in our bodies. We must realize that our spirit man is the life of our body. If your minds are set on ungodly things, the result will be ungodly actions. Your godly deeds will be in equal proportion to your godly thinking. You cannot meditate very little on the Word of God and expect to live a very great godly life. Some people are trying to overcome their bad habits the wrong way. They want to correct their behavior without first correcting their thinking and their faulty belief system. Man works from the outside to change the inside. We think that if we can just stop cussing with our lips, stop drinking beer or stop doing drugs on the outside, that we can make ourselves right with God. We set up this religious front, but on the inside we are still believing false doctrine, wrong things about the Word of God, wrong things about what God the Father is actually like, evil thoughts towards our brothers and sisters even though we don't dare speak a word, and we call that holy living because we don't drink, cuss, or chew bubble gum in church. On the outside it looks holy, but on the inside, do we think like God thinks? Do we believe the same things about the Word that Jesus does? Are we doing all the works on the outside but neglecting the thoughts, the beliefs, and the bad attitudes on the inside? We are constantly focusing on changing on the outside first. "Oh if I could just stop over eating, then I would have self control." "If I could just stop yelling at my co-workers, then I would be mastering sin." But what we don't realize is that what's taking place on the outside is the direct result of what is taking place on the inside. James 1:26 The Holy Spirit is not only referring here to the tongue that is in your mouth only, He is also directing us towards the words we say to ourselves or the thoughts we think in our minds. You might not ask a man or woman out for a date, but if you have lust or say to yourself you want them for ungodly purposes, then you have spoken it with your mind. James 3:2 Not stumbling in what we say means not stumbling in what we think or say to ourselves in our own thought processes as well. You cannot take a life long vow of silence and think all kinds of evil thoughts in your heart and mind and think that it will make you perfect. In order for you to bridle or tame your whole body, you must not only control the tongue in your mouth, but you have to control the tongue in your mind as well. The tongue of your mind or what you say to yourself in your thinking is also like the tongue of your body, a small rudder on a large sail boat driven by the wind that is able to turn the whole vessel wherever it wants to go even in the deepest of oceans. You can have all the winds of life blowing against you in circumstances over which you have little or no control, but you can steer yourself out of the storm and rest in the clear waters of peaceful godly thinking by meditating on the goodness of God regardless of the circumstances which you are now facing and up against. When your mind is full of godly thoughts the reality of your thoughts in Christ are greater than the reality of what you see in the natural world. This is called a sanctified imagination. It is not escapism, it is faithism. It is not living in a fantasy world, it is living in the reality of God's world. We need to put on the Helmet of Salvation so that we can see things the way God sees things so that we can have peace and comfort in our hearts and minds. Too many Christians are disturbed by what they see in the natural because of what they do not see in the spiritual. They have on the worlds way of thinking instead of the Helmet of Salvation to protect their mind, will, and emotions. The Helmet of Salvation puts our minds focus on the things that are above and not below. Too many Christians are living far below the standard of living God has called them too simply because they do not know what the Helmet of Salvation is and what it is suppose to do for them. Paul was sent to prison when his ministry was thriving, but he had on the Helmet of Salvation and so the reality of the freedom of Christ remained greater than the reality of the bondage of the prison bars he was locked and chained behind. The Helmet of Salvation caused him to write a lot, if not most of the New Testament while he was locked in chains. He had on the Helmet of God's reality which far outweighed the reality of what his eyes could see. Did Paul have this strength of mind by simply becoming born again? How many of us could write or even think anything good if we were in similar circumstances? or beaten almost to death several times? Paul got the grade of Helmet that he had to protect him from that level of attack so that he could maintain peace in his mind regardless of the circumstances BECAUSE HE WAS AN AVID (enthusiastic, passionate, eager, fervent, and devoted) STUDENT OF GOD'S WORD. How many of us would like to be able to endure the same trials he had with the same peace of mind, the same focus of ministry, the same desire to server God, regardless of our seriously adverse, opposing, undesirable, and unpleasant circumstances? Well, I have Good News. We too can clothe ourselves with the same Lord Jesus Christ that he clothed himself with which protected and guarded his peace of mind regardless of his circumstances. God is no respecter of persons. What He gave to Paul, He also wants to give to you. I have a clue for you. The same Helmet Paul had on is hidden in God's Word. Find it in the Spirit, then put it on and keep it on forever!!! Phil 4:6-9
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| For Additional Reading
on Spiritual Warfare, the author recommends reading "Dressed to
Kill" by Rick Renner. This book can be ordered for approximately
$12.00 online @ Rick
Renner Ministries!
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