The Shape Of Salvation

Have you ever felt like you just needed room to breathe?

You know when life presses you to the point you can’t…

You sit there looking at your bank account
And the bills are bigger than the income.

The business you felt God called you to
Feels like it takes all your time and energy yet isn’t growing.

When you experience loss that hurts so bad
That you struggle to get out of bed.

You’re trying to move forward
But it feels like there’s no space to move.
No space to take a deep breath.

I’ve been there
I am there
I will be there again…

And so will you

But I learned something crazy…

That helps me breathe a little deeper
Especially in the middle of the times it feels like life is squeezing you

Psalms 18 is the Psalm David wrote AFTER he was saved from Saul and his wilderness season.

During that season he was living in caves…
I don’t like caves.

They feel restrictive to me.
They literally make me feel like I can’t breathe.

And he lived there for years.

But Psalm 18:19 says,
“He brought me out to an open place;
He rescued me, because he took pleasure in me.”

So here is the crazy part…

The Hebrew word for salvation has a shape.

The word for Egypt in Hebrew is Mitzrayim
It comes from the root word tzar

Which means narrow, tight, constricted, pressed in on all sides.

Doesn't life feel like that sometimes?

Like you can’t move…you’re stuck
Nothing you do works

But look at what David says God did.

Psalm 18 uses the word Merchav
The broad place
The spacious place

It comes from the root word rachav

Which means to be wide, to be enlarged, to have room

Room to breathe.

That's how David described what salvation felt like.

Not just forgiven. 
Not just rescued.

Brought into a place with room to breathe.

And then it gets even deeper…

The word for salvation itself is Yeshua 
It’s where we get the name Jesus

Some scholars have even translated it as…
“to be brought out of constriction into room”

Salvation has a shape…

From narrow to wide
From tight to open
From stuck to movement

The other day I found myself crying out to God and saying…

“God I just want room to breathe”

I didn’t even realize it…

I was praying for salvation
I was praying for Yeshua

And salvation isn’t just something that happens once for our sin.
Yes, if you are saved He has done that for you.

But salvation is something he does over and over for us.

In the wilderness
In the tough times
In all the challenges that will come

He’s with us during those seasons of formation"
But He doesn’t leave us there.

Because salvation has a shape.

He will move us to the broad place
When it’s time.

It’s what he does.

He takes constricted things and opens them.
He takes closed wombs and opens them.
He takes trapped people and parts the water.
He takes the cave-dwelling shepherd David and sets him on the throne.

The narrow place has a reason. 
Even if it doesn’t feel like it in the moment.

But He never leaves you there. 

Because that's not the shape of what He does.

Salvation has a shape.
Because salvation has a name.

That name…
is Jesus.

So if you’re in a tight place right now…

Know that He has you there for a reason.
But He won’t leave you there.

Because salvation is coming.