Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us for today's installment of Power Walk with Pastor Paul Cannings. Through this week, Pastor Cannings has been teaching on living in the power of the Holy Spirit, sharing clearly the role and functions of the Holy Spirit. Today he focuses on the illumination of scripture as one of the roles of the Holy Spirit. What does this mean, and how does this apply to us? Dr. Cannings lays this out in today's message, Holy Spirit and Scripture. Let's listen.

Paul Cannings: If there's anything that education can do to us each and every day is to make us think that we understand what we're doing, especially when that education has led to many accomplishments in our lives. Whether it's job and maturation in a company, whether it's building a home, family, all these different things. Sometimes people are even matured in a church because of the accomplishments they've made in the world. Those people sometimes are the ones who then end up leading churches. They've accomplished a lot. They're strong givers, all these different things. Sometimes all of those things take us away from what the spirit of God is doing in our lives or seeking to do in our lives. So we live a very sophisticated carnal life.

Many times what we don't realize is those things take us further away from God than closer to God. That's the problem with Jesus's day. I mean, you had Pharisees, Sadducees, high priests, rabbis, all these different people. They nailed him to the cross. He said in John chapter 5, verse 39, they know who I am. It wasn't the uneducated people that said crucify him, it's the educated people that said crucify him. It's the people that have status in the church, teachers in the church. It was not the people who are the Peters of the day. The Peters of the day dropped their nets and followed him. The Peters of the day that may curse are the ones that followed him. The tax collector that they wouldn't stand having around the temple courts, he's a tax collector picking up money for the Romans, that's the person who became a part of Jesus's following. He has to tell them, stop treating the rich a certain way and the poor the other way.

Many times, folks, when we come to Christ, we treat Christ and the church like it's a corporation and because of money being in it, and because of people's status and accomplishments, rather than a place where people can grow. It's an organism. The church is the body of Christ. It's an organism, it's not an organization. A body of Christ, because it's an organism, it has structure, but it doesn't have structure and that's it. It has structure because it's an organism. So if we're not focused on who the church is about, then the church is more about its structure than about the person of Christ.

So instead of us growing in our walk with Christ, we grow in how we make it in this church and how we function in this church. How sometimes we control the preacher because we don't need him preaching on all some of these different things here. We want to see this church grow and do well. A lot of times when we come to these things, what we don't realize is that dependence on the Holy Spirit leads to relationship with Jesus Christ. No matter how educated we are, sometimes no matter how biblically trained we are.

1 Corinthians chapter 8 says this for all the folks that are biblically trained but not engaged with the ministry of the Holy Spirit, moving in their lives, adjusting things in their lives whenever he wants to. He says this, "Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge." Corinth, folks, is got all kinds of different philosophies and libraries and different places and different temples attached to gods. And he says, "Knowledge puffed up, but charity edifieth. And if any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know."

In other words, we are not coming to the truth on our own. It's impossible to come to the truth of God without God. Nobody can come to know God without the helper, the Holy Spirit, for he came to guide us in the truth and he is the spirit of truth. No one can come to experience the abundant life that Christ came to provide without the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is the truth and Jesus Christ is the salvation. He's the way, the truth, and it's the spirit of God that leads us to experience life and life abundantly. That's why we could end up being more religious than spiritually maturing and experiencing what Christ wants us to know.

Please remember, it's not all that we've put together. That's why sometimes, even as pastors, we become well-educated and we use our Greek and Hebrew and all of the background theological dictionaries, and now we have sophisticated computer programs that we can now use and we could know that passage inside and out. But the inside to that passage no one can come to know without the Holy Spirit. That is something that dominates my life. No matter how much training, how much education I have, no matter how much seminar I've been through, if I'm not applying this, the lights don't come on for us to see God's intent in the passage, not just our ability to communicate it.

And once we communicate it, it may be impressive, but it don't necessarily change a heart because it's not going from the spirit of God to the spirit in that person's life. Therefore, it's just a good word that excites a person for a moment, but there's no transformation. And that's why I want us to focus today on 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Never forget this. It doesn't matter how smart we are. When we come to the knowing God and experiencing God, the Bible says we must abide in him. We must remain in what he is saying, no matter how crazy it may sound. He says in 1 John, he says to come to know him is to walk in the way he did.

Hebrews chapter 5, verse 14 will say we must practice what we learn, or there is no sensing of the Holy Spirit movement inside of us. Many times churches become religious, it's become what we do for an hour. If anybody breaks that, we're about to lose our minds. But we don't go in that manner to everything else that we do. Folks, we come to things and we could do it systematically with our brilliant minds and miss the heart of the issue. It's done intellectually, but not necessarily from the heart. It's a difference.

He says in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 10, he says, "But God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit, for the spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God." Who's he writing this to? He's writing this to the church of Corinth. They're coming to Christ now and they want to apply their systems of thought in order for them to understand what the scriptures are saying. Sometimes we come to Christ like that because I've achieved this. Yes, I may be coming to the church, but I am a medical doctor, or I'm a lawyer, or I'm this. Okay, so what? You trained to do that on a job. You didn't train to do that in a church. What does law have to do with the church? You may be a judge, but what does that have to do with what Christ is teaching you about life?

In Hebrews he says, when you come to church, come to stimulate one another to love and good deeds. Chapter 10, come with a mindset to walk with Christ and grow in Christ. Don't come as if you know it all because of what you've achieved in the secular world. This is a whole new life. Christ thinks of things completely different than how we would look at it. That's why he says the only way we can actually search out, Bible is saying that's when a person starts to search the scriptures, the only person that could take them deep into the scriptures is the spirit of God. He came to guide us in truth. He is the spirit of truth.

We have dramatized the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has to guide us in the truth because Christ came to give us life and life abundantly. He came to establish a friendship with us. Christ is a spiritual being, not just a glorified body, but a spiritual being. So in order to be engaged with spiritual beings, we have to connect to the spirit of God in us. The way to do that is for us to do all the things we've been talking about this week. Key thing is practicing the word of God. It's like a person going to the gym. They have muscles already. All they're doing is exercising what's already there so it gets stronger.

The Bible says the Holy Spirit, at the point of salvation, came into our lives. By we practicing the word of God, what is already in us comes out of us. So the more we practice the word of God is the more the spirit of God takes on searching out the deep things because now he's going to create, 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 2, a thirst like a baby thirsting for milk. He will create that thirst for the word of God, and we will never get enough of the word of God.

God taught me that a long time ago when I was teaching the book of Ephesians. I walked into the classroom at the Bible college and the very first question stumped me. God taught me then, as a young professor, don't you ever think that you could pick up a file, walk into a classroom without praying, without seeking me, without going through the process of just rereading the text and preparing your heart to communicate what needs to be communicated. Because you don't know everything even when you think you do. I take you deep because I want you to understand who I am so we can have a genuine relationship.

Here's the next thing we need to come to with a mindset this way. In verse 11 he says, "For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the spirit of God." No man can come to a full understanding, to a complete knowledge of what God is saying without the spirit of God illuminating it. It's impossible. It doesn't matter how long you've been in church, how many sermons you've heard. Until the spirit of God is kicked in, we can't come to an understanding of knowing the word of God to where it's completely clear in our minds. It's impossible.

Here's this last thing. Verse 12 he says, "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, that we may know the things that are freely given to us by God." We have to stop using the world to teach us how to follow Christ. We as churches are so splintered. We have some people that believe in this and some people believe in that. Some people when they get saved, they literally ask me, well, which denomination do I join? I said, oh, that's a tragedy. It's about coming into a family to grow spiritually, just like a baby being given to a mother in a family setting for the baby to be loved and nurtured and grow up in that family.

That's what the church is supposed to develop in a person: the gift of encouragement, the gift of help, the gift of service. Because we bring our cultural preferences, we sometimes approach it in a mechanical way when it's a spiritual process. So that we can come to know God, not from a philosophical worldly concept, but from a spirit-led biblical process that unites us, teaches us love, produces the spirit of God in us. So that we are long-suffering through pain, find peace when we are dealing with enemies, can still be kind dealing with difficult situations, we can still have joy because in every situation, Christ is nurturing us as he teaches us what the word of God means each and every day. This is not just about knowledge. It's about faith in Christ. Stay focused.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Pastor Cannings. Reading the Bible is not a mechanical process, friends, but a spirit-led biblical process. So let's rely on the Holy Spirit to give us true understanding. As always, we value your prayers for our ministry as we serve not only in our community, but nationally and internationally as well. Please log on to powerwalkministries.org. That's powerwalkministries.org or call us at 281-260-7402.

I am so excited about the pastor's 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 and 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. Be a part of this, you will not be disappointed. April the 23rd through the 25th. Look forward to seeing you.

When you contact us, would you make a prayerful contribution to enable us to fulfill our mission to encourage and equip the body of Christ? We appreciate all of your prayers and financial support. And now remember to always seek the Holy Spirit's assistance in the meaning of scriptures that you read. Allow him to shed his light and to give you understanding.