Bittersweet Farm
Date: July 8, 2012 AM
Title: Embedded Behind Enemy Lines
Speaker: Ken Pierpont
Series: Matthew’s Gospel
Text: Matthew 17:14-21
Place: Evangel Baptist Church–Taylor, Michigan
Date: July 1, 2012 AM
Title: The Importance of Seeing Jesus
Speaker: Ken Pierpont
Series: Matthew’s Gospel
Text: Matthew 16:28-17:13
The Forest
We have a small home in the forest, actually The Forest. When they planned our neighborhood someone did two brilliant things for which I am grateful every day. They left hundreds of old trees standing and they “bent” the streets. They call our neighborhood “The Forest.”
Within a few weeks of moving here about five years ago we settled on a name for our cottage in The Forest. It would be Granville Cottage, after “The Old Granville House” on It’s a Wonderful Life, only on a more intimate scale. Ours is not a Italianate-Revival three-story, but a small home made of brick the color of limestone, a sort of Stone Cottage if you have an imagination.
A Discovery
Let me tell you what we recently discovered about Granville Cottage. We have a nice screen-porch on the back of the cottage shaded by an Elm and a couple of Bald Cypress, a Red Maple and a Pin Oak. Outside is a tiny gurgling pond ringed with stones and ivy. This porch has been underutilized for the last few years. We never spent a single evening there. We never ate there. We put some rockers on the porch, but no one ever sat there.
Then, one afternoon a couple weeks ago, we found the missing piece. It was serendipitous. I was resting myself while Lois puttered among antiques and photo props over in Ann Arbor. It was a warm day so I found a nice chair under a shade tree. There was a breeze and there were people to watch.
The chair was surprisingly comfortable. There were three others just like it surrounding a matching glass table. The set was green. Six or eight hours later when Lois finished shopping she found me there content in the shade and the breeze beneath the tree in the comfortable chair.
She walked up and said; “That set would be nice on our screen-porch.” It was very reasonably priced. After a short deliberation we claimed it for Granville Cottage. It was the missing piece to our screen-porch. Now we have a perfect place for the family to gather during two or three seasons. We’ve grilled burgers and eaten there, had pizza picnics, and enjoyed some pleasant conversations already in those comfortable chairs around the green glass table. It’s like we discovered something we already own.
Look Around
I got to thinking about how many things we already own that we haven’t really discovered. I wonder how many places nearby we have not explored or enjoyed. Is there quiet street where you could walk, or a park where you could pray, a bit of water that you could look upon that would calm your soul? I wonder who is in our lives whose stories we really don’t know. How many undiscovered treasures are all around us waiting to become a treasured part of our lives? There really are already ours, but they are waiting to be discovered.
You could say that contentment is discovering something you already own in a fresh way. You might give a coat of paint to that little rusty wagon and put some geraniums in it. You might wrestle your old bike down from the hooks in the garage and dust it off and clean and oil it up and ride around the neighborhood, pulling some evening air into your lungs. You might meet some new friends for coffee.
Discover something you already have.
Have you heard this: “Contentment is realizing that God has already given you everything you need for your current happiness.”
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
June 24, 2012
Date: June 24, 2012 AM
Title: Godly Selfishness
Speaker: Ken Pierpont
Series: Matthew’s Gospel
Text: Matthew 16:24-27
A Silvery Morning
I hope you all are savoring summer. What a beautiful gift from God it is. On a recent morning walk I noticed a silvery quality on the cool morning air. As I walked along the edge of the woods a magnetic fragrance slowed my pace and at the same time the clear, liquid, flute-like call of the Wood Thrush filled the air over and over.
The Music of the Morning Woods
The call of the Wood Thrush always reminds of me Vance Havner. He often wrote of the Wood Thrush but I had never identified its call until one dusk on a summer day in the North sitting around a sputtering fire, listening to campers share their testimonies of God’s work in them during the week. When I heard the beautiful music coming from the feathery pines, amplified in the meadow, I knew immediately it must be the bird that always charmed Havner.
I hope you take time to think long and love deep and walk slow and visit big water and watch the sun rise and set while summer is here.
What Makes a Man a Man?
Challenges
Over the last few weeks we have had some challenges. I’ve had some shocking electrical challenges. I have been up to my knees in plumbing challenges. Lois challenged my manhood and asked me to install new automatic dishwasher. She called and said should I pay to have it installed. I said; “Absolutely” Pay someone. That’s an easy answer. She got a second opinion.
You have no idea what a challenge these things are to me. She called Kyle and he said; “O, that’s cake. Anybody can do it.” I called my dear first-born son and I said; “Hey, I love you man, but please don’t ever tell your mother again that anybody can install a dishwasher. Not everybody should do things like that. Somebody could get hurt.”
I’ve seen some of your Facebook posts where you have put up the before and after pictures of your miraculous renovations. I just click from picture to picture in literal awe. My life is just not like that at all.
This week while one of the girls was taking a marathon shower one of the boys said; “Hey, there’s water running into the basement.” I went down and removed the panels of the dropped ceiling and sure enough water running steadily out.
My Tools Are On Shelves
Now if you come back to my study after church I will show you what I have been doing with my life since I was fourteen. I’ve been reading and thinking and writing, and speaking and organizing and counseling and motivating and exhorting and inspiring people to know and follow God. I have literally thousands of books stacked clear to the eleven-foot ceilings on these subjects. You can look all day and you won’t find a single book on plumbing, not a single manual on electrical, not a single book or pamphlet. If you come to my garage I don’t have one of those neat peg-boards with little tools silhouettes for each wrench. I don’t have a big steel tool chest with drawers. That’s just not what I have done with my life.
I don’t spend my day off at Lowes just salivating over appliances and power tools and plotting projects. I admire people who do, but when I go to Lowes it is to get in and out as fast as I can, get the bleeding stopped and get back to where I am comfortable and competent.
When the lights don’t work it shocks me. When the the plumbing leaks I’m in deep water. I don’t have a lot of experience. I don’t have the best tools. I don’t have the knowledge. I break things. I have to do things over and over again. I miss the most obvious things.
Humor and Hyperbole Aside; What Makes a Man a Man?
Humor and hyperbole aside. I’ve had to fix a few things over the last few weeks. Yesterday I conquered the plumbing and pillowed my head with the great satisfaction of a job well-done. There is something satisfying about getting the leaks stopped, isn’t there?
When you work with your hands it really stimulates your mind. You can really think. I got to thinking about what it means to be a man. What qualities make a man a man and I think Jesus was the consummate man and he made it clear what it means to be a man—what it means to be highly human.
Jesus taught his disciples that he could not fulfill his calling without suffering and sacrifice. Our natural inclination is to avoid as much suffering and sacrifice as possible. His teaching was wonderfully counter-intuitive. He said the way to live is to die. The way to fulfillment is sacrifice. He taught his disciples that to follow his father he would have to suffer and die and then he shocked them by teaching them that to follow Him they would also have to suffer and sacrifice and be willing to lay down their lives.
I can see that. The longer I know the Lord the closer I get, the more I understand the message of Scripture the more I see that nothing shows true humanity, true manliness like sacrifice.
If you want to have a life, join Jesus on his mission of suffering and sacrifice and you will wake up one day and be surprised at the fullness and the richness of your life. You will have a life and he will reward you endlessly throughout eternity. Whether or not you can rebuild an engine, patch a tire, build a house, mud drywall, hit the ball over the left-field fence, plumb or wire or leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Be a man. Be like Jesus. Humble yourself he will show you how. He will empower you to do what you cannot do.
Recent Comments