Kenneth Copeland - Faith Isn't Wishing
Hello everybody, I'm Kenneth Copeland. This is Kenneth Copeland Bible College right here. Amen. Thank You, Lord. And we all welcome you to Thursday's edition of the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast. And of course, we're talking about faith. It is my job to teach God's people faith. And through the teaching of faith and the preaching of faith. Now, that's not all we teach or preach. Of course, there's many things to preach. There's the principle doctrines of Christ. The centerpiece of that is the laying on of hands. And you teach faith in the blood and all of those things, but whatever you teach and whatever you preach, you have to keep one hand on faith and you have to keep one hand on the love of God because faith works by love. And God is love. He has faith, but He is love.
And so we talk about faith continually because we have been made the righteousness of God by faith in Christ Jesus. We were born again by the grace of God, the gift of God, by faith in Christ Jesus for the book of Ephesians says we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus as being new creatures, hey, when we were born again, we were recreated. That's amazing to me. It's stunningly super. We were recreated. I didn't know that for a long time. I still had some Baptist hang ons that I was just an old sinner saved by grace. But then I found a scripture that said Christ died for the ungodly. And I thought, man, I qualified for that. And then the Lord began to put the pieces together for me. And then I began to read first and second Corinthians.
Oh, I found out that I was a new creation in Christ Jesus, that old things had passed away. What? That old sin nature passed away and all things became new and all things were of God on the inside of me. And then in 1963, Gloria and I were married in April of 1962 and then we got born again, six months later. And then the next year, we went to a conference and they gave an invitation as I've told you before to come receive the Holy Spirit in His fullness. And I turned around to my mother and dad seated behind us, I said that's something we ought to have. They said you ought to have that. Well, what was on my mind? I liked to went to hell to hell. And I know it. I knew it then. And so, if they'd come and said, come squeal like a pig, I'd have done it. I mean, I just, I don't want to miss any invitation from them. And I just grabbed Gloria by the hand. We just charged up there. I didn't go up there to try to get it. I went after it.
I didn't know you weren't supposed to do that. I didn't have any religious tradition, Gloria and I both were scripture illiterates when we got born again. Can you imagine anybody that out of it? I said, Gloria, did you recognize that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell the same story? She said, yes. Isn't that wonderful? That's where we started. T. L. Osborn said Copeland. No, he said, Kenneth, you were born free. You had no religion to unlearn. And I didn't. And so everything I heard was just, just exciting to me. Just go after it, just go get it with all your heart and all your mind. And the thing that hit me the most, the impact of the book of Hebrews and I came to this 11th chapter.
Now, at this point, we didn't know anything. And I read this and I said, Gloria, I found the hall of fame. I knew about the baseball hall of fame. I knew about the rock and roll hall of fame. I knew about football hall of fame. I knew all about, I found the Bible hall of fame. And I said, look, look, look at this. If we can get this faith, if we get hold of this thing, listen, there's not anything we can't do. If we just get a hold of this? Now that we just need to get hold of this. And we just started looking for it everywhere we could look. And we went to one church and they preach on faith a little bit, and then they'd get off on something else. They'd get off on Paul thorn in the flesh. And the frogs in Revelation.
One pastor I heard said, don't talk to me about those frogs in Revelation, I'm tired of hearing that. And he said, I think I'm looking at one now, that was Harold Nichols, he's in heaven now, but then I preached the Word of Faith there in that church. And I mean it, it lit a fire, hallelujah. So anyway, the hall of fame, I found it. I found it. And then they go back to faith. This is what happened if you have faith, this is what happened if you don't have faith, but nobody told me how to get it. Nobody told me where it came from. Nobody told me what fed it. I just, I wanted it, hungry for it.
Now, I saw Oral Roberts use it. And he said things to me like, don't touch them until you're ready to release your faith. And I heard him say things like your faith has to go up to God. And then when it climaxes like that, you'll have a miracle. And one night, Gloria and I had just driven in from Tulsa and I was preaching at Grace Temple, brother Harold Lou Nichols' church. And when we walked in, of course, my mother, I mean, when we walked in the door, I don't know yet what they talked about. She just said, Gloria, come on. So, she took and they just went. I said, mother, you have any tapes? She said, yeah, look at there on that old tape recorder. She had one of the big web core tape machines and there was a white box, tape box, the large seven inch reel, I opened it up and it was Kenneth E. Hagin.
I had seen him one time in a Full Gospel Businessman's meeting. I never had heard him teach. On one side Paul's revelation. On the other side, you can write your own ticket with God. Mark 11:22, 23, 24, and 25. And he got over into the first chapter of Hebrews. I mean, I can just hear it right now. And he said, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to do it. Yeah, I'll do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll do it. Hebrews chapter one, ministering spirits. Are they not all the ministering spirits? Are they not all angels of God sent forth the minister for those that shall be heirs of salvation? I wound up on my mother's floor. I had my New Testament in my pocket, always, always because that's where I carried my cigarettes. I had that New Testament in my pocket. I jerked that out and I read those scriptures and I said, my God, I just hugged that little New Testament up.
I said, I can have what I say and I have an angel. I have an angel. I just, I wound up in my mother's floor underneath her coffee table. I have an angel. And I thought I'm going to name him, David, where that came from. I don't. I doubt if he goes by that, but anyway, he's right here right now because I know there are those that have seen him. He stuck to me right now. Come on. The man that saw him said Copeland he's big. And said he looks like Mr. Clean and said, he just stuck to you and you kind of wind him down a little bit. He's whisper something in your ear and you just take off, you have an angel. I wouldn't suggest you try to name him. But I was so excited. I was so excited. Then, I began to find out, now faith is. Right here in Hebrews 11:1, now, say "now". Now, now, now, every time you said that it updated, there is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Now, now, now, now faith is. If it didn't now, I didn't faith, it's hope. Let's look at that again. Let's look at the working definition of faith from the Classic Amplified translation. Now faith is the assurance, the confirmation, the title deed, the title deed of the things we hope for being the proof of things we do not see and the conviction of their reality, faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses. That's it. The force of faith. It is born in the human heart at the time of conversion. And at that moment you were created in Christ Jesus, a new creature that, hey, a new species of being, and there's not another one in history like you. Amen.
Nobody ever, ever had or ever will have your fingerprints. There's nobody that ever will be or ever has been a person exactly like you, glory to God, you are specific, you are born of the Spirit of God, and God knew you. And He knew me before the foundation of the world and His plans for us did not include sickness. It didn't include COVID, cancer or any of the other, no arthritis, bursitis or any of the out of screw? No, no, no, no. No! That's not in the book of destinies. You were destined to be sitting in this room today as part of this brand new Bible college, glory to God. Amen. And here to get all excited and all wound up about the force of faith. It's living in me now, and I found out, I found out from the New Testament, the Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul, that by faith, glory to God, death has been swallowed up in life. You'll never die. You'll depart. Glory to God.
Dying's easiest thing you ever did in your life. And we've read this before, but it won't take time to turn over there. Yeah, we're right here. Let's just go back to same chapter of the book of Hebrews, it's worth looking at. Verse nine, we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor that He by the grace of God should taste death for all men, taste death, that represents the five physical senses. What that say about the senses? Faith perceiving as real fact, what is not revealed to the senses. So, you can't taste it when you die. You can't smell it when you die. You can't see it when you die and you can't hear it. Why? Because you don't die. You don't die. It's just your body. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. I'm just as alive as I was one minute ago. But my coat is not, why? I'm not in it.
Now, some wonderful partners sent some money and said, go have some suits made. So, this was done custom style for Kenneth Copeland. This fits me. But when I'm not in it, it's dead. D-E-A-D graveyard dead. But it's about to get resurrected. If I can find that arm hole, now it's alive again. It moves when I move. I could have walked off and left this lying in the floor. It would've never lived again. That's graphic, isn't it? So now faith is, if it isn't faith, then it's hope and people use hope.
Let me ask you something, you go into the healing meeting, I'm going to try to be there. No, I didn't ask you if you were going to try to be there. I ask you if you're going? Yes, yeah, yeah, I'm going to go. Are you going to get healed? I sure hope so, Brother Copeland. No, you didn't use hope. That's not hope. That's wishing. Hope says I'll guarantee you I will. How do you know? Because I have the scriptures on it and I'm going to be in that healing meeting and I'll tell you right now, the moment they lay hands on me, that's my point of contact. I'm going to walk out and they're healed. That's real Bible hope. Bible hope is absolute expectancy. The things we absolutely expect to come to pass. That's real hope.
Think about it like this, now my being the only child, man, some people have asked me over and over again about that. I'll just briefly tell you, when my mother was young and she was an athlete and she was playing basketball for the high school in Union, Texas. Now Union, Texas is about the size of this room, but is up on the panhandle of Texas and she was a basketball player. And her appendix ruptured on the basketball court. Now in those days, I mean, my mother was born in 1911. So, figure out what year it was when she was 16. What? That's right. 1927 in Lubbock, Texas. And she has a ruptured appendix. And when they rushed her to the hospital and the doctor opened her up, it wasn't a little scar like you see now, no, that scar went all the way from here all the way across her midsection to get to that appendix. Got in there and saw that it was ruptured. So, the doctor didn't sew her up. He just used cadaver clamps.
Now, my grandfather was a very, very happy jovial, Cherokee Indian. But when he got otherwise, he was a 100% Indian. He didn't have much to say, hmm. Gloria said the older I get the more Indian I get sometimes. I want to get out there and I want to just go shut up someplace. He walked in there and encouraged him. Like, if she dies, you die. So, I mean, 1927, sweetheart, you understand. So, he just kind of cleaned her out, sewed her up, because she has to die and she wouldn't do it. They told her, you'll not live, you'll die within 10 years. My dad and mother got married immediately. They had been married nine years when I was born. Now they tried, I just begged and cried because I didn't have a little brother. So, they tried again and they had to stop it. So, I have a little brother in heaven. I'm going to get to see him one of these days.
Now, my being the only child and of course Christmas was huge. And I was born the first week of December. So, it was kind of a combination thing. So, mother always had the tree up by my birthday. She thought that was wonderful. I did too, but it was 19 days of torture. I mean... but my grandparents lived 300 miles away. He was a farmer and rancher. It was like pulling teeth to get him to leave home because he had stock to feed and cows to milk and so forth and lived well off up there on the plains and nobody to help or he had some hands from time to time. But he's one of those kind of men wanting to do it all himself. And he was good at it. But if they ever said they were coming, I didn't hope, I expected.
And if I heard a car, that's meemaw and papaw. I'd run to the door. And I'd hear another, that's meemaw and papaw, they're going to be here for Christmas. I know I heard them. I know I heard..., no. I know it that's meemaw and papaw, had to be, no, that they're coming, why? They said they would. And I believed everything my papaw said and because his Word was good. That's hope. That's real Bible hope, an earnest. At one translation calls it hot expectancy. Hope is the blueprint for faith. It's the Bible blueprint for healing. It's the Bible blueprint for prosperity. It's the Bible blueprint for a ministry successful anointing. It's the Bible blueprint for a big church that starts with a little church. Amen. And we're out of time. Give the Lord another praise, glory to God.