Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): We welcome you to the Power Walk Ministries broadcast. Today Reverend Cannings brings us part four in this series, Fatherhood: Your Best Life, and the message titled, Guaranteed Success.

Guest (Male): How do we achieve guaranteed success in parenting? There are so many obstacles to raising a child well these days. Reverend Cannings, senior pastor of Living Word Fellowship Church in Houston, challenges us to submit our lives to the empowerment of the Holy Spirit in order to experience guaranteed success as fathers. Let's listen to him now.

Dr. Paul Cannings: No one runs onto a field and doesn't expect to experience success. No one runs onto a soccer field or a basketball court and not have a focus of winning the game. You know, people don't go to a job interview without the focus of winning the job. Some people are working so hard at their weight; they get on the scale and hope the scale will tell them what they want to hear when they stand on it because they're hoping to gain the purpose for which they're making all the sacrifices to bring down their weight.

We do things to accomplish the things that we've set out to accomplish. To live in that way is to live purposefully. But success can't be short-lived because then you repeat the process over and over again. Success has to be where you're constantly moving forward and gaining more and more development in your life. When teams are not winning in the NFL, NBA, or hockey teams, then they make personnel changes because the whole focus of the team is to achieve success.

It's no different when we come to Christ. Christ is guaranteeing us success based on the process He takes us through. He's guaranteeing it. We're doing it under the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Once we submit our lives to the empowerment of the Holy Spirit and follow the processes He has placed before us, He is saying success is guaranteed. What could Satan do that He cannot stop? What could Satan take away from our eternal benefits? How could Satan take away our crown, our chance of experiencing living with God in heaven and sharing His throne? None of that stuff can be taken away.

This is the King of kings, the Lord of lords. He is mighty in everything. God guarantees us success in our families when we follow a certain structure that He has provided to us. He's guaranteeing us that we will have success. That's what He's saying here in Psalm 112 because family is huge to God's plan for mankind. He starts everything out there, and everything is built from there. That's what He is originating everything from. That's why Satan attacked it.

So when we come to family and the development of how a father leads in his home that leads to blessings, He's organized a process that leads to success. Why? Because it impacts generations to come. When God is seeing this, He's seeing this impacting things forever in terms of the development of His kingdom for God's glory and God's honor. How do we achieve that? What is the process? Well, we've been discussing it these last several days.

We're now toward the bottom part of verse one of Psalm 112, talking about the success and how God will guarantee us this success if we follow this process. He comes to the key, the pivotal part of it that needs to take place, or this will not happen. This is the spindle in the wheel; it has to happen. In verse one, He says the mindset needs to be focused on praising the Lord. He says, "Blessed be the man who fears the Lord." The attitude and disposition of the person is to live in reverence before God.

Then He comes down further and says to have a reverent view of God and a proper perspective of how that works. A person needs to look at this particular part of the verse because this is critical to it. Don't forget, the word of God does not return void. That's what Isaiah 55:11 says. There's nothing empty that will come out from obeying God in whatever He's saying. Please remember what I've said this week.

The concept for whatever we are doing needs to originate from God. You say there are so many things that are gray areas; there's no gray area. Don't let people trick you into that. In 2 Timothy 1:3-4, he says, "I've given you everything you need for life and godliness." It's through the true knowledge of God. That's the problem right there. That's why Satan wants to pollute the word of God. 1 Timothy 4:1-4 says Satan will so pollute it that even when people that are polluting it continue forward and they purposely continue forward, their consciences will become seared. In other words, there will be no conviction anymore as they teach something that violates the scriptures.

He says we cannot pollute that. You can go buy any kind of food, but if it's junk food, even though it may feel and have some sense of satisfaction on our taste buds, it damages the body. It's just not the food that is healthy for the development of the body. That's why He's saying that we have to watch the food we eat. We may enjoy it, we may like it, it may make sense, but if it is not true, it doesn't produce the nature of God in us.

Every concept of every aspect of our lives, as we discussed earlier this week, originates from the word of God. The example I used back then as we transition deeper into this verse, we talked about the fact that a person can decide who they want to marry. The Bible is not saying that a person has to be a certain color, have a certain economical status, or be of a certain sociological status. That's not what He's saying. He says, "Marry a believer who shows by the fruit, not by their conversation."

Many say "Lord, Lord," but few will enter into the kingdom of heaven. Not everybody that says "Lord, Lord" is true to God. He's saying you've got to watch their fruit in their life. The Holy Spirit produces that fruit. If a person is connected to God and the Holy Spirit is poured into their life, the Holy Spirit produces fruit that gives you the characteristics of the personality of Jesus Christ. When you see the personality of Jesus Christ coming out of the person, He's saying that cannot consistently take place unless the Holy Spirit lives in them because the Holy Spirit is the helper of Christ.

So He says when you see that, you know that person is genuinely saved. He says in 1 John 3:3-11 that if a person is just sinning and doesn't have any conviction about their sinning, there's a strong possibility that they are not saved. So when we find that person that is saved and they're committed as a result to follow the prescription of what God says a husband is and what God says a wife is, he says, "Get married." That's it. He's not talking about height or anything; He's saying that's good enough that the person will submit their life to the role God has called them to.

The titles that God has given specifically meet a particular job description. That's why the person would go from male to man, to husband, to father. Same thing for female to woman, to wife, to mother. He's changing the titles because He's changing the responsibilities. So when a person comes to that, He's saying, "Now you can move forward." So there's a lot of freedom, as we talked about earlier, in who we marry, but not freedom in the nature of the person that we marry.

He's saying you cannot function under any other influence than the Holy Spirit. You see in Ephesians 5:15-18, we just have to hunt. He says, "If you seek me, you will find me." That's why the concepts for how we live our lives are all in the scriptures. That's why He says this in terms of a person having success. A person having success will greatly delight in His commandments. Watch these words carefully.

The person finds it a joy, finds it exciting. I love what 1 Peter 2 says. They will be like a child thirsting for milk. They want this word of God, they desire this word of God because they want to do what God says. They live a life that is in reverence of God. Fear of God drives them to be delightful in God because reverence, Chapter 111:10 says, leads to wisdom. Wisdom leads to understanding, and this understanding leads to them wanting to submit to His commands. That understanding that submits to His commands is a praise that is enduring.

So because of verse 10 of Chapter 111 in Psalm, He's taking us now to how that takes us into success. How that takes us into success is when the person, because of their commitment to reverence God, now lives in wisdom. They cannot live in wisdom without a solid commitment to the word of God. That happens when the person has a reverence for God. That's why He breaks it out this way.

When we don't have a reverence for God, we do what we want to do. We become carnal Christians; we just follow whatever our feelings are. The Bible says in Romans 8:5-9, then we become hostile towards God. We don't like to hear what God has to say. "Why does the Bible always have to say this?" and "Why is it Bible, Bible, Bible? Everything's talking Bible." The Bible says because we are committed to the flesh, our minds become hostile to what the word of God is teaching.

In Philippians 1:9-11, he is telling us that in order to make excellent decisions, in order to walk in God's word in wisdom, to arrive in wisdom making excellent decisions because of a reverence for God, because of a mindset focused on worshipping God first. Second, the person reverences God. Then as a result of that, the person needs understanding because they're trying to respect God, they're trying to deal with their feelings, they're trying to deal with their concepts of how they live their life that moms and dads may have taught them or grandparents may have taught them, and they're trying to balance what the world is saying on all these platforms.

They need to have a filtering system in order to come to understanding. That's where the knowledge base comes in. That knowledge base, He's saying, when the person delights, it becomes the motivation, the drive to the word of God. They accept this as the orders of God to direct their life so that God, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, can guide them into truth. Since Christ came to provide us life, the pivot to experiencing abundant life is the truth. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.

So when we commit to walk from the word of God, we come to a way of life that produces the abundance of life which Christ came to provide. What drives us in this way is the delight for the word of God. My son was being interviewed because he was going to play football in Canada. The guy asks him a question, "Man, do you like the sport?" He says, "No, I love the sport." He says, "Oh, good stuff. Well, I want you to come to this workout."

He said, "Dad, why was that a big deal? He asked me like several different ways of the same thing." I said, "Because when you have a love for it, he doesn't have to motivate you to go to the gym. He doesn't have to motivate you to go out there and want to win, because you love winning and you love playing." That's what the Bible is talking about, this word "delight." Nobody has to make me want to study the word of God. I love God so much, I want to live a life of wisdom that turns out to be excellent and successful, so I'm just passionate about finding the will of God, and so I'm driven to study the word of God because I have a love for Him. This is what it takes to have success in your home and in your life that brings God glory and blesses you eternally. Let's stay focused.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Pastor Cannings. It's true, God guarantees us success in our families. When the father fulfills his role in a way that is pleasing to God, He will bless not only the family but also the generations to come. Now, if you'd like to get in touch with Power Walk Ministries, please give us a call at 281-260-7402. Again, that's 281-260-7402. When you contact us, would you consider becoming a Power Walk partner today? We covet your prayers and we ask for your financial support as we endeavor to use this radio broadcast to reach more people for the glory of Jesus.

Dr. Paul Cannings: You know, I had someone walk up to me and say, "Hey, you so bless me when I listen to the station and feed off the word that God has placed through you." That means so much. I had a person say to me, "Hey, you saved my marriage. I was really going to walk out on my wife. You saved my marriage." Oh man, that moved me to keep pressing on.

I pray that you would support our ministry and become a part of it and share with us in the resources that we have because that goes to the support of this ministry. Pray for us, please, I sincerely mean that. Pray for us as we share the word with other people and that you will become a partner, a regular partner with us. All you have to do is go to our website, powerwalkministries.org, and press the donate button, and it would explain in there how you could become a Power Walk partner.

Guest (Male): As always, we value your prayers for our ministry. To become a Power Walk partner, please visit us online at powerwalkministries.org. Now remember, as we just heard, when you begin to develop a mindset that is committed to worshipping and reverencing God and taking delight in His word, this will be a blessing to the whole family.