Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us for today's installment of Power Walk with Pastor Paul Cannings. There are numerous resources all around us today on how to handle relationships, rise above our circumstances, and handle difficult people in our lives.

Pastor Cannings continues our series on relationships, marriage, and family, focusing on bringing the biblical point of view on how God first instituted marriage. Today he brings us Ephesians chapter 5, challenging us to walk in wisdom in every area of life. Let's listen.

Dr. Paul Cannings: I want you to back up with me as we read this text because I'm going to try my best to show you how Paul got here in Ephesians chapter 5. I want you to see how he got here. Go down with me to verse 15 so we are going to read for a minute. "Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise but as wise. Make the most of your time because the days are evil." That's why I fussed at y'all about looking at all-day news channels and television. Make the most of whose time? Whose time? God ain't got a time. So the only time he'll talk about time, it's your time, my time.

So then, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of God is. And do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the spirit. Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to who? The Lord. Please remember that when we read verse 22 to verse 26. Always giving thanks for all things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father. Here he goes: "and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ." Wives—I'm not going to read what you have in your Bible because it's not in the Greek text—wives to your own husbands as to the Lord.

Okay, he said submit in the fear of God to one another, then he said, "wives to your own husbands as to the Lord." And he brings up the Lord again because he kept saying everybody got to be submissive to the Lord. So he goes to the Lord for the husband. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. He himself being the savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives—the word "ought to be" is not in the Greek text, so it should read—but as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water with the word, that he might present to himself the church. The man is helping Christ present the church through his wife in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. And the word "own" don't mean she's bought.

For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also the church—the word "does" is not in there—because we are members of his body. This is the reason he wrote Genesis chapter 2. Shall I leave my father, my mother, and shall—in other words, I'm finishing up what Moses left out—join his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This is what God intended. But because we're in the new dispensation, a new covenant, verse 32, this is a mystery, it is great. They didn't get it in the Old Testament. I didn't get it as a Pharisee, Paul is saying.

But I'm speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself. And the wife—the phrase "must see to it" is not in the text—that she respects her husband. Why would God, who made a point to make man and woman equal, bring this up? And he's made a point to repeatedly say how he has brought men and women together as equal. Genesis chapter 1: I made them in my image to be fruitful and multiply, man and woman in my image. In other words, the woman is made in the same image as the man, based on God.

He makes another point in Galatians chapter 3 verse 28: there's no difference between male, female, bond or free. You're all sons of God. You all have the same nature because in Genesis I made you in my image, so you have the same nature. He makes another point in Malachi chapter 3, matter of fact, he says if a man was to mistreat his wife, I'll mess up your money and your prayer life. And then he repeats it in First Peter chapter 3 verse 7. They're joint heirs, which means that not Satan's going to block your prayers; he's distinctive to say that I personally, who sits at the right hand of the Father, will block your prayers.

I will block them. In other words, if you mistreat your wife, when you pray to God and mention my name, I will not mention yours. So why would this God, who is constantly saying that there's no difference between male and female, bond and free, and that I made you in my image and all these different things, why would this God put together this structure? What is his point that we need to reconnect to? Because if the world was right in how they function, why is divorce so high? Why is there abuse in the home, domestic abuse?

If God is so wrong, why are the results that the world is dealing with, our kids that are angry, they're shooting in schools? Why, if God is so wrong, people sit angry? Men wave the—I call it the retreat flag. I do the outside, you do the inside. If a wife is happy, everybody happy. I call those statements when I hear them in counseling, you're retreating. You're not being a man. Here is the money, you pay the bills. I don't want to argue, I want peace. Or have fun with what you want to have fun with and just leave me alone when I go outside.

I'm going to find things in the garage to do to make sure I'm not in the house too often. So I'm going to go on trips, I'm going to play golf everywhere so that when I come home you miss me so much I get what I wanted in the first place. I call that the retreat flag. So what does that build if God is so wrong? What does that build with kids? Kids don't see leadership. They come into marriages where they don't want no woman telling me what to do. Kids are now saying I ain't getting married, let's just live together.

Because that marriage thing, I seen it, I don't want it. So young adults today, they will just if I have a need, I got a hookup, I know this person is good, we just sleep together, we go along or we have this casual intimacy. No commitment. Our young people are there. If God is so wrong, why are there 29 sexual diseases, but in marriage, none if people are faithful to one another? If God is so wrong, why when people switch roles where I'm going to lead the house because ain't no man telling me what to do, why do we have divorce so high, even in the church?

It's because many times we've come to this issue and we have not slowed down to learn the process that God has had, that I had to learn. I had to learn this process because I didn't grow up in a home. I saw a traditional structure that was somewhat biblical. And my dad was an elder at the church. I remember preaching in place of Dr. Evans at a marriage conference, and my dad was there. And he was pretty mad at me when I taught this structure. He walked right past me and I said, "Hey, Dad," and he just kept walking. And I knew what that meant.

So I learned from that expression that my dad was still where he was and there was not a Bible verse that would change his mind. I wasn't preaching to him, I didn't even know he was in the audience. My mom had a way of working her way through her commitment to submit by teaching us what bothered her without saying it's her husband. She would say things to me or to my brothers like this: "You going to clean your own room because your wife will not be your slave." What does that mean when you hear that as a child? You hear that over and over again, you start to realize she's saying something to make sure that you don't become like your dad.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Pastor Cannings. It seems just as Christ exemplifies for us, we could choose to love and forgive more easily in our relationships. Now friend, if you have questions about what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, then give us a call today at 281-260-7402. Again, that's 281-260-7402.

For all of our ministry resources, please visit us online at powerwalkministries.org. When you're there, look for Pastor Cannings' book, "Why Can't Mondays Be More Like Sundays?" It will further help you develop your faith that is real and pleasing to God.

Dr. Paul Cannings: You know, Power Walk Ministries seek to support itself by the books and the materials that God has blessed us to be able to minister to your life and to strengthen and equip you spiritually to be productive. And that's the way we develop support for this ministry. So we feel that if we touch your life, then that will lead to us touching other lives.

So go to our website at www.powerwalkministries.org and participate in our ministry because when you do so, it goes to serving other people, not just on radio but around the world in conferences in terms of equipping pastors and their wives, etc. So join us, partnership with us and be blessed at the same time by going to our website and becoming a part of our ministry.

Guest (Male): Powerwalkministries.org or call us at 281-260-7402. If you'd like to write us, our mailing address is Power Walk Ministries, PO Box 920517, Houston, Texas, 77092. We appreciate your partnership with us. And now remember, it's never too late to consider and implement God's structure and guidelines in our homes and replace chaos with harmony.