Bittersweet Farm
On the Independence Day weekend my heart was heavy about the direction our country is taking. The Lord burdened my heart as I flew across our whole nation from California where I spoke on Thursday and Friday all the way back to Detroit. I studied the book of Judges and wrote this message. If your heart is heavy over the direction our nation is taking this message will encourage you and give you come direction.
[photo taken by Chuk Pierpont at Duck Point on Wolf Lake near Watersmeet, Michigan]
Does the “call of the eternal” ring clearly in your soul?
J. H. Jowett’s book The Preacher, His Life and Work is the text of his 1912 Yale Lectures on Preaching. They are over 100 years old but I have read the re-read them dozens of times. The lectures often have a lyrical quality, a poetic beauty about them. In the first lecture he describes the sense of calling a pastor must have–but I think this same sense of eternity should ring in the heart of every follower of Christ.
“The call of the Eternal must ring through the rooms of his soul as clearly as the sound of the morning bell rings through the valleys of Switzerland, calling the peasant to early prayer and praise.”
Since I was a young teen I have had at least a faint sense of the eternal embedded in my soul. I pray that God will help me live out all my days before me with a continual and sweet sense of holy duty tugging at me from the deepest place in my soul. Though I live in a noisy world, may the call of the Eternal ring though my soul as clearly and beautifully as the sound of the bell in an alpine valley calling men and women to prayer.
In this message I address some of the issues believers will face as the nation officially turns away from God.
Series: Knowing God by Heart
Title: The Sovereignty and Providence of God
Place: Evangel Baptist Church-Taylor, Michigan
Date: June 28, 2105 11:00AM
Speaker: Pastor Ken Pierpont
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A classic re-post from 2004
I noticed one day… I suppose my children pointed it out to me a special quality that gummy bears have. If you lick them and throw them they will stick to almost anything. If you lick them and throw them you can stick them to the ceiling. You can throw them at a car and they will stick to the car. We discovered this one day out in traffic. I was sitting at the traffic light and I noticed an attractive woman pulled up behind me. I had a little difficulty keeping from noticing her. She was very attractive and I had the distinct feeling that she noticed me. In fact I’m sure she was looking steadily at me.
Immediately a thought came to my mind. I thought, “It would sure me fun to jump out of the car and do something memorable.” That is when I remembered the special qualities of a gummy bear. I just happened to have a generous supply of them. I grabbed a handful of gummy bears and jumped out of the car. I ran back to the car behind me and quickly fired four or five gummies into her windshield. To my shock I saw something in my peripheral vision. My sons had also jumped from the care armed with their own gummies and they fired away at the pretty woman’s car too.
We jumped back into the car and sped away leaving the pretty woman stunned and motionless behind the wheel. The boys thought it was great fun but later at home when I ran into their mother she let me know immediately that she was not amused. She said most of all when we all jumped out of the car and threw gummy bears at her car she was just embarrassed for us.
It’s not as easy as it used to be to impress a beautiful woman and gain her admiration. When you try sometimes they are just amused and not impressed. Sometimes they are filled with pity not the respect you hoped to gain. Sometimes instead of admiration they’re just embarrassed for you.
I was speaking recently at a home school conference. I told the gummy bear story and I got a big laugh from all the people. After my talk I forgot all about it. But my audience remembered. Three of the young people in particular. They happened to know where I live and where I keep my car. This became very obvious the next day. My cell phone rang. It was my son, Chuck.
“Dad, have you seen your Volvo today?”
“No, what’s wrong.”
“You have to come and see it yourself. Someone has plastered it with at least 300 gummy bears.”
I laughed and mourned my foolishness. It was as if I gave a group of pyromaniacs instructions about how to make bombs. It reminded me of the rouges in Australia who strapped a stick of dynamite to a kangaroo just to see what would happen. They lit the fuse and stood back in a special depth of ignorance induced by drunkenness to enjoy the show. The funny part is they ended up having to walk all the way back to town because the frightened animal sought refuge under their truck.
I was reminded again that I have to be careful about what I say because words have a way of coming back to trouble me. The Bible says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue; and they that love it shall eat thereof.” Sometimes my words are life-giving but it is possible for them to get me into a real mess. A real mess.
Ken Pierpont
Riverfront Character Inn
Flint, Michigan
October 25, 2004
Drinking some stout, flavorful full-kick pour-over to jump start some writing this afternoon. I surfed over to Kyle’s site to read a post he had written about coffee. I noticed this on our first-born son Kyle’s bio…. thought it made heart-warming reading… It’s a growing list of things he loves:
Jesus, coffee, my wife, my three sons K2, Ollie and Leland, photography, backpacking, canoeing, fixed-gear bikes, fly-fishing, snowboarding, body surfing, skim-boarding, beach-combing, cliff-jumping, reading, assurance of salvation, push ups, crunches, trail running, wrestling with my sons, hibernation days with my family, kayak surfing in the Atlantic, my Creator, cuddling on the couch with my wife, ohio state football, graph paper, the gospel, micro uni-ball pens, sunday night football, my macbook, playing my Parkwood guitar, Jesus’ stories, ping-pong, tennis with my wife, driving through the night, storytelling, days off, catching pan-fish with my sons off the dock of my in-laws cottage in northern Michigan, the corner store, coffee via the pour-over method, american pickers, roasting coffee, a sweatshirt on a cool autumn day, an occasional herbal tea, Lake Michigan, just a little sun burn, campfires, listening to my sons laugh, dates with my girlfriend, roller-coasters, northwest Michigan, flannel shirts, autumn, the feeling of a fish on, the common loon, eagles, trails in the woods, fruit and vegetable juice, a fresh jonathan apple from the tree, Christmas music on the day after Thanksgiving, the speckled back of a trout, the call of a wild turkey, rainy days, saturday mornings, hunting for the perfect Christmas tree, occasional big breakfasts, autumn… (and the list continues to grow)
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