Now Is The Time Our Salvation

"For He saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation." 2 Corinthians 6:2

If you have been empowered by the Holy SPirit to make Jesus the Lord of your life, then now is the day of your salvation, not tomorrow, not when you get to Heaven, not yesterday, but right now you are saved, this very moment, this is the time of our salvation. That is an awesome Truth, and when we realize that we don’t have to wait for our salvation, or earn it over time, there is a godly peace and joy that will totally consume and empower us to be used fully by our Father to further His Kingdom! God’s Truth set’s us free and through His peace that passes all understanding and through His love that passes knowledge, we can enjoy and live completely in this Truth, it is eternal and it is for each one of us who have Jesus as Lord! But here is a question that I would like to ask you, and one that our Father asked me several years ago, what does salvation really mean? What does it mean to be saved and why should someone want God’s salvation, what good is it? How will possessing salvation affect a person’s life right now, as well as in the future?

When I was born again and filled with the Holy Spirit, I was eleven years old. I didn’t think about salvation, I hadn’t studied about it; and I wasn’t searching for it, it just overtook me and consumed me. I knew in my heart, at that very moment when the Holy Spirit called me that I wanted it, and our Father accepted me and filled me completely with Himself, and I have never doubted for one second since then that I am saved! I wasn’t even at an alter call when God called me and chose me to have eternal life. Years later, when I was in my late twenties, our Father started directing me to ask people what they thought His salvation meant. Even though He had called me and I had come to Him without asking these questions, our Father really laid it on my heart to ask them of others, and He led me into many people’s lives that did have these questions. Now from my experience the Church seems to assume that the world already knows what salvation really means and that they just haven’t accepted it. I certainly assumed that most people knew, at least in the circles that I ran in. But when our Father had me to begin to ask people questions about salvation, they really struggled with definitive answers; our Father had me even asking preachers what salvation meant. And as I heard the answers, God quoted this verse to me, “How shall they call on Him in Whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of Whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher.” Romans 10:14 In my family room, on Havens Corners Road, God directed me to allow Him to use me to clearly show what His salvation through our Savior Jesus Christ means, and why people should want it right now! So, here we go, in the power of our Father's might and through the strength of His Anointing, armed with the Truth of His gospel of peace, with the sword of His Word, and in the power of His Spirit, we are going to study what it means to be saved and why we should want it!

To begin to explain salvation, let's first look at the word salvation. The Dictionary and Concordance describe salvation as: preservation, deliverance from danger, evil, and the deliverance from the power, presence, pleasure, and penalty of sin. Now don't just read these meanings and go on, stop and allow the Holy Ghost to bring you peace and joy and the fullness of hope in believing the meanings of salvation, and allow salvations meaning to sink into your thought process. We have the mind of Christ, these Truths of God’s Word are food for our souls, and the Truth will set us free! Preservation, deliverance from danger, safe from evil, delivered from, not only the penalty of sin, but also sins power, this is what salvation means! When we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we are freed from the power of sin, the pleasure of sin, and the presence of sin. Our Father has so many Truths to share with us on this freedom, and we will study them, but not right now. We will first lay the foundation of the house; then we will build upon it with lively stones of God’s Truth, His Word.

The Greek word used in the Bible for salvation is soteria {so-tay-ree'ah}. Its meaning can be found in a Strong's Concordance, number 4991. Soteria means: deliverer, health, rescue, and safety. Fourfold salvation: saved from the penalty, power, presence and most importantly the pleasure of sin. Deliverance from the molestation of enemies, future salvation: the sum of benefits and blessings which the Christians, redeemed from all earthly ills, will enjoy after the visible return of Christ from heaven in the consummated and eternal kingdom of God.

The Greek Word for saved is sozo, Strong's 4982. Sozo means to keep safe and sound, to rescue from danger and destruction. To save one from perishing, to save from disease, to make well, to heal, to restore. To preserve, to deliver from the penalties of sin and judgment and finally to save from the evils which obstruct the reception of deliverance.

When our Father first had me to ask the question: what is salvation, the primary response I received was, "to go to Heaven." The real Truth to grab hold of here, is that while the Greek words for salvation and saved and their definitions mention and include future benefits, they overwhelmingly address salvations benefits for today. We need to look to Jesus to Author and Finish our faith with this, and through the power of His might, He will strengthen us to take hold of and see that the definitions of salvation include powerful benefits for this day, for this place, and for this time. Faith comes from hearing God’s Truths, and our Father's Truths set us free! When I began to ask people about salvation, their response was overwhelmingly directing salvation's benefits towards the future, not for their lives today? After hearing the same response several times, I realized why God had asked me to ask the question in the first place, and I realized the nature of the ministry that He had called me too. Our Father had called me to teach the power, nature, benefits, and the timing of salvation. If you want to have a great study, find the words salvation and saved in the New Testament and replace them with their complete meanings and then see how powerfully the scripture reads.

For instance put soteria's meanings in 2 Corinthians 6:2. Behold now is the day of preservation, now is the day of deliverance from danger and evil. Behold now is the day of deliverance from the power, pleasure, presence, and penalty of sin. Now is the day of safety and health: now, this day, on this earth we have all of these things. When someone tells you that they are saved, is this what they mean? Is this what they think, is this how they feel, and is this what they desire for others to have? Is this what they believe God wants for us, and do they believe that we can actually live with this freedom and power on the earth? My experience is that most Christians don't. Hosea 4:6 teaches us that God's people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. Well no more, in Jesus’ Name, no more! We have been given the Holy Ghost to teach us all things, we have Jesus Who Authors and Finishes our faith, we have the Bible, and we have a Father Who wants us to know everything about Him. We are now new creatures in Christ and old things are passed away, so with the power and strength of the Holy Spirit, salvation will be fully understood and fully realized by all who call on Jesus as Lord, and the world will see Him fully through us! “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; And on My servants and on your handmaidens I will pour out in those days of My Spirit, and they shall prophesy: And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood and fire, and vapor and smoke.” Acts 2:17-19

As Christians we love to talk about yesterday, Moses, David, and the Apostles; the Bible is full of great men and women of faith, and we love to tell of their heroic adventures, and we should! We love to talk about tomorrow, Heaven, when Jesus returns, and how wonderful it will be, our glorious future, our redeemed bodies, it is awesome, it's glorious, and we should talk about it! While our past was great and our future is glorious, we live in today and we tend to shy away from today, yet today is where the needs are. Tell someone that lives in a dangerous neighborhood, with gangs and killings, or someone who is dying, that in the future, Heaven and the return of Christ will be better. Sure you will be proclaiming a truth, but they have an overwhelming need for God’s eternal solutions today. Today is where the need is and today there is an answer, and the answer is salvation through Jesus Christ. Salvation provides health, safety, and protection! Salvation, offers physical, spiritual, and soulful benefits for this day. The nice thing about this day, is it will always be here. Tomorrows never come, it will always and forever be today, and salvation is always and forever for today. Be blessed in this Truth, and you may already know fully about salvation, praise God if you do, but there are a lot of people, even Christians, who don’t. That’s not our Father's will and while most people will confess that God has an interest in their life today, they really don’t have a full and complete revelation that their salvation is as complete for them today as it will be when Christ returns for them!

“For whosoever shall call on the Name of the Lord shall (now be preserved and delivered from danger and evil, shall now be safe, shall now be healthy and free from disease, shall now be set free from the pleasure, presence, penalty, and power of sin) be saved.” Romans 10:13

Faith is the evidence of things hoped for, if you don’t have the hope for this, ask the Holy Ghost to give it to you, He will! "Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost." Romans 15:13