Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): Thanks for tuning in to today's Power Walk Ministries broadcast. Fatherhood, Your Best Life. That's the name of the series which Reverend Paul Cannings is teaching right now. Through God's word, he urges parents to bring up a child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. He provides principles about not provoking your children, but rather developing their character and teaching them to fear God, and then watching to see God bless them. Reverend Cannings breaks that down for us right now in the message, "Blessing Your Children."

Dr. Paul Cannings: Being a father has its challenges. I understand it, but it has its greatest blessings. It could bring long life, Psalm 128. It could bring its greatest blessings, Psalm 112, that a person could ever experience because of the level of responsibility that we discussed in the last couple of days that we want to continue on today.

In Ephesians chapter six, verse four, as we take this verse apart and walk through it because this is so critical to our nation being held together, to generations being positive or negative, it is huge. I know people will say that's not easy for me. I was in a marriage that didn't work out, and now there's a father there and he's doing a pretty good job. It doesn't excuse it. There is still a responsibility to still have to find innovative ways to still be in that child's life.

You say, well, you don't understand. She moved to another state and took the kids. We were never married and this is what happened. Well, it doesn't nowhere in that child's life this issue can be replaced. God designed them to need this. God designed them to have to have this. There's no way out of it. You can't say, well, you know what, my car is such a wonderful car, take the battery out. No, it's designed to have a battery. A child is designed in order for them to develop into being the human being that God needs them to be, to achieve all the things God has for them in their life as to why He brought them on this earth. It cannot be achieved unless that father is engaged.

That's how huge this is. And if a father chooses, as we've talked about in Malachi chapter four, verse six, not to do this, God curses the land. It's this huge. That's why there are so many blessings to it, because God understands the surmounting issues that can become a challenge in this process. So we've been taking this verse apart, picking it apart.

We started off with fathers and how he distinguishes this particular function that the fathers have from mothers. The mothers have a role. It's not that they don't have a role in parenting. That's not the issue. But we're starting at where God starts. That's all I'm saying. It doesn't make the father better and all these different things that people want to get into. Everybody has a role and everybody has a role in raising a child, developing the child for the glory of God. Everybody has a role. A woman is designed to have babies. A man is not. But at the same time, her role is just different. It doesn't mean that the man's role is better. It's just different.

So when we come to this, we are now in verse four of Ephesians chapter six. And he says, "Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath." Okay, in other words, there's going to be some provocation that takes place. I know it happened when I raised our sons. Sometimes you did some things that you said, I could have done that better. I go in their room and say, I could have handled that better. I'm sorry. I apologize because I wanted them to understand that nobody's above being wrong. I didn't go patronizing them, buying them ice cream and all that other stuff. No, no, no. I'm not doing that because when they grow older, people that do them wrong is not going to go buy them ice cream when they apologize. So I just say I'm sorry, and I will do better.

There are times when this happens. These things take place because we're human beings. We make mistakes. But he says we should not continue it because, let me get a little fancy on you here, it's a present tense indicative imperative. What does all that fancy stuff mean? It simply means that we can't make this our habit. We can't know that we're irritating the child and just keep irritating the child, knowing it's leading to the child becoming more and more angry. But because we have authority, we expect the child to not even pout their mouth or move their face in any kind of way. They must sit there quiet and do exactly like we say and never show any sense of disrespect.

He says, I'm commanding this. He's not suggesting it. That's why it's in an imperative mode. He's commanding that this takes place and it's not an option, and it should never become a habit in the relationship between a father and their children. Never become a habit. It's going to happen from time to time, but it cannot become a habit, the pattern in the raising of a child.

So I don't want us to look like the person that has to be perfect. And some mothers say, you're provoking the child. Okay, you know, sometimes the child is still a fool like we talked about. So they reject knowledge. The child doesn't want to hear or accept any kind of discipline we talked about. The child is hot-headed because a fool is just hot-headed. That's what Proverbs 14:16 says.

So you've got to be careful when you come to this situation to hit this balance. Because sometimes it's just a child's temperament to make it look like the person is irritating them. So you have to learn the child and the temperament of the child as well. What characteristics are we implicitly passing on to the child? Because sometimes parents are hot-headed. So guess what? You take hot-headed, born a fool, born with hot-headed nature, and then you put a hot-headed parent on top of that, what you have is a fire burning the house down. So we have to watch what we are implicitly demonstrating before the life of the child.

So when He comes to this, He balances this. That's what we find in this verse. He balances it. In verse four of chapter six of the book of Ephesians, he says, "But bring up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Balance. Yes, you have the authority, father. Yes, you are the beginner of this. Yes, you can direct how this operates within the home as the head of the home.

But here is your firewall. You can't use that to lead this child to wrath. He didn't say anger. Wrath is where the child gets to the point where and you walk away from the child, the child goes in the room throwing stuff. The child is in the room just beating the wall. The child has gotten to the point where they cannot control their emotions, immature as they are. They go to school, they're a bully in terms of how they operate with people around them because they feel bullied, so they go bully.

And that's what he is saying here. You're seeing these characteristics pouring out of the life of the child. So it's wrath. Wrath is some angry actions, not anger by itself is a high emotion like a dragon having fire spitting out of their nose. That's anger. Wrath is when that dragon now wants to eat you and destroy your life. That's what he's saying is now being brought up in that child because of favoritism. We talk about some of them to give you reminders in case you didn't listen yesterday. There's favoritism, sometimes overprotection, discouraging the child. No, you can't do that. There's no way you could do that. You don't have the chance to do that. You don't have the ability to do that. Words that are derogatory in the child's life, abusive anger when the child is being spanked.

And I explain spanking in the Bible is not abuse. We have to look at it for what it is. People have taken it and they've corrupted it, but it doesn't make it wrong to spank. We have to be careful with that. And I'm not going to be one of those that because it's become abusive to not ever teach it, because the Bible has it in the Bible. And I'm a pastor teacher. I will teach it. But I will teach it within the structure in which the scriptures delineated so that it's not an abuse where a person is abusing a person's life. That the Bible is saying is what leads to wrath and the person becoming a bully and beating other people and starting fires and all these different things or cutting themselves. The Bible said these things, yes, we need to prevent that from happening by how we respond to that child.

And that's why he says balance it with this. What is that balance? He says, "Bring them up." Wow. The same present tense active verb is an imperative he uses the same emotion right here with bringing up. So in other words, don't go this way, but go this way. And how you approach the child, approach the child in this manner, not in that manner.

Obviously what he's saying here balances out with Proverbs where "train up a child in the way they should go, and when they get older, they shall not depart from it." So this is this nurturing. So the mother is attached to her emotions, which is not negative. And that's why God naturally makes the woman's skin softer, make the woman naturally that she, if she chooses to be a breastfeeder, see, God has designed her to be that nurturer.

But the bringing up also involves a nurturing. In other words, the person that is going to be there to not provoke the child is also to have a soft nature about them in how they approach the child. So we have to go from that to now look at another side of the child that God has made. God has made the child with an innate ability. That's why you see some children gravitate to certain things in college or just love doing certain things.

I could remember my wife thinking that our youngest son would be an engineer and our oldest son would be a medical doctor. We thought he's going to be into science and all this stuff because he seemed to just gravitate to stuff with science. Only to find out as we kept putting him in this class and we would send him to this program during the summer, and we come to learn that no, he's more liking business. So his first year in college, ah, dad, I really don't like all that stuff. I don't know why I was interested in it. I've kind of outgrown it. And I understood that because my mother drove me towards science and I outgrew it. So I said, no problem. What do you like? Business. Okay, let's get there.

The youngest son, we thought he was going to be an engineer, but we started learning, no, he loves to serve, to nurture people when they're hurting. He goes to a person, a child that's crying, he wants to hug them. He's different. And so the Bible is saying this is this bringing up. God has given them these different bents and he's saying we have to study them enough to learn them. So I spent time, my wife and I studying the child and learning what the child's natural bents are. The child is born with these tendencies that God has already put there.

He says also, the child is a spiritual being. We want to bring the child to accept Christ at a young age. My mother drove me to Christ. I don't even know I was being driven to Christ. I just realized, oh man, I want to give my life to Christ. This is good thing. I need to do this. And I did. But that was nurtured into me.

So the child is spiritual. The child is emotional. The child will cry. The child will hurt. I have to learn to work through those processes so that the child when now all the other things start developing in their life, they learn how to manage those emotions to make better decisions. So the person is physical. So there's certain things they're going to need. It gets cold in the winter. The child is needing these things. They're growing up. You don't want them to have bad self-image in the clothes that they're wearing.

So the Bible is saying the bringing up of this child is a process. The parent is providing the child strength during this time and nurturing them to maturity: the spiritual maturity, emotional maturity, mental maturity, physical maturity. The parent is teaching the child to learn the burdens of life and how to work it through. You don't spare the child from all the burdens. I'm not taking that away from you. You did that. Now let's work through how we're going to resolve that.

We had a lot of family meetings, lots of them all the time, working through things and interacting with things. But we wanted to teach our children problem solving because we are nurturing them through that so that they develop mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually through the process so that they learn to handle their own problems and now they're seeking wisdom. This nurturing, the Bible is saying, balances out how a father is now not provoking a child to wrath. Because if a father is focusing on bringing up the child, then he's not provoking. Paul is balancing it in this verse and saying that this is where the child finds security, finds a safe place. Home is so important to them that the child literally leans on their parent to become all they need to be because this becomes a safe place that I can grow up and be all God wants me to be. Stay focused.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Reverend Cannings. Bringing up our children involves nurturing, a word that's often used for mothers mostly, but Reverend Cannings calls on us fathers to be compassionate and understanding by spending time with our kids. Now, if you'd like to secure this series so you can review it over and over, let me direct you to our website at powerwalkministries.org. That's powerwalkministries.org. You can also request this by phone when you call 281-260-7402. Again, that's 281-260-7402.

Dr. Paul Cannings: I praise God that this ministry has blessed many lives. It encourages us to keep going. So I pray, folks, that you would partnership with this ministry by encouraging other people to come and listen to us, by getting on our website, making purchases, by supporting our ministry. And I guarantee you, it will go to the better use of God's kingdom resources to touch lives. That is our heart. Because of what we felt God was calling us to is to touch lives. Share the word, pass it on, and pray for us regularly.

Guest (Male): That's powerwalkministries.org. We'd love to hear from you. Reverend Cannings also serves as senior pastor of Living Word Fellowship Church. If you live in the Houston area or you're just visiting, he'd be delighted to have you join them on Sunday mornings at 8:00 AM or 11:00 AM. The church is located at 7350 TC Jester Boulevard in Houston. And now remember, fathers, the Bible clearly teaches to not provoke your children, but rather understand that it is a process to nurture them to maturity.