Kenneth Copeland - THE BLESSING from God Is Forever
— Father, we thank You and praise You today for revelation from heaven. And we give You the honor and the glory for it. We take it by faith, Sir, and we thank You for it with all of our hearts. In Jesus' name, amen. Brother Jerry, get us back in this thing. I can hardly wait to get this book open, man.
— Every day a blessing day.
— I am so blessed. You have just absolutely just, I mean, you laid a serious case of joy on me. You know, you preach me happy.
— That's what the Word's designed to do, isn't it?
— Oh, yes, sir.
— It is good news.
— Yes, it is. I'm telling you.
— And it is a good life, praise God.
— I'll tell you it is. I was thinking about Psalm 3:8 again, and then I want to get over to Isaiah 54, but where he says that his blessing is upon his people. His blessing is upon his people. And then that little word, selah, stop and think about this.
— Stop and think about that.
— The blessing is on his people. How does it come on his people? The same way it did when he created Adam and he blessed him. He conferred it on him. I looked up the word conferred, and I know we talked about this last week, but I want to remind our audience of it. I looked up the word conferred, and it says, "It expresses God's desire to grant us particular benefits and privileges that are to be enjoyed permanently". Hallelujah. And of course, Psalm 68:19 says that he loads us with benefits daily. If that's part of the blessing.
— If that's permanent, then ain't no government, no devil, no unbelieving person can take that away from me. Praise God. I'm blessed whether it's good or bad out there. I'm blessed. I'm mean, because you can't curse what God has already blessed.
— Well, David even said one time in Chronicles, what God blesses is forever.
— Yeah.
— He was asking God to bless his house. And then he said, "And if God blesses my house, it's forever".
— Amen. Well, we're in his house.
— That's right.
— Amen.
— So this blessing that God has conferred upon us, it is permanent. But notice it says, when he confers it, it's an expression of God's desire to grant us particular benefits and privileges. Now I was reading that one day, and I said to Carolyn, "You know what? We live a privileged life".
— Yeah, we do.
— We live a privileged life. So I went and looked up the word privilege, and listen to what it says. I've heard people say that before. You know, that guy lives a privileged life, or they're, you know, he's a Rockefeller. He lives a privileged life. Well, hey, my daddy is the creator of the universe. My big brother is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. I live a privileged life. I got royal blood flowing through my veins. Now, listen to the definition of the word privileged: special advantages and rights reserved exclusively for a particular person or group of persons, especially based upon heredity.
— Well, they got that right. Yeah, that's me.
— They got that right. That's us. See, I'm an heir of God and a joint heir with Jesus Christ. I'm supposed to live a privileged life.
— Amen.
— Anything less than a privileged life is not the way God designed for us to live. Praise God. Now, when I read that...
— So, devil, you ain't taking my privileges away from me. You ain't talking me out of them. And that's the only way you got to get them is to talk them because you can't make me do nothing. You can't make me think something. You can't make me say something. And you can't make me do something. I am in Christ Jesus.
— Well, you remember in the parable the sower sows the Word in Mark chapter 4, Jesus said that one of the primary ways that Satan steals the Word out of a person's heart, the cares of this world. Now, the Amplified calls it the distractions of the age. Now, that's what, by and large, the media is attempting to do.
— It is, isn't it?
— Is to get people, and even God's people, so distracted on what the blessing, what the Bible says about the blessing, what the blessing can do, and get them focused on recession, get them focused on bad economy, get them focused on everybody losing their houses.
— On both sides, fussing and fighting.
— Totally distract us.
— Yep, yep, yep.
— And consequently, you steal the Word out of a believer's heart, and that believer becomes helpless then. You know, it's the thing that makes us dangerous to the devil is the Word in our heart.
— Yes, it is.
— He knows that the Word in our heart can stop all his operations and all his assignments against us. And I think it's interesting also that Jesus said, once the Word is sowed, Satan comes immediately. Now, he knows, the fact that he comes immediately and doesn't wait a year, he knows if the Word of God gets in Kenneth Copeland's heart and Jerry Savelle's heart, it's going to change their life. The truth will set them free. I can't afford for them to get any more. I can't afford for them to let this take root. I've got to do something to get it out of them immediately. And the way he does it is through distractions and the cares of this world and any avenue that he can use through those particular things called the cares of this world.
— Yeah, but Brother Jerry, I just can't help it. Now, that's a lie. You have not chosen to help it. I know things can get so tough. Satan will tell you, there's no hope for this. This can't be helped. The doctor will tell you there's nothing, nothing can be done. Well, now in the first place, that's very presumptuous of somebody that knows they don't know everything. Say there's nothing can be done. Now, they may tell you there's nothing we can do, but that don't mean there's nothing to be done. And you don't need to be thinking that. You don't need to be talking that. You just need to say, now look, boy, nobody tells you what to think or to say or to do. But Jesus Christ of Nazareth, He is the one that has privilege over my spirit, my soul, my body, and my bank account. And I'm not letting the devil or anybody that represents him get their hands on it. And then say it anyway, whether it feels good or not.
— And like somebody said, "Yeah, but they're telling us over television. The news said," the best part of that television set is that remote.
— I'll show you who got the power.
— When they're going to be talking all that bad news and all that stuff they predicted was going to happen to us, I grabbed the remote. And I talked to them people. I know they can't hear me. I talked to them. I said, "Well, that may be the way it's going to be in your house, but not in my house".
— Did you ever notice that that off button is red? That means stop it.
— Yeah, yeah. I tell Carolyn sometimes, I say, "I think I'll turn on something more inspiring. Let's watch Andy Griffith". Because I know Barney's going to make us laugh. And a merry heart doeth good like a medicine, you know? But people are missing out on the good life that God has prepared for us because they're allowing the devil to distract them and allowing the cares of this world to get on the inside of them. When we are supposed to live ahead and not the tail, above and not beneath. Jesus said in the 17th chapter of John, beginning in verse 14 down through verse 17. He said it twice within those few verses. We are not of this world. He said, "Father, they are not of this world, no more than I am of this world".
— That's big, Jerry.
— Now, you look at some other translations and one of them, the Message translation says, they are no more defined by this world than I am defined by this world. And you look up the word defined and it means not marked by their boundaries. So Jesus is saying, we are not of this world. We are not bound by what bounds them. We're not restricted by what restricts them.
— Man, that's good.
— We are not limited by what limits them. We're not of this world. I tell people all the time, I am not normal. Don't ever accuse me of being normal. I'm not normal, you know, as to the way everybody else in this world lives.
— Not conformed to this world.
— I'm not conformed to this world. I love the Phillips translations of Romans 12 where it says, don't be conformed. It says, "Don't let this world around you squeeze you into its mold".
— You know, that's a powerful thing because that's what conform. Hear the word form. How do you form something? You have certain boundaries that you build a form. And that form shapes whatever's pouring in there. There's a boundary to it. And you conform it. It's like one of those big presses that's going to press out a fender of a car. You just stick a piece of metal in there and wham! And when it comes back up, there's a car fender laying there. Well, it formed it with pressure. It conformed it. And when it came out, it looks identical to the mold. So now we are not conformed by that pressure. You know, and people think you're crazy if you don't talk like them. And they'll put pressure on you to get you to do it. They'll laugh at you. They write ugly books about you and all that. But I'm not going to let them press me into that mess. I'm free of it and I ain't going back.
— Why would you want to go back to that?
— I'm not going back to that.
— Listen to this. In the book of Hebrews, talking about formed. Through faith, we understand that the worlds were formed by the Word of God. I was reading that over 40 years ago and the Lord said, "Son, take my Word and you can form a world within this world".
— Isn't that good?
— Yeah. You ever heard somebody say, "That guy lives in another world". That's me they're talking about. I have formed a world within this world through the words of my mouth. That Copeland has studied the Bible till he's out of his mind. You noticed. Amen. I ain't going back in there. I'm in my spirit. And my spirit man tells my mind what to think. And the only thing that I can trust for my thoughts is this book.
— That's right.
— There's where the renewing of the mind, which transforms and breaks that conforming mold.
— Right.
— Ain't this good?
— Oh, I'm telling you. You get this Word in your heart and you begin to speak it out of your mouth and you can literally form a world within this world.
— Oh, yeah.
— You remember in Matthew 24 where Jesus is explaining to the disciples when they said, "Show us the end. Tell us what it's going to be like". And He talked about all this calamity and all this stuff and then right in the middle of it He says, "See that no man deceive you" and then secondly, "See that you be not troubled". Now He just talked about the worst disasters, calamity you can ever imagine and then He said, "By the way, don't let it trouble you".
— You see to it.
— That says to me that it's possible for a believer to live in a totally chaotic world and not be troubled by it.
— Amen. Yes, sir.
— Now how is that possible? Because they have a revelation of the love of God. They have a revelation of the blessing of God. They have a revelation of who they are in Christ. They have a revelation of their covenant and what it's capable of producing and there may be chaos all around them and they are not even troubled by it. I like what I heard you say one time. You folks have gone through two recessions that Gloria and I didn't even know about.
— Didn't even know was on. Now you talk about that pathway that God has. When you first get on it, the Word is a light on your pathway. It's a light for your feet. You're just, man, I mean, you can't even afford to look up much because of all that disaster that you just come out of and you're thinking, you're locked in here, man, and you've got the light on. But Proverbs 4:18 and 19 say, "The path of the righteous get brighter and brighter". That light gets stronger and brighter and you're getting more revelation of this path that God's got you on and it's getting bigger and better and stronger and you're beginning to see a little further down the road and a little further down the road. Praise God. And the further you see, the better this thing looks. Isn't that wonderful?
— Oh, it's wonderful. When I first started back there in 69, like I said before, I was totally shocked that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the same story. You know? And then, you know, you had those reel-to-reel tapes back then and that lady brought those tapes of all that meeting that you did in Shreveport over to me. And I put that first tape on and when you said, open your Bibles to Ephesians, thank God for the stop button because I didn't have a clue where Ephesians was. And I looked in the front of that Bible and found Ephesians. And then you'd read something there and then you'd start expounding. Well, I didn't understand that. Thank God for the stop and then reverse and make you say it again. Now, this was all totally foreign to me. Now, if you'd have been reading a Hot Rod magazine, I could have kept up with you because that's all I read. But I didn't know anything about the Bible. But after doing that day after day for hours upon hours, my family would go to bed at night and I'd be up all night listening and reading and listening to you talk about that. And one day, all of a sudden, the light came on. And those things that made absolutely no sense a few days before, all of a sudden, I see it. I see it. And when you do, you can't help but jump up and run out of that bedroom. I have literally, back in those days, ran out of that little house on Traney Lane in Shreveport, Louisiana, running around the house screaming. And my mother and father-in-law thought, the boy's gone nuts. But it was such revelation that you could hardly stand it.
— It is the sweetest. It is the most... It is the most satisfying thing that can happen to the human being. It's revelation light from God who created you coming into your spirit. It just has that satisfaction. All other things that satisfy of all different kinds of things in the flesh, in the mind, and so forth, are kind of flash burns. And they just kind of burn out in a minute or two. But this thing just lingers, and it grows, and it lingers, and it gets brighter and brighter. You go back and feed some more, and it just gets brighter. I'm satisfied that that's what was being said in the 91st Psalm, when he said, "I'll be with you in a time of trouble, and with long life I will satisfy you". Ain't no good to live long and not be satisfied. But this is the only thing that can satisfy the human being. Nothing like it.
— Here it is, 44 years for me, 46 for you. And it still does the same thing to us. It never becomes dull. It never becomes boring. It's not an obligation. It's not a task. It's not I got to get in the Word. I enjoy doing a lot of things. But there is nothing I enjoy more than studying the Word of God.
— Now, you just brought up something, too, that most Christians, I mean, there's millions of Christians that have no idea this is even available. I enjoy flying airplanes. I enjoy driving boats. I enjoy it. If it's got a machine and an engine in it, there's something about it I like. I like riding motorcycles. We ride together, boat together, fly together and all those different things. And I enjoyed them back before I knew the Lord or knew anything about His Word. But, Jerry, I get far more out of the things that God put in me to enjoy now that the Word is in my life. I sit down in my airplane now and it just, I'm telling you, the joy of the Lord just comes all over me. It satisfies me where back there then, those things had no satisfaction for me. It was gone within moments. And now, because of the Lord and because of the joy of the Lord, and so forth, it lingers.
— Well, those things are byproducts of what you learn from the Word.
— Yes, they are.
— They're things that the Word has produced. Didn't have to make it happen myself. It's the Word of God. It's the blessing of God.
— The other day, we were headed out on a trip, going to a meeting. Pulled that airplane out on the runway. And as I usually do, I say, "Father, I just plead the blood of Jesus over this airplane and over me and over Dwayne as we fly it over everybody in it. And for protection" and so forth. And the angels of God lift us up lest we dash our foot against a stone. And, you know, when you pray that, you tend to get loud. I'm enjoying this. And just to say, and I'm just saying, "Lord, we just praise You and thank You". And I reached over there to get those throttles to come up on there, you know. And just as I did, it just came up in me the knowing that a moment of revelation and knowing God is enjoying this. Now, what does he get out of an airplane that'll only fly, you know, 600 miles an hour? Because I enjoy it. Because I'm enjoying it. Because He was able to give it to me. Because, and the devil ain't got nothing to do with it. And all of a sudden,
— It's God and Son.
— He's enjoying it. Why? Because it blesses me. He loaded me up with blessings that day.
— And He wants to do it every day.
— Every day.
— Praise God. Hallelujah.