Spring at Granville Cottage April 21, 2008
We moved into the Granville Cottage just as the last leaf fell from the trees. I have to count again to make sure, but I think we have nine trees in our yard. There are a number of shrubs and bushes. Now that spring is here we’ve had some happy surprises around the cottage. A few days ago we were delighted to discover daffodils springing up along the fence in back and from the ground cover. Along the very back fence is a huge, brilliant, yellow forsythia bush. It just flames in the morning sun. We open the back door to the beautiful sound of dozens of birds. Maybe someday I will even get a Dogwood to grow in our yard.
Last week I had a happy experience. Jan Karon read a little piece I wrote about her and posted at www.kenpierpont.com and she posted on my site. So I guess I’m mixin’ it up with the big-hitters now. She is a very gracious Christian lady.
I hope you will take time to listen to the messages in my series Everything You Ever Need based on Psalm 139. You can find it on the podcast page at www.evangelbaptist.com
Well, Hope turned nine yesterday and we are going out for her little birthday breakfast today—so until next week, I have to run. I have a little girl here that’s growin’ up on me and I have to spend time with her while I can.
Spring Tomorrow March 20, 2008
Hannah and I ran some errands this evening. At the Riverview Library I found two nice, hardcover fly-fishing books for sale in the lobby. For a paltry quarter each they are mine. Leaving the library the sun had just sunk from sight. The sky is beautifully clear tonight. In the southeast a bright full moon is rising. Tomorrow is Good Friday and the first day of spring. My heart is quiet.
Kissing Kyle March 16, 2008
This weekend it was a little like spring. I took a walk along the shores of the St. Joe River with my grandson, Kyle Kenneth. He has the sweetest little dark eyes and tiny soft lips. He’s my buddy. I even talked him into giving me a kiss. It was a happy moment.
No Attention March 10, 2008
This morning I was looking at an old journal entry. Here is what it said;
“We are trying to teach Hope to sleep in her own bed. In April she will be five years old. She is used to sleeping with us. The other night we had her stay in her own bed in the girl’s room. She was not happy. She was crying so I went into her room and said; “Why are you crying, Hope?”
She said, ‘I don’t like sleeping in here. I don’t want to sleep in here. I don’t get any attention.’”
I know how she feels. I hate it when I don’t get any attention.
No matter what their age, paying attention to people is a powerful thing—it is a very powerful thing. Try it. People will love you for it.
The Father’s Voice March 8, 2008
Sometimes you can be enjoying a beautiful, mundane afternoon and be plunged into a heart-rending crisis within a few seconds. That happened to us one quiet spring afternoon a few years ago. I was walking out across the yard enjoying the laughter and play-sounds of the children coming from the other side of the barn.
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I Give Up March 7, 2008
I’ve always had trouble getting my oldest son Kyle to lay his hair down real conservative-like. Now it looks like it’s going to be one of those generational things. This is a picture of my grandson Kyle KENNETH Pierpont. Looks like he’s not going to make the Bob Jones catalog cover either.
You can see other cool pictures of Kyle and read his Dad’s stuff here. I am diggin’ on the striped shirt. Those things have been in since Opie Taylor.
Bus Ride Home October 25, 2007
Gravel roads girdled the gentle hills of rural Licking County. I rode the bright yellow school bus that growled along them one fall afternoon. It was comfortably cool. The sun was going down the crisp blue, October sky. From my seat in the bus I watched the fields and forests pass. Wind stirred golden fields of corn drying for harvest. Bright sunlight glistened off blue farm ponds. Red and yellow Maples stirred up a love of and longing for beauty in me that has never been fully satisfied. (more…)
Let’s Clean the Garage October 19, 2007
I’m not all that sharp but I have learned a few things from being a father of eight and husband of over twenty-five years. Left to themselves young boys usually do not do a very good job on cleaning the garage. They either fight with each other or they just frog around and do a halfway job.
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Questions to Open the Heart of Your Child April 24, 2007
I love my children deeply but there are times when I feel an emotional or spiritual distance like they are drifting a little out of reach. Sometimes one or both of us are distracted or busy. The distance may be the result of my own selfishness or irritability or hurt that steams from anger. Sometimes we will have a hurtful exchange or they may say, “You don’t understand,” or “You don’t listen.” I have been humbled often to realize that there were important things I just did not know about my children. Those secrets are often used by the enemy of their souls to separate them from myself and their mother and eventually from God.
One of the most powerful ways to “discover” the heart of your son or daughter is to spend time listening to them. I like to plan and “event” that may be a full day or a weekend and include a specific hour or two of intense, focused listening.
I have taken my sons on camping and hiking trips for this purpose. I have spent the day with my daughters walking the lakeshore and having dinner and spending time on a long drive with the radio off talking. It can be as simple as going to breakfast together or going to a quiet café or coffee shop for a couple hours. We agree to turn off our cell phones and give that time to each other. During this event or session, thoughtful questions are a powerful instrument to become an expert at each child.
I try to ask questions, look them in the eyes, ask follow-up questions, hold my tongue, avoid lectures or exhortations, and try to probe down as many layers as I can. All I want to do is discover during this time. I don’t have to act or fix anything. Just careful listening is enough.
Listening your way into the heart of our sons and daughters helps me to identify the custom-made lies that Satan is using to try to destroy each one of them. I can take their answers to my wife and we can take them to the Lord together and plan projects, outings, assignments, and support that will help them. Each child has dreams, goals, and desires. Each child has fears, troubles, guilt, and hurts that they are unlikely to tell you unless you are skilled and diligent at asking questions.
The effect of these outings, sessions, questions, and projects is a growing “bond” between you and them. They know you care about them. You understand them and help them understand themselves. They see that you are devoted to their good and helping them achieve their dreams.
These questions have been floating around for years and I have found them to be very powerful. I think they originated in Mr. Gothard’s office, perhaps directly from his pen with the assistance of the men he was working with at the time. They are not original with me, but I have used them a lot and they are very powerful.
My (Youth Pastor) Son, Kyle called this evening and mentioned that some of the men in his church were meeting this evening and the material below was brought up in the conversation. Sometimes people have trouble finding this because it is buried in the archives, so I re-posted it here where it would be easy to find, at least for a while. If you are intrested in a printed copy of this with come additional material, send me an e-mail and I will send it to you.
ken@kenpierpont.com
Duet. 6:4-9 Mal. 4:6
Set aside time just to ask questions and listen. Don’t teach or answer, just ask more questions and, if you need to, write the answers down. Make a careful study of each of your children. You could make a notebook for each child and record their answers in it.
1. What foods do you like or dislike the most?
(Goal) To break the ice.
2. Who is your best friend? I Cor. 15:33
(Goal) Who is the greatest influence of their peers?
3. Who do you most want to be like when you grow up? (Goal) Whoever it is they are moving toward that type of character.
4. What embarrasses you most in our family relationships?
(Goal) To discover what we are doing or what is going on in the family that causes them to reject themselves.
5. What is the greatest fear in you life?
(Goal) Tells us where Satan is getting into their lives. (Fear is of Satan)
6. What is your favorite activity?
(Goal) To design ways and projects to have special fellowship with your children. To have a better relationship.
7. What is your favorite song? Favorite kind of music? Favorite group?
(Goal) To see if we have a problem with music.
8. What person outside our family relationships has most influenced your life? How have they influenced you? (Goal) To determine who has influence over your children as role-models.
9. What do you like to learn about the most?
(Goal) To give direction for what to train them in.
10. What accomplishment in your life so far gives you the greatest sense of achievement?
(Goal) To discover what I can use to help build their self-worth and then put a spiritual emphasis to it.
11. What irritation in our family bothers you the most?
(Goal) To discover what problems in the family I need to work on and then teach the child how to respond to sources of irritation.
12. What really makes you angry?
(Goal) To find out in what areas are they not yielding their rights and expectations to God; and then help them work on those areas. Phil. 2:3-11
13. What do you want to do when you grow up?
(Goal) To discover what they are moving toward. To help them develop a sense of destiny.
14. What has been the biggest disappointment in your life so far?
(Goal) To know what is hurting them at times; and then to explain God’s purposes for disappointments.
15. If you had the power to change anything about the way you look, would you use that power; if so what would you change?
(Goal) Find out where they are rejecting themselves.
16. What do you appreciate the most about each member of our family?
(Goal) Focus on positive qualities in family. (Later) Encourage them to go tell that member of the family.
17. What biographies have meant the most to you? (Goal) To see if they are getting life stories from Godly people.
18. What do you like to do the most as a family?
(Goal) How can we have family fellowship that this child will enjoy. Then plan an activity.
19. Encourage them to be honest. If you could change anything about me, what would you change?
(Goal) To discover where I am damaging my relationship with them.
20. When you get to the end of your life, what do you want to look back on and say that you accomplished for God? (Goal) Discover if they have a purpose in life.
The next steps are the most important:
Pray with your wife about some of the things you learned during your session. This question times will bind your heart together with your son or daughter.
Spend a little time during the week to discuss some goals or to spend time talking about one of the questions.
Develop projects or thoughtful responses and goals based on what their answers were.
Two Green Gumdrops April 23, 2007
It is a beautiful morning. The air is fragrant with spring and this is the time of day when the birds sing in the huge white pines north of the house. I need an excuse to go out. Instead of brewing my own coffee, I jump in the car and drive the back way along Salt Creek to get a cup from McDonalds. One of the children has used my car. I try to keep it impeccably neat. It’s not at all new, but it runs well, gets good mileage, and it is clean. Turning to back out I notice two green gumdrops on the back seat. They make me pray:
“Lord, how am I going to teach my children not to eat gumdrops? Their teeth are going to decay away. Lord, I try to keep my car neat. It’s a good testimony that way. I want my children to learn orderliness and cleanliness. They are character qualities. Without character qualities they won’t do well in life. Lord, how do I teach them to clean up after themselves? It seems like I’ve told them these things a thousand times. Lord, I’m worried about these things. Will my children have teeth when they are my age? Will they live in squalor?”
But on my way for coffee I look at these two green gumdrops on the seat beside me. I am tempted to toss them out the window so my car will be clean but for some odd reason I can’t. I want to hold on to them. I think maybe it was little Hope who left them there.
Driving along the creek toward my morning coffee I suppose Hope will be our last child. It won’t be long and there will be no green gumdrops in the back seat. There will be no little chattering girl in the back seat. I will still turn my worries for her into prayers, but they will be about weightier matters than tooth decay and personal tidiness.
Those two green gumdrops on the seat beside me soften my heart. I pray again; “Lord, please help me to have a heart full of patient love for Hope and for Lois and for the other children. Remind me that our days together are numbered. Help me to have the sweet long-suffering of Jesus on my face and in my heart during the few short hours each day that I get to be with them. When years from now they remember my face, Jesus, please help them remember it with a smile of loving approval and not with a scowl of impatience. May the aroma of patient love permeate our home like the fresh fragrance of spring and give me a song every morning like the birds in the pines at dawn. Oh, and Lord, thank you for letting me find those two little green gumdrops in the back seat this morning. Amen.”
Ken Pierpont
Brook Place
Hinsdale, Illinois
April 23, 2007
Ken's new book - Sunset On Summer, now available for order, $13.95 each.