Ken Pierpont's Blog, page 17
August 30, 2022
When Does God Answer Prayer? (Daniel 9:20-23) Audio
When Does God Answer Prayer? (Daniel 9:20-23) Video
Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan
August 28, 2022 AM
Pastor Ken Pierpont
When Does God Answer Prayer? (Daniel 9:20-23) Video
When Does God Answer Prayer? (Daniel 9:20-23) Video
Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan
August 28, 2022 AM
Pastor Ken Pierpont
August 25, 2022
Dreaming of Big Things | September 25, 2022 | Bittersweet Farm Journal
On my day off I often drive the back way to the village for breakfast. I like to sip my coffee and roll through the countryside and watch the seasons turn. Last night I rode 18 miles through the countryside at dusk on my lime-green gravel bike (still thinking on an appropriate name) and noticed the beauty of the cornfields the play of sunlight in the clouds.
Early in August a weather system from the north brought cool temperatures to Bittersweet Farm and a couple of days of steady soaking rain. I sat in my window writing one afternoon and just listened to the rainfall for hours. As a result we are enjoying a green, green August. It’s cooler than normal and sometimes early or late in the day it feels like early fall.
Things are growing. It almost seems like you can watch the corn grow. September and October corn are dry and golden brown. June corn is tender and short. July corn is growing green and lush, but August corn is tall and in the tassel. It’s beautiful to behold especially in the evening with the blue sky overhead or in the morning with sunlight shining trough.
I have spent many hours outdoors this summer. I committed to two spring men’s retreats and two fall men’s retreats and only one summer camp this year so I spent my summer concentrating on preaching through Daniel, shepherding Bethel, and riding my bike.
Dreaming of Big Things
I’m up early and thinking about big things. I have big projects and big plans and big dreams and big ideas, but it’s hard to make big things happen. Sometimes I dream about what it would take to reach the tens of thousands of people in our county who don’t really experience the love of God or taste the sweetness of his mercy. Really, I dream and think and read and pray about that a lot, but I only personally touch a tiny number of them.
I’m embarrassed to admit how eager I am to speak to big crowds and be invited to big places and have lots and lots of people read my books. I have fantasized about being a best-selling author when I should have written a note of encouragement to a loved one or parishioner.
When I think of it, I can be so fixated on the grand and grandiose that I don’t see the simple things I can do right in front of me. I could pay for the breakfast of the person behind me in line with the old car with the loud muffler and the truck held closed with a belt. I could help somebody whose resources are slender move into their new apartment. I could visit a lonely person for an hour and bring them lunch. I could buy breakfast for a young man whose father was never really in his life and help him learn some of the things my dad faithfully taught me. While I am waiting for an invitation to speak at a great evangelistic rally, I could make quiet conversation with a neighbor, love them and nudge them godward.
I know a lady who makes pumpkin bread in the fall and sells it to raise money to send boxes for Operation Christmas Child. She isn’t really out to change the world, but because of her small, repeated efforts hundreds of children somewhere in the world will get a Christmas Box this year and they will hear the story of Jesus.
In the early morning hours like this one, when my heart is quiet, I remember the power of small and simple things oft-repeated. Speaking to a few men down at the jail, or a small class at a Christian School, or a little homeschool co-op gathering, or a humble, modest, out-of-the-way camp. I realize that big things often grow from tiny seeds quietly planted and faithfully watered and tended with quiet, faithful love. A small group could make a big difference for someone, a circle of prayer, a small bible study, a little team of ladies conspiring to love.
Out on Bittersweet Farm I have a huge project in mind. Done right it would take a lot of time and cost a lot of money. In my fertile imagination I can see the finished product and imagine my joy and satisfaction when it is complete, but it is an overwhelmingly large project so I keep pushing the start of it down the calendar. What I really need to do is take a small load of stuff to the Goodwill. It wouldn’t take much to start. Just a small beginning would be a big victory.
When I am quiet enough to listen to the still small voice I can hear it clearly, just do the small thing in front of you faithfully over and over again and one day you will see what God did. I remember the little boy with the loaves and the fishes and what happened when he gave them to Jesus.
Bittersweet Farm
August 25, 2022
John 6:1-9 Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), 2 and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. 3 Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. 4 The Jewish Passover Festival was near. 5 When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” 6 He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.
7 Philip answered him, “It would take more than half a year’s wages[a] to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!” 8 Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, 9 “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”
August 23, 2022
11–The Potent Prayer of A Seasoned Saint (Daniel 9:1-19) Audio
11–The Potent Prayer of A Seasoned Saint (Daniel 9:1-19) Video
Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan
August 21, 2022 AM
Pastor Ken Pierpont
August 21, 2022
11–The Potent Prayer of A Seasoned Saint (Daniel 9:1-19) Video
11–The Potent Prayer of A Seasoned Saint (Daniel 9:1-19) Video
Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan
August 21, 2022 AM
Pastor Ken Pierpont
August 18, 2022
The “Orienting Function” of the Bible
Sunday morning August 14th I opened my message by explaining what I call the “Orienting Function of the Bible.”
People who take the Bible seriously come to know the mind of God and the ways of God and they understand the world around them even when things are difficult and disturbing. People who study the Bible and believe the Bible and meditate on the Bible tend to see a deeper significance in the common things around them and tend to have a deeper purpose and a higher joy than those who don’t… The Bible has an orienting function in our lives and families. it helps us keep our balance and know our place. It helps us deal with our past and prepare for our future. It tends to move us from despair to hope, from aimlessness to purpose, from emptiness to fulfillment. It helps us understand evil and it assures us of its limits. The passage we will study today has had that orienting effect on the faithful for many centuries around the world.
Cold Rain and Thunder | August 18, 2022 | Bittersweet Journal
Last night I put on my sunglasses for a bike ride and started down the trail. I rode east from Teff Road between the two sections of Lime Like into the woods and past fields east. Between Moscow and Reynolds a dark storm came in unexpectedly from the north east and soaked me with cold rain. I continued east into the woods but the rain was coming hard and the woods offered no protection. I turned back, then the thunder started. Now that will elevate your heart rate.
For years I have been enchanted by the undulating flight of the goldfinch along country roads. This week, for the first time, I experienced it in a different way and it was arresting.
First, the goldfinch is misnamed. It should be called the “brilliant yellow finch,” but that’s another point.
I’ve been riding my bike every day this summer. Kimmel Road is freshly paved and smooth as butter. I was rolling down Kimmel Road the other day and I saw a flash of yellow in my peripheral vision. For a few moments my speed was matched by the flight of a brilliant yellow bird rising and falling in flight along the ditch beside me. Seconds later it flew into the fencerow and out of sight. Just a splash of brilliant yellow above all the verdant green and it was gone.
I breathe a prayer. Lord, help me never to get callous to the little things along the way.
August 14, 2022
10-God’s Purposes Will Triumph Over Great Evil (Daniel 8:1-27) Audio
10 – God’s Purposes Will Triumph Over Great EvilDaniel 8:1-27
Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan
Pastor Ken Pierpont
August 14, 2022 AM
10 – God’s Purposes Will Triumph Over Great Evil (Daniel 8:1-27) Video
10 – God’s Purposes Will Triumph Over Great EvilDaniel 8:1-27
Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan
Pastor Ken Pierpont
August 14, 2022 AM
August 12, 2022
Bittersweet Farm Journal | August 12, 2022 | 46 Years a Pastor
Good Morning Journal Subscribers;
It’s a glorious summer day in Michigan today. It is my study day (Friday). I love my study day. I look forward to it all week, crunching my administrative, counseling, discipling, evangelism, hospital calls, pastoral duties and meetings into the other days of the week. I started before light and took a break to ride my new gravel bike a little over 13 miles. It was about 58 degrees at the beginning of my ride out by Lime Lake. The sky was blue as October. It felt like fall. People walked along the trail wearing flannel or sweats. Yesterday I biked from Jackson to Concord for breakfast with a friend (Joe Sexton). After our breakfast we rolled back to town. It was good fellowship, good exercise, and a good eating at Mel’s Place on Main.
46 Years A Pastor
This picture was taken at Linville Church in Ohio a couple years after I was called to pastor my first church. Also pictured is my brother-in-law Pastor Jim Evans, who pastors now in the Coshocton, Ohio area.It’s Thursday morning as I write this. It was a Wednesday evening when I was officially called to pastor my first church and I was seventeen. I had been preaching since I was fourteen and I grew up with a preacher dad, so I had some preparation for ministry, mostly long conversations with Dad, faithful teaching from mom, and lots of practice in doing or watching all the things you do when you are a pastor and this since my earliest memory.
During my junior year in high school I was invited to sing at a little country church near the Ohio-Indiana border. After my singing one of the leaders of the church asked if I would be willing to return the next week and sing again and also preach. I returned the next week. That week Don, the senior leader of the church, asked if I would be willing to be their pastor. Within a week or so I was driving up on Sunday morning teaching Sunday School and preaching. In the afternoon I would eat with one of the good farm families of the church. In the evening I would preach again. On Wednesday night I drove up and conducted Prayer Meeting. On some Thursday nights or Tuesday nights I would drive upon and go calling around the church meeting people and trying to lead people to Christ and invite them to the church.
They licenced me to the gospel ministry in April of 1977. I actually attempted to preach through Revelation on Wednesday nights that year. Some of my high school classmates made the drive up to hear the “Teen Preacher.” A couple girls professed faith in Christ on morning. In the spring word of the teen preacher got out and Rev. Franklin Cody, who pastored the large Methodist Church in Greenville, invited me to preach for a huge Boy Scout Jamboree in the city park. Over twenty young men responded to the invitation for salvation. Only the Lord knows the fruit of that.
It’s been 46 years since then and God has given me the desire of my heart for all these years pastoring churches in Ohio, Michigan, and even Illinois for a bit. I have no other plan. I have no higher goal. I have no greater joy, beyond my fellowship with Jesus and my precious family. My interest and passion have never waned.
Bittersweet Farm
August 12, 2022
