Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us for today's installment of Power Walk with Reverend Paul Cannings. We're so glad that you've tuned in to join us. Today we continue with our series Fatherhood Your Best Life. While parenting is a joy, it can also be full of challenges and we seem to learn as we go along. Dependence on our experience and our own reason doesn't always provide the right answers for the parenting situations we sometimes face.

Reverend Cannings takes us back to the Bible to find understanding and wisdom in how we can lead, instruct, and guide our children. Here he is now with today's message Parenting Responsibly.

Dr. Paul Cannings: The greatest challenge and blessing that could ever be placed before you is to call a parent. It's the greatest challenge. I'll never forget how that impacted me when my wife said we are pregnant. It immediately gripped my heart and I could not wait for our children to be born.

One human being can create such a tremendous impact. It could be a worldwide impact. It could be positive and negative. Hitler wiped out maybe eight million people in this world, just trying to be the dominant person. Martin Luther King became a great impact in how this country continues to address what has damaged it for many years.

Abraham Lincoln, one person can have a very positive impact, one person can have a very negative impact. So when we come to the raising of a child, we do not know the impact this child may have on the rest of the world. Who would have known when Timothy's mother and grandmothers raising him that he would become a pastor mentioned in the Scriptures that we could learn a whole lot from listening to Paul teaching him? Who would have known that?

This issue of parenting is a huge thing and it's a great responsibility. That's why the Bible will describe a child as a gift from God. But the Bible also says that a child is a fool. They're born a fool. They have no positive desire within them because they're born in sin, shaped in iniquity with foolishness in their heart. That's how the Bible describes them and the truth is just the truth. You can't dress up the truth. It is what it is.

Nobody means to be mean when they say what the truth is because the truth is a fact that is taking place. That's why in a court of law they're always trying to establish the truth by establishing facts. So the truth is actually a reality of what is taking place and the Bible is teaching us that a child is born this way. It is wrapped up in their hearts that they're a fool.

So we are given this opportunity to develop this child who is born this way. That's why some of the first words, if not the first word, that comes out of their mouth is no. They're telling you, "I am a rebellious person." That's what sin is. "I will take the meat off the table and throw it on the floor and see how many times you will go to the floor, pick it up and put it back. And I would love to control you that way and drive you crazy because this is fun to me."

They're teaching us who they are. This is the reality that God says we have and He has placed the major responsibility of this on a father's lap. That's what He's done. I understand mothers are there, you've got Timothy's situation with his mom. I am blessed with a homemaker as a mom who raised eight kids and every morning would cause us to sit in the bedroom, four girls in one bedroom, four boys in the other bedroom, and we'd sit there and would teach us the Word of God. On Sunday morning she would cause my dad to teach us the Word of God before we go to church. All that impact took place upon my life. The best teacher I've ever had in my life is my mother. I get it.

But the Bible places the responsibility of teaching the child on the father and He distinctly does that. Paul is actually in Ephesians Chapter 6, Verse 4. Fathers had a lot of freedom when it came to their kids in terms of authority. They really did. And that's why Paul has to delineate in this verse specifically how that teaching needs to take place. And be careful to watch what he says as we read from Verse 1 through Verse 3. He's talking about father and mother, but in Verse 4 he drops mother. Look at it.

He says, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Children obey your parents. Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise." In Verse 3, "that it may be well with thee, that thou mayest live long on the earth." This process can stop a child's life for being long. And a father not doing his job can create a cursed earth. Malachi Chapter 4, Verse 6.

So you come to Verse 4, he says fathers. He doesn't say fathers and mothers. He says fathers. Because the responsibility is attached to the beginner. The word father in the Bible is a person of authority that God places the responsibility on because He views him as the beginner. God is our Father. For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son. He began the salvation process. That's why He is Christ's Father. He's the beginner.

That's why he's saying here you now are the responsible to begin this process forward of raising this child from being a fool, from being a sinner, to being a person that will create tremendous impact on the world, on a family, for generations to come. Because when they impact a child in their day, they develop a tribe.

Just looking at my family, we have two kids, now we have seven grandkids and my son is considering adopting a child, so they could be eight. So that family of 14 that started out as a family of four. Could you see what that multiplies into if they continue to have many, many kids, if God so blesses them? So that continues forward into a tribe that became nations.

So that's why it was important in Deuteronomy Chapter 6. He says, "Train up the child. Make sure that the child is, you put this on their forehead, when they wake up, when they lie down, teach them these things." Because the heart of a child is designed this way. And I want you to see how the Bible defines the child. And I'm just going to do it blatantly because a lot of times when we come to this, we want to see the child as gooey, so when we come to teaching them and shaping them and walking through this process, we assume a psychologist said that they're born good. Not true.

The child is not born good. Don't believe in Psych 101. The Bible don't describe a child that way. The Bible describes a child in this way and I want you to see this and I'm going to give you the verses for you to follow it and accept truth. Truth is not pretty to hear all the time. Truth is just based on the facts and how those facts lay out. It is what it is.

We want things to be politically correct. We want it to be dressed up and especially in America, we want to make everything nicely presented and sweetly said. That's why sometimes we don't want to hear the truth anymore. We have to look at the truth for what it is and this is how he describes a child. And when children were born, I'll never forget sharing with my son, looking at him and saying, "Son, beautiful, but please remember the responsibility God has given you in what is before you right now because not every person gets a child."

This is a decision that God has made to put this child on you. It is a huge responsibility even though it's a wonderful thing. David teaches us in Psalm 51 that a child is born in sin. He's not born good. He's born a sinner. And iniquity is in his heart. He desires to do evil. He wants to do evil. He finds evil something that is accommodating because they are already in this motion.

Now here's how the Bible describes a fool. I want to give you these five different things. They reject knowledge. In Proverbs 13:16, Chapter 18:2, and Chapter 23:9. They reject knowledge. That's why when you're trying to teach them, they don't want to hear it. They're not interested in knowledge. Now you put them in front of a television and you give them all kinds of information, they are born a fool, so they take that information and they run with it.

But when it comes to the knowledge of God, they don't have the heart yet to absorb it, so they reject it. They move in the direction of being rebellious. Here's the next thing he says. He said they hate discipline. They don't want structure. In Proverbs 15:5 and Verse 14, and Proverbs 17:10. They just hate discipline. They don't want it. They're going to make you the worst person ever when it comes to giving them structure.

Discipline in the Bible is not first correction, it is first structure. The Bible says God disciplines us. He drives us to read His Word. He talks about serving in the local church. He talks about managing our money. He talks about how we operate a salt and light. He's putting us within a structure to function in that structure with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to achieve it because by structuring our lives, there's less need for correction.

If a person is willing to submit to the will of God, the Holy Spirit transforms their heart and their life so there's less need for God to correct them because now they're a mature Christian willing to do whatever God says. That's why perfect love cast out all fear. I have no need to fear God because I'm willing to do whatever God says.

When we come to this, he's not just talking about disciplining in terms of spanking. He's talking about the fact that they don't want structure. You start giving them structure and they rebel against it. They also squander money. Proverbs 21:20. They get a summer job and man, they want to buy this, buy that, buy that, and they just want to buy up everything. And they want to know, "What's your problem? It's my money."

They are quick to quarrel. Proverbs 20:3. They're quick to quarrel. That's why they want to argue and fight back and want to know and talk back. Because that is a sign that they're still foolish. Why would somebody want to quarrel back with somebody who feeds them, clothes them, puts a roof over their head? They're totally dependent on this parent, but they will still be sassy. They can't even get a job at 13, but they will talk that way because the Bible says they're a fool.

The Bible says a foolish person can become an atheist in Psalm 53:1. It's a fool that says in their heart there's no God. They're watching rain fall on this side of town, not on that side of town. There's got to be somebody making these decisions. How could the earth be spinning, the sun shining, the moon, all this other stuff happening and it just happened through some kind of entropy that took place? Bible says it's a fool that is talking. They're looking at an organized process that is consistently functioning in an organized way saying God is not here. He said that's a fool.

One last one. A fool is hot-headed. Proverbs 14:16. He says they're hot-headed. Everything seems right in their own eyes. Proverbs 12:15. "What's your problem? What's the deal with you?" That's why the Bible wants to teach us as parents that we now have this child before us and they may be gooey and nice and sweet and wonderful, but at the end of the day, the Scriptures are teaching us that this child has to come from here to there.

And the person that needs to do that is the person He's placed in the home that He's given authority to. The person He's given authority as the head of the home is the father. So He comes to the father to develop this child that He said could be a massive problem. So the person with the most authority is the person He's placed in the position to deal with a child that can be rebellious, can become an atheist, can reject knowledge, and can be hot-headed.

And if that person doesn't take his place, Malachi Chapter 4, Verse 6 says God ends up cursing the land because you've got atheists in it, rebellious people in it, hot-headed people in it. You've got all these different things taking place in it because the person that was in that place to shape the child's life is not there. They're out of place. So this child that is born this way ends up creating an earth that is a mess.

It is a great responsibility that brings tremendous blessings when a father takes this position and does it. So that the gift that God has given us becomes a gift back to Him. Stay focused.

Guest (Male): Thanks Dr. Cannings. When we do things God's way, we can experience joy in the fact that we're trusting the Almighty as we raise the children that He has entrusted to us. And friend, maybe you're listening today but you don't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and trusting God is something that's foreign or new to you. If that's the case, why not give us a call and let's talk about it. Our phone number is 281-260-7402. Again, that's 281-260-7402.

Our web address is powerwalkministries.org. Power Walk Ministries continues to fulfill its vision to bring the Gospel to the lost. Would you prayerfully consider partnering with us both in prayer and with your financial support of any amount? You can do so online by going to powerwalkministries.org or by calling us at 281-260-7402.

And now remember, as we just heard, God will hold us fathers responsible for all that we communicate to our children through our lives. So let's honor God in the way that we lead and guide our children each day.