Someone is Praying for You February 27, 2006
I paced the first base coach’s box and watched my little boy warming up on deck. Every cell of his body reflected eager nervousness. When his turn came he stepped into the batter’s box and went through the motions he had seen others perform.
It was his first year of baseball. Every game he put in his three innings in right field which earned him a couple at-bats during each game if things went well for the team. When he was in the batters box my heart was there with him, so much it is impossible to describe. He is my first-born son.
His uniform pants were usually very clean and white. He was smaller than the other boys. The years between ten and twelve can be very significant growth years. Kyle was athletic, but lacking in size, experience, and the confidence that goes with them because he was ten.
When he stepped into the box he would look sternly out toward the pitcher with serious consentration. He never looked relaxed and loose- that was not his style. He would bend his knees and try to “spring” up and down to stay loose. He would take his pracitce cuts with the bat. The ball would come in and I would pray.
If you were watching me that day you would have no way of knowing that pacing up and down that coaches box I was deep in prayer. I prayed, “Lord, I know there are people with serious needs and staggering problems, but please, Lord, please let that little boy get on base. Please let him get on base.” Every time Kyle came up to bat I prayed for him with all my heart.
A few times that year my desperate prayers were answered and my son safely reached first base. One of those times he was immediately called out because he turned toward second base, but he did get on base. The next year he got on base a lot more. By the time he was twelve it was rare for him not to get on base. Nearly every time he came to bat he would eventually score and bat in other runners.
Last week, fourteen years later this same young man stood before a crowd of a couple hundred young people with his Bible in hand. He was sharing about the process our faithful God has been using in his life in bringing him to a place of surrender to a life of vocational ministry. My mind went back to those early prayers and I found myself again pouring out my heart to God, “God bless him, help him, guide him, use him. Make a way for him. Keep him from harm. Deliver him from evil.”
All my life I have had other who poured out their hearts to God for me in prayer every day to make good in life. I thank God for that. I hope you have someone who prays for you with that intesity. I hope there is someone in your life who stirs your heart to pray for them in that way. Everyone ought to have someone pray for them like that.
Ken Pierpont
Riverfront Character Inn
Flint, Michigan
February 27, 2006
Little Flocks in the Wilderness February 25, 2006
“It is a great advantage to a minister to commence his public life in a small village, where he can have time a quiet for study and reading: that man is wise who avails himself of that opportunity.”
-C. H. Spurgeon
All-Around Ministry
In the harvest field now ripened
There’s a work for all to do;
Hark! the voice of God is calling
To the harvest calling you.Little is much when God is in it!
Labor not for wealth or fame.
There’s a crown—and you can win it,
If you go in Jesus’ Name.Does the place you’re called to labor
Seem too small and little known?
It is great if God is in it,
And He’ll not forget His own.When the conflict here is ended
And our race on earth is run,
He will say, if we are faithful,
“Welcome home, My child—well done!”
When I was seventeen years old I drove north every week to minister to a little flock in the wilderness for year before I left to study at Moody Bible Institute. When I was twenty-one God entrusted Lois and me with another little flock in the wilderness. This time it was the good people of Beaver Chapel in Mercer County, Ohio. It was there our oldest son, Kyle was born.
One winter morning it snowed so deep that it took me over an hour to shovel a path over to my study. I started a little heater, brewed some coffee and spend sweet hours with the Lord reading E. M. Bounds on prayer and then kneeling by a worn little chair on the hardwood floor of my study and talking to the Lord.
David’s older brother mocked him and taunted him to go back to his “little flock in the wilderness,” but it was there tending “a few sheep in the wilderness” that God was forging in him the character needed to lead a nation. It was there that young David was learning to be a man after God’s own heart.
Not everyone follows the same path into ministry but tending little flock in the wilderness was a good way for us to begin.
Please Help February 24, 2006
Would anyone out there be willing to send the poor missionary family money in large amounts so we can afford to buy some new socks for our children? We are just bare-ly clinging to life here.
Just kidding folks. We have never done better. God is so good to us. We all have plenty of nice socks with no holes. Why those girls each have their own bathroom stuffed with makeup and their own closets crammed with clothes.
Lois even has an expensive camera and the leisure to walk around snapping pictures every day. And we’re not even going to start talking about my books.
Bad Tradition February 20, 2006
I started a little tradition a few years ago. We were in a department store. Lois and the girls were looking at makeup and stuff. We were trying to avoid the young women in the white coats intent on spraying us with things when an idea came to my mind that I should have resisted. I picked up a lovely sample of women’s cologne in a spay bottle and when Chuk turned away I gave him a generous shot of it in the back of the neck. I thought he smelled real pretty.
He was a little narrow-minded about it. He only thinks things like that are funny when he comes up with them first himself. A few months later the boys began to do it to each other. Since then none of us have really been safe.
Last spring I was preaching a series of meetings for a fellowship of churches in Illinois. Dan and Wes came along and we spent the week boarding with a widow from one of the churches. In the apartment where we were staying the good lady had left a bottle of strong perfume on a dresser. It had probably been there awhile. It was vintage stuff. Wes and Dan were getting ready for church and Dan thought Wes could use a little frgrance, so when he turned his back he gave him both barrells.
Wes let out a loud, gutteral, angry scream. In all my life I know I will never encounter such a fragrance. It was the horseradish of cologne. Three days later you could still smell it on him. At church that night people looked at us kinda’ funny.
The other day the boys crossed the line and took advantage of me when my back was turned. I heard a comotion behind me and turned around. Wes was smiling at me and said, “I got ya’.” He had doused the back of my wool coat with a floral odor that is going to be very hard to explain to my wife.
Sometimes its best just not to get things started. Once things get out of hand there’s no going back. Take it from me. Over the years I have come to wish I’d had never fired the first shot in the perfume war. It’s like sin. It best not to get the thing started in the first place.
Sin is no joke. We should never take it lightly. It has a way of getting out of hand fast. Before you know what has happened things are out of control. And, like the old preacher once said; “Son whatever you don’t control will quickly control you.” At first sin is a trifle to us, a harmless indulgence, before we know it we have been “…caught in a trap and taken captive by the devil to do his will.” (2 Timothy 2:26).
We should always take sin seriously, especially secret sin. It has a way of spreading like cancer and making any kind of life impossible.
Ken Pierpont
Riverfront Character Inn
Flint, Michigan
February 20, 2006
Snowy Weekend
We just returned from a weekend retreat at Camp Barakel. As always the food and fellowship at Barakel were good. I preached four times at Barakel, a total of about nine times this week. This morning we welcome a nice group of young people to the Stonebridge Newsletter from the retreat this weekend.
It was a beautiful, cold weekend up north. There were over ten inches of snow on the ground. The pines were all dressed in it. We did a little ice skating on Saturday afternoon and a little extra napping and reading in our warm, pine-panelled quarters. At night the winter sky was cold and clear and silent. The lake was a wide expance of white visible thorugh the woods. Late Saturday night I stood on a hill above the lake watching my breath and the steam from a cup of coffe rise up into the cold air. It was refreshing to my spirit to drink in God’s creation.
I was reminded of something Jim Elliot wrote in his Journal fifty years ago:
“I walked out to the hill just now. It is exalting, delicious, to stand embraced by the shadows of a friendly tree with the wind tugging at your coattail and the heavens hailing your heart, to gaze and glory and give oneself again to God-what more could a man ask? Oh, the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on earth! I care not if I never raise my voice again for Him, if only I may love Him, please Him. Mayhap in mercy He shall give me a host of children that I may lead them through the vast star fields to explore His delicacies whose finger ends set them to burning. But if not, if only I may see Him, touch His garments, and smile into his eyes—ah then, not stars nor children shall matter, only Himself.
“O Jesus, Master and Center and End of all, how long before that Glory is Thine which has so long waited for Thee? Now there is no thought of thee among men; then there shall be thought for nothing else. Now other men are praised; then none shall care for any other’s merits. Hasten, hasten, Glory of Heaven, take Thy crown, subdue Thy Kingdom, enthrall Thy creatures.” (From the Journals of Jim Elliot).
This weekend we will be preaching and singing at Family Fellowship Bible Church near Imlay City.
Oak Brook February 13, 2006
This weekend Lois and I have had all or part of five days together. That is something I am not sure we have done in twenty-five years. We enjoyed our annual Directors Meeting and Valentine Banquet at IBLP Headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois. It was a treat, complete with valet parking, live classical music, a five-course meal, candles, flowers, gifts in our room, and lots of great fellowship with others who serve in our ministry.
All the way from Flint to Oak Brook Lois read the biography of Oswald Chambers, “Abandoned to God.” Every few minutes she would share a passage with me.
On Sunday morning we drove south about an hour to the little village of Momence, Illinois where I preached at Calvary Baptist Church. It was delightful to minister to a local church. I am always thrilled when a pastor trusts me to preach to his people.
We met a bunch of Stonebridge Readers this weekend and even had brownies and coffee in the home of the Timus and Donna Rees family. They are on staff at Headquarters and help crank out some of the finest printed resources in the evangelical world.
This evening I will speak at a Valentine Banquet here in Oak Brook. Thursday I will speak to couples at Byron Baptist Church and then we will spend next weekend in ministry at Camp Barakel up north.
Graceful Napping
Aren’t naps just a luxury? I fell asleep in a big overstuffed chair in a bookstore once but the kids woke me up because I was drooling and they were embarrassed. Cats aren’t like that. They don’t embarrass their offspring when they nap. They are perrrfectly natural at it. Cats just close their eyes and drift off into sleep in the coziest positions and places. We used to have a cat who loved to curl up and nap on the hearthstone when the fire was burning.
One morning I came down to the living room early. I thought I was the first one up but then I noticed that Holly, then a little mite of five or six years old, had gotten up first. She was still in her yellow flannel gown her mother made her. She was curled up into a little ball like a kitten, sleeping in a patch of sunlight that was streaming through the window. The sunlight made a pattern on the floor and Holly curled up right in it.
Immediately I thought of a phrase in the book of Jude verse 21; “…keep yourself in the love of God…” The love of God has flowed steadily into my life, all my life, in a thousand ways. I do not have to ask God to love me. I do not have to motivate him to love me. I do not have to be good to be loved. The love of God streams into my life every day like sunlight through the window. When I abide in his love and stay in fellowship with Him, when I remember the love of God for me, then I experience the love that is always there. I’m sure that’s what Jude meant when he wrote; “…keep yourself in the love of God…” John was the Apostle of love, he called himself the disciple whom Jesus loved. It was John who recorded one of Jesus’ final instructions for his followers; “Abide in my love…” (John 15:9)
When I find ways to love Jesus and when I discover new ways he loves me I am “keeping myself in the love of God.” That’s when I curl up in the love of God like a kitten on the hearth, like a little child napping in a patch of sun.
Ken Pierpont
Oak Brook, Illinois
February 13, 2006
A Little Orange Honda February 5, 2006
Pastor Larry Whiteford drove a little orange Honda. Even though he was the Senior Pastor and the founder of the church, he didn’t have a special parking place for himself. He parked at the far end of the parking lot and walked in on Sunday morning. He always arrived before anyone else. He could have parked anywhere he wanted to park.
One day he explained this unusual behavior to me. “I don’t think it’s good to take that honor upon myself. There are older members that need to park close. I need the excersize and the walk gives me a chance to pray for the people that will park in those spaces and attend our services this morning.” I admired that way of thinking.
Years later I drove up to the church where I had been called to be the Senior Pastor. There was a nice sign that read: “Sr. Pastor Parking.” Next to it were two places that said, “Associate Pastor Parking.”
In my heart I liked the idea of being honored, being considered important. Remembering Pastor Whiteford’s practice though, I immediately asked the trustees to remove the signs and replace them with “Visitor Parking” signs.
I told them I would park in the far end of the lot. I said; “I could use the excersize and while I am walking in I can pray for the people who will be attending the serives.
Walking toward the church one morning I forgot to pray for the people. Instead a dark thought came into my mind. I thought to myself, “I’m glad I’m not like those other pastors who are so eager for their own honor that they have private parking spaces.”
Pride is a subtle sin that can thrive in a religious environment like mold in the shower. It is a dragon that is very hard to slay.
“Humility comes before honor.” (Proverbs 15:33 ESV)
Ken Pierpont
Riverfront Character Inn
Flint, Michigan
February 6, 2006
I’m not the first guy to notice this Josh Goleman collects “Pastor Parking” signs.
Pentwater, Michigan
Edgar DeWitt Jones
Edgar DeWitt Jones caught my attention from the opening paragraph of his book, The Royalty of the Pulpit.
“I shall long remember the summer of 1948 at Pentwater Michigan, where I summered with my family. To be sure, one cannot easily forget the wonder of “the million-dollar sunsets” that we were privileged to see from our cottage daily, nor the whispering of the wind in the pine trees that nightly soothed us to sleep; but the circumstance that made this particular summer so unforgettable was the fact that I took sixty-seven volumes of the Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching with me and read them, every one, in preparation for this book.”
I’ve been to Pentwater. It’s a lovely little West Coast of Michigan town. Mr. Jones and his family summered in beautiful Pentwater Michigan on Snug Harbor almost sixty years ago. They walked the dog in the evening. They watched sunsets over Lake Michigan. They lay still at night and listened to the wind in the pines. In that context Mr. Jones read over sixty-books on preaching. Each book contained a set of annual lectures on preaching given at Yale. Then he wrote The Royalty of the Pulpit.
What is your idea of the ideal way to spend a summer or a part of a summer? I have an active imagination so I can think of almost unlimited ways. I could hike Pictured Rocks or Isle Royal with my sons and take in wide views of Lake Superior. I could tour Scotland and relive the stories of the brave Covenanters. I could take my daughters to Prince Edward Island. I could bike around Mackinac Island in the company of my wife. These, of course, assume that I have unlimited time and financial resources. When I think of good ways to spend a summer it is hard for me to imagine a way to improve on the way Mr. Jones spent the summer of 1948.
Now you know a little something more about me.
Ken's new book - Sunset On Summer, now available for order, $13.95 each.