Kenneth Copeland - Practice The Love Walk And Reap The Reward
— Hello, everybody. We're Kenneth and Gloria Copeland. Father, thank You for Your Word today. We are so thrilled. Oh, it's so good to know that You love us and You are so, Your mercy endures forever. And we thank You and we praise You for it in Jesus' name. Amen. Glory to God. Last two weeks, we've been here at our place in southwest Arkansas, and it's just been such a good time. The weather's been so good. There's been times we've... Do you know, did you know this is the 29th year since we started this?
— I was only three years old.
— Yeah, I realize that. Amen.
— 29 years, it doesn't seem more like five or six.
— This is the 29th year. And, but it's been such a joy all these years. And if you've missed any of the broadcast, you know you can go to kcm.org and see them there. Oh, by the way, don't forget to download the notes. You need to be doing that because you can use the notes off of... Did you know that the broadcasts that Gloria and Pastor George Pearsons have done, there's over 1,200,000 downloads of the outlines on Divine Prosperity. You talk about a body of work concerning prosperity.
— He did a great job.
— It's just marvelous.
— And also that shows you what people...
— Hungry for it. They need to know it. Well, knowing about the fact that God is love, and love is God, and God planned all of this for us. God wants you rich. Oh, now, Brother Copeland, rich is going a little too far. No, it don't go far enough.
— It's just a Bible word.
— It don't go far enough. It's a Bible word. If you only knew what rich is, amen. Read the Word of God. It'll tell you. Hallelujah. Praise God forevermore. You can tell I'm already excited about this.
— We dare them to do a study on rich.
— Absolutely. Get those downloads and do a study on God and His people being rich.
— And then let it end.
— In fact, there's a statement in the Book of Deuteronomy where God said, there should be no poor among you.
— I remember that. I agree with that. Praise God.
— That's the way the Living Bible translates it. There should be no poor among you. Why? They had a blessing covenant with God. Hallelujah.
— Praise God. That's good.
— All right. Let's go back to I John. We'll read our golden text. In I John 4, Verse 8, "He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. Now we'll go to the 15th verse. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, who is love, God who is love dwelleth in him, and he in God who is love. And we have known and believed the love that God who is love hath to us. God is love. And he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love..." Let me help you with that now just a little bit. Herein is the love of God that's in us. See, Romans 5:5, "The love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost". If you're born again, He's in there. Now, so catch it now. Herein is the love of God that is in us. My cross-reference says, love with us. Herein is the love of God that's in us made perfect. Now, the love is already perfect because it's God, but it begins to perfect on the inside of us. If you read this whole book, it's only five chapters long. Read it every day for about a month. I've been doing this for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, and reading it every day before I read my other chapters and so forth. But, and grasp this, the revelation that He's love, and He loves me. Hallelujah. Now, herein is the love of God that's in us made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love. There is no fear in God. There, therefore, is no fear in me. Praise God. Why? Because perfected love casteth out fear. Why? Because fear hath torment, and he doesn't want you or me tormented about anything. Torment is worry. Worry is torment. That's the devil's ground. It's the devil's business. He's the tormentor. Now, the torment is in the fear. Remove the fear, and the torment's gone.
— You can't have worry and faith at the same time.
— This is an illustration here. If fear is present, the tormentor, who is the spirit of fear, has something to connect to. Now he can torment you.
— Yeah.
— But if that fear is not there, he doesn't have a handle to grab.
— That's a good way to say it.
— Because the torment is in the fear. It's in there. So now then, we're talking about having faith in that love. So let's go back over to Mark 11:22. Jesus said, "Have faith in God". Well, yeah, but He said, have faith in love. Yeah, but He said, have faith in God. Well, we're talking about developing faith in the love of God, learning to trust the love, learning to trust His mercy. I don't care if the devil and the church and everybody else tells you that God put that on you. Trust His love. You know good and well He's not going to do that to you. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor, the Scripture says in the 13th chapter of Romans. Well, hey, then love is God. God worketh no ill to His family or anybody else. Now, "For verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, be thou cast into the sea. And shall not doubt in his heart, but believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass, he'll have whatever he says. Therefore I say unto you, what things so ever you desire when you pray, believe you receive them, and you shall have them. And when you stand praying, forgive, if you have ought against any". Now, that's the laws of faith. So if we're going to believe the love, and if we're going to transform and renew our minds to that, then we're going to have to start saying that. God loves me. Glory to God. It's God. He loves me. He's commanded me to walk in love, and I'm doing it. I'm going to do it whether I feel like it or not. Love's not a feeling. God's a person. Love is a person. Amen. Now, knowing the love, let's talk about that. Let's go to Ephesians 3, and let's go to the 14th verse. I want you to hear this like you've never heard scripture before in your life. Verse 14, "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father. I bow my knees unto love". Isn't that good?
— Yeah, that's good.
— The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom, of the Father, the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he, who's he? "God, the Father, who is love, would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your heart by faith, which worketh by love, that you, being rooted and grounded in love", uh-huh, rooted and grounded in it, "May be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, the length, the depth, and the height, and to know the love".
— Praise God.
— That's God. To know God.
— Amen.
— To know, to understand, comprehend. The word translated comprehend goes further than just having a basic understanding of it. And the illustration that I enjoy using because it's so easy to understand. Just about everybody watching us, Gloria, understands right now, you can go down, buy a ticket, and get on an airplane and go somewhere. I mean, it's that simple. Now, if you understand that, but the difference, I understand that also. But the difference is, I've studied it to a higher degree, and I can fly the airplane. Now, by being able to fly the airplane, I'm not limited to where somebody else is going. I can go on my own. Now, by having just additional knowledge and spending more time with it, it took me up to a higher level. Now, let's read this again. "That Christ may dwell in your heart by faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend, may have working knowledge, is a good way to say it, may be able to comprehend with all the saints". Saints, there is every born-again person, everybody. So all the whole Body of Christ, this is available to you, not if you don't get rooted and grounded in love. You'll never have any depth of understanding unless, like I had to go spend time training. I still train. I've been flying for well over 50 years. I was flying already before I even met Gloria, and this is our 55th wedding anniversary, so that tells you something. I've been flying a long time, and I still study it. I have to, to stay current in it. I have to go back to training. I have to stay with it all the time. Now, that's what He's talking about, being rooted and grounded in love.
— How many hours have you got?
— Oh, I don't know.
— 3,000?
— No, I got several times more than that.
— Well, I got 60.
— May I correct you, darling wife?
— What?
— You have 85.
— Okay, I've got 85. Now, would you want to ride with me? No. You'd go with Kenneth. He's got more time.
— Well, and that's it.
— Proficient in it.
— You spend more time doing a thing. You're supposed to find out more about it.
— That's right.
— You spend more time with God, loving God, and practicing loving all the time. Practice it. Practice it. Practice it. No, no, no. No, I can't say that. No, I don't dare say that. Uh-uh. That's not lovely. You just keep working. You just keep working. And some wicked thing comes across your mind. Even if you flare up, don't get offended. When Jesus said, the sower sows the Word, Satan comes immediately to steal the Word that was sown. These are they by the wayside where the Word is sown. Have no root in themselves. Now, we know this is what he's talking about, because, and immediately they become offended.
— Yeah.
— So in order to not become offended, you would have to be rooted and grounded in love.
— That's right. Praise God.
— That means you're going to have to spend some time at it. And you're going to have to spend some time praying in tongues. Well, Brother Copeland, what has that got to do with it? Well, I'm glad you asked that. I'm going to turn over to the book of Jude. What chapter, Brother Copeland? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Amen. Thank You, Lord. And I'm going to look at Verse 20. "But you, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ".
— Praise God.
— So think what I say. Look what he's saying here. When you're praying in the Spirit, especially about this, the wisdom of God is on the inside of you. The great teacher is on the inside of you. Jesus, the Spirit of love Himself, is on the inside of you, living there. Now, when I'm praying, the Scripture says, a person that prays in other tongues speaks not unto men, but unto God, howbeit in the Spirit. In the Spirit he speaketh. Then it says, "When he prays in tongues, he edifies, builds up himself". That's what Jude was referring to, building your spirit up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost. Keep yourself in love. I'm going to tell you something. With God on the inside of you, who is love... Oh, Lord, thank You. Glory to God. Ooh-wee. I'm so glad you reminded me of this. Mm-mm-mm. I get so excited about this. 16th chapter of John, 13th verse, "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth. For he'll not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak. He will show you things to come. He will glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father has are mine". You can read that like this. "All things that the Father, who is love, has are mine. Therefore said I, he shall take of mine, and show it unto you". That means we have access to everything Jesus has, everything God has, everything God knows. And that's everything. I'm telling you, darlin' heart, if you can pray in tongues long enough, you can find out anything that God knows about your life, anything you need to know about your life. If you just stay before Him and practice love and walk in love, and if you get out of love, repent right on the spot. Repent to the person you're talking to. Humble yourself. Glory to God. And pray in the Spirit. Help me with this, Lord. Help me develop the love of God. Oh, God, show me the key issues. Show me the trouble spots. Help me with this. I believe I receive now. While I pray in the Spirit, I believe I receive while it's still a mystery. I believe that I interpret. I believe you'll get this through to me. You'll get it in my heart. You'll get it in my mind. It is working for me right now. Love is working in me, and love seeks my victory. Love seeks me to triumph. Glory to God. Amen. Everything I need to know about this terrible financial situation, just start praying in the Spirit and don't quit till it comes. When the United States, a member of the United States Senate attacked certain churches and so forth and attacked our ministry, and, oh, it looked dire there for a while. And nobody knew what to do about it. You know, we did what the law and all of that says, of course. I just kept praying in the Spirit, and we just kept praying and believing God, just kept praying and believing God. And after, it was considerable months went by, all of a sudden, one day, I mean, God just dropped that in. I would have never, like one person said, I would have never thought of that. I wouldn't have thought of that. In my whole natural mind, I would have never even thought, never had any idea. He told us exactly, exactly, exactly what to do. And it had such an impact on the office of that senator. It had such an impact on their staff. It had such an impact. There was no way. There was no, they had no defense for it. It was such an impact. And you know, they were wanting all this information about our ministry and all of that, and that information was confidential information with, that was held by the internal revenue. And so here's what the Lord told me to do. He said, "You have your son, John, take all of the information that the senator has asked for, and take your television cameras and take the news camera from the CBS outlet there in Dallas, and go over to the internal revenue office in Dallas and hold that up there before them and say, 'Sir, here's all the information that you asked for, and here is a letter inviting the IRS to come in and audit our ministry any day that they choose.'" That did it. That ended it. What else are they going to say? The wisdom of God.
— You know, you never heard from that again, did you?
— No, they just wrote a little article in the back of the paper that said, we found no, we didn't.
— A much smaller article than the original one.
— Yeah. Watch this. When we first got to St. Thomas in 97, at the time we got there, they used to have what they called Prayer Supplication Day and Thanksgiving Supplication Day, where there's supposed to be holidays for the government. It was a government holiday where people were supposed to pray against hurricanes in July. And in October, we had Thanksgiving Supplication Day where we thank God, you know, thank God for no hurricanes. Nobody was praying. Everybody was going to the beach because it was a holiday, so everybody was off work.
— The Lord spoke to me and said, "When you get there, I want you to begin to pray in the middle of the island..." We didn't know where the middle of the island was, "against hurricanes and earthquakes". That's what we did.
— That's what we did. So we had our first one that July of 98, and we went downtown St. Thomas, called Emancipation Gardens. We had our speakers down there. We danced. We had praise and worship for like 45 minutes to an hour, and then I ministered the Word of God, and we left out there feeling good. But that week, Hurricane George came through. You know, other people on the island was probably talking about us and what this little church is going to do now. They went down in the downtown of the city, or in the middle of the city, made all this noise, and now we have Hurricane George beating on us. There's a lot of wind, and all of a sudden, it got silent. I mean, it was total silence, eerie silence. And all we could hear on the radio is, we lost the eye. The eye regrouped and hit Puerto Rico, and it caused a lot of devastation in Puerto Rico. It actually jumped over St. Thomas, hit Puerto Rico.
— The headlines of the newspaper said, "By some miracle. George hopped over our island and went to Puerto Rico, by some miracle". We knew it was God.
— So I got in the pulpit that Sunday. I said, "Well, God punched George in the eye. He couldn't see us. That's why". But at that point, people's faith shot up. And now, you know, now people actually believe we're not going to have a hurricane, because I told them, As long as we're here, we're not going to see a hurricane. We're not going to see an earthquake. We're not going to see a tsunami. And our record's been good for the last 20 years. But we're so grateful for this ministry and the things that they've taught us. I've grown up so much under the Kenneth Copeland ministries. As far as my faith and as far as the Word of God, you know, it just took me to another level in God. You got to know who God is and trust that God's going to honor His Word. All you got to do is use your voice and speak to it. And we speak to hurricanes, and they don't even come near us. They don't touch us, and they will not come towards them or anyone. You just walk into it and speak what you believe.
— Say what you have. We have faith in God. He's there. He's our protection. He's everything we need. He gave His Son so we can have everything. And we have everything. Once I know that I have everything I need and He's with me, I can say what He tells me to say. And that's the other part to it is that I say what He tells me to say, and I see what I say. We have faith in God. Amen. I like what Ronald and Sharon said, that God punched Hurricane George in the eye. Oh, I tell you, that thrills me. Glory to God. They took authority in the name of Jesus. Believe and trust the love of God. Somebody said, "Yeah, but to say you'd never have another one"? You just have to stay in the Word and stay in the Word until it comes up strong enough where it comes out your mouth. You don't have to force it to say it. And when you're choking on it, just back down and say, I'm preparing to say it. I'm preparing to say it. I'm preparing to say it. I believe the love. I believe we'll never have another hurricane, and it's going to come out my mouth, and when it does, it settles it. Father, we pray over the offering today. And we believe we receive Your wisdom, Your instructions going to every person in the sound of my voice, revealing to them what their part of this offering is, what their part of the finances of this outreach of Kenneth Copeland Ministries. And we thank You.
— Thank You, Lord.
— They will obey You, and we know that the love of God will increase. Glory to God. The love will increase for the finances of this ministry and increase the finances of our partners and increase the finances of those who are sowing into this broadcast today. And we give You the praise.
— Thank You, Lord.
— In Jesus' name. Gloria and I release our faith for the anointing of increase in Jesus' name. Thank you, partners. Thank you, everyone, for joining us here in southwest Arkansas at our place. We love and appreciate you. Go to church this weekend. Get into God's presence and worship and praise Him. This is Kenneth and Gloria Copeland reminding you again that Jesus is Lord.