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142 | Am I Really Saved
342 Plays3 months ago
This weeks episode is for YOU if you don't have confidence in your salvation because you can't remember a specific date when you "prayed the sinners prayer." Or maybe you feel like your testimony just doesn't measure up because you believe "it's boring." Referenced in this episode: ⦿ Every Woman A Theologian Shop: https://phyliciamasonheimer.com/store/ ⦿ Stop Calling Me Beautiful: https://phyliciamasonheimer.com/product/stop-calling-me-beautiful-paperback/ 👩💻 Watch the entire Beginner Believer Series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLybB3dkK5l8mBBBHlb6GteDUMJbTwYR8v Subscribe to Verity Podcast: ➡️ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/verity-by-phylicia-masonheimer/id1495210734 ———————————————— Verity Podcast is an Every Woman a Theologian company. We believe every woman should be a theologian. Every woman should be a student of the heart of God. Find our latest books, kids books, and hospitality product releases on our website, here: ➡️ https://rb.gy/h4szl3 Order “Every Woman a Theologian” ➡️ https://rebrand.ly/yju441w Our latest release: “A Christian Guide to Fundamental Mormon Beliefs” ➡️ https://rebrand.ly/vu6hcw1 Follow us on Instagram: 📸 Phylicia Masonheimer: https://rb.gy/qma0y8 📸 Every Woman a Theologian: https://rb.gy/zwyxld 📸 Verity Home: https://rb.gy/epiovd 📸 Faithful Kids: https://rb.gy/ke8r4t Please like, subscribe, and share our content—it means a lot to us and helps us continue to create the kind of content you need and enjoy!
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Transcript
The Essence of Testimonies
00:00:00
Speaker
It's not always about what God saved you out of, but what God preserved you from. Some of us have testimonies that aren't about God saving us out of the party scene. Instead, it's about God preserving us and our faith thanks to the faithfulness of previous generations so that we could come into adulthood and minister to those who are being saved out of very hard things.
00:00:24
Speaker
Everybody's testimony matters. Everybody's testimony is beautiful in its own way. Welcome back to Verity Podcast.
Questioning Salvation Without a Date
00:00:35
Speaker
I'm Felicia Masonheimer, your host and the founder of Every Woman a Theologian. Today we're going to talk about a question that I receive almost every single week on Ask Anything Monday, the Q&A that I do on my Instagram each week.
00:00:49
Speaker
Now, oftentimes this question comes in the form of some serious doubt and even a little bit of shame from people who have grown up in the church. And here's what it sounds like. How do I know that I'm really saved if I can't remember the specific date of my salvation? So this question reveals a couple underlying questions. Number one, do I need a specific date?
00:01:17
Speaker
of salvation in order for my walk with God to be authenticated. Number two, if I can't remember a date of salvation, does that mean that I'm not actually saved now, even though I'm walking with God and I'm seeking Him and I've been baptized and I'm participating in the church body and I'm growing and bearing the fruit of the Spirit? What does that mean for me? And three, for those who are growing up in the church or have grown up in the church,
00:01:45
Speaker
especially as very young children who made professions, the question can be, was that an authentic profession or was it just emotional? And how do I navigate that? Now, we talked about some of this in previous episodes. And if you go all the way back to the beginning of the Beginner Believer series, episodes one and two on this YouTube channel, you will see that we addressed what it means to be saved and what it happens at salvation.
00:02:12
Speaker
And so we're going to go back over some of those concepts here, but I wanted to be very specific in who I'm talking to. I'm talking to those of you who have doubted your salvation because you don't have a specific date that you can remember when you made a profession. Now, a little bit of church history here.
Historical Context of Salvation Dates
00:02:29
Speaker
This idea of having a very specific date of salvation is a rather new concept in the last 200 years or so. And a lot of this came out of the Second Great Awakening and the work of Charles Finney. Charles Finney was a very emotional preacher.
00:02:46
Speaker
He came from an Arminian tradition. However, he did not hold to classic Arminian theology. He built on that and added to it, and eventually out of his preaching came the Holiness movement, and out of the Holiness movement eventually came what we know as Pentecostalism in the Charismatic Church. So in Charles Finney's methodology, he would often appeal to the emotions of people to encourage them to repent.
00:03:16
Speaker
And it was under his leadership and others in that era in the 1800s during the second great awakening that something was created called the anxious bench. And the anxious bench kind of acted as this place where people could go sit if they were feeling anxious in spirit as a result of the preaching of the message. And this anxiety was not like a worrying anxiety, but just the move of the spirit, the conviction of the spirit on their hearts.
00:03:39
Speaker
Eventually, this anxious bench came to be known as the altar and the call to repent an altar call. The altar call, of course, is characterized not just in the traditions like the holiness movement in Pentecostalism, Charismatic traditions, but also in Baptist traditions and even in other traditions like Methodist. So certainly it is not only one place that was having some kind of altar call.
00:04:04
Speaker
there was encouragement to repent and turn from the book of Acts all the way to modern day in different ways throughout church history. But this specific era really introduced a pressure to have what is often called a crisis of faith where you turn from self and sin to God. And this led to kind of emphasizing that specific day or date as the moment when you did turn to God.
00:04:30
Speaker
Now, this can be good. I'm not saying it was bad. I'm not saying it was wrong. I think that it served a purpose in church history, especially at a time that people needed to live in authentic Christian faith that was moved by the Holy Spirit to outward action. And the Second Great Awakening did accomplish that. It mobilized Christians to change their society and to work towards abolishing slavery and even giving women the right to vote.
00:04:58
Speaker
But out of this also came a trend towards this individual salvation experience that perhaps overemphasized the date of salvation.
Understanding Salvation as a Journey
00:05:11
Speaker
For some of us, salvation and knowing God turning to God wasn't just one specific moment, but a series of moments, a series of turnings over time, till eventually we realized, yes, Christ is my Lord and the leader of my life, and I want to walk with him and follow him. He is my King, and I will serve no other. See, at some point, there has to be a full turning. You can't live with one foot in each world.
00:05:40
Speaker
But that doesn't mean that the turning is on one specific day, one specific moment that you can remember. It may be that the turning is gradual and that over time you were drawn closer and closer to God by the move of His Holy Spirit. And as that occurred, you began to seek out resources in mentorship and discipleship and eventually gave your life to Christ.
00:06:08
Speaker
Now, you might not know exactly when that happened, but if you were bearing the fruit of the Spirit, you're walking in obedience. You pursued baptism and discipleship connected with a local church. You learned about how to study the Bible and how to pray, and you pursued those spiritual disciplines, and you're bearing the fruit of the Spirit in your life as Galatians 5 defines them.
00:06:29
Speaker
Then we can look at that life and say, this is a person who loves God. This is a person who is walking with him. Now let's look at what scripture says about salvation. Ephesians 2, 8-9 says, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
00:06:50
Speaker
Sometimes when we emphasize the date of salvation, we can actually turn it into a little bit of a work. We can kind of act as if it is our own doing instead of the gift of God, that it is the result of a work and begin to maybe even boast in a way about how early we got saved or how late we got saved and out of what circumstances we got saved. A lot of times people who don't know the date when they were saved, like I said, grew up in the church and they can tend to think they have a very boring testimony.
00:07:20
Speaker
That's often the verbiage I hear. My testimony isn't worth sharing. I never did anything huge and wrong that God saved me out of. But I don't know who said this, but I think it's well said. It's not always about what God saved you out of, but what God preserved you from. Some of us have testimonies that aren't about God saving us out of the party scene.
00:07:42
Speaker
Instead, it's about God preserving us and our faith thanks to the faithfulness of previous generations so that we could come into adulthood and minister to those who are being saved out of very hard things. Everybody's testimony matters. Everybody's testimony is beautiful in its own way.
00:08:01
Speaker
One time I was at a Bible study with some friends and most of us in the Bible study were raised in the church and most of us came to Christ fairly young sometime in our younger years or in our teens. As we went around the circle we were sharing about how we felt kind of ashamed of this boring testimony but one of the people in that study came to Christ in her later 20s as the result of an extremely painful past and she told us
00:08:31
Speaker
I would give anything to have a testimony like yours. I would give anything to not have walked through this and lived this life before I came
Valuing All Testimonies
00:08:40
Speaker
to Christ. I wish I could get those years back.
00:08:43
Speaker
And having that perspective helped us to recognize the value in a testimony that maybe took some time slowly, maybe wasn't glamorous, maybe it wasn't a wild turn of events that brought us to Christ, but the slow faithfulness of those who discipled us, to the point that maybe there wasn't a big special day when we turned around, but we did turn around, and we came back to Christ, we came to Christ, and He transformed us.
00:09:12
Speaker
So if this is speaking to you, if you have been that person who thinks my testimony doesn't matter or I don't remember when I got saved so it can't possibly count, go back to scripture. Titus 3.5, he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit.
00:09:34
Speaker
So He saved you not because of what you did or when you turned to Him, but by His own mercy.
Assurance of Salvation
00:09:40
Speaker
And if there is the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit in your life, you know that could not be produced by your own actions. That is the work of God.
00:09:52
Speaker
If you have confessed with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10, 9. We often use this in that moment, right? When somebody's coming to Christ for the first time, you might be thinking, I don't remember praying that prayer. Okay. Well, have you prayed it since? Do you live that way? Do you live as if Jesus is Lord and you believe God has raised Him from the dead and you are walking with Him daily? My friend.
00:10:18
Speaker
You're saved. You are in Christ. You have nothing to fear.
Resources and Conclusion
00:10:22
Speaker
I hope that this video encouraged you, and if it did, please subscribe, like, and share. It helps get the word out about every woman a theologian and Verity podcast. And if you'd like more resources for your own journey, head to FeliciaMasonHeimer.com to check out all of our studies, booklets, and other resources that can help you on this path to a deeper relationship with God. I'll see you next time on Verity Podcast.