This summer the Institute in Basic Life Principles and the Advanced Training Program will be holding four Regional Training Conferences to help people build strong families. My whole family would tell you these are life-changing conferences. It is my privilidge to participate this year. Take a look at the video here and follow the link to get involved with your family.
Night Meditations
I was about seventeen when I bought myself a quality table radio with an alarm and sleep function. It was a very nice radio with a large speaker. I could listen to programming as I went to sleep at night. I would often try to go to bed at 10:30 at night so I could set the sleep timer for thirty minutes and go to sleep listening to a program called “Nightwatch” produced by Moody Radio and hosted by Chuck Wagoner. The program was aired by WEEC from Springfield, Ohio. Chuck Wagoner had a rich baritone voice. He spoke very quietly and in an unhurried way. It was a perfect way to end the day with the things of the Lord on your mind.
What you think about before you go to sleep at night could determine the course of your entire life. You will meditate on something in the few minutes before you go to sleep at night. What do you meditate on? Some go to bed thinking about the injuries done to them. Contrary to the Scriptures which say “let not the sun go down upon their wrath,” they go to bed meditating on their hurts. Some go to be meditating on their regrets, their sins, their failures. Some people go to bed meditating on their worries and their fears. Their hearts are filled with anxiety in the last moments of the day. Some go to bed meditating in their desires for things. They go to bed meditating on their ambitions. Others go to bed mediating on their illicit sexual desires. God’s intent is that we meditate on the things of the Lord in the night hours
David set his heart on the Lord at night. You can see this repeatedly in the Psalms. Psalm 63:5-6 says: My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips: When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches.
Psalm 16:7 I will bless the Lord: who hath given me counsel: my reigns (mind) instruct me in the night seasons.
Psalm 17:3 Thou hast proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night.
Psalm 42:8 Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.
Psalm 77:6 I call to remembrance my song in the night. I commune with mine own heart: and my spirit made diligent search .
Psalm 119:55 I have remembered thy name, O Lord in the night.
Psalm 119:62 At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy righteous judgments.
Psalm 119:148 Mine eyes prevent the night watches , that I might meditate in thy Word. That means I look forward to them.
Psalm 4:4 Stand in awe and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still .
Psalm 63:5-7,8 My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips: When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches.
Isaiah 26:9 With my soul have I desired thee in the night : yea, with my spirit will I seek thee early.
Isaiah 30:29 Ye shall have a song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept .
God often spoke to people in the night. He spoke to Jacob, Laban, Samuel, Daniel, Peter, Mary and Joseph in the night. As one once said; “God works the night shift.”
In September of 1978 I as twenty years old. That was the autumn I met Lois. I did my very best to completely monopolize her time and attention, which I have continued resolutely for the past nearly thirty years. We began to spend time together and I knew early on that I wanted her to be my wife. I knew I was going to be a pastor, so I assumed that she was called to be a pastor’s wife. I wasn’t sure if she knew it yet so one night on a walk around the campus I worked up the courage to ask her.
I said; “Did you ever think you might be a pastor’s wife?”
She said; “No, but when I was in high school I used to lay in bed and night and listen to Lester Roloff on the radio and I felt like God was telling me I was going to do something for Him. I thought maybe I would help troubled girls.
It warmed my heart that night as we were strolling through fallen leaves on that cool autumn night that years before, in my quiet, private meditations on my bed God had been stirring up longings for God and for eternal things in my heart using a Christian radio station late at night. A state away a girl who I had never met was listening to her radio too. God was working in her heart, stirring up her heart for ministry and for God. He was tugging us both into a rich life of ministry together that neither of us would ever have imagined.
Ken Pierpont
Brook Place
Hinsdale, Illinois
April 2, 2007
Hard to Believe
When I was not yet twenty years old I remember John MacArthur speaking for a week at Moody. It was as if he opened the Bible and answered the deepest questions of my young heart. He spoke on “Glorifying God” and “God’s Will is not Lost.” Since then I have always tried to read John MacArthur. He is a modern “Worthy.” This month his new book The Truth War is available. I’m sure I will read it soon. The following quote came from Hard to Believe:
Theodore Roosevelt once said, “there has never yet been a man who led a life of ease, whose name is worth remembering.” Certainly when the Lord calls us to be His disciples, He does not call us to a life of ease.
After a long, difficult life of Christian service in India, (Henry Martyn) announced he was going to Persia (Modern Iran), because God had laid it upon his heart to translate the New Testament and the Psalms into the Persian language. By then he was an old man. People told him that if he stayed in India he would die because from the heat and Persia was hotter than India. But he went nonetheless. There he studied the Persian language and then translated the entire New Testament and Psalms in nine months. Then he learned that he couldn’t print or circulate them until he received the Shah’s permission. He traveled six hundred miles to Tehran; there he was denied permission to see the Shah. He turned around and made a four-hundred-mile trip to find the British ambassador, who gave him the proper letters of introduction and sent him the four hundred miles back to Tehran. This was in 1812, and Martyn made the whole trip on the back of a mule, traveling at night resting by day, protected from the sweltering desert sun by nothing but a strip of canvas.
He finally arrived back in Tehran, was received by the Shah, and secured permission for the Scriptures to be printed and circulated in Persia. Ten days later he died. But shortly before his death, he had written this statement in his diary: “I sat in the orchard, and thought, with sweet comfort and peace, of my God ‘ in solitude my Company, my Friend, and Comforter.”
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As for Me and My House
Growing up I never remember missing prayer meeting on Wednesday nights unless I was working. Even when I did work on Wednesday nights I missed being with the family in prayer meeting.
Dad would always open the prayer meeting with a song, then he would have a short Bible study. Usually he would teach systematically through a book of the Bible or he would do a special study on some topic of interest or importance. After the Bible study he would read a letter or two from missionaries, open the floor for prayer requests, and then break into prayer groups. We would all go to our group, kneel at a pew and take turns praying together. The meeting varied very little over the years and when I was a pastor I found myself defaulting to the same pattern.
One Wednesday afternoon Dad said; “Kenny, why don’t you lead the singing tonight?” I had never led singing before.
I said, “I don’t know how to lead singing.”
He said, “That’s OK I will teach you.”
He gave me a hymnbook and turned to the song; “Faith is the Victory.” You could lead it with a simple two-beat pattern. He had me stand in front of a mirror and held my arm to show me how it should look. A few hours later I was the song leader for prayer meeting. He taught me more and in a few weeks I began to feel comfortable leading singing. Before six months had passed I was able to lead congregational singing with some confidence and a great deal of enjoyment.
I’m grateful for the way Dad and Mom had of thrusting each of us into Christian service. They must have said thousands of times that their greatest desire for each of us is that we serve the Lord and today all four of us are doing just that.
We had a little brown plaque in our house that was always displayed in the prominent place. It said; “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” That meant bus calling, soul-winning, hospital visitation, hymn-sings, Sunday School, Five-Day Clubs, Child Evangelism training, vacation Bible school, summer Bible conferences, rest home visitation, jail ministry, summer camp, running and folding bulletins, special music, and, of course, song-leading.
Tonight Chuk, Dan, and Wes are making their way back from South Bend. Kyle preached to his youth group and Chuk helped with the music telling, stories, playing the guitar and singing together. Last week Kyle and his wife drove to Cleveland to sing, play the guitar, and minister in a Christian coffee house. Maybe the only satisfaction greater than serving the Lord is knowing that your children are serving the Lord.
” – choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve – But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” (Jos 24:15)
Ken Pierpont
Brook Place
Hinsdale, Illinois
March 26, 2007
Journey to the Heart Video
Their descendants shall be known among the Gentiles, And their offspring among the people. All who see them shall acknowledge them, That they are the posterity whom the LORD has blessed.” (Isa 61:9 NKJV)
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