Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us for today's installment of Power Walk. Today, Pastor Paul Cannings brings us part four in his message series, Character Builders. Many of us, for years possibly, have pushed down very real feelings of anger and even hate within us.

Pastor Cannings directs us to take stock of our lives and allow Christ to shed His light in the deepest recesses of our heart so that we can grow and walk in freedom. Here he is now with today's message, Choose Light.

Dr. Paul Cannings: It is easy to say to love somebody when you have justifiable anger. It doesn't make sense. When it seems like our world is going in all kinds of directions, marriages have their troubles, people have grown up in situations where it was abusive, and the Bible is still saying to honor your father and your mother. That could be a challenge for some people as they work through those processes that have taken place in their lives. These things take place. They happen for people.

You've got situations where people are in jobs that are just abusive. Demands are high and as a single parent, many times they have to just deal with it because that's the best job opportunity they've had, and the employment situation is not good right now, so they don't want to give up that job. Many times there is very, very good reason to hate. There is very, very good reason to become angry.

But I always think about the fact that there's a lot of reasons that God has to hate, but He chose to love. He's trying to teach us what He is all about. If we're going to get to know Him and if we're going to be about Him, then that's where we are. It's not that He's insensitive to what's going on, to the struggles that are taking place. God gets that.

The issue is, how do we operate when the lions are roaring? How do we operate in a situation where people are hateful? Jesus Christ went there. His family thought he was crazy. He's got Pharisees and Sadducees just hating his guts, looking for an opportunity to kill him. So we come to these situations, we've got examples in scripture where even Jesus has had to deal with folks hating him.

All the way to Calvary's cross, he would say from Calvary's cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." So he would still stay focused in the midst of the hatred, even the rejection that he experienced when the disciples did not stand with him. He understands the struggles we've been through and the pain we are going through.

So when he comes to these things, he's teaching us what saves us, what helps us for us to experience the benefits he has for us in heaven. In James chapter 1, verse 12, he says, "I will bless you with a crown of life in heaven." Anybody that could overcome, if a situation is bad even in the church, he says that person will sit with me on the throne in heaven.

He wants us to glory in him as Peter would say in the midst of trials and in difficulties. He says, "Don't miss out on the glory to be revealed." Paul would say the same thing. So Christ is not just thinking about this earthly life, he's thinking about how this earthly life doesn't take away our heavenly blessings.

So when we come to this, he's not insensitive. He doesn't not care. It's not that he doesn't understand our plight and our situation we're in. He is seeking to save us from what hate can do to us, what hate Satan can use through us to damage other people's lives, and the glory that he has for us where we would live in heaven forever. Seventy years if we get that doesn't compare to forever and ever and ever.

There's no purgatory. There's no way to work yourself up in heaven to get what you finally understand we need to do. No, this doesn't exist. Don't let anybody lie to you. It doesn't exist. Absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. There is no purgatory. So when we get to heaven, the Bible is saying it's fixed.

There's nothing we could do to gain anything. Everything is here on earth to gain. That's why Paul would say, "I give up everything so I would gain the power of the resurrection. For me to live is Christ, to die is gain" because in my life, I did everything I choose to grow in him, to work away from my flesh to my spirit, to the spirit of God, so that I can walk in the spirit and not in the flesh. So now when I die, there is gain.

That's what he's after here. When we come back to 1 John and we bring ourselves back to this whole issue of hate, anger can lead to this hate. In verse 9 he says of 1 John, "He that saith he is in the light and hateth his brother..." When we decide to walk in the word, which is the light, God is light, God's word, then we start to experience the truth.

When we're experiencing the truth is how God's word now relates to day-to-day life situations. Truth is the reality of what the word of God means in day-to-day living. So a person who chooses to walk in the word of God, God is light, then they experience the influence of the Holy Spirit illuminating the word of God. They experience the Holy Spirit guiding them into truth, the reality of what the word of God means each and every day.

The Bible says when that happens, they come to the light to be able to understand what God's word means, so now they walk in the light. Don't forget he keeps saying this word walk. He doesn't say they understand the light. He doesn't say they come to a great experience of the light. No, this light is when a person is walking.

This when a person has made it a lifestyle pattern. That's what walking means, and they've made it a habit to keep practicing this path forward. It's not a perfect person, because when you look at this, he's going to tell us that walking in the light will expose sin and we could confess it, and he's faithful and just to forgive us. That's literally what he's going to say in chapter 1 of 1 John.

That if you say you have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not know the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And don't forget the consistency here. If we walk, could also be "since," but if we walk, conditional situation, in the light as he is in the light. In other words, we're walking in the light is not something that we decide is light.

He decide it's light because God is light. So we can't say, "I got the light. I can see this situation the way I think it really is." No, we can't do that because it has to be what he is saying is the light, not what we believe is the light. So he says when we do that, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanse us from all sin.

What is he saying? When I walk in the light and the light becomes real, because now I'm walking in the truth and I'm realizing what God's word mean in day-to-day situations, as the spirit of God now continues to guide me, lead me, direct me, and challenge me from day to day, he says now when walking in this truth and the word becoming real, I see things better.

When I see things better, it also exposes my weaknesses. It also exposes the things I do wrong, the things I said wrong, exposes the things that was said in anger that needed to be fixed, exposes the things that was deep down inside that nobody knows, that Peter would call 1 Peter chapter 1, would say it's a refining fire.

It refines me from the inside out. When that situation is taking place, the Bible says it removes sin. If it's removing sin, we already discussed this when we looked at Ephesians chapter 4. When it is removing sin, then Satan doesn't have a play on my life like he did with Ananias and Sapphira.

It doesn't have control to get to lead my hate into a direction that is now wrath. It is now malice. It is now slander. It is now clamor. He doesn't get the chance to lead it in that direction because the spirit of God, when he brought it to light, I confessed it. Verse 9, "If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and the word is not in us."

Notice carefully, he didn't say "the truth," he said "the word" is not in us. God's word, just the written word, cannot be in us because there's no way we can know the word, walk in the word, come to the truth, and not say that we have ever sinned. It's impossible. The Holy Spirit illuminates. It's kind of like a person who is—I remember going into my closet and I was trying to get dressed without waking my wife up.

Man, I'm in there and I'm getting dressed and I grab a bunch of socks trying to figure out which socks I'm going to wear, and I thought I had on a blue pants. So I got out blue socks and I got the blue socks on, put it on, and I'm trying to get this dress in as little light as possible. Locking the doors, everything else making sure to get out so she could get a good night's sleep.

And when I got in the outside in the garage to jump in the car, I realize that I had a black pants on with blue socks. The light exposed the truth. See, that's what he's saying that leads to us not walking in darkness. That's why he's saying what he said in chapter 2. He says, "He that saith he's in the light and hateth his brother is in darkness even until now."

There's no way a person knowing what the word of God says and plan to walk in it could end up hating. There's no way, because the Bible is saying, and look at chapter 4, he's going to bring it out even more beginning in verse 7: "Beloved, let us love one another, for God is love. And everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God." Is saved, transformed into a new creation, and have experienced God intimately.

As we talked about yesterday, they've experienced the conviction of the Holy Spirit. They've experienced the Holy Spirit reminding them of the word of God, which he does based on John chapter 14, verse 26. They've experienced the word of God being illuminated, convicted when we don't do it. The Bible says the Holy Spirit does.

So when the Holy Spirit is working in our lives, we come to know God because he's constantly guiding us into this truth since he, that's his job is to guide us into the truth. If a person is walking with God, what comes out of them is this fruit of this Holy Spirit: love.

So there's no way a person can say they know God, but yet hate somebody and yet want to do vicious things to somebody. The Bible is saying that person is telling you loud they're not under the direction and the control and the influence of the Holy Spirit, so they must be in darkness. He didn't say they're not saved. He just said they're in darkness, meaning the Holy Spirit does not dominate their lives because they're too committed to the flesh.

Paul said this powerfully in Romans chapter 8, beginning in verse 5. He says, "For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God."

It hates God. It can't stand what God has to say. It gets angry when God says to love an enemy. For it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. But they that are in the flesh cannot please God. So that's why a person who chooses not to walk this way immediately comes in the darkness.

That's why he says, "Be angry, but sin not." Don't let it hang around for long periods of time or Satan will get a foothold. Darkness will begin to influence this person's life and like in the case of Cain and Abel, there is death. The Bible says that's why it is better to choose to walk with God rather than hate.

Because to walk with God provides a bigger victory in our lives, to experience the love of God in our lives, so that we experience the power of God in our lives, so that in spite of the fact Joseph was in that pain, he could still do what God said. It didn't remove the pain. Joseph's decision to walk in the way God told him to walk experienced the power of God rescuing a nation to incubate the nation that God planned and promised Abraham he would do. He fulfilled the legacy. He continued the life of God forward because he chose God even when he was in pain.

Folks, it's a choice. It is not anything else but a choice to decide is the spirit control me or my flesh. We'll pick this up again tomorrow as we continue to talk through how do we overcome hate and anger. Stay focused.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Pastor Cannings. Even though love seems like a scarce commodity these days, the fact is it isn't. God is love and we walk with him. His boundless resources are in us to spread love wherever we go. And may we do just that.

And now if you'd like to touch base with us, please give us a call at 281-260-7402. Again, that's 281-260-7402. We also invite you to learn more about the ministry of Power Walk and become a Power Walk partner with us. Please visit us online at powerwalkministries.org. That's powerwalkministries.org.

And if you live in the Houston area and you don't have a church home, you're welcome to visit Reverend Cannings and his congregation at Living Word Fellowship Church. It's located at 7350 T.C. Jester Boulevard in Houston. As we leave you, remember, simply love one another, for God is love.