THE GREAT RICE BOWL COMPETITION

#2- Series-"Beware the leaven of the Pharisees!"

    Jesus' pet peeve was none other than the leaven of the Pharisees. The New Testament records thirteen times Jesus telling His disciples to "Beware the leaven of the Pharisees." They, knew what He meant, do you? In the following story, this toxic, hidden substance gradually takes over an entire community. It is a message for the body of Christ today. Can you tell how it happened?

           THE GREAT RICE BOWL COMPETITION 

   It all started very innocently, really. It hadn't rained in a long time. No one knew why until one day someone noticed a sign on a tree, "The rain god is mad; bring out another bowl of rice!"
Members of the community clustered around the sign and then scattered to their homes to collect bowls of rice to place at the base of the tree. There were different sizes, shapes and colors; but the next day there were still no rain clouds on the horizon.

   Then someone suggested that the rain god had preferences. In the past, the rain god seemed to operate best if the rice bowls were lined up a certain way. The people were relieved that some student of history remembered this fact and rearranged the rice bowls in the historically appropriate order.

        After awhile when there was still no rain, someone else suggested that perhaps the bowls themselves were the problem. Members of the community formed a committee to reflect on what it would take to make the bowls more pleasing to the rain god. What could it be that was withholding the blessing of rain? The committee met practically every day and finally finished its report. The report concluded that it was both the size and the color of the rice bowls but more likely the fact that there just weren't enough of them that offended the rain god. No one was sure yet which color or what size or how many would bring the favor of the rain god, but they decided to experiment to find out.

   The committee named themselves the Great Rice Bowl Committee. A place on this committee was the crown of prestige in the community. The Internet was abuzz with their names, and whenever a citizen of the community saw a member of the Great Rice Bowl Committee ( hereafter designated the GRB Committee or simply The Committee), he stared wistfully at him wishing he, too, could have a place on The Committee. After all, it seemed that The Committee knew what the rain god liked and what he didn't. They "knew" things that the regular members of the community didn't know, particularly the secrets of The Committee's inner sanctum, which involved the next program on the agenda to try pleasing the rain god.

            Soon the members of the GRB Committee decided to please the rain god with an event. The Committee proclaimed that on a certain day there would be an event called the Great Rice Bowl Competition. Whoever made the best bowls in the greatest number and in the color the rain God preferred would win. The reward for winning the favor of the rain god would be a seat on the GRB Committee. Now any citizen of the community, even one who had been previously marginalized and thus unknown would now be able to advance to a coveted place of prominence in the community on the GRBC!

   That was the day the once peaceful community exploded into a frenzy. The members of  the community divided into clubs. Each GRB Committee member had his own club filled with members who were dedicated to producing rice bowls according to the wishes of their favorite member of The Committee. Each citizen of the community wrestled with the decision regarding which club to join. It was a hard choice because a community member could raise his standing in the community by joining the "right" club. The word on the street was that it was dangerous not to join a club. One might not be seen as a team player or trustworthy because he wasn't in a club. Besides, how would he hope to communicate with the rain God if he wasn't in a club?

   The clubs took names corresponding to the shape of their rice bowls to differentiate themselves: Square, Round, Oblong, Hexagonal, Trapezoidal... Each club challenged the others by increasing its goal. The worker in the club who could make the most rice bowls - for the rain god- would win an intra-club award. Preparing for The Great Rice Bowl Competition occupied everyone's time almost exclusively!

   Then someone had the idea that perhaps it would please the rain god to have Great Rice Bowl Factories, particularly if having fewer bowls than another club would increase the disfavor of the rain god. Each club had its own factory which produced as many rice bowls as it could, after its kind, in the manner the club believed would best please the rain God. Within a short time, The Committee issued a proclamation:  Everyone was required to produce his rice bowl in a factory if he wanted to compete. It was easy to tell which bowl came from which factory because each factory had its own style and also its own stamp.  (The GRB Committee members, of course, did not need to make rice bowls so they were exempt from this rule.) Each committee hired marketing executives to publicize the glories of their particular shape of rice bowl in order to attract more club members who would then make more rice bowls.

    Everyone wanted to please his or her favorite member of The Committee. Clusters of club members grouped around their favorite committee member learning all they could about rice bowl manufacturing, but more importantly, about how to function on the committee if they happened to win the competition.

   All this was not cheap. The community poured funds into their rice bowl clubs to support the Committee members and their respective factories. One could only dream of having his own seat on the Great Rice Bowl Committee and his own club to do his bidding.

    The Committee members had everything now: prestige, power and the money with which to buy anything they wanted personally, but especially to build more factories. Now when they walked down the streets of the community, everyone bowed to them and greeted them with their titles: Great Bowl Master of the Rain God. Although it still wasn't raining, no one seemed to notice.

   Finally the day arrived for The Great Rice Bowl Competition. Who would win? Which club would finally see the rain fall out of the sky and into their bowls of rice? The citizens of the community hadn't been able to sleep.That morning each citizen of the community gathered with his or her club to display their rice bowls to the community and present their rice bowls before the rain god. Any club member could win. His corresponding club would receive a prestigious award. Imagine being the Committee member whose factory and rice bowls actually caused the rain to fall! Their rice bowls would become the receptacles for the rain guaranteeing them eternal prestige and unlimited funds.

   A hush fell as the members of the The Committee walked in front of each elaborately crafted display. The Committee members whispered to each other, pointed to different bowls and cocked their heads knowingly as if to suggest their favorites, sure that the rain God would affirm their selections.

   The moment arrived. The judging was finished. Now the members of the Great Rice Bowl Committee prevailed upon the rain god. Their voices thundered loudly and vibrated in a distinguished manner as sweat appeared on their brows. After a awhile, they stopped.

    That's when it happened. Suddenly, lightening flashed, thunder cracked and a voice from above laughed and said,

   "I am not now and never have been a rain god!...And I don't eat rice--much less in bowls."

   The entire community quaked in shock! This divine revelation was almost more than the community could stand! The Great Rice Bowl Competition had all been for nothing. The rain god, or whoever He is, wasn't concerned about the color, the shape or even the number of rice bowls anyone produced! By then it was clear: The Great Rice Bowl Committee didn't know any more about what He wanted than anyone else! They ran to their homes to hide. That was when the community abandoned the clubs, the factories, the Committee and the notion that God wanted bowls of rice. It wasn't long before the Great Rice Bowl Committee dissolved. 

   Everything went back to the way it was before the community first noticed the sign on the tree.

            Then it started raining--on everybody all at once!
   Now the community lives harmoniously without the Great Rice Bowl Committee. 
   (However, a BOLO (be on the look out) has been issued for information leading to the arrest, capture and conviction of whoever posted that blooming sign on the tree in the first place!)

******

   




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How is Your Soul-Count Coming?

The Baptists gave me my first assignment when I became a Christian at around 8 years old. I remember a preacher with a “wiggly” voice saying, “What will you do when you arrive at God’s throne and have no souls to lay before Him at His feet?”

I remember thinking, oh no! I don’t have any. I need to get some. My quest for souls began. The problem was that I couldn’t find any. That’s not to say that there weren’t any—I just couldn’t find them. There were plenty of bad girls and bad boys in school, but to them I was a prude, which rendered me incapable of influencing them for Christ. They thought I led a sheltered life. I didn’t “drink, smoke, cuss or chew or even go with boys who do”-or did.

I grew up during the Billy Graham Crusade era. If you couldn’t pray the prayer with enough souls, you needed to bring your unsaved friends to a Billy Graham Crusade. The conviction of the Holy Spirit was powerful at those. The resistance of your unsaved friend would likely collapse there. I tried to round up people, but I don’t think it worked. I passed through childhood and teen years and still had not one soul to lay at Jesus’ feet.

In the ‘70’s when I received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, I thought that surely this would make a difference in the soul-count. One day, my friend Mary Ann Brown and I decided to increase the count and go door-to-door witnessing. Why should only the cults like Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses reap the harvest behind the closed doors in my neighborhood?

Mary and I brushed up on our techniques largely gleaned from all the emphasis we learned in Evangelism Explosion and witnessing techniques that preachers taught us from the pulpit in the Baptist church. We donned our long skirts, wadded our Bibles under our arms and began to stalk victims who were doing things on Saturday afternoon like washing their cars and watching TV.

My nerves were on edge as I stepped onto each porch. Who was behind the door and how would the react? I gulped down my reservations and bravely knocked. I wrestled with the fear of man, which manifested in the wistful hope that no one was home. I didn’t want to hear the sound of footsteps coming to the door, and I didn’t want Mary Ann to see me trembling. What would she think and what would the hapless victim think?

I don’t think our soul count grew. I believe we did manipulate a few people into saying “yes” to all our questions and who allowed us pray a rote prayer with them. We were excited while they closed the door and went back to their favorite TV programs. I never saw what looked to be the slightest ounce of conviction on anyone’s face; but at least we had done our duty to tell them. Now they would have no excuse when they stood before God’s throne. We were sure that when they did, God would remind them, “Remember those two ladies in the long skirts that one Saturday afternoon…?” as he cast them into outer darkness.

That relieved me for a while. Perhaps I really did have some souls to lay at Jesus’ feet, but was the number enough? I wondered if other people felt as I did and what they did to achieve their soul counts. The teachers of all the soul-winning techniques had notches on their Bibles like gunslingers had on their guns whenever they killed an outlaw. Some of them had cards filled out with hundreds of names. These people had prayed the sinner’s prayer with them. My pathetic little life didn’t have that kind of impact on the lost, but I sincerely wanted it to. I felt like was failing Jesus because I wasn’t very good at this. I couldn’t “close the deal,” and no one every fell under conviction of sin as I passed by them on the street. I was sure that I would enter heaven’s gates without the souls I needed to warrant the approval of Jesus, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. You don’t have quite as many as Billy Graham, but you have an Honorable Mention.”

My stint as a conference speaker wasn’t all that much better, either. I couldn’t give good altar calls. One time I did all I knew to do. I posed the eternal question,
“Smoking or non-smoking?” People laughed; but once again, I had no souls to lay at Jesus’ feet.

I asked John Arnott one day how he did it. He has an incredible talent, or anointing, for getting people to come forward at altar calls. Who wouldn’t come to Jesus if a giant teddy bear asked you to? He patiently tried to explain how to do it. I still didn’t seem to get it. My soul count to this day is very low. If you have a solution for me, please send an e-mail or a text. I’m getting older by the minute and fear that I will not even get enough souls to show Jesus how much He means to me.

 How you respond to what I need to say in this blog depends entirely on how you believe someone reaches the point of salvation. Does everyone need to pray the sinner’s prayer to reach the Kingdom of Heaven?

I’m not so sure any more. C.S. Lewis did not enter the Kingdom of Heaven by praying the sinner’s prayer. He was originally a big-time atheist, challenging the most brilliant minds of the church on radio in Britain. He was a professor at Oxford.

One day as he was reflecting on the whole matter while riding through the English countryside, he said that he knew the exact moment when the faith to believe plopped into his heart. It was as though he entered a door. He could recall not believing and then suddenly believing. He became one of the greatest apologists for the Christian faith and one of the most prolific twentieth century authors of allegories and satires that illustrate the Gospel. He even made the high school literature book in the U.S. He was a radio favorite in his day among Christians because he could argue the faith with his former atheistic colleagues and disarm them. Great Britain was his audience. The BBC carried his debates live.

I don’t know, though. He may not have been truly saved because he forgot that he needed to pray the sinner’s prayer.

Since I am not very good at “closing the deal,” I do the next best thing. I just talk to people about what Jesus has done for me. Perhaps it’s just to assuage my conscience because I have a low soul count, but I’ve come to believe that God has a bigger role than we have imagined in any person’s salvation. He is the author of it, the one who draws a man to Himself.  He is the one who gives the faith to believe. The origin of salvation is supernatural. Regardless of how many cards you can present at the feet of Jesus filled out by people at the altar, you had very little to do with it.

Our responsibility is to give an answer to everyone who asks for the hope we have. We can preach the gospel of Jesus and cause people to hear of Him. It is far better if that message does not come wrapped in pleas for money or donations to your TV ministry. People will likely think that you have a hidden motive and that you care more about that than you do about Jesus.

I’ve always enjoyed how Billy Graham does it. He uses TV and does not let TV use him by placing himself in the awful place of having to raise funds to keep the program going. He goes on TV temporarily to air a crusade, and then goes off. He does not allow the religious monster to trap him. He is growing old now and doesn’t have crusades, but I heard him the other night on the air preaching at a crusade from 1957. It was so refreshing to hear the pure, simple gospel of Jesus followed by the invitation to receive Him. I wanted to “go forward,” and I’ve been a Christian since 1957! Let’s just cancel everything else and fund the reruns of old Billy Graham Crusades.

The accidental intercessor doesn’t have to go door-to-door witnessing to strangers or be on TV. As God opens doors in front of you, respond to the opportunity. You may be the link in a very long chain of influence which exposes the one God is calling to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A person can believe in the heart without you having to “close the deal.” This belief will precede any “confession of the mouth.” It is OK to pray the sinner’s prayer, but it is not necessary to declare salvation and notch your Bible. They will declare it, if it was real.