Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): Welcome to the Power Walk Ministries broadcast with author and speaker Dr. Paul Cannings. Thanks for joining us. Everything about our lives is naturally intertwined with those we live in relationship with and are connected to in various phases of our lives.

Dr. Cannings begins this series on relationships, marriage, and family in order to provide foundational principles from scripture which can be practically applied to our lives. The first volume in this four-part series of messages is titled, "Are You Ready?" Let's listen as Dr. Cannings takes us to the book of Ruth, chapter 2, to learn about relationships, God's style.

Dr. Paul Cannings: Relationships today don't look to the Bible first. The hardest thing to do as a pastor or as a counseling ministry is to get people to listen to the principles of marriage before they get married. You say come to premarital counseling and really study these principles; not many couples do that. They're just thinking of wedding day.

And we come to relationships and we think we got them. How is that the case? Divorces are still high, even in the church. People are shooting each other in domestic violence. We've got all kinds of issues where children are shooting and killing parents, parents killing kids. If we're so right about relationships, why is everything coming out so twisted?

People want to go to Bachelor and Bachelorettes. You investigate those marriages; how long did they last? If we think we have relationships down, why are we making such a mess of things today? Why are people so frustrated and hurt? Some people have been so abused by relationships, they don't want to think of another relationship. People don't even want to be involved in it anymore because they've been bruised.

But some people are thinking they could just put this together on a dating app. They could find somebody in a dating app. If they e-harmonize, we're good. We could make it work. And we all think that we have relationships down when God is saying, "How could you tell me about relationships? All I've ever had is relationship."

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, we've never fallen out. The only time that I turned my back on Jesus Christ was at the cross dying for you. So understand, we have never fallen out. We think alike, we function alike, we operate alike. We've always been together. So we could tell you more about relationship than you could ever come close to telling us about relationship.

And that's why a relationship is a process that we must learn. And there's several examples in the scriptures where we could learn it. And I could literally teach this stuff for a year. I'm not joking. You go to Abraham and Sarah. You go through the worst ones when you talk about Solomon and all the women he had and teaching us how that was a mess.

You could go to the situation where you're dealing with Christ and Peter in relationship and see how Christ and Peter had struggles in their relationship and how they worked their way through it. You go to relationships that fell apart in Paul and Barnabas. All through the Bible. Why? Because God only knows about relationship.

You start off in the Garden of Eden. Matter of fact, there's no Garden of Eden until God made a woman. So in other words, God said you can't bring a woman home until you get to my garden. So I define the garden. I define how you as a man function in the garden because if you don't function as a man inside this garden, this woman can't even find her role in the garden. She can't find helpmate mode if you don't know your role in the garden.

So God has defined this starting out right there in Genesis. So when we come to relationships, we got to ask ourselves, are we really ready for them? Are we really ready for relationships, God's style? For instance, how could the people in the Bible that were closest to this process, if their relationships following the principles of scripture lasted longer and then they said we could love one another, how come we start out with love and end with hate?

We say we're in love, but we kill one another. They are going to be commanded to love and they built a nation. What is the difference? They were closer to the principles we're going to look at than we are to them because we followed a world system and that world system is driven by Hollywood, a philosophical system that is totally opposed to God.

And we are driven by it. We're driven by what's on these romance novels. We're driven by what is taking place in the movies that we see. We're driven by our feelings. So if we're sexually attracted to somebody, we call that love and then we say it's time to get married because we can't keep it together.

And the Bible is saying, "Are you really ready for relationships?" Because if you come to Christ and you function the way I say you function, I guarantee you you wouldn't be as bitter, as hurt, as divided, as angry, as frustrated, as lonely, and as in pain as some people are.

That's why He says to us, the first thing we look at in this text is that God has to divinely orchestrate relationships. He has to divinely orchestrate them. In other words, if you walk into a relationship and it ain't got nothing to do with God, you're in trouble already.

If you came to me and you said to me, like one person said years ago, "I want to get married to this person." I said, "But I can't marry you. This is not Vegas." People got upset and I'm going, "What fellowship does light have with darkness?" There's a big issue on the table. If you found fellowship with this person, there's some darkness there somewhere.

So understand I can't do it. Why? He didn't divinely put it together. If a woman and a woman came together and says, "Let's get married and we want for you to marry us, Pastor Cannings," I can't do it. It's not divinely put together. So it's not a relationship. No matter how we want to let the world define this for us, you can't define it because the person who defines how relationship operates is God and God alone.

So it has to be divinely put together. How do we find that in the book of Ruth? This is the worst scenario you could ever have. You've got a man that is a Jew who owns his own farm and he is definitely successful at what he does. And you've got a Moabite. Really? You're going to actually try to put together relationship with a Jew and a Moabite? That's the worst thing you could ever do.

That's why this relationship building is awesome to me because it should never happen. In the scriptures it says that the Moabites are from an incestuous relationship with the oldest daughter of Lot and her father. Sorry, gross as it is, it happened. And when that happened, out comes this whole tribe of people, this whole nation of people called Moabites.

And so the Jews were told not to associate with them. So this should never happen. This relationship should have never happened. We're functioning under the time of judges. Right at the end of the book of Judges is why they put Ruth right next to it. They said man did what was right in his own eyes.

So when you come from Judges and you walk your way into the book of Ruth, you understand why we even have this problem. Why we had this problem? You have Naomi and her husband decided to go and live among the Moabites. How you going to go live among the Moabites when you're not even supposed to be around them?

So when this thing starts out, it's not Ruth's fault that she is back home with them. And she's only here because she decides on this key thing, this key thing that becomes the common denominator that erases all the differences people can have. That's why people come to me and say, "You've got to marry a black person as a black person." I'm going, "No, the Bible don't say that."

"You've got to marry a white person for a white person." Bible don't say that. The Bible says fundamentally you've got to marry somebody that loves God. See, Ruth decided to walk with God. That became the common denominator. If you don't have a person that loves God, then you can't have a relationship.

The Bible says in verse 15, matter of fact, somebody asked me this the other day, "I just got married. What is the fundamental thing you should say, Pastor Cannings, since I heard you've been married 44 years?" I said the fundamental thing is I don't love my wife first. What? No, I don't love her first. I love God first.

If I don't love God first, I can't love her first. Because if I can't love God, meaning deny my own self, do what God tells me to do no matter what I feel, no matter what I think, no matter what I believe she did or didn't do, or I didn't do. If I can't deny myself to God, I'm not going to deny myself to her.

So I've got to love God first, not her first. And it fits beautifully with Matthew chapter 22 in verse 37. It says love the Lord with all your heart, your soul, and your mind. Then you can love your neighbor. Your neighbor is your husband, your wife, the person at the street corner, the person on your job.

Fundamentally, if relationships are falling apart, it's our relationship with God that is not good. Don't marry somebody because they're cute. I guarantee you, if cute is the fundamental place to start, you ain't going to stay married because cute don't always keep going the same way. Y'all know I'm telling the truth.

Look at chapter 1. Look down to verse 15. Then she said, "Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her what?" Please remember that. A Moabite has many gods. Ruth decided not just to be a Jew, but to love the God of the Jews. Love the God of the Jews.

Ruth comes back and she says, "I know about your God." So he comes and he says, "Return after your sister-in-law." In other words, the word return here, go back to your place and do what you do. Ruth says, "I have made a 180-degree decision that I'm going in a different direction that includes your God."

Ruth made a decision. Walking with God is a willful decision to walk with. It don't have no feelings in it. It doesn't have anything that you have to passionately desire in it. It is decided. God, am I going to do you or me? I will follow you and I'm good, God. That's all this is. What Ruth says is that once you line up with God, I'm lining up with you. Are we really ready for relationships God's style?

Guest (Male): It's so important that we be careful in the choice of a mate. Pastor Cannings reminds us that God still divinely orchestrates our relationships as He did with Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz. Now to help you further mature in your relationships, I'd like to recommend Pastor Cannings' book, "Disciples in the Making".

You'll find this and all of our ministry resources at PowerWalkMinistries.org. That's PowerWalkMinistries.org or call us at 281-260-7402. Again, that's 281-260-7402. And when you contact us, would you please consider a generous one-time financial contribution or an ongoing schedule of contributions on a monthly basis?

Dr. Paul Cannings: I had someone walk up to me and say, "Hey, you so bless me when I listen to the station and feed off the word that God has placed through you." That means so much. I had a person say to me, "Hey, you saved my marriage. I was really going to walk out on my wife. You saved my marriage."

That moved me to keep pressing on. I pray, folks, that you would support our ministry and become a part of it. Pray for us. Please sincerely mean that, pray for us. Share the word with other people and that you will become a partner, a regular partner with us. All you have to do is go to our website, PowerWalkMinistries.org, and press the donate button and it will explain in there how you could be a Power Walk partner. God bless you.

Guest (Male): Again our number is 281-260-7402 or write us at Power Walk Ministries, PO Box 920517, Houston, Texas 77292. And now remember, as we just heard, let's choose to prioritize God in our lives and see Him help us in our relationships with those around us.