Kenneth Copeland - How To Overcome the Spirit of Grief
Open your Bibles with me this morning to 1 Thessalonians 4. Jesus said, "I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly. The thief cometh but for to steal, to kill, and to destroy". That's the dividing point of the Bible right there. Amen. So you're on one side or the other of that divide. Now, in the fourth chapter of the Book of Thessalonians... Praise God.
Look at this sixth verse. "No man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter because that the Lord is the avenger of all such. As we also have forewarned you and testified for God hath not called us unto uncleanliness but unto holiness. He therefore that despises despises not man but God who hath also given unto us his Holy Spirit. But as touching brotherly love". Now, you see you always come back to love. "But as touching brotherly love you need not that I write unto you, for you yourselves are taught of God to love one another. Indeed you do it toward all the brethren which are in Macedonia. We beseech you, brethren, that you increase more and more in love and that you study to be quiet and to do your own business, to work with your own hands as we commended you that you may walk honestly toward them that are without and that you may have lack of nothing".
You may have lack of nothing. Well that you may have lack of nothing. Praise. That means spirit, soul, and body. "Now, but I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep or those that have passed on, that have departed, that you sorrow not even as others which have no hope". Now, sorrow not, that word sorrow is the Greek word lupeo which is grief. Let me read it to you from the Classic Amplified. "Now also we would not have you ignorant, brethren, about those who fall asleep in death, that you may not grieve for them as the rest do who have no hope beyond the grave. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again".
We believe that, right? Oh, yeah. We believe that. Yes. I don't believe that. I know that. That's in my knower. I just know that I know that I know that I know that I know that I know what I know that I know that I know. I know. Glory to God. I know. I know him. Praise God. Thank You, Jesus. "We declare to you by the Lord's own Word that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord shall in no way precede into his presence or have any advantage at all over those who have previously fallen asleep in him in death. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a loud cry of summons and with a shout of an archangel and with a blast of the trumpet of God, and those who have departed this life in Christ will rise first. Then we, the living ones who remain on the earth, shall simultaneously be called up along with the resurrected dead in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. So always through the eternity of the eternities we shall be with the Lord. Therefore, comfort and encourage one another with these words".
Grief has no place in our lives. Grief, as we talked about last night, can bring sickness and disease because grief is the companion of death, but now I really like the way the apostle put this, that those that have fallen asleep. But then there's people come up said, "Well they're in the sleep of death and they're just asleep somewhere". Don't take one scripture. Take the body of the Word of God and you know exactly what happens. This same apostle said to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord and you're not asleep when you get there. Let me show you just how easy that is. To be absent from the body that's just how easy it is. Come on. Get up. That coat is dead as a sack of rocks. Why? I'm not in it. It has no life in it. I am the life of that coat. Amen.
Now, would you assist me please? Would you pick my body up and put it in the grave? See, I can't do it. I'm gone. So now he puts it in the grave and he puts it up for me because I'm coming back after it. But right now, thank you, sir. Right now I am the life of this coat because this coat was made for me. That illustration should help. "But Brother Copeland, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know". You probably don't know. "I don't know what happened to Uncle Bobo". Okay. So you don't know. Trust God. You don't know what happened in that last second or two. There are testimonies now of that. I'm thinking about one testimony where this woman kept witnessing to her husband, she kept talking to him, and he just laughed her off, wouldn't have anything to do with her, just wouldn't have anything to do. She just kept on, kept on, kept on, kept on. I saw it on 700 Club. Thank God for Pat Robertson and Gordon and the 700 Club. Glory to God. Friends for a long, long time.
Boy, I tell you what. He just had a heart attack that was something and just died in his pickup. Well he stepped out of his body and he went through some pretty rough places, but the prayers of his wife and the witnessing she had done to him, those things were inside of him. They were inside his spirit, see. He went through and when he left his body, he went through some pretty rough places there, but God just straightened him out and gave him his choice. "You can go back healed and finish working for me or you can just come on". "No," he said, "I'd rather go back and make up for how I messed up before".
Well what if he had chosen to go on? She would have thought he died and went to hell because he never did in front of her confess that Jesus was Lord. I wanted that to get through because you're right. You don't know. But we do know that God is not only a just God, He is a very merciful God. Amen. Praise God. So grief is a killer and I'm speaking to someone online that you've been grieving, I'm telling you stop it right now. So in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth, I bind the spirit of grief. I bind the spirit of death. I rebuke you in the name of Jesus. I rebuke death this morning. I rebuke the spirit of death. I rebuke the spirit of fear. I rebuke you in the name of Jesus. Hey. Now, you leave. And I plead the blood.
Now, wait a minute. Now, what does that mean? Particularly us Holy Ghost people, I mean we just plead the blood a lot. But well momma did that and grandma did that and I do it. Well what did you do when you did that? That's a legal term. I plead my case. I plead my case according to the 43rd chapter of the Book of Isaiah. "I even I am he who bloodeth out thy transgressions for my own sake". "I'll not remember them anymore".
Now, there's some good news this morning. That came out in front of me one day and I said, "Lord, no, no, no, no. You did that for my sake, not your sake". "No, no". I mean He snapped back at me. He said, "I did it for my sake". I don't get it. He said, "Do you like to remember bad things about your children"? I said, "No, I don't. I forgive my children. I've taught them that. Once you come to me with this and so on, I don't bring that up anymore. I don't come back at you anymore because in this case, I do my best to be a father like the Father God". Once you confess that sin, it's gone and don't bring it back up to him either. That's rude. Because He said it in first chapter of 1 John, "Walk in the light as he is in the light and his blood cleanses you from all sin".
So I plead the blood. We've overcome the spirit of grief. We've overcome the devil. We've overcome principalities and powers. We've overcome the rulers of the darkness of this world. We've overcome wicked spirits in the heavenly places by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. I plead the blood. What have I done? I have pled the blood of the covenants. In the name of Jesus, I plead the blood and just throw both covenants, both blood covenants right in the devil's face. I plead the blood. Glory to God. Thank You, Jesus. There's healing in that. Oh, there's healing and joy in knowing, knowing who you are in Christ Jesus. Knowing what belongs to you. Healing belongs to you. Healing belongs to me. First words count. All Bible scholars agree that the first occurrence of a word in the Bible then it carries that all the way throughout both covenants.
Genesis 6:3, that's right at the beginning. God himself said, I paraphrase, "I'm not going to put up with men living so long anymore so their normal lifespan will be 120 years". So now as you flow down through the Bible and you come to the Book of Leviticus and it begins to talk about foods that human beings should not eat, why? Because He's setting you up to live healthy and without sickness and disease for 120 years. Now, isn't it amazing that medical science without the Bible has come to the conclusion that without sickness and disease, the human body should live 120 years? Well everybody sooner or later whether you like it or not will catch up with the Bible. Science little by little finally catch up with the Bible. That book is right.
And the answers of human life are in it, but it has to be spiritually discerned. It is a code book and it's received by the spirit of man, not the mind of man. Amen. Divine healing is a spiritual thing. It spills over into natural healing. I've given you my testimony about that pacemaker. I said, "Lord, I'll just get this," but He said, "Receive the pacemaker by faith". So I did that and of course they went in there and checked and all to see if I needed some kind of a stent. No, I didn't need a stent. Praise God. Amen. But I already had obligated myself and covenanted with God to live 120 years. The covenant was in place. When you find the word glory, the first reference to glory in the Bible was finance. Just go check it out and find it. He has gotten all this glory. Amen. I'm not going to do your homework. I'm not going to... I'll just tell you it is in the first covenant. Amen. It had to do with a certain man and his wife. That's as far as I'm going to go with you. Amen. Glory to God.
Now then, deal with the spirit of grief. I will not tolerate that in my life. I won't tolerate it. We do not tolerate it at EMIC. Now then, that doesn't mean that we don't minister to people, members of the church in a time when they need you. Amen. But more than once I've used that scripture right there. I'm thinking about one particular woman and her husband is a close friend. He was frankly not old enough to die and it was sudden. I had to fly in to be a part of his homegoing service. I don't like funerals. They're homegoing services, homegoing celebrations. Now, we go and we spend a lot of time, Christians spend a lot of time getting people to heaven. Then when one of them goes, crying, bawl, squall, grieve.
Now, you can obviously see where that comes from. It certainly didn't come from God. Do you know what the Bible says about it? He takes pleasure in the homecoming of his saints. The Bible says death. He takes pleasure in the death of his saints. Well why? Listen. This earth is a rotten place to live. At the very best, it's a bummer. So begin to think instead of... Now, control your thinking. Say this: "My mind is my mind. I think what I choose to think And I choose to think according to God's Word. I think his thoughts after him". Glory to God. So begin to think life thoughts instead of grief thoughts.