Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): You've tuned in to the Power Walk Ministries broadcast. Thanks for joining us today. Dr. Paul Cannings, the founder and president of Power Walk Ministries and senior pastor of Living Word Fellowship Church, provides clear biblical teaching and practical applications for our everyday lives. Today he continues with the series titled Endurance for a Time Like This. There are many pressures on us these days due to the unrest on various levels in our country. And yet the Bible says God has given us all we need for life and godliness. Challenging us to apply God's word to our lives today, here's Dr. Cannings with today's message, Victorious Over Pain.

Dr. Paul Cannings: Years ago I ran track in college. Nothing to write home about, but I ran track in college and I remember my race was the 220 dash. I remember the coach frustrated me because he would make me run and run and run and run. I would spend little time in practice running the 220 dash. I'll just run and run and run. He'd say, "No Paul, I want you out here, I want you to run a mile and I want you to run as fast as you can, I want you to keep that pace."

And I could never understand why does this man have me running over and over and over again. A mile here, okay run one more lap and I want you to pick up the pace and I want you to run the best one lap pace you could run. And I'd run the one lap pace. He says, "Okay now I want you to take a walk and then I want you to go back out there, I want you to stretch again and I want you to run two laps at the fastest pace you can."

And I could never get it, but I learned one thing in the process: that when I'm running the 220 dash, the longer I kept doing that, the entire season I kept doing that, the stronger I finished. The more kick I had at the end of that race and it allowed me to finish the race with the best time I could ever come up with as a track runner.

From that, God taught me that many times it seems like God is taking us through one journey after the next, long journeys, one struggle after the next struggle, and we tend to want to know, "Oh God, when will this be done?" He's talking about us finishing and arriving in eternity for crowns. There's a crown for a pastor, there's a crown for people who have died serving the Lord, they're crowned. There's a crown in James chapter one verse 12 for those who endure trials, who stay the course, who in the midst of it allow God to refine them whenever He found it necessary, as First Peter chapter one verse three through 11 would say.

So in the midst of this process of movement and interactions that God allow us to be in, God wants for us to finish well. Paul would say, "I've fought the good fight, I have finished my course. Laid up for me is a crown of righteousness." So Paul even mentioned that. He would talk about pressing towards the mark. So when we are functioning many times we're seeking God out, we're searching Him out, trying to figure out what He wants us to know. And sometimes He makes it clear and sometimes He just keeps us seeking, either through His word, through prayer, through seeking godly advice. He keeps seeking because He says when we keep seeking we magnify before ourselves our commitment to faith.

And that's why we bring up this whole thing today as we continue this series on endurance. He's making us have to endure this time. He's making us more conscious of our frailty. We are more concerned about our health than sometimes we've ever been. So God has brought us into this place, so guess what He is putting us through: a process of endurance. If you ask David that or Joseph in prison or Abraham 25 years waiting for a child, could not get a child any earlier.

Because God says this is how I'm going to do it. So there's times when God puts us to run the track, run the track, run the track, and He does not always make it easy for us to understand why. What does that process mean? Well, we continue today with another word for the word endurance. So the English word here for this one endurance is bearing up under trials. What He's saying here is that this trial is not just something that is outside of me, it is tearing me up on the inside.

This is what He's talking about when He uses this word bearing up. This is a bearing up word, this is a holding on type of a word. Emotionally stressful, extremely difficult, and we're just holding on. This is what you find the passage I'd like to look to for this is just several places that it's mentioned. This word you could find it in Hebrews chapter 12 verse 20 and Romans 9:22. You could find this word throughout the Scriptures.

But the one I like to land on is Isaiah chapter 40 verse 31. I like to land there because in Isaiah chapter 40 verse 31, we find that Israel is in this situation of endurance. They're in it. Isaiah preached in the southern kingdom, not the northern kingdom, but when he's preaching, the folks in the northern kingdom are being beaten up by the Assyrians and they are going through all kinds of difficulty because they wouldn't listen to God.

Matter of fact, they used to get their own priests to carry on their own service because they didn't feel like going down to Jerusalem because the king did all kind of stuff to stop them from going down to Jerusalem so he keep the money up north. And so they developed their own worship services and did whatever they choose to do and they would hire priests from the south to come up there and do their own services to some of their own gods.

So they got really messed up and God took them out, just destroyed them. And Assyrians, the Jonah didn't want to go to, are the ones who came in and ended up the northern kingdom basically was annihilated. So in the midst of this process, there are people who did trust God. They're people like a Jonah and an Amos who did trust God, who did walk with God, who did want to do what God said, who did surrender to God. So they're in this mess because of people who didn't listen.

And one of the things I'm teaching Living Word is that we're quick to run to the world and point the finger at the world as to why we're suffering. No, when the antibody system in our bodies is deteriorated because of whatever our bodies are struggling with, then we get all kind of disease that could tear us apart. The restrainer, Second Thessalonians chapter three, is the Holy Spirit, and who does He live in? Us.

It's when the church choose to not walk with God. The Bible says if judgment begins in the household of faith, what will be the outcome of the world? We don't want to talk about sin anymore, we don't want to have an expositional sermon anymore. We go to church with a clock on our hands and we want to tell the preacher how long to preach. We want to make church about business interactions and fellowships and get to see my family and my friends and have the song sung the way we like it and the service ends when we like it to end so we go back to our lives.

The house of God should be the priority of our lives. David said you know, "I'm like a deer that panted after water, my soul panted after thee." He's talking about the house of God. New Testament, God's only commitment is to the local church. It's the only place that people can spiritually mature. Ephesians chapter four verse 12 and 13, Colossians 1:28 and 29, keep going down the list. The only place that people can spiritually mature, where all the spiritual gifts are resident, is in the local church. You deteriorate that, there is no salt and light, then we are useless to God.

When you look at the Bible, even when you go to Second Chronicles chapter seven verse 11 on, He says when this temple is not respected, judgment will come upon the earth. So when we are in some of us have sought to live the way God called us to live, some of us have taken it seriously, some of us are sincere and we're in the midst of it. We could get mad at the world or we could say, "God, you have us in this time like you did for the nation of Israel that Isaiah is writing to." And that time he was telling them, "You have to learn to wait on God."

Well, how does that work? Waiting isn't pleasant until we start to grow spiritually, then the joy of the Lord becomes our strength. The maturity of the Holy Spirit in us, the fruit that comes out from waiting and walking with God and trusting God so that no trial, no situation ever steals our peace and our inner strength and our inner joy and our ability to love anybody. That's the fruit of the spirit. And the list goes on.

So folks, I introduce this new process we're going through this week. The first one we're landing on is how to deal with this stuff on the inside. It is real. We have to match that, Isaiah's going to tell us, by His strength, not ours, because on a human side we're going to feel what we feel. We're going to go through the pain and feel the pain inside.

You can't change the circumstance, you can't go in and fix everything, you can't go in and get everything to work perfect, can't stop the Assyrians from coming in, He already said it's going to happen. Can't stop the Babylonians from coming because the people aren't listening and that's coming up where the Babylonians are going to take out the nation of Judah. And God said it's going to happen, they're going to go into captivity for 70 years, it's already being preached, it's already being set up for this because the people are not listening.

So you're in the midst of all of this. There is Daniel who is in the midst of this, Ezekiel is in the midst of this. And this is the message that I want to just mention today and we're going to work through this process now that we have an understanding of what these concepts now mean relevant to endurance. Don't forget, it's something you can't fix, you can't change, it's outside of you and you can't go in and can't stop the Assyrians from coming in, can't stop from going to Babylon.

You're in the midst of this. The people who are going to end up in Babylon going to walk 900 miles and the ones who live Jeremiah says are the ones who walked with God. But they're now in captivity. He kept them alive but they don't want to be in Babylon, have their hair shaved or put on new clothes and have to figure out what to eat and learn a new language and start all over this place, gotta find jobs, all these build homes and start from scratch when they could have had a good life in Judah. But out here they are, displaced, got nothing with them. Could you imagine that? I don't think as Americans we can imagine that.

This is what it's like. And he says: but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. When we jump back into this, Lord willing, tomorrow, we will start here. Now that we have this concept in where we're going on this next discussion of endurance, I pray that we will experience what Isaiah is talking about so that we live in God's strength, not our own.

They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Our own strength will fail us, but God's strength is new every morning, great is His faithfulness. Stay focused.

Guest (Male): That's true, we must develop a skill set based on God's word to experience Him more powerfully. Now to secure a copy of this message or any of our other ministry resources, please visit us online at powerwalkministries.org. That's powerwalkministries.org. You could also call us at 281-260-7402. Again that's 281-260-7402. And now Dr. Cannings would like to share a brief word with you.

Dr. Paul Cannings: I am so excited about the Pastors Conference coming up April the 23rd through the 25th. You cannot miss it. There's going to be such a great group of teachers teaching, well trained, well prepared, practice what they're teaching in their local churches. Here's some examples: Pastor and deacons functioning under the lordship of Christ, the biblical approach to resolving conflict in the church, traits of successful leaders, effective teaching methods for children, social media, how could you make it very positive for your children, developing a counseling ministry dealing with mental health issues in the local church, marketing, moving from traditional ministry to bibliocentric ministry, how do you grow the church through evangelism.

You cannot miss this conference, April the 23rd through the 25th, 2026 at 7350 TC Jester Boulevard right here at Living Word Fellowship Church. I pray you'll go to powerwalkministries.org, powerwalkministries.org. Be a part of this, you will not be disappointed. April the 23rd through the 25th, look forward to seeing you.

Guest (Male): Dr. Cannings will continue teaching on this series on endurance through the next two weeks. So be sure to join us. In the meantime, remember when we allow the Holy Spirit inside of us to have full control of our lives, we can be sure to experience the fears, anxieties, and pressures on the outside losing their grip.