Ken Pierpont's Blog, page 34
March 2, 2020
Let Me Pay For Your Gas
Jason who is a pastor on staff at a church in Minnesota received an e-mail from a young man he called “Eric.” In the spring of 2017. He lost job of 15 years. He turned to pain killers, Jim Beam, and Jack Daniels. On way to a job interview he stopped for gas even though he knew he had not money on his debit card. He decided to just run the card and play dumb when it didn’t to though. The attendant ran the card and it declined.
“Your card declined,” the attendant said.
The man behind him said. “Let me pay for you gas. I insist.”
He let him pay. The man who paid for his gas followed him out to his truck and invited him to visit his church Eagle Brook Church in Woodbury.
The guy was relieved to be able to tell him he lived in Blain and Woodbury would be too far for him to drive. The man said, “We have a new campus in Blaine.” Eric is not at all religious and politely turns him down.
Twelve months go by. He plunges deeper into drugs and alcohol. Things get bad at home. His teenage daughters are growing to hate him. He wife told him to get out.
One night he grabbed shotgun and last bottle of booze. He was going to drive out in the woods and end his life but the route he took went past Eagle Brook Church in Blain. He pulled into the parking lot and remembered the man who bought his gas.
He said, “I visited the church and it was as if God was speaking directly to me. I gave my life to Jesus and asked forgiveness. I walked out with hope.”
He asked his wife to go with him to church. She agreed but still insisted he move out. That Sunday after church they went for a picnic and he sought forgiveness from his wife and daughters. He told his daughters he was going to check himself into treatment. They wept and held each other.
That Sunday night he came to church support group and the next morning checked himself in to Teen Challenge.
The pastor inquired a number of months later for permission to tell his story. Eric wrote back and said; “I’m still in Teen Challenge. I’m still sober and I will be here until July.”
Always be alert for the Spirit to prompt you to love people around you who may be far from God and desperate for help.
Jason Strand, Teaching Pastor at Eagle Brook Church told this story in a message given December 23, 2017.
Bittersweet Farm Journal (Number 75) Chained in the Barn
Calendar Spring Yesterday was the first day of “Spring” out on Bittersweet Farm. The sun shone. The temperatures rose. The birds sang. The Sandhill Cranes flew over calling out with their crackling call as if to say; “Spring is coming. Spring is coming.” Hazard and I took a walk and met a few neighbor people and neighbor dogs we have not seen since last year. Here in our part of the world March is winter-like most of the month with a spring-like streak here-and-there. April still can feel wintery some, but we’ve had a taste of spring and spring and we are looking forward to it.
I spent a good part of yesterday reading a book by David Platt called Something Needs to Change. It is a fascinating book, a travel-narrative that reads like the book of Acts.
An Acts-Like Venture David Platt spent a week visiting villages high up in the Himalayan Mountains near Tibet. He was guided by a man named Aaron who had travelled to the area twenty years earlier to hike with friends. The things he saw broke his heart and he hiked out and determined to quit his job and come back and help the people who were dying of preventable diseases, losing their daughters to human trafficking, and living in deep spiritual darkness.
Nabin Their interpreter was a believer who had been abused and mistreated in his youth because his mother had died and his step-mother didn’t want him living in the house. People in the region, if they had a child with special needs would assume it was a curse and make them lived chained in a barn. His name as Nabin. Nabin was sent to live in the barn. One day Aaron was traveling through the area and asked for a place to sleep. A family said he could stay overnight in the barn. As he prepared to sleep in the darkness he heard and noise. He thought it was an animal, but it was Nabin. Aaron told Nabin of Christ and Nabin began to walk with Christ and helped Aaron in his mission. He lived chained in the barn for ten years until Aaron came and freed him.
Sex-Trafficking In one village Aaron said, “I want you to notice the complete absence of any young girls from age 7 to 15 years old.” The village had been emptied of young girls who had been sold off into sex slavery. The descriptions of this in the book are so sad I cannot bring myself to repeat them.
Hunger In one village a little girl came out to greet him and clung to his hand smiling. She would not let go of his hand. As he left the village she tapped on his pack—knowing there would be food in it. They had been strictly told not to give food individually. This would bring trouble. The little girl began to beg and plead. He had to pull her hand away and almost run away from her.
Spiritual Darkness. In a village named Lhuntse he met a young woman named Alisha. Aaron said; “Today you should ask her about her family.” Walking along the mountain path and that day the story spilled out.
Alisha’s grandfather was a “Devil-Talker.” People believed he could communicate with the devil. When she was born he said she was born on a bad day and that she would grow up to worship the devil. Her parents were afraid and offered sacrifices to the Devil every day on an altar they had built. The would send her out in the night to leave an offering for the Devil.
One day a blind man made his way along the dangerous mountain path to the village and told a story about a man no one had ever heard of before. The blind man said he was more powerful than the Devil. He said the man came from heaven and died and rose again and paid for the sin of the whole world.
Her father believed. The blind man gave him a Bible. Everything began to change. Soon her mother believed in Jesus, too. Her grandfather was angry and afraid. In the village the people feared that the devil would be angry so they shunned her parents and did not allow them to get water from the village well.
One day her mother and father walked steep mountain trail to another village to get water and never came back. Someone told her that they were killed in an avalanche. Years later the truth came out that her mother and father and been stoned by the elders of the village.
For years the village leaders always said, “Don’t believe in this Jesus. If you do you will anger the gods and bad things will happen to you like they did to her parents.”
Alisha left the village and went to the city. She found a church, counted the cost and was baptized. After she completed her education she returned to the mountain where she teaches school and tells others of Jesus.
Bittersweet Farm
March 2, 2020
The Suffering Church (Sermon) Audio
Series: Letters From Jesus
Sermon: The Suffering Church
Text: Revelation 2:8-11
Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan
Ken Pierpont–Lead Pastor
March 1, 2020 AM
https://kenpierpont.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/2020-03-01-AM.mp3
March 1, 2020
The Suffering Church (Sermon) Video
Series: Letters From Jesus
Sermon: The Suffering Church
Text: Revelation 2:8-11
Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan
Ken Pierpont–Lead Pastor
March 1, 2020 AM
February 24, 2020
More Love to Thee (Sermon) Audio
Series: Letters from Jesus (Rev. 1-3)
Sermon: More Love to Thee (Rev. 2:1-7)
Bethel Church-Jackson, Michigan
Ken Pierpont-Lead Pastor
February 23, 2020 AM
https://kenpierpont.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/2020-02-23-153001-gzimxqgxe6jyqblb3xol-audio-b1785s-e4779s-online-audio-converter.com_.mp3
More Love to Thee (Sermon) Video
Series: Letters from Jesus (Rev. 1-3)
Sermon: More Love to Thee (Rev. 2:1-7)
Bethel Church-Jackson, Michigan
Ken Pierpont-Lead Pastor
February 23, 2020 AM
February 20, 2020
Blue Ridge Adventure
I have a “friend” kind of an internet acquaintance, who was a college professor at Indiana Wesleyan University. He name is Keith Drury. He would always go on adventures during school breaks. I love to read about them. Once he section-hiked the Appalachian Trail. Another time he floated the Colorado River. He has hiked the length of the
Southern Upland Way and the West Highland Way in Scotland. He has canoed the Missouri River. Here is the one that captured my attention: one summer he and a friend rode the length of the Blue Ridge Parkway on mopeds.
Lois has always said she want a moped. I’ve never thought a moped would be useful where we live, but today I got to thinking. Some day I would like to ride the length of the Blue Ridge Parkway with Lois on mopeds.
Together we could see the blue mountains roll into the distance. Together we could smell the mountain laurel and feel the fresh breeze in our faces. Together we could sleep in little quaint places along the way and eat outdoors. We could sample the local food together and see the local sights and breathe in the spring mountain air. I think that might be a unique way to keep our love fresh. I have a file with maps and I’m making plans. We will see what happens. I don’t want our love to get stale.
What do you all think? Anybody have any ideas that might help us?
Bittersweet Farm
February 20, 2020
Write
Write words on paper…Form sentences—well-crafted sentences.
Cluster them into paragraphs.
Gather the paragraphs into stories… or essays or speeches.
Weave them together and bind them into books…
…books that warm people on winter nights,
…or make good company at the lake house,
…or expose the plight and pain of the poor and oppressed…
…books that the give the common man or woman a taste of opportunity or culture or beauty…
…books that move people to noble deeds or inspire them to live in a more honorable way.
This is the way nations rise and fall.
By words thus employed, destinies are forged and people rise up from hopeless despair… and men and women find their way to God, forgiveness, meaning, mercy and hope…
…all this with the simple pen.
February 19, 2020
I Was Wrong
Fred Craddock tells the following story about his family. “My mother took us to church and Sunday school; my father didn’t go. He complained about Sunday dinner being later when she came home. Sometimes the preacher would call, and my father would say, “I know what the church wants. Church doesn’t care about me. Church wants another name, another pledge, another name, and another pledge. Right? Isn’t that the name of the game? Another name, another pledge.” That’s what he always said.
Sometimes we’d have a revival. Pastor would bring the evangelist and say to the evangelist, “There’s one now, sic him, get him, get him,” and my father would say the same thing. Every time, my mother in the kitchen, always nervous, in fear of flaring tempers, of somebody being hurt. And always my father said, “The church doesn’t care about me. The church wants another name and another pledge.” I guess I heard it a thousand times.
One time he didn’t say it. He was in the veteran’s hospital, and he was down to 73 pounds. They’d taken out his throat, and he said, “It’s too late.” They put in a metal tube, and X-rays burned him to pieces. I flew in to see him. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t eat. I looked around the room, potted plants and cut flowers on all the windowsills, a stack of cards twenty inches deep beside his bed. And even that tray where they put food, if you can eat, on that was a flower. And all the flowers beside the bed, every card, every blossom, were from persons or groups from the church.
He saw me read a card. He could not speak, so he took a Kleenex box and wrote on the side of it a line from Shakespeare. If he had not written this line, I would not tell you this story. He wrote: “In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story.”
I said, “What is your story, Daddy?”
And he wrote, “I was wrong.”
Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories, Mike Graves and Richard F. Ward, eds., Chalice Press, 2001, p. 14.
February 18, 2020
A Holy Kiss
Gary and I attended a revival meeting one night years ago in the Ohio countryside. The preacher was a man who had founded a quasi-Mennonite sect. My friend was exploring fellowship with the group. The meeting was in the top floor of a large barn converted into a chapel. It was filled with sincere, humble men seeking God who took the Bible seriously.
Most of the men there that night were bearded. My friend Gary wore a full beard. I was clean-shaven. At the end of the service Gary and I went up to greet the speaker. Because Gary was bearded, the speaker must have mistaken him for a member of the group, so instead of giving him a firm handshake, he greeted him with a holy kiss.
There are five references in the New Testament to this practice:
“Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.” (Romans 16:16, ESV)
“All the brothers send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss.” (1 Corinthians 16:20, ESV)
“Greet one another with a holy kiss.” (2 Corinthians 13:12, ESV)
“Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss.” (1 Thessalonians 5:26, ESV)
“Greet one another with the kiss of love. Peace to all of you who are in Christ.” (1 Peter 5:14, ESV)
The Mennonite brother was serious about taking the Bible literally and I respect him for that. I don’t think we are expected to literally “greet one another with a holy kiss,” but I deeply believe that we are, in a way understood by our culture, to give a warm, sincere, pure and loving greeting to other brothers and sisters in the family of God. This may be more important that we think.
Peter said we are to “Love one another with a pure heart fervently.” People appreciate good music and helpful preaching and Bible teaching. These things are important. I’m sure a safe, convenient, comfortable building is important to a church. But deep in their souls, people crave human kindness, understanding, love. They need to experience divine love in a human form. Though we may not take this oft-repeated command literally, we should take it seriously and see to it that people who visit Bethel and those who make this their church home always receive a warm greeting and experience genuine love.
My friend Gary and I drove away from the meeting in silence for a mile or two. And then I said, “Gary, don’t worry, I’m not going to tell your wife about what happened tonight. Your secret is safe with me.”
Bittersweet Farm
February 16, 2020
