Hardheaded Believers

Hardheaded Believers

Hard-Headed Believers: Wearing the Helmet of Salvation What does it mean to be hard-headed? Is being hard-headed a bad thing? HH is bad when it entails being foolishly stubborn, rebellious, narcissistic having your way, or controlling others That’s a bad thing. But when you know what best for you; When you know what’s the Right thing to do—the greater good, the excellent and noble thing; When you know God’s will and the Truth of God’s Word; Being Hard-Headed is then a Good thing. The challenge is knowing the difference between being a Hard-Headed Believer and a Hard-Headed Backslider. A Hard-Headed Believer operates by the Spirit of God. A Hard-Headed Backslider operates in the flesh—hostile to God’s way and therefore needs to cease and desist, repent and turn back. Case in point: Peter rebuking Jesus. The Helmet of Salvation signifies a Hard-Headed Believer The Apostle Paul said, “I know in whom I have believed and I am persuaded…” A Hard-Headed Believer ⁃ Has Wisdom of the Truth of God ⁃ Has Assurance of Salvation ⁃ Has Conviction to remain steadfast in keeping salvation But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. 1 Thessalonians 5:8 Elpida - The Greek word here carries the weight of assurance. ⁃ joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation God gives us salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. The helmet of Salvation is the assurance we are to have—the assurance of our salvation. We must hold fast to the confidence of that salvation. One practice in ancient times was to cut off the head of an enemy. Decapitation = Game Over So many things happen in our heads: seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, speaking, breathing, laughing, crying. Our face is the most expressive part of our body. And of course our head holds our brain, which is recognized as the seat of consciousness and the center of the nervous system. Our heads connect our inner selves to the outer world more intensely than any other part of us....[It’s] the only body part that can publicly confirm a person’s death. Westerners tend to believe we are our heads: They seem tied to their owner’s essential personhood. Is that inevitable, since our heads contain our faces?

· Callous the Mind, be Resilient

· Endure Hardness like a Good Soldier

· Iron Sharpens Iron

· Be Steadfast, Immovable, always Abounding…

· Faint Not!

· Fear No Thing and No One

· Not Double-Minded…Not having “Itching Ears”

· Have the Mind of Christ.

· The Helmet of Salvation = The Assurance of Salvation—Knowing in whom we have believed and being persuaded…

· Having a “Faith that will not shrink, though pressed by every foe; that will not falter on the brink of any earthly woe.”

Hard-Headed Believers:

· Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego

· Daniel

· Nehemiah on the walls of Jerusalem, tuning out the hecklers.

· Peter and John arrested and dragged before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Council:

o Acts 4:13 Evidence uncommon “…boldness”

o But Peter and John replied, “Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him? 20 We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard.” Acts 4:19-20

· Jesus:

o Turned His face towards Jerusalem

o In Gethsemane

o Standing before the High Priest and later Pilate.

o On the Cross