Bittersweet Farm

Series: Letters from Jesus
Eternity Vision (Revelation 1:1-8)
Bethel Church-Jackson, Michigan
February 9, 2020 AM
Ken Pierpont-Lead Pastor

Series: Letters from Jesus
Eternity Vision (Revelation 1:1-8)
Bethel Church-Jackson, Michigan
February 9, 2020 AM
Ken Pierpont-Lead Pastor

Back from Up North

I spent last weekend at Camp Barakel preaching to a chapel full Sr. High campers. The camp was at capacity. My brother Kevin is on the Barakel staff. He led the chapel services. Two of his sons Zach and Josiah helped with music. My brother Nathan led the music and played the piano. His daughter Grace helped with the singing. I preached. We met in the West Side Chapel, built in the 40’s, a rustic place of worship with two huge stone fireplaces on either side of the platform. On a winter retreat the fires blaze and crackle while you sing and preach. A few inches of fresh snow fell and frosted all the pine forest surrounding the frozen lake.

I drove home Sunday out of the snowy north, sipping a strong coffee (for I rise early when I preach), down the state, across the Zilwaukee Bridge and into winter sunshine.

I’m basking now in the memory of it. I’m praying the Word took hold in the hearts of young people. I like to think the memory of a beautiful white weekend in the great north country of Michigan, the smiles of the workers, the abundance of good food, the order of the place, the beauty of the singing, the hissing of burning wood, the laughter of friends, the taste of cocoa, the exertion of skating and skiing and tubing and snowball fights, and the ministry of the Word will draw them Godward and leave them changed. I hope to see them again. One day, when I am gone, out from among them God will call forth preachers and singers and workers to continue to spread the aroma of Christ in this blessed place they call Camp Barakel.

I’ve been invited to speak again to families in the spring, teens in the summer, and fathers and sons in the fall. Should the Lord allow, I will have spoken at Barakel in all four seasons this year. I’m humbled at the privilege of driving up into our beloved Michigan in each of the four seasons with a Bible on the seat beside me and a message burning in my soul. It never gets old.

 

Musing on the Muse

It’s quiet on Bittersweet Farm tonight. I’m mending from illness. Thinking, watching, listening, and writing in the corner of my upstairs room. It got me thinking about where writers write.

Francis Schaeffer wrote in a plain chair pulled up the end of the bed in a small upstairs room of a chalet in the Alps. It was from this modest place he moved the world.

If you want to go down a fun rabbit-hole surf around that ‘net for half hour looking for pictures of where famous writers write. Sometimes they wrote in uninsulated huts out behind the house. Many of the most productive writers wrote in very simple surroundings.

Last week I was privileged to spend some time with Pastor Jeff Manion, the lead pastor af Ada Bible Church. He has a tiny office at the church which draws over 8,000 a weekend. He does most of his study at home in the basement at a simple table with a common chair and a lamp. I’ve met men who surround themselves with every conceivable comfort and productivity tool who have not had a fraction of their influence. I have a good desk, custom-made my my brother-in-law, a state-of-the-art computer. I have a good light, a comfortable, usually quiet room that stays year round a comfortable 70 degrees.

Louis Broomfield wrote Pleasant Valley, and many other books. He had the most amazing desk and writing I have ever seen in the house on Malabar Farm in Richland County, Ohio. It was huge, but he wrote all his books on a card table pulled over in front of the window.

Sheldon Van Auken wrote by the fireplace in a little one-room cottage he called VanCot. It was his home and he wrote on a manual typewriter on on a portable stand.

Your productivity has little to do with how expensive your tools are. Good tools that work are important, but surrounding yourself with toys, trinkets, novelties and luxuries will not make you productive. Getting regularly into a simple, quiet place and spending time in undistracted work will make you productive. We must continually fight the temptation to believe that we need something more than what we have in order to do what we are called to do.

Bittersweet Farm
February 4, 2020

I spoke at winter camp this weekend to a couple hundred senior high students. I spoke on identity.

Who you think you are is one of the most important things about you. Others are quick to tell you who they think you are. Satan would even love to define you by your darkest sin struggle, but who does God say you are?

If you are a believer you are in Christ and in Christ this is who you are:

1. You are Blessed and Privileged. (1:3)
2. You are Chosen and Cherished. (1:4)
3. You are Holy and Blameless before God. (1:1. 4)
4. You are Accepted, Included and Adopted. (1:5-6; 2:11-32)
5. You are Forgiven and Cleansed (1:7; 2:1-10)
6. You are Trusted with the Mysteries of God. (1:9-10; 2:11-13)
7. You are Spiritually Wealthy. (1:11)
8. You are safe, sealed, and secure (Eph. 1:13-14)
9. You are spiritually strong and powerful. (Eph. 1:15-21; 3:10-11; 6:10-18)
10. You have a home and a place where you belong. You have a people and a nation. (2:11-22 esp. 19; 3:6)
11. You are called, commissioned, and sent as a representative of the King of kings. (3:7-13) You have a job, a skill-set, a placement, gifts and a purpose. (4:11ff) You are custom-made by God for good works. (3:10ff)
12. You are loved with an immense and eternal love. (3:14-21)

Ken Pierpont
Camp Barakel
February 2, 2020

Series: Restored: Better Than New (Joel)
Sermon Title: The Day of the Lord (Joel 3:1-21)
Bethel Church–Jackson, Michigan
January 26, 2020 AM
Ken Pierpont–Lead Pastor