Ken Pierpont's Blog, page 27

Don’t Curse the Darkness, Be A Light (Sermon) Video

Series: Turning the Bethel Wheel (Insights from Philippians on Following Jesus and Helping Others Follow Jesus)

Title: Don’t Curse the Darkness, Be A Light (Philippians 2:12-18)

Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan

August 2, 2020 AM

Lead Pastor Ken Pierpont

Don’t Curse the Darkness, Be A Light (Sermon) Audio

Series: Turning the Bethel Wheel (Insights from Philippians on Following Jesus and Helping Others Follow Jesus)

Title: Don’t Curse the Darkness, Be A Light (Philippians 2:12-18)

Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan

August 2, 2020 AM

Lead Pastor Ken Pierpont

https://kenpierpont.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Don_t-Curse-the-Darkness-Be-A-Light.mp3

Routes and Routines; Stories from Bittersweet Podcast

We all have routes and routines that can be mundane or even monotonous to us. If you are wise you will try to see them as you will see them years from now. I used to take my daughter to cosmetology school every day on the way to work. Today I would gladly pay money to make that little trip again and have a talk along the way like we used to. Listen for more:

What Wants to Be Like Jesus Today? (Sermon) Audio

Series: Turning the Bethel Wheel

Title: Who Wants to Be Like Jesus?

Philippians 2:1-11

Bethel Church–Jackson, Michigan

July 26, 2020 AM

Ken Pierpont-Lead Pastor

https://kenpierpont.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Who-Wants-To-Be-Like-Jesus-Today-1.mp3

Who Wants to Be Like Jesus Today? (Sermon) Video

Series: Turning the Bethel Wheel

Title: Who Wants to Be Like Jesus?

Philippians 2:1-11

Bethel Church–Jackson, Michigan

July 26, 2020 AM

Ken Pierpont-Lead Pastor

Rambling to Inspire (Podcast)

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Here is the latest of my Stories from Bittersweet Farm Podcast. This one is a bit rambling but in it I have shared some ideas that I think will encourage you during these times when so many are hopeless.

 

I noticed this sign on the waterfront last week when I was at Camp Barakel thinking about how noisy the camp would normally be on a summer afternoon had the government not mandated rules that required closing the camp for the summer.

Bittersweet Farm Journal (Number 88) Tomatoes and People

I’m up early working outdoors on my little portable desk at the corner of the Carriage House overlooking the north meadow. The meadow is freshly mowed so that lends charm to the already serene view I have enjoyed or had in my heart since October 1, 2017 when we first drove out Vrooman Road and noticed the place.

Last night I cleared a little flower bed in the Walnut Grove. I tried to get some “Wandering Jew” going there. We will see how that goes. I may regret it, but I wanted to try to get something going and that crazy stuff, like God’s ancient people, thrives wherever you plant it. It has little blue/purple flowers.

I’ve spent the past two weeks speaking at summer camps in northern Michigan—The Springs and Camp Barakel. I spoke to Sr. High Camp at the Springs and workers at Camp Barakel. In between I traveled to Ohio to perform the wedding of the daughter of Charles Perlos, who sold us Bittersweet Farm, and preached each weekend at Bethel. Now I have gladly settled back into my work at Bethel Church.

The sky is always changing over line of trees that divides the near-north field from the far-north field. Last night is was blue and brushed with faint pink. This morning it is partly blue but mostly gray with clouds. The birds are noisy as if I am the one who is a guest on their property. I hear a whirr and turn to see a humming bird over the bee balm and coneflower in the flower bed I like to call “The Bird-Bath Garden”. It used to be a flower bed but I am pleased to publicly announce that I have four very promising tomato plants growing there.

As a friend gently pointed out recently, I am in my seventh decade of life. In all these over sixty years I have not yet eaten a tomato I tended myself. These plants came from tiny, tiny starts given to me by Pam Wentzloff. I drove over one afternoon last spring to visit and stood the required distance away from Randy in the front yard and talked about things. Randy and Pam are new to Bethel and it was good to get to know them and see their home. I put the plants in the back of my car and drove over to the church and set them out in the sun while I worked so the little starts would not wilt and die in the heat of the car.

It was good to chat with Randy in his pleasant neighborhood, but beyond a meaningful pastoral visit, I was not at all confident that I could tend the little plants until real tomatoes grew on them.

When I brought the plants home they did not look very promising. I set the container on the porch and moved it around to keep it in the sun and watered it until the some of the little plants started to reach up toward the sun. In my inexperience I think I killed a few of the starts with the water. When I set the plants out they could barely hold their heads up. Now there are four of them and they are over two feet tall.

As and act of wild optimism I have given them each their own wire cage upon which to grow and bear fruit.

When I returned from camp I noticed they were doing well and I fairly broke into celebration when I saw there were a few yellow blossoms starting.

I know exactly what I am going to do with the first tomato I tended myself. I will set it in the window and head down to Polly’s to get some good bacon. I will enlist my Kentucky wife to fry some crisp bacon and make BLT sandwiches with Dave’s Killer Bread, lightly toasted, that’s what.

With people and with tomatoes it is God who gives the growth. He supplies the real miracles. When I preach Psalm 8 I always say, “He helps us and he lets us help him.”

When helping people grow and flourish it’s good to remember the tomatoes. He is the one who does what only he can do. We can tend to people and pray and celebrate growth but only God can do the miracle part. Only God.

So every day I watch my tomatoes and tend to the people God has placed in my care. I water them with the word and tend them and celebrate every promising blossom of potential fruit and I pray and listen, I preach and exhort and encourage. Sometimes I laugh and I celebrate. Sometimes, honestly, I grieve and my heart is heavy. Some people just don’t look like they are gong to make it, but then God can do what I cannot do.

I’ll let you know about my tomatoes.

What Happens in Vegas

What Happens in Vegas

I have a friend, lets will call him Mark. He us not a Christian yet but I have had many opportunities to talk with him. He is a smoker, so I could always catch him in his rocker on the front porch. That is where we had our best conversations.

One day, I invited him to breakfast. I had been praying for he and his wife and their children and I wanted to have his attention, look him in the eye and have a good, meaningful, gospel conversation.

It was a solid two-hour conversation over breakfast. After we had eaten and the waitress had taken away our empty plates and we were sipping coffee he leaned back and asked me a question about God that I could tell came from somewhere deep in his soul.

They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. That’s not true. What happens in Vegas never stays in Vegas…it always follows you home… You can never drive away and leave your conscience behind. That’s not how it works…

Mark’s Question:

He said; “I had gone to Vegas. I had gambled away everything and I had just enough money to get home. I felt empty and defrauded and I was at the bottom. I was driving through the Nevada desert all night and I prayed to God to show himself to me. Nothing happened.”

“Well,” he chuckled, “I hit a rabbit, but that is all. What do you make of that? Why didn’t God show himself to me?”

How would you have answered his question? Have you ever felt really burdened with your life and with your choices and cried out to God in the darkness and silence and wondered if you we really are your own and all alone? Did you ever feel like you prayed and God was silent?

The Bible plainly teaches that there are times when God is silent and seems distant. In 1 Samuel God spoke to little Samuel, but that was unusual and it had been a long time since God had spoken in Israel “…And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.” (1 Samuel 3:1, ESV)

 

God Can See You When You Can’t See Him and

Often He Works Powerfully in Silence.

 

Psalm 10:1

“Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?”

Psalm 13:1–3

“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,”

Isaiah 45:15

“Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.”

1 Timothy 6:16

“who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.”

Our son Daniel is a dad now. He’s a tall, strapping las enforcement officer in New Mexico. Almost every night I watch little videos of his son, our grandson, Waylon. Little Waylon has a head of thick black hair like his daddy did when he was small and an appetite for food. The little dude is always munching on something. His daddy was the same way.

We were eating at a fast food restaurant one day when he was about four. After we all finished our meal the family went to the car. I asked Dan; “Hey Danny, do you want some ice cream?”

“Yes!”

We stood in line to order but the line was moving slow, so I gave up and walked over to the door to leave. When I reached the door I realized that Danny wasn’t with me. I turned around and saw him standing there studying the pictures on the menu board. For fun I just waited and watched to see how long it would take him to discover that I was not there.

At the time he was such a little fellow that when he began looking around for me I could tell he was looking at the pants of all the people who were standing around him. Not recognizing any pants that looked like mine he turned his little head upward and started desperately searching the faces of the people standing around him. He didn’t see my face anywhere. Panic spread across his face.

“Danny,” I called out to him.

His head snapped in my direction and when he saw me a he broke into a huge smile and ran to my side.

In the moment I had an epiphany. I cannot always see my Heavenly Father, but his eyes are always on me.

There will be times in your life, maybe soon, when you will feel like God is far away or absent. You will not be able to see him. You will feel alone. You are not alone in this feeling. The greatest characters in the Bible, men and women of faith, confessed this same experience.

If you read the fascinating story in the Old Testament book of Job you will see that Job had this same experience, the experience of not being able to see God, but he affirmed the truth that even when he could not see God, God could see him.

“Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I do not perceive him; on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him; he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him. But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.” (Job 23:8-10)

Right now you might not be able to see him, but he sees you and he is at work in you even when he seems silent or distant. Never forget. He is always with you. he can always see you. his eyes are on you. His ears are open to you, even when you can’t see him.

My Answer for Mark

I told my friend Mark at breakfast, “Well God sent me with the truth, that is the way He usually works. He speaks in our hearts, and in his creation, and in our conscience, but he especially speaks through his Word… but sometimes he speaks thought others. Mark I think if you commit your life to Christ and trust Him one day you will with him and you will look back over you life and you will see that hand of God and you will see that you were never alone.”

“…he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”” (Hebrews 13:5, ESV)

“Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.”

(Psalm 139:7–12, ESV)

I Rejoice and I Will Rejoice (Sermon) Audio

Series: Turning the Bethel Wheel

Title: I Rejoice and I Will Rejoice

Philippians

Bethel Church–Jackson, Michigan

July 19, 2020 AM

Ken Pierpont-Lead Pastor

https://kenpierpont.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/I-Rejoice-And-I-Will-Rejoice.mp3

I Rejoice and I Will Rejoice (Sermon) Video

Series: Turning the Bethel Wheel

Title: I Rejoice and I Will Rejoice

Philippians

Bethel Church–Jackson, Michigan

July 19, 2020 AM

Ken Pierpont-Lead Pastor