Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us for today's installment of Power Walk. Broken Not Defeated is the title of our current series taught by Pastor Paul Cannings. When we were kids, we all wanted to grow up so fast, wanted to get to the next level as soon as possible. If only we could adapt this approach to spiritual growth and our maturity in accepting life's challenges. It's hard for us to handle hardships and difficulties and recognize an opportunity for growth in them, isn't it? Challenging us to do just that, based on scripture through the life of Joseph, here's Pastor Cannings with the message, Growing Through Conflict.

Dr. Paul Cannings: Have you ever wished for things to just go smooth? Where you are pressing on and what you're doing comes to good results and you're able to see the fruit of your labor and you just can get that done without a lot of stress. That would be great, wouldn't it? That was a moment of dreaming.

When people have these realities in their lives, it's no different than what you see within the scriptures. The Bible doesn't give us people having wonderful days because they love Jesus. Even if you go to righteous people, you got Job and his wife says, "curse God and die," so you got a conflict there. You've got issues with Sarah and Hagar. You go through the scriptures, there are problems after problems, issues after issues that take place throughout the scriptures.

You've got Deborah and her husband. You can go down the list. To the when you get to Revelation, Christ is talking about taking the lampstand out of the church. It just doesn't stop. Peter and them are serving the Lord God and they're going in and out of jail. Then you got in Acts chapter 15, they're trying to decide about the Gentiles and the Jews and the law, and there's big conflict in the church and they had to pull together as leaders and resolve it.

Even Elijah had a conflict dealing with God, tied to a conflict he had with Jezebel. This is nothing new in scripture. The issue that is new for us is a sense that we tend to want to run from it. We tend to think that I can just get divorced for irreconcilable differences and this fixes this. We tend to not look at it from a perspective that God is calling us to.

People tend to fight to win and I always say when two people fight to win, both will lose. It's not about fighting to win. It's about fighting for what the standards of God are and being willing to discipline our lives to that because God's standards, God's will, empowered by the ministry of the Holy Spirit, is never divisive.

The Holy Spirit, who is the spirit of truth, is also the spirit of peace. If we're fighting under the influence of the power of the Holy Spirit, we end up with focused on what is the truth. It drives us to experience peace and the fruit of the spirit, which is longsuffering. We can make it through any painful situation and we can love even an enemy. This is what Joseph is brought to in Genesis chapter 42 as we now dive into the story after just introducing this issue of how God views conflict.

In Genesis chapter 42, verse 7 says this, "And Joseph saw his brethren and he knew them." He recognized them because they were old the guys when they put him in the well. Twenty years have passed. They don't recognize him, especially all in the Egyptian garb that he has on, haircut and everything else. Immediately when he sees them in this long line, a group of people coming trying to get grain, and he runs into them, he made himself strange unto them and spoke rough unto them and said to them, "Whence come ye?" and they said, "From the land of Canaan to buy food."

This is like there are states and cities in this country called Egypt. Joseph manages all these places. I don't know if it was spread out as it could have been in a large country like America, but it's not one place. Joseph is managing all these places, but it happens by the grace of God that his brothers arrive at the very place, at the very time that Joseph is there and he ends up seeing them and recognizing them.

In the midst of all these people coming from all these different countries, he recognizes his brothers. The thing that he immediately adjusts to is the pain he still feels as a result of what his brothers did by leaving him in a well to die when he begged them in distress. The Bible says in verse 21 of chapter 42, from his soul he begged them and they left him, his own brothers left him to die.

God arranged for Joseph to have to confront his brothers. What does he confront his brothers first from? His pain. Joseph doesn't first come to confront his brothers based on the providence of God and the structure that God has organized that he can't go past. He can't fix this. God is saying, "I'm going to give you a dream. This is what's going to happen in that dream and they will bow to you." Guess what happens? They bow to him.

When God speaks, Hebrews chapter 6, verse 18 says He doesn't lie. It's better for us to keep renewing our mind to do His will and let that become a living sacrifice we present ourselves through every day rather than to just keep leaning to our own understanding, which he says will make our paths a mess. Because if He says not to lean to our own understanding and we lean to our own understanding, guess what we just did? We just sinned.

The thing that is powerful that leads to the providence of God functioning in this way is the obedience of one man, Joseph. Joseph submitted to the will of God, to the issues that gender the plan that God has for His kingdom purposes.

Once we bring ourselves under the authority of God, we expose ourselves to the plan of God through us, for the focus of God, for His kingdom development, for His glory. We don't lose in that. We gain everything in that, but it drives us into these situations. The more we hold to the will of God is the more we expose ourselves to the kingdom plan of God.

When we are exposing ourselves to the will of God, we expose ourselves to God's agenda in propagating His kingdom plan across the earth. That's what leads Joseph to meet his brothers. The second thing we see here is that Joseph interacts with his brothers from his pain first. You have to understand that Joseph thought his pain was over.

Joseph actually thinks his pain is done. When you look at chapter 41, verse 51, Joseph called the name of his firstborn Manasseh, "For God," said he, "had made me forget all my toil and all my father's house." Finally, I'm married. I got me a child. God has restored me. God has given me what I've lost. When I've lived 20 years without a family, I now got one.

So Joseph is saying I'm going to build me something here that's great, that is going to remove all my pain. Then the pain showed up and the pain wasn't gone. Sometimes we think we can repair our lives and go to another country or go to another city or just move away from all the problems we once had. Run. Just sell the house and go somewhere else.

The Bible is going, you can't run from me. I am God. I am in every place all at the same time, fully God, and I don't forget nothing. I tell you that He who began a good work in you must take it to completion. Please understand, the ministry of the Holy Spirit helping Christ is to present the church as a radiant church before God.

Since that's the plan, so that when we come to heaven, we can experience the glorious fellowship with God. We can come to that table and join with Him and interact with Him and have great times with Him. Why? Because we know Him. We have longed to be with Him. How can we run? Remember Jonah trying to run? How far did he get? Did it change Jonah's attitude? No.

What did God do? He accomplished His purposes that He told Amos He was going to do with this kingdom coming against the northern kingdom. It happened. Couldn't stop it. It is better to surrender to the will of God to experience the kingdom plan of God working through your life, so you can experience the blessings and the favor and the power of God where we can see who we could have been. It's better to commit our will to His will to experience the kingdom plan of God so that we can experience all that we can actually become that we would never be able to do on our own.

Joseph, he's not running. Joseph was ready to face his brothers, but he did it from his pain. I can't have this anger turned to wrath where I'm now planning to hurt the person and do things to the person. He tells us to be angry. The word "be" means it's okay. You can just continue. Just make sure it does not continue to these other attitudes that are not characteristic of who God is.

It doesn't represent the nature of God, the character of God, but it does represent when we are angry, the righteousness of God. Joseph is in this feeling that he thought he got rid of and God is saying no negative to that because Joseph was justified in how he responded.

The Bible is saying that's okay because that's how we start healing from the pain. We can't stuff the pain down or we get depressed. We can't stuff the pain down because then vengeance and wrath can come out. When we are faced with what God allows us to confront, the Bible says do it with decency and order so that we can start managing the pain that by chapter 50, Joseph is in full view of how that works productively so he can heal and stay focused.

Guest (Male): Thank you Reverend Cannings. Our submission to God and His will exposes us to His agenda and plan for our lives. Please visit us online at powerwalkministries.org. That's powerwalkministries.org.

Erin Campbell: I'm Erin Campbell from Grace Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri. Some of the things I learned from the conference was how to implement an effective youth ministry. This conference has exceeded my expectations. I've met some amazing people and I've heard some great presentations.

Guest (Male): As it relates to Power Walk Ministry, Dr. Cannings for over 33 years, it began with him personally ministering to me in my home and then in our church, teaching me the basics of leadership and many other subjects. We took that information and began to make it applicable in our lives and the life of our church. Soon after that, I began traveling with him around the world with Power Walk Ministry, helping other pastors globally to implement the principles that Power Walk Ministry stand for. It's been beneficial to me and our ministry. As I've traveled again around the world with Dr. Cannings, we've seen the benefits in places like Rwanda, in places like St. Maarten, the Bahamas Islands. Again, Power Walk Ministry has been a great blessing to me and I pray it continues to be a blessing to many other ministries around the world.

Dr. Paul Cannings: I am so excited about the conference coming up April the 23rd to the 25th. I really am ecstatic about it. Pastors have come together on a committee help with the process moving forward. Excited about our first conference last year, but this conference this year is going to be greater. There's about 40 classes here.

Let me give you a taste. The pastor and deacon's functioning under the leadership of Christ, a biblical approach to resolving conflict in the church, traits of successful biblical leaders, cultivating a healthy and productive team environment, overcoming the stagnation in the church, discipling leaders, dealing with how do we grow people and do evangelism at the same time.

Despite all the difficulties churches are facing, we can find a powerful, effective way forward. A lot of teachers are coming to teach. They're well-trained, well-educated, practicing these principles within their church. Come be a part of April the 23rd through the 25th. Go to powerwalkministries.org. Powerwalkministries.org so that we could move forward together for God's glory. Look forward to seeing you. You will not be in any way disappointed at this conference.

Guest (Male): Reach out to us at 281-260-7402. That's 281-260-7402. We'll continue with this series Broken Not Defeated tomorrow. Be sure to join us. And now remember, it's always better to commit our will to God in order to experience and be part of fulfilling His kingdom plan.