Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): We welcome you to today's Power Walk Ministries' broadcast. We're so glad that you've tuned in to join us today as Pastor Paul Cannings continues with the series titled Fatherhood: Your Best Life. We all have people in our lives that we call our heroes. Those who taught us some valuable lessons in life, and sometimes those who gave us just the right push that we needed at a critical crossroads in our lives.

Often these heroes are recounted as parents. Friends, the impact that a father can have on a son or daughter is huge. And this is the area in which Reverend Cannings challenges us today in the message, A Father's Impact.

Dr. Paul Cannings: Depending on the temperament of the father and mother and the temperament of the child, the challenges of raising a child can be enormous, encouraging, difficult, pleasant, or an experience that causes everyone to grow. It depends on the spiritual maturity of all people involved, their prayer life, their commitment to seek wisdom in the process of raising a human being as explained starting out this entire week, that can impact the world like Hitler, that could impact the world like it was in the case of Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln dealing with the injustices that take place in our country.

These children grow up and their impact could be strong. Their impact may not be as enormous. The impact may be being a teacher, a Sunday school teacher, and a great educator that is committed and loves the class, the children that he or she teaches. Being a great mom, like impacted my life in a tremendous way. But this child grows up and their influence can be for generations. We looked at that and talked about that rather when it came to the issue of Isaac and Jacob and Esau situation. And now his two nations that still don't get along that well for generations to come, that continues on to eternity.

Raising a child is not just a being that's growing up because we're feeding them as we've discussed and putting clothes on their back and making sure they do their homework and making sure they're respectful at the house and making sure they treat their other siblings right and go to church and make sure they play sports, that we now have this balance, well-rounded individual that we've developed so they come out well. No, the Bible says there's some innate issues there. They're born in sin, they're shaped in iniquity with foolishness in their heart. That's how the Bible describes them.

The Bible is not just talking about the ability the child may have to achieve great things in their life in terms of what they may become job-wise, but it's talking about the character of the child that'll determine the impact the child may have. Hitler had the charismatic ability to lead a nation and transform it from one leader to another leader and take over the nation and empower it and fire it up to become this nation that accomplished great things. But character-wise, went in a whole different direction that damaged the world to today.

Understand, we're not just raising this baby that is cuddly and nice. We're raising a human being that can have tremendous impact. And that's why the Bible is placing this, as we discussed so far this week, on the person He's given a lot of authority to because of what he's starting out with, and that is the father. I don't accept the excuses. I'm sorry of "well, we've been divorced and then all these things happen". No, you keep trying. At least God sees your efforts that you haven't given up at reaching that child.

A child needs that father in their life or that child will grow up a different way. The Bible is teaching us that when we look at passages like Malachi chapter 4, verse 6. We have to understand that yes, this father may have promised a lot of things and you trusted that and now this child is born and then he went off and left you. And now you're dealing with all this stuff. But the father now wants to come back in the child's life. How do you deal with that? Make sure like Joseph did when he worked with his brothers and made sure they were honest men by testing and testing and testing for the purpose of making sure they're honest men.

Once he realized they were honest men, then he disclosed himself and worked towards the agenda he knew God set. And that was to put him in Egypt to help save a nation and to do what God expected him to do for this nation and he delineated it in Genesis chapter 45, verse 5 on. It was pain. His own brothers did that. But Joseph worked through that process and eventually because of him, you had this nation named Israel born out of Egypt. He created that legacy because he didn't just let the bitterness control the direction he took. He let the plan of God lead the process that blessed the nation.

We can't come to these things and use children as weapons and use alimony as a way to work the whole system. This is a human being. It is immoral. So when we come to this, the Bible is teaching us yes, because of Adam and Eve this child is born this way, but this is what I structured into this family setting so this child can become a great person that change the world, change a generation of people so that eventually what comes from that generation, like in the case of Moses, a great leader that changes the world.

We don't know who we're raising. We just know God has given us this privilege that we need to be focused on and galvanized to do a good job. And that's why He says this we've been going through fathers, do not provoke your children. To balance that He says bring them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. Watch this carefully, to nurture them we talked about that and admonition of the Lord. I like how this is broken out better in the Greek text. It's broken out in the Greek text to talk about discipline and instruction. It works better that way instead of wrapping it up in this word admonition.

Correction to many people is correction. We got to get the whip out. That is the ultimate thing. It has to do with rebellion. You see that in the nation of Israel where God would discipline them when they rebelled against that. He opened up the earth and swallowed them. That's the whipping. The whipping came at the end, it didn't come at the beginning. It was a process. In other words, the person is rebelling against a structure that is designed for their benefit so that they grow up to be all the things God wants them to be. And that's why it's necessary for them to be disciplined. That's what He's talking about here.

The first thing about discipline is that the parents must organize a structure in the home that is consistent. It's not constantly changing on the child's life. I could tell you what our structure was growing up. It was consistent. I could tell you what we did at 6:00 in the morning when we had devotions as eight kids around sitting in the bedroom and mom teaching us and dad teaching on Sunday morning before we headed out to church. So we sat there, you had the lesson, you had the breakfast and a lesson and then we headed out to church.

I learned that once we finished that, what was expected in the morning as we prepared for breakfast, as we got ready for school, what expected when my parents organized, when we came home from school, what we organized ourselves to get our clothes ready for the next day and make sure that homework was set up and got done while mom was working with all of us to make sure dinner was ready. So when we finished studying, we go out in the yard and we could play and have a great time and then we came in for dinner.

Before we got to bed, she wanted us to individually do devotions and she always had to come check me because I'm looking at comic books acting like I'm studying the Bible, but I'm looking at comic books. So she always had to come figure me out. So she worked through that process and it became such a part of my life. I remember going off to college and I had to do my devotions because it was something that was a part of me. He's talking about discipline. Making it such an intricate part of the child's life that the child thinks this is what they do. This is who you are.

It is balanced by not provoking the child. It is balanced by the nurturing of the child so the child is loved and the child is held to a standard that is not provoking. The child is seeing the father's leadership in the home that is not provoking and the child is experiencing the love and the nurturing of the father and the mother and now the child is being led somewhere. When the child feels nurtured, if the child feels beat up, the disciplining doesn't work and the child wants to fight back and they want to argue and therefore this disciplining becomes correction because the child is rebelling simply because the child was provoked and the authority was abusive.

Nurturing comes before this whole issue of discipline. Understand, you're trying in the midst of discipline to create wisdom. That's why the Bible now attaches to instruction. Because the child is now disciplined to get up and prepare the clothes and make sure it's sitting out for Sunday morning. And the child is going to come home and in those days, all eight kids, we had two pants and three shirts for the week of school. We had to wear uniforms and so we were responsible for washing. It wasn't no wash and dry when I was growing up, there was a scrub board.

Our kids are going to be clean, they're going to be well-dressed, they're going to be properly dressed and she sewed for us. Dad didn't have the money to take care of eight kids so my mom was a sewer for her kids and she would sew our clothes and she would put it together. And you know you're being inspected as you walked out the door. So you better get it right. You understood that and you functioned with that because this person was so loving, so kind, so good to kiss you and hug you as you went out the door and to pray with you.

Those things took place and you started to realize the love of this woman that when my dad worked and eight kids so my mom was a homemaker. I remember trying to figure out, "Mom, why you always eating the fish head? That's not the good part of the fish." And it dawned on me, that's the only part that was left for her. And that's why she ate fish head. She made fish soup out of it and at the end of the day when we all settled down, understand, that nurturing, that coming home and dad sitting down with us.

That nurturing, that coming home and dad sitting down with us, those kind of things when He's now saying no, we're not changing this. This is our structure. This is how you're going to do it. We accepted that, respected that simply because they nurtured us and we wanted to please them. We wanted to do what they were saying. And now we have questions and the questions were entertained because now we're seeking wisdom.

Discipline leads to wisdom and that's why He is driving it to wisdom because wisdom always requires instruction. Because wisdom is built off of knowledge and we will get there tomorrow as to how this instruction works so it's not a beat down with the Bible where a person feels like, "Oh, here we go, Bible study again." So it doesn't become that. And that's why when we come to correction, the children are receptive because they understood they broke the structure and they broke the rules and now they're being defiant about it and that's not going to happen in this house. Therefore, there came the correction.

We'll pick this up again as we conclude this study on the call to fatherhood is the call to the salvation of a nation. That's what it is in the Bible. And that's why it has such rich blessings to it. Stay focused.

Guest (Male): It's true. While children don't enjoy any discipline at the moment, there are countless adults who look back and they're grateful for boundaries and structures that their parents provided. Thanks for that great message from Dr. Paul Cannings. The impact of a father is lifelong and may we be responsible and seek God's leading and wisdom in how we raise our children.

Now to obtain a copy of this series on Fatherhood: Your Best Life, please visit us online at powerwalkministries.org. That's powerwalkministries.org. You're welcome to call us as well at 281-260-7402. That's area 281-260-7402.

Dr. Paul Cannings: One of the hardest things in ministry is not actually doing ministry when God has blessed you to be this equipped, but it's to get the resources to get it done. Oh folks, that's the hardest. We've stepped out in faith because we believe that. But we pray that God will touch your heart to partnership with us and you can do that simply by going to our website, it's a secure website, and pressing the donate button. And on that button you will be able to become a partner with us and we will seek to bless you for being a blessing to us. I pray that God would move on your heart to be our partner.

Guest (Male): That's powerwalkministries.org. And now remember, as you correct and admonish your children, it's important that they understand clearly that it stems out of love for them, first and foremost, so that they're receptive to you.