This saturday we listened to Otto Koning's "The Pineapple Story". After battling with the audio visual equipment we settled down to listen to an MP3 downloaded of the web.
The story is full of extremely humorous anecdotes relating his encounter with the people group he was ministering to and his testimony of surrendering all to God; the creator of all.
Otto Koning was a missionary in Dutch New Guinea (The western part of New Guinea). He worked among a local native tribe that had known only their village ways, one of which was stealing from others. When Otto and his wife arrived and moved into a hut, the natives often came by to visit and - as the Koning’s discovered to their dismay when they went to preach in the natives' village –left with various of their household items.
The only fruit Otto could grow on the island was pineapples, which Otto loved and took pride in growing. However, whenever the pineapples began to ripen, the natives would steal them to the extent that Otto could never keep a ripe pineapple for himself. This he found was extremely frustrating, and he became angry with the natives. All during the seven-year period in which this took place, Otto preached the gospel to these natives, but never had a single conversion.
The more the natives stole, the angrier Otto became leading him to take drastic measures in order to protect the fruit such as flying in a German Shepherd dog from another missionary. This only further alienated the natives.
You see the natives understood that the fruit that nature bears belongs to no man and is therefor available for consumption by anyone.
In time Otto took a furlough and attended a conference on personal rights where he discovered why he was so frustrated. He realised that he had taken personal ownership of the pineapple garden and that the garden did not belong to him after all. After much soul searching, he gave his garden to God.
Soon the natives started having problems among their tribe and they discovered that Otto was the reason for their problems because he had given his garden to his God. The natives saw a correlation between what Otto had done and their own lives being affected by calamities in their village. Once Otto gave his garden to God, he no longer got angry and was free from worry. The natives started bringing him fruit from the garden because they didn't want any more calamities to affect them.
Otto then saw the “light” one day when a native said to him, "You must have become a Christian, Otto. You don't get angry anymore. We always wondered if we would ever meet a Christian." You see they had never associated Otto with the kind of person he was preaching about because his message did not line up with his lifestyle. Otto was embarrassed and humbled by this realisation.
At the end of seven years, he witnessed his first conversion, and many began coming to Christ once he fully gave his garden to God. The fruit grew so abundantly that Otto began exporting it and growing other types of fruit, such as bananas. His village became the most evangelized in the whole region, yet for seven years prior to that he had not one convert.
Otto realized something each of us must realize: To gain your life you must lose it, along with your possessions. It was only when he gave all his possessions to God that he became free from them. What is more God gave manifold to him once Otto had surrendered all and had given God complete ownership.
Do you have some possessions or worries that you need to surrender to God today? Let God have all that you have. Become a steward, not an owner. You will be surprised at how well God can take care of His possessions.
Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever
loses his life for My sake will find it. - Mat 10:39
And quoting James Elliot….
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose…”
So let us surrender to God what belongs to God!!!
Discussions afterwards involved:
Do we really have any right to that which God provides?
Wouldn’t surrendering give us the “peace which surpasses all understanding”?
Is God always in control?
How did Otto’s strategy stand up to the 4 pillars of mandate, message, model and power?
Note. James Elliot (October 8, 1927 – January 8, 1956) was an evangelical Christian missionary to Ecuador who, along with four others, was killed while attempting to evangelize the Waodani people through efforts known as Operation Auca.
For further MP3's relating Otto Koning's testaments go to the following link: http://www.freewebs.com/snakestory/pineapplestory.htm
