One of the most important things a man must learn is how to hate evil and love what is good. Here are eight ways to increase your hatred for evil.
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School Again?
Yesterday at Bethel Church we might have had the high attendance of the summer. You get the feeling things are changing. Summers are shorter. They don’t just feel shorter. They are shorter. Schools are starting sooner. Camps are shortening their summer programs. Last week the weather was even cooler, fall-like. Stores are stocked with school supplies. Young families are shopping for back-to-school school clothes.
In our neck of the woods school starts this week.
Lois and I raised eight children without ever sending them off to school. If we had it to do over again, we would do it all over again in a heartbeat. We would try hard to do it better, but we would absolutely do it again. We liked not being driven by the school schedule. Monday was my day off and every Monday was a field trip or family time.
Still in our neighborhoods there was a difference once school started you could feel in the air in our little town. Things just felt more businesslike—more academic. No cluster of kids out under the streetlight. No children riding bikes out in front of the house. The trampoline sat silently in the back yard. No sound of clacking skateboards. A burst of traffic around 3:30 p.m. but by early in the evening the streets grew quiet and empty.
Home-schooling is not for everyone, of course. But learning together at home happens in every family. Of our 20 grandchildren, some of them are in public schools, some in Christian schools, some of them are taught at home.
For all of them we pray that above every other thing they come to know and love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.
“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:5, ESV)
Yesterday I needed to pick something up at the store. I noticed huge school supply displays and fall clothes for little children. A woman and her about 12-year-old daughter were having a serious conversation about notebooks. The little girl had a look of concern on her face. I was just a stranger walking by, but if I am any judge of the human countenance it was a look of anxiety.
It made my soul prayerful for all the little ones going out in this big, scary world of opportunity and danger, knowledge and adventure and delight, friends and foes.
Oh. God. Watch over each of them wherever they go. Help them learn and grow and flourish. Give them grace and mercy. Help each teacher and school worker and bus-driver and lunch-room helper and teacher’s aide to do their part to guide each young soul well.
For the children, the carefree days of summer are gone and soon, too their childhood will pass and they will enter the great steam of adulthood. Prepare them Lord. Protect them. They are little lambs really, all of them, and you are the Good Shepherd.
In a train car in Sugarcreek, Ohio | August 21, 2023
Kids Stories | Stories of Answered Prayer | Meat for Every Meal
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Men Need Eternity Vision
I like to call Faith “Eternity Vision” What happens when a man has eternity vision and sees the world thought the lens of faith?
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Bus Ride Home | Stories from Bittersweet Farm Podcast
I have been reading my book For A Few Days as podcast episodes. Today is chapter 15. Keep an eye on the podcast. I will be posting every day until the book is finished.
Questions to Open the Heart of Your Child
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 cafe 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 interested 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) Music is a window to the soul
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.
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