Unleash Your Superhero Potential with the Helmet of Salvation: Defend Your Faith and Conquer Life!

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One of the first things Satan tries to do when we come to Christ is attack our foundation.  Satan knows if he can get us to doubt our salvation we will never be willing to step forward because if we aren’t really saved then why does stepping out in faith matter?  We have to be able to strengthen our walks by getting into scripture which tells us what God says about our faith not what the father of lies does.

This has been a struggle with me in my Christian walk as long as I can remember.  There was a little reprieve when I first came to the Lord because I had just made the decision to follow Christ.  Then shortly after I began to place my expectations of perfection on myself and my life.  Anytime I would mess up with lust, my mouth, or just get angry I would put a disappointed attitude on God and approach Him as an all consuming judge instead of as a loving Father who wants me to mature in His ways.  Back and forth I went letting Satan get a hold within my relationship with Christ.  It was a never ending cycle of sin.  I’d mess up again, feel depressed, be angry with myself, tell God I wouldn’t do it again, and because I was placing my expectations in my own strength would be back to messing up.

It didn’t help that I was raised never feeling I could meet the expectations of a parent and living in a culture which validates a person based on what they accomplish not on who God has made them to be.  The other thing not helping was I didn’t have a firm foundation in the identities in which the Bible and God told me about myself.  I couldn’t help but think if I continued sinning I couldn’t be saved.  Shouldn’t there be a stark contrast of my life in the areas of lust if I have received the Holy Spirit?

Satan loved to throw verses which were meant to inspire us, and convict us to live lives worthy of the anointing, in my head and use them against me to make me feel even worse.  I kept looking at Hebrews 10 or Matthew 7:21-23 and letting Satan beat me over the head with them telling me I couldn’t be saved because I sinned.  Of course the power of the cross is bigger than our sins and death, it has to be.  Our hope is founded on more than ourselves because no man would have hope if he had to rely on his own heart, mind, and soul to save him.  We always have a more lenient view of ourselves and actions rather than those around us, after all, we know why we messed up.  We can also go the other way and cripple ourselves in our walk by walking in the defeat of sin.

As long as we have breath in our lungs we have the ability to repent and follow after Jesus.  Sanctification is a long process which won’t be fulfilled until the day we meet God.  We don’t expect infants to memorize the alphabet immediately or to understand their times tables but there will come a point with enough practice they will be able to do them without much thought.  This is how it should be when we disciple others or simply even start to judge their lives and mistakes.  If God loved me enough to forgive me of my sins then shouldn’t I be there to forgive others of theirs?  This doesn’t mean we don’t call sin out or help a brother sharpen their walks with a loving nudge but we don’t need to beat them down with a judgment we don’t expect God to have placed on ourselves.

This is why I believe the helmet of salvation is listed in Paul’s list of the armor of God in Ephesians 6.  We need to put some armor on our heads to remember the cross, remember the pain with which Jesus died for us, remember how far Christ went for us so we could live with Him in eternity.  It helps to remember if we had a good upbringing how much our fathers loved us and forgave us.  When you become a father yourself you begin to realize this love.  The love that no matter how much your children drive you up a wall you would take them back and chase after them into the darkness just for them to come back to the light.

Of course there are other pieces of the armor and we will talk about them in a different article, but this is the piece which sits upon our head.  If we don’t put it on we begin to wander, not having the sense of direction we need.  We begin to doubt our salvation and the work Christ did for us.  So let us do as Paul says and continue in the race to win it.  “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified,” 1 Corinthians 9:24-27.

We must change our perspective.  We have to start looking at ourselves and the world around us through the kingdom of God mindset.  We must stop listening to the lies of Satan and tell him to leave.  Cast out that in your life which would cause you to stumble and live with the love God has granted you.  Forgive, exhort, help those who need help, don’t look down on the homeless or the people who have made bad choices but rather let us help them back to the light.