Bittersweet Farm – Page 137

Bittersweet Farm Journal (Number 9) Twenty Years On

June 30, 2018 Filed Under: Bittersweet Farm, Current Thoughts

Twenty Years on Shear Lake

This week I’m with our two oldest grand-buddies, Kyle Kenneth and Oliver Bruce. We are at Camp Barakel. This week I am speaking here on the shores of Shear Lake for the 20th year in a row. The partnership with the people and ministry of Camp Barakel has been one of the sweetest privileges of my life.

Just outside the speakers quarters on the East Side Camp is a towering pine tree, probably almost 30 feet high. When I first spoke here I took a picture of one of the children standing by the tree. The little child was taller than the tree. When I first came here some of the children were the ages of little Kyle and Oliver. My heart is flooded gratefulness for the goodness of our God when I think of it.

This year my brother Kevin and his family have joined the year-round full-time staff of the camp. Kevin led the chapels and his wife Carolyn played the piano.

Every night when the chapel fills with campers and their songs fill the air my heart is thrilled and I am reminded of what mom and dad would say over and over again when we were growing up: “We just want you to serve the Lord.”

They were right. There is such joy, meaning, and fulfillment in it.

To The Call of the Barred Owl

I month ago I sat down in the evening to make a journal entry. I want to share it with you in this edition of the Bittersweet Farm Journal:

Tonight Hope made dinner. I had worked at the church and worked in the yard. Lois was returning from a trip out of town and we timed dinner for her arrival.

Hope piled the table with BBQ chicken, new red potatoes and butter, slaw and corn-on-the-cob.

The corn was the first of the season, tender and sweet and with real butter and salt and pepper, a delicacy. It’s as if the winter numbs your taste buds and the new corn of early summer awakens them. (Sometimes eating can be idolatry-on this evening it was worship).

After dishes we moved out to the “evening porch” to read while Lois puttered among the flowers.

It is May 29th. A year ago tomorrow I drove into Jackson to meet with the Pulpit Committee for the first time. Now, a year later, we have made our lives among you and live in our little farmhouse right on the border of Summit Township and Spring Arbor Township, were when evening falls we sleep to the sound of the Barred Owl calling from the woods across the road.

Ken Pierpont
Camp Barakel
June 30, 2018

Is Your Eating Worship or Idolatry?

June 29, 2018 Filed Under: Weight Management

Is My Eating Worship or Idolatry?

Every day, many times a day, I have had to wrestle with my self-indulgent nature to eat what is good and in the amounts that are healthy for me. I have had many days of wise and appropriate eating and I have had seasons of discouraging failure—and it really is a life-and-death matter.

Today I finished preaching at chapel at Camp Barakel and I was walking with two of our grandsons to lunch and a helpful thought occurred to me.

I know that for me over-eating and eating the wrong things is usually an expression of idolatry. The times when I have been able to have self-control in my eating have been times when I consciously saw over-eating as the sin of idolatry—putting food in the place where only God should be.

When I eat the right things in the right portions and receive that food as a gift from God, it is an act of worship to eat. But when I eat the wrong things or even the right things in wrong portions then I am usually trying to get from food what only God can give. I’m looking to food for what only God can be.

As I walked to the dining room it occurred to me to ask of my soul this question through the day: Is this meal going to be worship or an indulgence in idolatry? Is this snack going to be an act of worship or sinful idolatry?

A Suggestion

As you plan your meals and before you eat bow your head and pray; “Lord, I want this meal to be an act of worship not an indulgence in idolatry.”

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:4)

Have you found honey, eat only as much as you need. (Proverbs 25:16)

Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Cor. 10:31)

Eating can be idolatry, but it was meant to be an act of worship.

Ken Pierpont
Camp Barakel
Fairview, Michgian

Don’t Wrestle Idols Away From People

June 28, 2018 Filed Under: Circuit-Riding, Faith and Family

I’m at Camp Barakel preparing my heart to preach to young men in the woods tonight and thinking about the power of loving God to drive out of our lives illegitimate things and this thought occurred to me. Peter said that fleshly lust war against our souls. I’m at war. The young men I deeply love are at war… Fleshly lusts war against our souls. How can a man prevail against the things that war against his soul? How can I help the young men I love win the war against the things that would destroy them: Here was a thought that formed in my heart:

If you want to help someone don’t try to wrestle their idols out of their trembling hands or shame them… They will just pick up another darker idol and continue in bondage and emptiness… Show them Christ as infinitely more satisfying. Let them see how your own heart is satisfied in Him. Help them experience the love of God–fellowship with God.

Ephesians 3:14-21 “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

So it is with men. We must help them see–we must show them how our souls are satisfied in the endless beauty and glory of Christ, then when they are Spirit-enlightened and the Morningstar rises in their hearts… they will willingly drop their idols and embrace Christ.

God, help me. Help me show the young men I love what that looks like.

Ken Pierpont
Camp Barakel
June 28, 2018

Bittersweet Farm Journal (Number 8) Why We Do What We Do

June 20, 2018 Filed Under: Bittersweet Farm

The Latest News From Out on Bittersweet

A week from Sunday it will be July and no summer in my life has ever flown so swiftly past. Next week I will make a holy pilgrimage to preach at Barakel. This week all the children are coming in. This is a rare and wonderful thing. We have a family wedding on Friday in South Bend. On Saturday the plan is for the whole clan to enjoy a walk out to the Grand Haven Light for sunset like we described in my first book Sunset on Summer.

Out here on Bittersweet Farm it is impossible to describe the beauty of the month of June. The day begins when the sun rises over the trees east of the farm. The trees are all wearing their canopies of rich green and the countryside is covered with growing things. the grass grows swiftly. Keeping Bittersweet Farm isn’t really farming, because our only crops are grass and flowers and our only livestock is Hazard, the Wonder-Yorkie. Keeping the farm is a little more like grooming a park, but it’s a delightful hobby and rewarding and a good excuse to be out in the fresh air and sun. I have a good tractor with a 54-inch deck for mowing and a nice hydraulic bade for plowing the snow.

There are about 50 trees on Bittersweet Farm not including dozens growing over the stone wall on the west property line that runs along the border between Summit Township and Spring Arbor Township. Bittersweet is in Summit.

About 25 of the trees growing on Bittersweet Farm are Walnuts, the rest are mostly Maple and a couple Oak. The two acres of Bittersweet Farm are a rectangle long-end running north and south. It is high on the north and south ends and low in the middle and the walnut grove grows low center of the property. The house and barn are in the south-west quarter of the rectangle.

The air is alive with birdsong especially in the hour after dawn and the hour before sunset—the golden hours. Beginning at dusk the fireflies begin to blink and hover over the laws and fields. The way the land is laid over the earth creates an amphitheater-effect. Sounds carry beautifully. So when I play my harmonica on the porch at night or whistle or play the guitar the sound is lively. On a good evening at dusk the birdsong quiet and the Owls begin to call. Barred Owls call from the forest across the road south of the farm. It’s a loud, haunting beautiful sound.

If you have been paying attention you know that the little farmhouse on Bittersweet was built with two porches. Hope rises early and brews coffee and goes out on the east-facing porch to read her Bible and have a time of quiet. She likes to call that porch the Sunrise Porch. Almost every evening the three of us and whatever guests visit spend the last hour or so of daylight out in the south-facing porch, or the front porch. I like to call it the Evening Porch. Lois has splash both porches with color and beauty using hanging pots of flowers.

A year ago was the summer of travel and preaching and camps and the summer of the Red Jeep Journey and the Red Jeep Journal. This summer is the summer of Bethel—just staying in town and serving my church. I have only scheduled one week of summer camp this year. I’m preaching and teaching and coaching and leading and encouraging and comforting and challenging and praying and counseling and getting to know the families of Bethel and their stories.

Why We Do What We Do

In the ministry at Bethel we often have a “…why we do what we do…” moment. We’ve been having quite a few lately.

A few weeks ago I drove back to the Downriver and officiated at a weeding for a couple who came to follow Christ when we pastored there. A week ago Sunday we baptized them here at Bethel. They testified of their joy and deliverance from bondage to drugs and alcohol. They have been clean and sober for five years now. They attend Bethel every Sunday. There was much joy in the church when they followed Jesus in Baptism.

Last week another family we met and baptized in the Downriver came out to visit Bethel, Dennis and Shanon Rosales with their delightful daughters Divinna and Dempsi. Divinna played her guitar and sang the we rejoiced at what God has done in their lives. When I met Dennis he told me with uncommon bluntness that he had no patience with “churchies” and now, he says; “I guess I am one now.” Dennis has been a great friend and a great help to me. God has been at work in the Rosales Family in a beautiful way. They love the balcony at Bethel when they get out this way.

I should sign-off for now. I think I smell coffee brewing and the house stirring to live downstairs. The fun is about to begin.

Ken Pierpont
Bittersweet Farm
Summit Township, Michigan
June 20, 2018