Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): Thanks for tuning in to this broadcast of Power Walk Ministries with Pastor Paul Cannings. Friends and relationships bring about conflict, yet God designed us for community. In the book of Acts, chapter 12, we find the believers gathered together praying for Peter who is in prison.

Encouraging us to also be actively involved in the lives of other believers, Pastor Cannings brings us this message series titled, It Takes a Village.

Dr. Paul Cannings: We live in a world that has learned a lot from what it's like when people are isolated, when people are removed from one another, not even able to experience family members. We see how aggressive things can become, how dysfunctional things can become, and how mental illness can become even more dramatic in what we are dealing with every day.

It's interesting that many times people can't stand being together, but when they are without one another, they can't stand themselves a whole lot sometimes. It's because of the way God designed us. God designed it that a man and a woman will give birth to a child, and this child will eventually lead to a tribe, and this tribe would lead to a city.

Why is it like that? God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have always been together. Relationship is everything that they know. You're talking about God just constantly pouring Himself out to where, in every situation, He makes man and He makes angels. God the Father and God the Son are always together forever and forever, never separated.

God turned His back on the cross, not separated, but God turned His back on Him. Why? Because God is love. Love demands a community of people. Love is a sharing, love is a giving, love is giving so much that it brings a person to be so selfless that they would sacrifice themselves on a cross. That's why marriage can become a place where people could become so vulnerable in relationships.

God designed us to need a village. He designed us to need a church body with gifts of encouragement, gifts of help, gifts of wisdom, and gifts of knowledge. He designed the church body so that when the world breaks us down, there's a place that builds us up. He designed us that way.

People are struggling to go back to church and still believe they can grow spiritually, which does not make any sense biblically. Theologically, that's not going to happen. Just one verse alone in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 12 and 13, says that's the only way we could be built up. Verse 16 says that's the only way we could experience the love of God.

We're not perfect people in the church. So if we go in and seek to be a difference in the church, rather than criticize it and walk away, maybe there's hope for the church to become what God wants it to be. When the church fails in Revelation, five of them out of the seven, then you have this crisis in Revelation that Jesus Christ has to establish Himself to respond to and to fix.

Because the church, the Bible says, is where the keys to the gates of Hades are. You shut it down, you don't do what God designed it to do. We don't struggle with flesh and blood; we struggle with principalities and powers. So the more we take away the antibody system is the more the virus of sin, decay, people having marital issues, gun violence, and all these different things magnify themselves to where Jesus Christ's return becomes more and more eminent.

This is why we are where we are and why the Scriptures teach the opposite of what our emotions would take us to, what our comfort zones would take us to, and where we feel that we will be fine, only to end up in a place God never designed us to be. That's why we look at this passage of Scripture today as we work our way through it so we can learn from it and grow in it rather than just give a general synopsis.

I'd like to take a week to power walk our way through this so that we learn how to apply the power of the Holy Spirit to our lives productively for the glory of God. That's why we say right here in Acts chapter 12, we're going to spend most of our time from verse 11 through verse 17, even though this passage goes from verse 6 all the way through to verse 19.

This is a passage that talks about Peter. He's in jail, he's been serving God, and he is not about to turn his back on Christ again. That's what you see in the determination of Peter. Many times you could mock Peter, people look at Peter all kinds of different ways, but I like Peter. I like Peter in the fact that he's the only one to step out of the boat.

Even though people may criticize Peter for having peppermint socks because he keeps sticking his foot in his mouth, Peter at least opened his mouth. When he did, he was willing to be corrected about it. So at least to me, Peter, of all the disciples, was the most committed to Christ in demonstrating that, outside of John, than the other disciples were.

This Peter is the one who preached at Pentecost, even though he denied Christ three times. He's the person that God would come to and say, "Peter, upon this rock I'll build my church." And Peter's the one who Ananias and Sapphira fell down before and died because God established Peter as the leader in the church.

So Peter is not about to turn his back on Christ. They could tell him not to preach the gospel; Peter's going to go preach it anyway. He's going back to the same place that they told him when they arrested him. You would think Peter wouldn't go back to the very same place and preach when they told him not to preach. Peter didn't care; Peter went back to the same place because he's not going to deny Christ again. He's never going to be found in that position again.

As a result of that, Peter was able to become a key leader in the local church. That person, as a matter of fact, helped solve the issues of Acts 15. When they were talking about going to the Gentiles, Christ talked to Peter on the rooftop to explain to Peter that he would go to the Gentiles. That's why Peter would say in Acts that he has now come to the understanding of what Christ is doing. In other words, I didn't get it before, but in Acts chapter 10, I get it now for verse 34 through verse 35.

So Peter is now this person that these Jewish leaders are going to go after. Later on, when it comes to the Gentiles, by the time you come to the end of Acts, it's Paul they want to slaughter because he keeps going to these Gentiles that have no part in God's kingdom. And so they had to stop that too.

These same people that crucified Christ are trying to crucify Peter, and Peter is not backing down. Even though Peter is doing all of these different things, Peter needed a village. Many times that's what we, in our commitment to Christ, our commitment to walk with God, and our commitment to do what Christ is saying, we believe our commitment and what we're going to do will make us strong. But without a village, Peter is not going to be who God wants him to be to continue his ministry.

That's what we tend to walk away from when we start to give up on church, when we may believe that "I'm going to go to work and I'm going to do what God called me to do, I'm going to be in my family and do what God called me to do, I'm going to go out here and be a salt and light." The Bible is saying none of that can happen without the community of faith.

You have to have a community of people who walk by faith and not by sight and are committed to doing what God has called them to do. Like you would see the church of Philadelphia in Revelation, that church becomes people who Christ would take their names and put it on a pillar for the temple that He would bring down from heaven to establish in the New Jerusalem. He'd put their names on the pillars of that church because of their commitment to Christ, no matter what the synagogue of Satan was doing to persecute them.

Because they held to God's plan and they stayed wired to be a community, they developed that community to be a community of people in the local church. See, folks, we have to think this way, or we'll be a part of the problem that leads this world to fall apart. We allow the very thing that Christ is only the head of.

He said, "I'm the head of the church, the church is my body," the only thing He identifies with. The Spirit of God would come and would develop in a believer's life because of the local church. We cannot not take this seriously, or we will be a part of the problems that are faced in our culture.

There's several plagues that are going to come in the last days. There's going to be several earthquakes and all these different things, but we are failing because we're not thinking of God's plan first. We're trying to find our comfort zones, we're trying to find what makes sense to us, but we are going to everything else.

That's why in this text in Acts 12, we need to spend some time as we look at verse 11. In verse 11 it says, "And when Peter came to himself." What does that mean? You see, Peter initially thought that what was going on was a dream because it was so radical. What was happening, you have to understand how secure this jail cell was.

You have Roman soldiers that are in barracks not too far from this jail cell. Then you have two sets of guards, and then the gates open up into the city. So for a person to escape is very difficult. And then you have this brutal person called Herod, brutal to the bone. This person's going to bring them up to be sacrificed, basically, because it seems that's why God is reaching out to save Peter.

That's why Herod's death is going to be where God just strikes him down and have worms eat him in front of everybody because he thought he was like a god and that people should worship him. And God says, "No, like Nebuchadnezzar, this is going to happen to you."

So Peter was going to face a person with that level of arrogance, that mindset that he could do what he wants to do, get away with anything he wants to get away with, because he is a god. And God took him out. This is what Peter was faced with. When Peter is seeing jail cells open, when Peter is seeing chains fall off, when Peter's hearing this angel speaking to him, he thought he's having a dream. It can't be real.

But when Peter's now walking out and into the city, Peter's going, "Wait a minute, this is not a dream. I'm physically standing here." Now, why is all of this happening? What we're going to learn as to why all this is happening is because a group of people never forgot about Peter. People kept praying for Peter. A group of people took that seriously for Peter.

In doing so, they empowered the church to continue to spread and to develop because they were deeply committed to that, even though the church was being persecuted. And God made a powerful movement for the church because these folks took what God has established, no matter the persecution it was going through, as a serious part of their commitment to Jesus Christ.

Folks, it doesn't matter what we face in these last days. It matters who we face it with. And the person who is telling us that He walks with us in a powerful way and shuts off the attacks of Satan. That's why Paul would say, "Satan, I know your schemes." He would come to the church in false doctrine, with deceit and lies.

You would see some people that you believe are saved and walking with God and he's going to find ways to do different things, like you would see even in the case of Job where Job is going, "What is the deal here? I walk righteous." These things will happen in these days to leave people bewildered. Satan comes all kinds of ways.

And the Bible is saying you hold the keys. But I'm only committing these keys to the church. I'm not committing it to your house, I'm not committing to your devotional life, I'm not committing it to how faithful you may be at the church because you hold a Bible and you walk in the Bible.

That is great, be a salt and light. Yes, this is who you are, you're a disciple of mine, you share the gospel; I've explained all those things. But the place that you empower it and the place that I protect you and bless you is my church. That's what will make you what I need you to be, because that's the only place I'm committed to. Folks, I pray our mindset will reorient to how God has wired us, not the way the world is seeking to rewire us as we in these last days experience a whole lot of travail. Stay focused.

Guest (Male): No indeed, we are not alone. Many times our isolation can be of our own making. So let's give to and receive the support of other believers. As we take the message of the gospel and seek to equip the body of Christ effectively, would you consider partnering with us both in prayer as well as through your financial support?

You can do so online at PowerWalkMinistries.org or by giving us a call at 281-260-7402. Now, if you'd like to write us, our mailing address is P.O. Box 920517, Houston, Texas, 77292, or call us at 281-260-7402.

Dr. Paul Cannings: I am so excited about April the 23rd through the 25th because it is a conference with lots of notes, great teachers, well-educated, well-prepared, doing what they're teaching in their churches. You cannot miss this conference. Come April the 23rd through the 25th at Living Word Fellowship Church. Come and be blessed.

The conference is the way forward. How can we be productive despite the challenges ministries can experience? You go to PowerWalkMinistries.org and you will get all the information you need. PowerWalkMinistries.org. Look forward to seeing you.

Guest (Male): And now, as we leave you, remember, God is committed to fulfilling His purpose through the church. So let us commit to loving and caring for other believers.