Bittersweet Farm

This morning I received a message from one of our sons. He was up early and preparing for work. He works in oil in west Texas but up until recently he was a police officer. A few years ago he was called to a home where an unspeakable tragedy occured. It was a horrifyingly sad scene. Overcome by the burdens of life and years of drug addiction a woman there had died at her own hand. He could not help but notice the near her body was a Bible opened to the book of Revelation chapter 12.

Revelation 12 is a chapter about War in Heaven and on earth—spiritual warfare. This morning our son had come across a little video on Instagram or TikTok speculating about constellations and Christ’s return. The speaker had a novel and sensational interpretation of what Revelation 12 means.

I will not go into detail about the meaning of Revelation 12 other than to say it describes spiritual warfare across time including Jesus, the Devil, and the nation of Israel past and future.

Writing Light Into the Darkness

Now I’m up early at my keyboard in the corner of my room writing light out into the darkness. Here is the thing. It is vital that you understand the world around you. It’s never been more important then it is now and things have never been more confusing or troubling. It is a matter of life and death—spiritual life and death that you understand the world around you from God’s point-of-view.

How Are We To Understand Our World?

According to God’s design every person should be a serious student of the Word of God. The Word of God should be our meditation day and night. Many, many places in the Bible teach us that to flourish spiritually—to be blessed by God one must meditate on the word of God day and night. You can read this right now in Psalm 1.

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” (Psalm 1, ESV)

When you read the scriptures carefully it is very clear that God has a plan for people to understand truth and live a life blessed by God. We are told to meditate day and night, but we are also told to assemble and systematically teach all of the Bible.

Look was Paul said when he was facing death and departing from the elders of the Ephesian church.

“…I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Acts 20:20–21, ESV)

“Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” (Acts 20:26–27, ESV)

God intends for faithful pastors to teach the people the whole counsel of God and not to withhold anything that is helpful to them.

Notice what Paul wrote to young Timothy:

“Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.”” (1 Timothy 5:17–18, ESV)

Paul said, be sure those who preach the gospel can live of the gospel. Pay them so they have time to faithfully, systematically teach the Bible. If they do not teach the whole Bible faithfully they will have blood on their hands according to Acts 20:26-27 quoted above.

In 1 Corinthians Paul says this:

“In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.” (1 Corinthians 9:14, ESV)

Don’t Miss This

Now since this is true what does it tell us about how God has designed things to work? He wants us to sit under faithful and systematic teaching of the Bible. He does not want his church to be a social club or a special interest group. He has not designed the church to be a group gathered to influence the world culturally or politically. The church is designed to assemble and teach the Word of God.

Churches should support faithful pastors. Pastors should study deeply and take their teaching seriously. Care should be taken to see to it all the people learn all the Bible. Children should have classes arranged around a systematic teaching of the Bible

Children should be introduced to all the major characters of the Bible. They should go a number of times through the timeline of the Bible and geography of the Bible lands. They should be taught all the major doctrines of the Bible repeatedly as they pass through their childhood.

What Should You Do?

What could possibly be more important than full and faithful participation in a faithful local church built on the truth of the Bible? This should move us beyond occasional attendance.

Most pastors will tell you that faithfulness in church attendance is declining in America. We are in a time of falling away—a season of apostasy. It is critical that now of all times we not only participate in weekly church meetings, but that we take serving in the church and supporting the church very seriously.

Our son was up early seeking answers but he was not depending on TikTok for something so important as understanding how to guide his wife and three little sons. He is in the Word daily. He is listening to teaching on podcasts. He is seeking out truth and a right and godly understanding of his world.

The Shipleys

My grandparents on my mother’s side were Bud and Charlotte Shipley. When they came to Christ as young parents everything changed. They turned from sinful empty living to Christ. God restored their broken marriage. They found a local church and participated and served and gave faithfully for the rest of their lives. At first they were at Calvary Baptist Church in South Bend. Calvary planted a church closer to their home and they were a part of that church plant called Grace Baptist Church. A few years later Grace Baptist planted Fulkerson Park Baptist in Niles, Michign just bit further north. Later I was called to be the Youth Pastor at Fulkerson.

They are now with the Lord but while they were alive you would find them among the faithful at Fulkerson Park in each service, Sunday School, Morning and Evening Worship on Sunday, and always on Wednesday night for prayer meeting. They taught and helped and gave and supported missionaries and attended revival services and invited friends and witnessed to people far from God. They had christian books and magazines by their chairs and continually talked about the things of the Lord through the week.

Their lives had been rescued and transformed. They clung to Christ and to His church. They loved the church and the people of the church and they loved and supported their pastors even though they were people of very modest means.

 

Why Have I Written This to You?

I’m up in the corner of my room as the sun comes up this morning writing this because my heart is so deeply burdened for you and for your family. The church is still God’s plan. Faithful pastors preaching the whole counsel of God are still God’s way. Thorough, faithful, systematic Bible teaching and preaching is still the way God intends for us to nourish our souls.

The other night I met a man with a wife and new child. He was a bright educated man who had studied to the doctoral level. He was intelligent and polite. He told me that he was a Christian. I asked him, “Where do you go to church?”

He said, “Well, we really haven’t been to church in years. We don’t have a church.”

Here was an otherwise intelligent man who identifies as a Christian who does not value the church at all. He does not support it. He does not serve. He does not contribute. He does not participate. He does not even attend—not even occasionally.

As a spiritual leader of his family he has blood on his hands. (Acts 20:26-27) He would never neglect his child’s nutritional needs, or educational needs, or physical needs for food and shelter, but he in completely disconnected from the church God designed for spiritual and human flourishing.

If you are an occasional church attender or if you are sporadic in your attendance and don’t contribute or serve the local expression of the church of God you are disobedient to God and you are neglecting a powerful means of grace.

If your participation and identification with the local church is a hit-and-miss pattern, if you attend only when you don’t have more interesting things to do or trips to take, it is very, very likely that the next generation of your family will walk away altogether.

There is Something About It.

Our son, Dan, who called this morning was telling me the other day about how difficult it is to get all three of the little toddlers settled into a Sunday School class and Jr. Church. He said, “The other day we got to sit through church together. I loved it. There is something to that.”

He is right. There is something to giving to missions. There is something to teaching a class. There is something to setting up and tearing down and putting away and cooking and planning and organizing and seeing to it you do what you have to do to see to it that your church is a strong church faithfully and systematically teaching and preaching the whole Bible to all the people.

Thank God for the internet and Google and cell phones and iPads and social media to spread the word. Thank God for good Christian music at our fingertips and faithful eaching on our phones and computers. Thank God for everyone trying to make truth known on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, but theser are all supplimental to the way God designed things t work in humble, simple, faithful clusters of Jesus people gathered in churches doing what God said to do and hungrily devouring the teaching of the Bible.

Where is your church? How do you serve and support it?

 

Bittersweet Farm | September 19, 2023

Yesterday I preached at Bethel Church. In the afternoon I drove over to visit my parents. In the evening I told stories at Northeastern Baptist in Kalamazoo driving back through the night listening to a scary podcast. I arrived home and was greeting by fresh cookies so it was a good day. Just before midnight I crawled into bed and slept soundly through the night without moving.

At Bethel Baptist I am doing a series on the effects of the fall of man described in Genesis 3. The series is called Life is Hard. Yesterday’s message was “What to Do When Marriage is Hard.” Here is the heart of the message: If marriage is God’s idea and it is good, why do so many find it hard? The answer is this: Marriage is hard because the sin-curse on the world had affected all of us and everything. The world is broken. Creation is broken. People are broken. All of us.

Is there any good news? Yes, indeed… there is good news. The Bible calls is The Gospel—a term that means good news. God has sent his Son Jesus into the world to die for sin and for sinners to reverse the effects of the fall and one day there will be a new heaven and a new earth and no more curse. The New Heavens and the New Earth will be populated by the forgiven—those who have received God’s mercy. So here is the good news regarding marriage:

God has made a way for us to bring him glory in any and every marriage circumstance. There are examples in scripture of people who are single who give glory to God and live honorably in every circumstance… married, single again, divorced, separated, married to an unbeliever, sinners married to sinners—every marital situation you can imagine—there is a way for them to live in a way that brings glory to God.

God Can Grow Beautiful Things In The Dark Soil of Suffering

Devote your marital condition to the Lord and purpose to flourish by seeing the intent of God.  When you trust God and Obey him in your struggle, when you do not sin or despair when others hurt you, when you turn to God and see the hand of God and trust the hand of God in the struggle of your marital situation, he will grow beautiful things in that dark soil. Don’t sin when you are sinned against. Don’t despair when things don’t go they way you expected. Lay the Gospel over your marital hardships. When bad things are happening to you, God is always doing something good. Seek holiness first and happiness will always follow. Pursue God and enjoy pleasures forevermore.

Pursue God. Obey God. Trust God. Do your best to use your marital situation, whatever it is to bring honor and glory to God…

Casting Down Idols of the Heart.

When we marry we are tempted to look to our spouse for what only God can do. We tend to give to our spouse what belongs to God alone. This is idolatry. We can make money and idol or things. We can turn people into idols, relationships, even good ones like marriage into God substitutes—idols of the heart. God wants us to look to him and point to him above every other thing so he will see to it that our marriage cannot meet our deepest needs so we will not make an idol of our relationships and miss the beautify and glory and ratification of God.

You can watch the message here. I would love to hear your feedback on the message.

In the late 90’s we lived in the village of Fremont, Michigan in the parsonage of the First Baptist Church at 515 East Pine Street. Our youngest, Hope America, was born in Fremont. It was the last place where all ten of us lived together under the same roof.

Fremont is a small town about an hour north of Grand Rapids and about thirty minutes from Lake Michigan. It as the home of Gerber Baby Food. Our church and home were a few blocks apart in the village. I loved living in Fremont.

In about 1998 my brother Kevin encouraged me to start posting my stories on-line. He created a site for me—kenpierpont.com. Soon I started posting new stories regularly. What I was doing would be called a blog now but the term was not widely used when I started doing it. I have published no less than once a month and usually at least once a week without interruption since then for over 25 years.

Rising Early to Write in Quietness. The family was young and noisy and I loved spending time with them so to write I had to rise every morning and five and write over in the corner of our bedroom in the darkness, the glow of the monitor my only light. When the sun came up the kids would rise and my writing would be done for the day.

The Stonebridge Newsletter. About that time I started an e-mail newsletter. I called it the Stonebridge Newsletter (Pierpont is a French word that means stone bridge). The newsletter grew quickly to over 5000 subscribers. I published essays weekly that were often picked up and published by Heartwarmers4u by Azriela Jaffe and Hearttouchers by Michael Powers and even a few for Stories for the Teen’s Heart and Chicken Soup for the Soul. I was published in few large and a few small home school publications. I spoke for some homeschooling organizations and these all helped grow my newsletter.

The Local Paper. Rich Wheater, the editor of the local Times-Indicator began to run my story every week in the local pape—every Tuesday as I remember. That was one of the most satisfying publishing experiences I have ever had. He included a bi-line and a photo so people would often meet me in stores and strike up conversations about my stories.

I still smile when I think of the simple joy of sharing stories with new friends at Bill’s Shop and Save or at the Wise Office Supply or the Haveman True Value Hardware a few blocks from the church.

On Wednesday nights through the school year our church sponsored a kid’s club called AWANA. Many Christians who attended other churches participated along with our own families. Our children loved the club. They loved the games social opportunities especially, I think. In the parking lot of the church on a fall or spring evening I would often mill around among the people waiting for their children, talking and playing in the parking lot. People would sometimes tell me that my story made them laugh or cry or both or they would tell me how it reminded them of something that happened to them. Those memories still warm my heart.

I suppose that is one of the reasons I write—to make that human connection. To share a touching or funny incident. I have always included stories in my messages but once used they cannot be used again in the same pulpit so versions of those stories were included in my blogs or my outside speaking.

We moved away from Fremont many years ago and since then I have written five books and published hundreds of stories. I have gathered many other cherished “writing memories,” but those conversations around the little village of Fremont are tucked away like cherished photos—yellow around the edges. Those stories are still in my archives deep in my webpage. You can find them here.

I have had a few large paydays for my writing and I always welcome them, but still after all these years of writing and publishing I cherish the simple human connections that sharing heartwarming stories can bring and most of my writing is and probably always will be free. I hope you enjoy the stories. I would be well-rewarded by hearing from you.

Bittersweet Farm | September 15, 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life is Hard

If you have been around a few years you have already discovered that life can be very hard. I’m a Christian pastor. I believe the Bible is the word of God and I believe you can build you life on it’s truths, rightly understood. The Bible plainly explains why life is hard and what to do about it.

Why Life is Hard

To state things in a straightforward way, life is hard because sin has cursed the whole world. You can read about this within the first three chapters of the Bible. It’s not happy reading but it explains a lot. The world we live in is cursed. It has a sin-curse on it. As a result the very earth itself is damaged. Relationships are affected by the curse. Theologians call it “the fall of man.” Relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters are affected by the fall—the curse.

The rest of the story of the Bible details God’s gracious plan to reverse and to lift the effects of the curse on people and on the earth itself.

When a person no longer has hope that he can cope with the multiplied hardships of life he is overcome with despair. But there is a story, a series of stories and poems and letters and discourses given to us by God through men, that is designed to restore your confidence that the sin curse can be overcome and that one day we can live on a renewed earth together with people we love in peace. The effects of the curse on creation will be lifted. The pain of broken relationships will be withdrawn.

How to Cope When Life is Hard

If you carefully follow the storyline in the Bible you will see that it is through Jesus that the curse is reversed and the earth and those who are redeemed—restored by Jesus and forgiven and rescued—are able to live on earth one day without the curse. By the end of the Bible a New Heaven has descended to a New Earth and it is a place of beauty and order and the worship of the One True God, Jesus Christ.

So one day Jesus himself will reverse the curse on earth and those who have turned from their sin and believed in him. Until then the scriptures teach us how to live in a world still cursed with hope and confidence—how not to be overwhelmed and overcome with despair. The scriptures give clear and practical guidance to those who want to live with hope in a world that is hard, but the Bible does not yield these treasures to those who do not take the time and make the effort to study, understand, and apply those truths.

Next time you feel crushed by the sadness of life, the curse and the brokenness of the sinful world among sinful people. Next time you feel defeated by your own sins and failures, look to Jesus and study the story of the Bible. Get a Christian mentor who can help you understand what steps to take to experience a life of hope. You will see in the scriptures why life hurts and why life is hard and what Jesus has done about it. You can make your way back to God through Jesus Christ. There is hope when life is hard. There is help when life hurts.

Send me a note. I will coach you on this if you like. Don’t yield to despair when life is hard.

Bittersweet Farm | September 7, 2023