What does the author mean?

I am fascinated with Romans 1:16 in which the apostle Paul writes "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." If one looks closely at the context it is apparent that Paul is writing this to Christians. For example look in Romans 1:6-7 we see the words the called of Jesus Christ; to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints.

Now that we have the context which is to Christians let us examine the verb believe. In this sentence the verb is in the present tense which means constant, habitual and on going. Therefore we see that the gospel is the power of God for Christians who continue to believe on a daily basis. Whoa! Just think about that sentence, what the verb means and what Paul is really saying. There are so many today that describe their Christian experience in terms of a past tense event. When you talk to many people in the church they say things like when I got saved. But it is less frequent to hear Christians talk about being saved daily. Salvation as the apostle Paul uses the word in Romans is a past, present and future tense word. My point in this brief blog article is that we need to preach the gospel to ourselves on a daily basis! This is the very power of God in our lives. Keep reading, studying, thinking and then applying the word of God.