And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, through all prayer and petition, praying at all times in the Spirit. Ephesians 6:17.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
Your thoughts are very important, in fact, it is your thoughts that determine and run your life. Your thoughts govern your mind, your will, and your emotions. What you dwell upon in your mind you will believe and will also say and what you say you will do and what you do will determine the course of your life.
O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O LORD, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it. Psalm 139:1-6.
You will always find insights to the Old Testament by looking at the words in the original Hebrew in which they were written. The word translated as “thought” in all the passages of Psalm 139 is the Hebrew word “rhea (רֵעַ),” which literally means friend, companion, neighbor, fellow, but also means “thought.” It is derived from the root רָעָה (ra’ah), which means “to associate with” or “to befriend.” You see from this that your thoughts that you hold on to and dwell upon become your close friends and companions. Be careful who you are associating with. Toxic thoughts and bitter roots are very poor companions to take with you through life. Your inner thoughts are very close to you always. Some of you need to associate with new “friends” that you dwell with night and day within. And today’s piece of armor, the Helmet of Salvation will help you with that, for I have given you the mind of Christ.
But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ. 1 Corinthians 2:15-16.
In Psalm 139 you hear of how well I know everything about you from your innermost thoughts and prayers to your outermost actions. I know all the workings of your organs and body for I have planned and made all. I watch over you in love, I encompass you round about in the shield of My faithfulness. I know the intentions of your heart. I know your thoughts towards Me or against Me. You can receive or reject Me. You can stay in the center of the continuum of life with Me or go to the outskirts of the continuum in the outer darkness. But all life is from Me and within My sphere, there is no life apart from Me. I am the source and sustainer of all life. If you will draw close to Me, I can draw close to you and you can stay in the center of the continuum and become like Me in light and love. My thoughts can become yours.
So let us consider the next piece of My armor they you must take up to resist the fiery arrows, tactics, and strategies of the devil to steal your victory in Christ Jesus and all the benefits you have therefrom.
Seek the LORD while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the LORD, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. Isaiah 55:6-7.
All day and all night you are having conversations but many of these no one hears but you and Me alone for they are your conversations within your mind. But these are the most important of your conversations for they are what is running your life. If your thoughts are contrary to Mine and are causing you hatred, fear, torment, shame, guilt, depression, addictions, malicious speech, offense, and sadness these are wicked thoughts.
So what is to be done? You seek Me and call on My Name, and those who seek Me I reward and those who call upon My Name are saved. But that is not enough. You must forsake those unrighteous and wicked thoughts by repenting, returning and getting My help, pardon and peace.
But that is not the end of it. You have now got the helmet on but you have to replace the thoughts you have forsaken with new ones because your mind is busy all the time and must have something to think on and talk about.
Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4:8-9.
You need the thoughts you were born to have, thoughts of shalom and not evil, thoughts that give you a bright future and a hope. And those are the thoughts that I have toward you. Precious plans that outnumber the sand. Beloved, forgiven, blessed and favored is the story of your life if you will go to the spirit realm for your thoughts and not to the dirt where the devil crawls and feeds.
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. Isaiah 55:8.
How come My thoughts are not natural to you when I made you by My Word in My image and according to My likeness? Why do you need the helmet of salvation?
When Adam rejected Me and submitted to the lies of the devil in place of My Words of truth, the imperishable and incorruptible seed of My Word in his heart that had birthed him from above was rooted out with his own hand (death and life are in the hand of the tongue) and in its place was planted the perishable and corrupt seed of the lie of the devil so that he was born again from below. You are born by My Word. Understand that. Words birth things in you. They plant and grow in the garden of your heart.
“A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a rock garden locked, a spring sealed up.” Song of Solomon 4:12.
I will rejoice greatly in the LORD, my soul will exult in my God; for He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels, for as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes the things sown in it to spring up, so the Lord LORD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. Isaiah 61:10-11.
And because all men and women are descended from the perishable seed of Adam, your default mindset is of the flesh and not of the spirit. Adam murdered the eternal life within him, for lies are perishable and are not eternal. Only the truth is eternal. Thus he was justly judged and condemned. He owed an eternal life for the one he lost, which he could not pay and none of his descendants could pay, and his sentence was thus eternal death. His spirit became dead to Me and alive to sin. The spirit of a man is My lamp and Adam’s and his descendants had nothing but a smoldering wick. But the good news is that a cold stony heart can be born again as a living open heart filled again with life, eternal life, until it overflows. In Jesus is the light of life. He alone gives light to your lamp and brightens the darkness around you.
Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” John 8:12.
Jesus came down from Heaven and was born by My imperishable Word taking flesh in the womb of the virgin Mary with no trace of Adam’s seed or sin. And He came to pay your judgment in the flesh, for He was born imperishable as Adam was originally, and He then took all your sins into His own flesh as your sacrificial substitute and paid your debt with his eternal life in the flesh and took your sentence for sin and went to the dust of death and hell itself for you.
And when I raised Him, you were justified and all your sins gone. He is My gift to you to pay your judgment and take your sentence. In Him you are a new creation born from above by the imperishable seed of My Word. Receive My implanted Word it has the power to save your soul.
But as with any gift you must receive it for the gift to be completed. If you refuse and reject so great a salvation you will die in your own sins and the judgment of Adam is still upon you. And without Jesus you cannot pay it.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” John 3:16-18.
Do you see? Those who believe have received the gift. Those who reject it are still under the judgment of Adam, they have been judged already because they have not believed in the Name of My Son. And what is His Name? Jesus in Hebrew as He was originally named is Yeshuah which literally means SALVATION. If you have not believed you are saved in Him for you have rejected the gift of Salvation. For you are saved by grace through faith and not by your works for the judgment is already in place and you must offer an eternal life to pay it, and no matter how many good deeds you do that is not sufficient to pay the price for in your flesh since you have no eternal life to give. Jesus is the only man in the flesh since Adam that has that eternal life. But now, if you are in Him, you have that life. You have eternal life. And then walking in the righteousness that is His, now your own in Him, you can do the good deeds I prepared for you in advance in Him and receive your full reward.
If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater; for the testimony of God is this, that He has testified concerning His Son. The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son. And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. 1 John 5:9-13.
But once you are saved in your spirit you must retrain your mind how to think thoughts from above in order to make your conversations in Heaven where I have seated you in the Spirit with Christ at My right hand.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:9.
But it does not end there. Your born again spirit is filled with My Holy Spirit and you have access to My Words and My thoughts and you can think them and use them and take power with them. You can plant and cultivate a most beautiful garden in your heart where you and I will love to step aside and talk. But just as I told the first man in that beautiful garden of Eden, you too must cultivate and guard your garden.
“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth. It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. For you will go out with joy and be led forth with peace.” Isaiah 55:10-12.
And what will happen to your weedy, thorny garden that was your old way of thinking in the flesh?
“Instead of the thorn bush the cypress will come up, and instead of the nettle the myrtle will come up, and the transformation of the desert will be a name to the LORD, for an everlasting sign which will not be cut off.” Isaiah 55:13.
The helmet of salvation keeps your thoughts pure from evil. It is the blood/brain barrier. For you overcome the accusations of the devil by the blood of Jesus, the true sacrificial Lamb, and the WORDS of YOUR testimony. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophesy. And His testimony is My plans for you are SHALOM.
Thoughts can be conceived from the Spirit realm or from the flesh realm. Thoughts are words spoken inside your mind. These words can arise from deep in your spirit or from outside input. I speak within. Deep speaks unto deep. My communications and thoughts will come from Heaven by My Spirit into your spirit and then are translated in your soul, that is, your mind, from spiritual language to your native tongue and thus when spoken by you within your mind sound like your own inner voice, but you know by the enlightenment they are from Me. However, some of the communications of My Spirit you just know by light of revelation for they are beyond human speech to express. This is why the speaking in tongues in your private time with Me is essential.
For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. 1 Corinthians 2:10-13.
All thoughts come into your mind and are processed there, no matter what their origin. My Word can divide the thoughts and intentions of your heart as to whether they arise from the flesh (worldly, earthly), the fiery arrows of the evil one, or from My Spirit. When you are mature in My Word you can discern which are from Me and which are not. My sheep know My voice and follow Me, a stranger’s voice they will not follow. Anything contrary to My Word is a stranger’s voice but to discern that you must know what My Word says. And the more diligent you are in the pursuit of My Word, the better you will know Me.
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4:12.
And that is why the helmet of Salvation and the Sword of the Spirit, which is My Word, are paired together in My armor.
And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, through all prayer and petition, praying at all times in the Spirit. Ephesians 6:17.
But more about the Sword in our next Life Lesson.
I love you. What are you talking about within your mind right now? It is time to pay attention and put on the helmet of Salvation, which is the mind of Christ. And I have already given that to you in the anointing.