Everyday Salvation: the anecdote for low-level anxiety

As a child, I must have prayed some form of the salvation prayer over 100 times! Why? I wasn’t worried about God’s side of things, I was concerned about me - had I gotten it right? 

How would I know that it worked? Was Jesus really there, “in my heart?” The nebulousness produced a constant low level “salvation-anxiety” state for me. 

At some point, my mom told me she was pretty sure it had worked and I didn’t need to keep asking Jesus to save me. Her words, though funny looking back, truly brought relief to my soul. 

It may make me laugh now, but the very real feeling that I remember was not at all funny:I felt insecure, insignificant and unsure.

I did not know (by know I mean experientially) that I was - indeed - a child of God. God might have known my name, and Jesus may have died for me - those things I believed. The question that plagued me was whether God had accepted my acceptance. 

I can’t help but see the similarities between that season of my life and what our world is experiencing right now: insecurity. The world is wondering if it will be saved. We are wondering if we are safe. 

Insecurity shows up as a range of anxious manifestations from constant low-level nervousness and discomfort to sudden and strong attacks of anxiety.

In the same way that I needed to know I was, indeed a saved child of God when I was 8 - we need to know now, that we are, indeed, saved children of God. 

I didn’t know it then, but I was actually on to something. Salvation was never intended to be a switch that gets flipped once. Salvation isn’t a momentary prayer we pray but a life we enter. Salvation is now, it was then and it will be tomorrow: Jesus is salvation.

In Christ, each and every day is the day of salvation. 

Show me a day when the salvation of Jesus is not experienced and I’ll show you some manifestation of insecurity, insignificance and confusion in that day. 

2 Corinthians 6:2 says this:

For He said "In the acceptable time I listened to you, and in the day of salvation I helped you." Behold, now is the time of favor; behold, now is the day of salvation.

There's a reason we physically wake up every single morning. The physical comes first to reflect and teach about the spiritual. They are different but never actually separated. 

We begin every single morning needing to wake again into salvation. Yes, into the new day but even more so, into the reality of who we are: children of God - in the family. 

Ask Jesus to wake you up to your life of salvation in Christ today. 

Jesus, what part of me needs saving today? 

Jesus, what needs healing and mending today? 

Jesus, what do I need to be delivered from today? 

Jesus, what do you want me to know about those things today from Your heart to mine? 

You can expand these questions to our world too: 

Jesus, what part of our world needs saving today? 

Jesus, what needs healing and mending today? 

Jesus, what do we need to be delivered from today? 

Jesus, what do you want me to know about Your world today from Your heart to mine? 

- Cayce Harris