THURSDAY August 1st
Ephesians 6:17
‘. . .and take the helmet of salvation.’
The next item on our checklist is the helmet of salvation. The first thought that came to me is this, we have the breastplate to protect the heart and the helmet to protect the mind.
The helmet of salvation also appears in 1 Thessalonians 5:8 along with the breastplate ‘But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.’
We are to do all that we can with the provision or help of God to protect our minds. Someone as once said that the mind is the devil’s playground. If he can get into our minds (as well as into our hearts) he can cause all kinds of trouble, but we have been saved and because of salvation we receive many benefits, of which one is the peace of God which passes all understanding.
In the final week that Jesus spent with his disciples, he said to them ‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.’ (John 14:27) This peace that calms the heart will also steady our minds. In Philippians 4:7 Paul reminds us ‘And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.’ Even in the Old Testament, God promised the nation of Israel his supernatural peace, how much more we who have come by faith into a living and powerful relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. We can call God our heavenly Father and he would say to us ‘You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.’ (Isaiah 26:3)
We need to put the helmet of salvation on and keep it on, so that as we face the many difficulties, sorrows, traumas, troubles and conflicts that will beset us, we will experience the peace of God, peace that is only available to those who through salvation have come to confidently trust him.
Why could a man such as H. G. Spafford write the words of the hymn ‘When peace like a river attendeth my way . . . it is well, with my soul’, after having lost a son aged four from Scarlett fever and then a few years later losing his four daughters in a shipping accident in the Atlantic Ocean. It could only be possible because he had learned to put on the helmet of salvation, allowing him to know the undeniable peace of God during his painful circumstances.
I do not know what each one who reads these devotions (or listens to) is going through at this moment, but one thing is sure that we also can know the incredible peace that comes through having a confident trust in our heavenly Father and our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ. Today Jesus would say to each one of us ‘Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me . . . Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you’. Remember that one of his names is ’The Prince of Peace’!