Speaker: Pastor Kenneth L. Pierpont
Text: Romans 14; Galatians 5:16-26
Place: Evangel Baptist Church–Taylor, Michigan
Date: October 26, 2014 AM
What To Look For In A Partner
Sunday morning September 14 was the morning after our oldest daughter Holly married. My heart was so full and so focused. I sensed the Lord’s direction to preach this message. After you listen to it you may want to share it with your children.
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Playing When We Should Be Praying
The house is silent in sleep. The world outside still dark. It is the beginning of a fresh, new week. It’s a peaceful and beautiful time of the year where I live. We are in the lush green of late summer. In just a few weeks families will be preparing to send the children back to school. The economy is making a slow come-back. For the most part our lives are stable and prosperous. Things have been a little thin lately but we still have enough extra for our cable and internet and the electronic gadgets that bring them to us. We still have enough extra to get away and enjoy some time “Up-North” in the summer. Not so in much of the world.
In the east it is daytime and I wonder what news we will hear from Israel and from Iraq. Israel and Gaza are at war and Iraq is torn apart by a group of Muslim extremists that make Al-Qaeda seem moderate. They are practicing unspeakable brutality against any religious group but their own.
This morning I’m thinking about the fact that I have known nothing but freedom without fear all my life. I can study and read freely. I can speak and write freely. I can apply myself freely to any work or legal enterprise that I desire. Lois and I were free to have eight children. We were free to teach them at home. Most of all, we have the freedom to worship God publicly with others of like faith. Never once in all my life have I feared for my life or safety because I assembled with other believers to worship God.
That’s not the way it is in many parts of the world today. Every day the news reports another atrocity against Christians somewhere in the world. Here in America we are preoccupied with worship styles and preferences as if church was a religious smorgasbord offering a little something for everyone’s personal taste.
Will there come a time we will regret not taking advantage of the freedoms we have enjoyed all our lives? Will there be a time in America that Christians will repent in tears for their pettiness and for the self-centered consumer attitude we have had concerning church?
While our brothers and sisters in other lands lay down their lives for Christ, let’s gather in groups and faithfully pray for them and while we can. Let’s take advantage of the freedoms we enjoy while we can. Let’s put aside personal preferences and prepare to suffer for Biblical convictions.
There are those who threaten to raise the flag of Allah over the White House. They would love to destroy our churches and snuff out our faith. Professing Christians in America gossip more then we pray. Most of us are playing when we should be praying. If religious persecution comes to a “theatre near you soon,” as many in other parts of the world are warning us, we will live to regret the games we play that we call church.
Let’s not be feasting and playing when we should be fasting and praying.
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
August 11, 2014
Did Your Mom Tell You This?
When I was a boy my mom always tried to force me to eat vegetables—spinach, oh my. Brussels’s Sprouts. Cauliflower. Broccoli. Squash. She was always buggin’ me to eat this stuff. I didn’t like any of it. Finally I reached an age where I could make all my own food choices. I began to eat what I wanted and walked away from veggies, except corn with butter and salt, potatoes with butter and salt, peas with butter and salt, green beans with butter, salt, and bacon fat—Oh, and fries. Other than that most days the only vegetables I came near were the pickles on my burger. I ate my veggies, but they were fried or made with plenty of—you know—butter and salt.
Well Mom hasn’t controlled my diet for many, many years. I eat exactly what I want in the portions that I want. To be honest, that has not been particularly good for me. I’ve been remarkably healthy, but now I’m at the age where my eating habits are catching up to me.
I go to the doctor. The first thing they do is weigh me. They act all professional about it, but they just keep bumping those weights to the right. They write on their little clip-board and they try not to act surprised. Then they check my blood pressure and my cholesterol levels. Let me save you the painful details. After I run up a healthy bill with the doctor he gives me a speech that sounds remarkably like the one my mother gave me with a few medical terms thrown in to justify the considerable expense of the visit.
You can take the medicine and enjoy the side-effects of the medicine and wash it all down every day for the rest of your miserable life with your orange juice in the morning or… you guessed it—you can eat your vegetables. Lay off all that fat-marbled meat with salt. Stop eating all those carbs with salt and butter and fat in its various and tantalizing forms. Ditch the junk food. Potato and corn chips don’t count as vegetables. A Large Coke, Bacon and Cheddar Quarter-Pounder, and a Large Fry does not constitute a balanced meal. Here is what you have to do to stay off the medicine:
Walk at least 30 minutes every day and eat brussels’s sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, squash, salad, salad, and salad with small amounts of lean meat. Meat is fine, but it is best if you consider it a garnish, not your main dish. I can save you a lot of money and embarrassment. I can save you money for drugs, weight watchers, diet pills, and snake oil.
Do what my mom told me years ago. Eat your vegetables and fruit. Get out and play a lot. Say your prayers at night. Don’t make a habit of doing wrong. When you do wrong fess up and make it right. Go to church. Did you hear me? I said go to church—I’m talking every Sunday not Christmas, Easter and when you don’t have the green to get away to the cottage. Go to church and eat your veggies.
I’m pretty sure that if you don’t eat your veggies you are likely to die young and if you know the Lord you are going to go to Heaven and they don’t have fried chicken and barbecued ribs there. You will have glorified tastes for fruit and vegetables and your mother will be sitting over there across the table from you with an “I-told-you-so” look on her face.
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
August 5, 2014
Please Listen to This
This morning my little brother Kevin pointed me to this meaningful interview with Pastor John Piper. This is worth its time. “The world does not need more
Here is a link to the podcast interview.
Here is the link to an article based on the interview.
Why Did She Do It?
Mom is on the left. Her sister, our Aunt Sue is on the right.
Why did she do it?
About fifty years ago in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Clancy Street. My Dad was a seminary student, a student pastor, and he worked at a grocery store in the meat department. Mom had my sister Melony and I make invitations to what she calls a “Five-Day Club.” It was early in the summer. We finished the invitations and went go door-to-door handing out the invitations to our Five-Day Club. The next week for about an hour and a half a day in the morning our back yard was spread with blankets and twelve to fifteen of the neighbor children showed up to hear stories about Jesus and sing Christian songs. Mom used the Wordless Book to explain the gospel. It is one of my earliest memories.
Why did she do that?
Mom had a huge file of visualized Bible and Missionary stories and songs and memory verses. When she visited other churches it was common for people to see her there and ask her to sing. She had an old Avon kit bag she would keep in the car and when asked at the last minute to sing, she was always ready. She would send one of us out to the car for the Avon bag and she would sing with all her heart.
Why did she always do that?
Forty-four years ago, the bus came to a halt in front of Jew Knight’s Sinclair Station on State Route 47 in the tiny village of Logansville, in central Ohio. It was Tuesday evening so instead of crossing the road to our house, my sister Melony and I walked to the little white church. Tuesday night was Good News Club night. Mom and Mrs. Davis gathered the children of the village and we sang songs—eager to take turns holding the flash-cards. We memorized bible verses, and reviewed the books of the Bible. Mom taught a Bible lesson illustrated with flannel graph. Mrs. Davis taught an exciting serialized missionary story with a cliff-hanger at the end so you would want to come back next week to find out what happened to Rangu the Witch-Doctor’s Daughter. There are treats and prizes and friends. Over the years I memorized the stories an irritated my mother by whispering the punch-lines to the kids sitting around me.
Why did she always do these clubs? Why were they so important to her?
She did it because she knew it worked. She knew that that story told from a colorful book without words could completely transform a life and a family forever. It did the Shipley family… a family all broken up back in the late 1940’s. It was at a Vacation Bible School held at Bertrand Bible Church where she and her sister first heard the story of Jesus and believed the Gospel and were saved and forever changed.
But there was another reason. She did it so that we would do it. On Mother’s Day weekend I always talk with my Mom and I say, “What can I get you for Mother’s Day?” She always says something like this: “I just want you to serve the Lord. That’s all I want.”
When I think about it, I do every single day of my life just what Mom showed me how to do years ago. I go invite people to hear about Jesus. I sing songs and teach the Bible and tell exciting cliff-hanger stories to stir-up people’s hearts for Christ and make Him known. I just do all the time what I’ve seen my mother do hundreds and hundreds of times.
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
May 12, 2014
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