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by Erik Hjermstad

“All work and no play . . . .” A truly fitting expression for a world focused on, well, the world. Helpful advice to someone who is struggling with the stress that comes from a workaholic life . . . a truly worldly problem. So, what about the spiritual world, then? Let me offer this thought based on the same grounds as the previous cliché: “All work and no save . . .” For this is what happens (and will happen) when we try to do all the work (or overwork) in our duty of delivering the message of salvation to people. They will not receive the gift of salvation. For it is not our gift to give. We simply have received the grace of being able to pass the gift on to the next recipient. Unfortunately, that is not always the way it seems to work in our world.

The way things appear sometimes, one would think that we are playing an intricate game of chess in salvation. Each move . . . each thought . . . how it will affect the outcome of the game . . . all of these thoughts and ideas are ongoing with each potential “savee.” There is the planning of what to say, when to say it, and/or how to say it. How do we act around them? I ask instead: How did we come to care what we say, when we say it, or how we act? When did we turn delivering the message of salvation into a “job of stress?” When did we add all the stress that comes from a workaholic life to the greatest gift of God? When did we become the chess players?

Cont. below...

Think on this idea: if this entire process is like a chess game on an infinite level. If each person on that board is another person who still has not come to know Jesus intimately in their hearts, and they are just waiting to be “taken.” If both of these ideas are true representations of the situation, then I ask this: what were we before we became saved?

We were no different than those we want to see saved! We were chess pieces just as we envision them to be chess pieces now! More than that, in fact, we STILL ARE chess pieces. We are simply chess pieces that have been moved by the divine hand of the true master of the game! When is it that we gave ourselves the promotion from inside the game looking up to outside the game looking down on the pieces?

That “when,” of course, is when the other player of the game – the would-be contender – attempts his countermoves. The lies of Satan never cease to try to fill our hearts with the thought “Me, Me, Me.” He would enjoy nothing more than to see a world with everyone trying to do things by their own merits, for he knows the outcome (as would we), things would fail. We get all that we are from God, to try to do otherwise is to welcome defeat into our lives.

This is what happens when Satan, who loves to twist God’s Holy Word, fills us with the lie that it is OUR duty to save people. That somehow we have the words and actions to save a person. When we believe these lies and act upon them, we sow chaos into the situation and our lives: for chess truly is a 2-person game. There is not room for a third person to try to jump into the game that is already playing. It is NOT our job to save people. People don’t save people; Jesus saves people. It is our job to simply deliver that salvation that Jesus has given us unto the people. That salvation – “the save” – is brought forth through the Holy Spirit leading the person to Jesus Christ (and the acceptance that stems from it). It is our job to bring that Holy Spirit to the unsaved. It is by the Holy Spirit moving on their hearts that they will be saved and come to know Jesus Christ. Think of it this way: God, the chess master, plans His move. He moves us! If we choose to listen, we bring with us not only the Holy Spirit He has instilled in our hearts, but the Holy Spirit He has moved against us to help us, well, move. That, my friends, is a whole lot of Spirit, but still just a small portion of the true vastness of the Holy Spirit. All we have to do once God has lifted us up with all that Spirit in our lives is pass It on to the next person so that God can complete His next move in them. The move of salvation in a Lost Soul!

It sounds so easy! It truly is! It is Satan who has tried to make it sound complicated. We can pass the Spirit on in a smile! All we need to understand is that we don’t understand. We don’t understand how the Spirit moves and works! Once we truly see this, we can see how important it is that we don’t interfere with the work of the Spirit. For we would be bumbling into what we truly don’t understand. That, in a summary, comes down to an aspect of Faith. Trust in the unseen and what we don’t understand. Truth that since it is God behind it, we don’t need to see it or understand it. We need to simply be chess pieces in a world filled with chess pieces! There’s some humbleness for you – just another chess piece. When God whispers His next move to us, we just need to listen. If He tells us to go somewhere: Go! If He tells us to say something: speak! It is, simply put: to be a chess piece of God, you need to be humbly obedient to the moves by God. For God is so many moves ahead of us (and Satan) we can truly never understand them fully. Rather than worrying about it (and running the risk of meddling), we just need to obey.

One of the things that it comes down to is that word “obey.” Obedience! It is how things get accomplished. Faithful obedience in the Holy Spirit! In God! In Jesus Christ! Truly one of the greatest worships we can give to the Father – for it indicates a love-trust relationship so strong we will do what is needed of us even if we don’t understand. Believe that because God understands the move, we don’t need to understand it. All we have to do is obey.

That trust-obedience relationship is easier to understand if you look to the kingdoms of old. In any kingdom of any age there was always one king. The people were expected to obey that king. The king would not go out to each person and plan a strategy (for the next person he would talk to would just change the strategy of the first! Confusing, huh?) A good king gained the trust of the people, so that they would obey because they believed in why he was doing it! We are not without a king today! Our king is Jesus Christ! A King of Kings, in fact! We are but messengers in the Kingdom of God delivering His Word. Be wary of being tricked into donning the robes of authority! Retain the humble station of messenger in the Kingdom, and the most blessful King shall pour out such a bounty upon us that we shall feel like kings! To receive such a love worthy of kings! That is why it is so important to retain that humbleness. We don’t want to confuse that king-like feeling with the thought that we are kings. There is only one King: Jesus Christ. The station of messenger should be more than adequate for anyone when Jesus Christ is the King! For a messenger always gets to get close to their king to receive the message!

Another thing about messengers, also, is that they rarely know the contents of their message. All they knew was they needed to deliver it. Sometimes the entire survival of a kingdom depended on that delivery of that message. That is the level that humble obedience to God shall do to us. We will become that dutiful messenger that can perform his duties at any given time. A messenger will not exceed the boundaries of that duty! He will not do more than what He was asked to do! A messenger that would dare such a thing in the past would have been demoted at best, executed at worst. While, obviously, the divine King is not so harsh, the repercussions of a presumptuous messenger in the Kingdom of God can lead to people not achieving salvation, which can be a fate worse than death. If all someone needs is a smile to deliver the Spirit that will lead him or her to Jesus, and you deliver the Gospel because “you” think they need to hear it, you might scare them away from God. Only God understands what someone “needs” to give their life over to Him. He will ask the children that have received Him to do just enough to open the door in others a crack. He can do the rest (He is the Almighty, nothing we can do even compares to His works).

When desiring to see salvation in the people around you (and even the people you don’t yet know)… be a messenger. Just do what your Lord asks! A messenger is not a king! A messenger is not a knight! A messenger is a messenger. Just as each piece in a chess game is a certain chess piece. A knight cannot move diagonal just because it decides that is a more beneficial move. It disrupts the game to do so. We just have to stay firm to the idea that though we “just heard” the move God has made on us, by the time we react on it, God has already moved countless steps ahead in the game. There is no longer any need to worry about this move; we just need to complete the move set before us. Then we shall see, like a domino affect, how the other moves God has completed fall into place. It all begins so simply, too. Humble obedience! Become a “lowly messenger” in the Kingdom of God today and see just how high that position will lift you and how much closer it will bring the Kingdom of God.