Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): You're just in time for today's Power Walk Ministries broadcast. Our current series is titled Reestablish or Rebuild, brought to us by Dr. Paul Cannings. Marriage is the first and most important institution that God has established in this world. It's through marriage that we build families and societies and nations. And as believers, our families need to reflect God's truth on every matter in our communities. Here's Pastor Cannings now with today's message, Beginnings.

Dr. Paul Cannings: Many people have sought to find purpose in a lot of different things, in sports. Some people have found purpose even as pastors. So many times, people even made their purpose their God. They're going to go to that job and they're going to make money, and so that's their whole purpose in life is to find ways to just bank, bank, bank. Some people have made their marriages and families their God, and so God is secondary to all those things and it dominates their emotions and feelings.

Family's huge. I believe in family is huge. I believe that's the first thing that God established and literally says that if the man doesn't function properly, he will curse the earth if he doesn't turn his heart back to his family in Malachi chapter 4, verse 6. So it's huge, but is family in itself all-encompassing in terms of how we function for the glory of God? That's why I want us to back up for a minute. There's so much that happens in our lives, so much distraction.

With all this social media and all this media stuff, there's so many messages being spoken to us, things popping up on people's phones all day, that many times the message of God is lost. As I shared with us this week, Adam didn't say a word until God finished everything He's going to do. When God has nothing else to say, that's when Adam spoke, and that's when God brought him Eve. Because he knew his purpose and understood where he was going, he heard God's definition of how Eve is supposed to be to him and all those different things.

Now that he got it and he's totally surrendered to it, that's when he speaks. But before then, he has nothing to say because he's focused on what God is going to say. That's where we're focusing on some of the time yesterday, and I pray that you would join me further on in this verse as we focus on God defining purpose here. As explained, if you lose something in the house, it's easier to backtrack and find it than if you don't know where you lost it.

Many times, we just keep looking for purpose in so many places, in so many ways. In terms of a person, they're going to college and they're going to finish college and go to grad school, then become a medical doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, and that's their purpose. When you go to the book of Ecclesiastes, it leaves at the end of the day emptiness. None of those things will give us rewards in heaven. So if our purpose is in finding all those things, then why doesn't it last when we get to heaven?

The book of Ecclesiastes would tell us it was vanity and vexation of spirit. He tried it all and came up with nothing. Please focus on how He defines our purpose because when we let Him define our purpose, it lasts and it is more enduring, fulfilling, and productive. In Genesis chapter 2, verse 15, He says, "And the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it." Now, I brought up this thing on our way out yesterday. I brought up this whole thing about the Garden of Eden.

Why the Garden of Eden? He says in Genesis chapter 1, verse 26 through verse 28, He says, "I'm going to make the male and female to be fruitful and multiply to fill the earth." Why are we in the Garden? Let's just set us out somewhere and let's get going. This is what He is talking about. That's not what He's doing. He says, "I want you to come into the Garden of Eden, and I've set it up. I've got the east side of it. I've got a tree of good and evil and a tree of life, and I'm setting it in the midst of the Garden, and we're ready to rock."

Why is that such a big deal? When you study this, God is saying that the place that He places us is the place that He shapes us, and from that shaping, it's His sanctuary to us. The Garden of Eden is a place of a sanctuary. That's why when they messed up the fruit, He kicks them out of the Garden because now they know good and evil, and you've got a holy God that walks in the cool of the evening in the Garden and they are sinful.

It is a place of holiness. It's a place of worship. It's the first church house. It's a place like a temple before God where He would come and meet with Adam in the cool of the evening. What were they having? Worship service. He's worshipping God. He's getting to know God. God is teaching him. God is serving him. He's the first pastor he's ever had. Could you imagine the minute you open your eyes, the first person you see is God? That's the first person you see, then you see animals.

These animals that you name and you're following His directions and what He's telling you to do. At the end of the day, this is all you know and this is all you surrender to and this is who you want to follow because you see the perfection, you see the glory, you see the majesty of God, the power of God. Why would you compare that and follow anything else like an animal that doesn't even have any of that and is dependent on God?

The Garden of Eden is not just the Garden of Eden, it's the place where God has put the person, the place where God can develop them, mature them, and make it a sanctuary. The first thing I must see is that wherever God has placed me, it is my place of worship. When God makes a man a man, he's a man and I need to learn what that is. I need to understand what is the nature of a man. What is God's focus for a man?

Why does God go from male to man, from man to husband? What is He teaching in those things? That becomes my place of learning and growing and listening to God because Adam is not saying a word. He's listening to God because God is the only one who's worth speaking. He is willing to learn and to grow. What is that? Discipleship. He dwells inside of us in a New Testament. We are His dwelling place. The Holy Spirit comes and resides in us.

John chapter 14, verse 16 through verse 17, He dwells in us and He says He's going to stay there forever. So our body now is a dwelling place of God. That's why we can't take our body and do what we want with it. This is why He's saying wherever I have placed you. My mom used to say this all the time: "Whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might because that's where God starts." Many times, we're always looking as to where we're going rather than to where God has us and could we make where God has us most productive first, because that's His first place of growing us.

This is why Paul says, "I've had to learn to be content." The more I walk with God is the more I have to surrender to God. As a result of that, I no longer live. It is all about God. Everything about my personal life with God is about growing in God, and that's the reason why when Paul is walking with God, he says his life became a testimony of God's transition of a man who was a murderer, a man who disrupted the church, to a man who became a great example of God's development in him.

The things I want to do I do not do anymore. Paul says, "I'm going to the Gentiles. I'm in jail, I'm going to write Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, because this is what I'm about." So I must first see that wherever God has placed me, I must learn, grow, and develop from that place all He wants me to be, and I start finding purpose that way. Please remember He is the journey. I don't have to make a journey. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He's the author and finisher of the race. He is the journey. I don't have to create a journey; I have to trust His journey that He would take me through.

Here's the next thing we see in here. He put him into the Garden of Eden and He gives him a directive to function on: to dress it, to cultivate it. Not just to be in the Garden, he says, "I want you to get in this Garden, I want you to cultivate it." Look at verse 5, and you would see why that is huge. In verse 5 of chapter 2, he says, "And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: and the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground."

Somebody had to till the ground. What do you find Cain doing? Tilling the ground. He followed his dad. So there was nobody to do that, to make what God has made productive and effective for God's glory. People say, "Working is going to be a curse." No, working was before the curse. Working wasn't after the curse; it was before the curse. What happened after the curse is it became the sweat of the brow. It became extremely difficult to fulfill why. You've got a perfect man using every cell in his brain, and then he sins.

So it's going to be harder to manage this earth in a sinful state, in a weaker state. When we see this whole process of Adam tilling the ground, you find that in Matthew chapter 25, he would say in verse 14 on, he would say he gave them work to do based on their ability. See the same thing with Moses separating the leaders out and giving them fifties and hundreds based on their ability. So God has given us what we are capable of doing.

He set up some people with a bent to work on cars. He set up some people with a bent to be engineers. Other people can now have scientists, doctors. They can now have people who would teach in a classroom because some people just love it. The Bible says when a person, in the book of Ecclesiastes I believe chapter 3, finds what they love to do and they enjoy doing it, it is their lot. So we find our purpose for working.

We find our purpose in this sanctuary of development, this holy place where God is going to teach us what He has for us. We're going to have a spiritual gift. At the point of salvation, He's going to give us a spiritual gift. In 1 Peter chapter 4, verse 7 through 11, he would say everybody has a spiritual gift. At the point of salvation, He puts a spiritual gift in us to teach us the work we need to do. We're not supposed to just go to church and sit there and complain and look at the preacher and say, "That was not such a good sermon today," or, "I didn't like the music today."

No, that was not the point of it. He says go to church with a purpose to use your spiritual gift. Hebrews chapter 10, and verse 24 through verse 26, to stimulate one another to love and good deeds. You're going to build up this body. Ephesians chapter 4, so that the body functions together, serving one another, so it's built up in love, verse 16. We learn our spiritual gift this way. A person as a man, Adam is going to become a husband and then he's going to become a father. He's learning that from what God is designing because He's going to bring him a helper.

I made them male and female to be fruitful and multiply. You need help while you're tilling the soil to end up having this multiplication process that's going to bring out the full goal that God sets for mankind. Adam is finding his fulfillment in the place God has placed him, in the job God has given him to get done. When a person finds that lot, it's not just about how can I make big money. That's not it here. God is sending the rain, God is getting the trees, God is doing this. Adam is just taking what God has provided and doing something with it. We need to find our lot when we work, and when we do, we are beginning to find more and more of the purpose for which God has us. We will do our best to jump into verse 16 here, and we will work our way through this as we learn that God has structured everything. The whole Bible building on this man and woman and marriage and church and everything else, it builds itself right out of the book Genesis, the beginnings. Stay focused.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Pastor Cannings. For all of our ministry resources, including this series, Reestablish or Rebuild, call us at 281-260-7402. That's 281-260-7402. Or log on to powerwalkministries.org. You can also write us at Power Walk Ministries, PO Box 920517, Houston, Texas 77092. And when you contact us, be sure to ask about Pastor Cannings' book, Why Can't Mondays Be More Like Sundays? It will help you grow deeper in your faith and intimacy with God.

Pastor Cannings also serves as senior pastor of Living Word Fellowship Church in Houston. If you're in the area or you're planning a visit, you're always welcome to join us. Sunday worship services are at 8:00 AM and 11:00 AM. The church is located at 7350 TC Jester Boulevard in Houston. And as we leave you, remember, the Holy Spirit resides in us as believers, so let's give him complete freedom to mold us and make our marriages and families what he wants them to be for God's glory.