February 25, 2007
I love this picture.
Giving God One Hour
I have been preaching since I was fourteen years old. That’s 34 years. My first message was only a little over six minutes long. I just said everything I knew to say, ran out of steam, and sat down. When it comes to preaching brevity covers a multitude of sins. Nevertheless, since then I have developed the ability to pretty consistently preach about ten times that long.
A few years ago I was preaching and at exactly noon someone’s watch alarm went off. You could hear it all over the church. The man made no attempt to turn it off. He just sat there disrupting the whole service and let it beep with his arm resting casually on the back of the pew. It was especially distracting to me because I was conscientious about preaching beyond the noon hour and I was at a critical point in my message trying to drive truth home to the hearts of people. For the next few months every time I went a few minutes past noon the man allowed his alarm to disrupt the service.
I try to forgive people when they do petty foolish things like that because if you let it get under your skin you will stay constantly upset and be of no real use to the Lord in ministry. Angry preachers don’t accomplish the purposes of God and they cannot meekly instruct those who are taken captive by the enemy. I’ve learned that I can’t really be a help to people with my own soul tied in knots all the time. The incident did come to mind this past week though.
I spent last week with twelve young men. We rose every morning at six to seek the Lord. On Wednesday we fasted for lunch and spent all day seeking the Lord and delighting in the Lord. We prayed and read scripture and encouraged and exhorted one another and sang hymns and took prayer walks and spent over nine hours delighting in the Lord. It was a sunny day–almost spring-like and for a few hours the snow melted. We all took and hour and a half to spend time with the Lord in creation. In all we spent many hours seeking the Lord and he met with us. We had a small but very real revival. There were tears, prayers, confessions and the experience of holy affections for God.
I had a long drive home alone on Saturday all the way through the state of Wisconsin north to south. Thinking on the week I realized that one of the reasons we all heard from the Lord is because we took time to wait before the Lord for hours.
Maybe you should get away and spend a weekend seeking God or turn off the TV at night and get up in the morning an hour earlier to spend time in fellowship with the Lord. I have had some sweet times with the Lord on a half-day off at a park with the Lord or skipping lunch and going to my car to read the Bible and pray. Last month over five hundred men sacrificed a half week to travel to Indianapolis. God met with us there in an unusual way when we sacrificed to be there and sought Him for hours.
We didn’t tell God we wanted to meet with him and worship him and then set our watch to go off in an hour. We can’t expect God to do profound things in our lives if we trifle with him. He reveals Himself to those who diligently seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)
Ken Pierpont
Brook Place
Hinsdale, Illinois
February 25, 2007
I Forget February 19, 2007
My mom always said, “Be true to your teeth or they will be false to you.” We are trying to stop rotting out our teeth with refined sugar.
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Hope lost a tooth last week. When she went to bed that night she gently reminded us that the tooth would be under her pillow in case we wanted to leave her money for it. That night when Lois and I laid our heads on our pillows we both plunged immediately and deeply into sweet, undisturbed sleep. Our “Tooth Fairy” responsibilities escaped our minds. In the morning Hope announced to Lois, “Hey, my tooth is still under my pillow.”
Lois said, “Leave it there. Tomorrow night we will try to remember to get it and leave you some money.” Hope is a lot like her mother, she likes it when people give her money and she’s not above reminding you to do so.
That night, when she put us to bed, she brought us a little card and said, “Do you have a pen? You need to write yourself a note so you won’t forget to give me money for my tooth tonight.”
Lois wrote a note, “Remember Hope’s tooth.” Hope stuck it on our headboard where we would see it in the morning. Early that morning Lois found the note and slipped some cash under her pillow. She doesn’t have all her teeth, but she had a big smile this morning anyway.
When you get our age things begin to change. You don’t always tuck your children in at night. Often they tuck you in. You notice aches and pains you didn’t notice before. You get in earlier at night and you like quiet more and sometimes you have to write yourself a note to remember the simplest things.
I forget why I wrote this. I am getting older and I forget stuff. Yesterday I sent the boys on a trip. They excitedly packed the trunk of the car with their snowboards and luggage and they were off to spend a few days visiting Kyle in Indiana. A couple hours later they called me.
“Is everything OK,” I asked.
“You forgot to give us the keys to the trunk,” they said.
They say when you get old you repeat yourself because you can’t remember if you said it before and you start forgetting things more. I can’t remember where I heard that. I’m glad God has a better memory than I do. Since I became a child of God when I put my faith in Jesus Christ’s death to pay for my sin He has promised to intentionally forget my sin and remember everything else about me.
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands – “. (Isaiah 49:15-16 ESV)
When I get old and loose my teeth and hair and end up wandering around the WalMart parking lot trying to remember where I left my car, or when I can’t remember which car I drove, it’s a comfort to know that my name will still be engraved on the palms of God’s hands. If you are a child of God He will never lose sight of you or forget you.
Ken Pierpont
Brook Place
Hinsdale, Illinois
February 19, 2007
My Valentine February 14, 2007
On September 8th 1978 I went golfing with a friend. That evening we stopped for pizza at a little joint across from the college. While we were waiting for our order a pretty dark eyed girl with long brown hair came in. I tried to get her attention. She resolutely ignored me. The next morning in the college cafeteria I noticed a group singing happy birthday to this same girl. I was again impressed with her beauty, her quietness, and her modesty. That night my roommate and I went to a church picnic. The first person I saw was this same beautiful dark-eyed girl with long brown hair.
Toward the end of the evening I noticed she was searching for something. She had lost her headband. I gallantly volunteered to help her. I didn’t know anything about courtship at the time so I asked her out. She said she didn’t know me well enough. I told her, “That’s the point of going out, to get to know each other.” I said, “Tell you what, why don’t we eat together in the College Café? She said, “I don’t know.” I said, “Well, you don’t have to make up your mind right now. I will be waiting for you Monday at 5:00 at the College Café, if you want to eat with me show up there.”
She said, “I don’t know.”
I said, “You don’t have to know. I will be there.”
On Monday I was waiting with my heart pounding out of my chest when she rounded the corner of the girls dorm with a few of her friends. When she approached I said, “Would you like to eat with me?” She said, “If you want.”
“I do,” I said. We ate together. During the dinner I talked her into going out with me that weekend. I took her Putt-putt golfing. She trounced me.
I have loved her every day of my life since then with a deepening love. She still makes my heart be fast. She is not a quiet as she used to be and she has lost her beautiful southern dialect and inflection, but I love to hear her talk.
This September we will celebrate 28 years of marriage. She has loved me, fed me, forgiven me, defended me, and borne eight beautiful children into the world. She is the heart of our home and the love of my life. She is sometimes fiercely loyal and she blesses me with good counsel and high expectations. On top of all that she just loves to shovel snow, which is especially handy today.
She is a gift from God. ” – her price is far about rubies – ” Like Boaz said of Ruth, she is a worthy woman. You can visit her site here.
Ken Pierpont
Brook Place
Hinsdale, Illinois
Valentines Day 2007
A Journey to the Heart February 8, 2007
We have spent the last full week on Wolf Lake in the western upper peninsula of Michigan in a little house on Duck Point with nine other young men. Duck Point juts out into Wolf Lake. The house if full of windows which look out on the lake on three sides. Dan and Wes were among them. The adventure was called a Journey to the Heart. We spent the time seeking the Lord, praying, studying the Scriptures and searching our hearts. Day after day we probed and examined our lives. Across the lake Holly led a group of nine young women in a Journey to the Heart for girls.
Driving north from the western suburbs of Chicago the traffic flows steadily along but the further north you get the more the city and suburbs thin out and the countryside turns to farmland. By the time you get north of Madison, Wisconsin forests of pines and birches, lakes and streams become more and more frequent and busy cares begin to lift.
Every morning we rose early and spent the first two hours seeking the Lord in prayer and silence. The men each found a spot in the house to seek the Lord and there prayed and spent time reading the Scriptures while the coffee brewed and the tea kettle rattled and whistled. At eight o’clock we would gather together and pray as a group and begin to study and search out hearts together in the light of the Scriptures.
We ate two meals a day, brunch and supper, standing and singing the doxology before enjoying our meal. The men cooked and baked their food and teamed up to clean up after each meal. There was a happy spirit of co-operation among them. There were humorous exchanges but not an injuring word was uttered through the whole week.
Toward afternoon we reserved some time to get outside and enjoy the beauty of creation and to keep alert while seeking God. On a couple evenings as the sun shown between the pines we hiked out and back two or three miles together. Some of the men walked all the way across the frozen lake. One day we took a two-hour snowshoe hike. Late one afternoon while the snow was falling we followed each other through the snow-flocked woods on cross-country skis while more white powder fell. On the Lord’s Day we walked all the way around the lake. The sun set while we walked and a waxing moon shone through the trees casting shadows on the bright snow. It was a few degrees below zero. The warm lights of the cottage were a welcome sight when they finally came into view.
In the evening we had fellowship, read, and watched some powerful messages on video. Before bedtime we read evening prayers, prayed together, reviewed Scriptures and drifted into the gift of winter sleep. One night before bedtime, after a long day I read a favorite message by Charles Spurgeon on the gift of sleep the Lord gives to those he loves. While I read the message the room was especially warm. By the time I was done most of the men were enjoying the gift of sleep itself. Late at night or early in the morning some of us would bundle up and walk outside to gaze in wonder at the brilliant night sky. I don’t know how not to worship God when I do that.
On Sunday we all went to worship together. Four or five inches of new snow had fallen on Saturday night so it was a slow beautiful drive to church. There was prayer and singing in our van as we drove between the snow-flocked forests. We were a third of the congregation in the little Bible Church in Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin. The little church was quaint setting a third of a mile back a curving lane in a snowy pine woods.
When we left the Northwoods behind, we had all had a taste of the sweetness of Christ and we we’re hungry for more of Him. In two years I will be fifty. I feel grief when I think how long it has taken me to see the great sweetness and stunning beauty of Christ. It has taken me so long to realize that Jesus is not just my Savior, but he is my Treasure. Before I go to be with Him I would like to know that my wife and sons and daughters and their sons and daughters have tasted of Christ and found him sweet, that they have gazed on Christ and that their beauty has ravaged their hearts so thoroughly that they will never be the same. I want to know that they treasure fellowship with Jesus.
O God, thou hast taught me from my youth: and hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works. Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come. (Psa 71:17-18 KJV)
Ken Pierpont
Indianapolis Training Center
Indianapolis Indiana
February 2, 2007
