Kenneth Copeland - Following God's Direction Is Your Choice
Turn with me to Proverbs 3:11 as we rehearse some of these things. "My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of his correction. For whom the Lord loves, he corrects, even as a father, the son in whom he delights". Isn't that good? Amen. Oh, just so many good scriptures. Proverbs in direction. Proverbs 6:20, "My son, keep thy father's commandments, forsake not the law of thy mother. Bind them continually upon thine heart and tie them about your neck. When you go, it shall lead thee, when you sleep, it shall keep thee, and when you awake, it shall talk with thee". He's talking about the Word. Amen.
Then there's just another scripture came up in me, in the Psalms that, "Keep my commandments with your heart. Keep my commandments with your heart," not just because they're commandments. And then you come to the new commandment. "I give you a new commandment that you love one another, as I have loved you. By this, the way you love one another, all people will know that you're my disciples". Now, these 12 men fussed and fought that whole three years. When Jesus, Peter, James and John came down from the mount of transfiguration, and there was the man with a epileptic son. And he said, "I came to your disciples and they couldn't cast him out".
Now they had been given the authority to do that. It wasn't that they couldn't. Then why didn't it work? Well, just check it all out, and the bottom line is because of your strife. Because of your strife. You're fussing with one another all day. The Lord gave me a message, "Strife, the killer of dreams". And let's talk about another area, of judging people. Now, let's look... Oh, there's so much in here. Go to Colossians chapter one. Now those of you that are partners, you'll find this on the prayer list that I pray for you. Colossians chapter 1:9, 10, and 11. Oh, let's back up a little bit. Verse seven, "As you also learned of Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is for you a faithful minister of Christ, who also declared under us your love in the spirit. For this cause, we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding". Why?
"So that you might walk worthy of the Lord and to all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all dunamis according to his glorious power, unto all patience and long suffering with joyfulness, giving thanks under the father, which has made us able to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who have delivered us from the power of darkness and have translated us into the kingdom of his dear son, in whom we have redemption through his blood even the forgiveness of sin, who is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature". Glory to God.
The wisdom in all spiritual understanding. That's direction. Is it not? That is direction. Now, glory to God, Romans chapter eight. We're just going to bounce around through here this morning. What is it Brother Hagin used to say? We're going look under ever rock and under every leaf. He probably still says it, he's just in a different place. There was a guy that told me this one time. He said, this fella, everywhere he went, he preached on the great Jamestown flood, that that is part of his message. I mean, he'd preach on other things, but he'd wind up on the great Jamestown flood. Well, and then of course he went to heaven, and it came his time to preach. And so there was an angel slipped over there beside him. He said, "I want you to know Brother Noah's in the congregation today. You don't know anything about a flood". I like that. If that isn't true, it ought to be. Glory to God, thank you, Lord Jesus.
Oh, this eighth chapter of Romans, this is one of those that is almost all yellow in my Bible. I was on the broadcast, David Barton and I were doing a broadcast together on Believer's Voice of Victory. And I had my Bible open to the book of Hebrews. And you know David, he's quick and very subtle, just without a smile. He said, "Where do you get a white highlighter"? I said, "What"? He said, "Where do you get a white highlighter"? And you can bet, you would know that it is in the 11th chapter of the book of Hebrews. Anyway, the eighth chapter of Romans is almost that, well, it is. Boy, the whole eighth chapter of Romans is just powerful. We'll start with the 11th verse, verse 10. "And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin but the spirit is live because of righteousness. The spirit is live". I said, "The spirit is live". Jesus said, "My words are spirit and they are life".
John 6:63. "But if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwells in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh to live after the flesh, for if you live after the flesh, you shall die. But if you through the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the spirit of adoption whereby we cry, 'Abba, father.'"
That was the verse of scripture that stirred my granddaughter Jenny to start that orphanage in Greece. She knew, she had met two of Elias's cousins, and she introduced them to me as first and second Thessalonians. And she wound up going there, and she wound up marrying into that great family. And one of the members of that family, Elias's aunt, she learned English by getting a Greek English dictionary and reading my books on faith. So now that's a Word of Faith church connected to the orphanage, connected to Elias, connected to me. And now I have a little Thessalonian as a great grandson. I've always wanted to go to Greece.
Now I need to go visit the family, and go firsthand and see things. Because Elias has been to all of them. And of course, when he came to the United States, first thing he did was go get his green card, because he lives with an American citizen on foreign soil. And so the first thing he did was go get his green card when he got here, and they were showing him things about questions about the United States. And he said, "245 years? That's all how old this nation is"? I told him, "That's right. But it's the oldest unchanged constitution in the history of the world". The average is 17 nations a year change their constitution. This one has never been changed.
And the reason why, it's based on the Bible. It's an anointed document. And it has stood the test of time and will continue to do so. And men and women try to foul it up, but it's a very short document. For a long time, I just carried one around in my Bible case, just to look at it and read it. Amen. But what is that? That's national direction. It's national correction. It's national protection. Because it'll keep you from just going into war just because you want to. Amen. It's all right. So now then, let's go to Proverbs 20:27. "The spirit of man is the candle". The crossreference says, "the lamp," "of the Lord searching all the inward parts of the belly". Okay, this is in the Classic Amplified. "The spirit of man, that factor in human personality which precedes immediately from God, is the lamp of the Lord searching all his innermost parts".
That is the way God leads and guides. And when you put his Word final authority in your life, well, you don't argue with it anymore. Finally, I came to the place. I just fell on my knees and I said, "Oh God, I am yours to command. Your will is my will, and my will is your will. I have no other will". My will is strong. I'm a strong willed man, but God didn't want you to be weak willed in the first place. Now we guard against strongholds that are of the devil. But we have strongholds of faith, strongholds built in the Word God concerning miracles and healing, concerning obedience to his Word.
Proverb 6:20. Let's see. Let's go once again to that. I read this. "When you go, they, the words of your parents' God, shall lead you. When you sleep, they will keep you. When you awaken, they shall talk with you. For the commandment is a lamp and the whole teaching of the law is light and reproves of discipline are the way of life". That's the way of life. It's not a way of life. There are ways of life, well, you could say death of the physical body is a way of life, but there are some decisions that need to be made. I heard Gloria say in Healing School one time. She said, "Now, dying is the easiest thing you ever did in your life. And if Jesus is your Lord, then to be absent from the body will be present with the Lord. If he is not, your place will be decided for you".
Decision is a very important way of life. I had direction, but I made a bad decision. Why do bad things happen to good people? Good people make bad decisions. And that is a way of life. The decision is yours, correction and direction. Praise God, and the wonderful things of God. And there's so much, so many things, that before we close, I want to do this. We will go to, of course, Hebrew chapter 11, but I'm going to read it to you from the Classic Amplified. "Now faith is the assurance, the confirmation, 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 what faith is. By faith, we understand that the worlds during the successive ages were framed, fashioned, put in order, and equipped for their intended purpose by the Word of God. So that what we see was not made out of the things which are visible. I've heard more than one say, "God created this universe out of nothing". No, he didn't. It was out of something you can't see. And he did it with his mouth. He designed it and he spoke it. Actually, if you watch it carefully and read the scriptures carefully, he actually spoke those words to Jesus and Jesus was the one that said them, where all things were created through and by him and for him because he was destined to live here as a man. Did you get anything out of that? Amen. "Now exceeding great and precious promises".
When that exceeding great and precious promise is meditated upon, stood upon, thought about, and said, and spoken, and read out loud, over and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, until it gets down on the inside of you, Brother Hagin said, "If you say something long enough, it'll get down into your spirit and control your life". Good or bad. Stand and let's give the Lord praise, please. Thank You, Lord Jesus. So it's your choice. It's my choice. You can decide, because no one can make your decision for you. First time I ever heard this, John Osteen, John and Dodie Osteen became just very close friends of Gloria and me. And he would say, "This is my Bible. This is God speaking to me. I can do whatever it says I can do. I can have whatever it says I can have. This is my Bible".
Well, I want to add a little something to that. This is my mind. And you are not going to tell me what my mind's going to think. I think according to this book, I speak according to this book. Gloria and I made the decision years and years, and years ago that we were not going to cross one another. We were going to assist one another. April the 13th this year, we will have been married 60 years. 60 years we've not had an argument. I had a couple. She just wouldn't join in. But it's her love that worked it's way through all the problems and stuff. And really, she really set the example for me. She's really the best thing. The reason I say that, and I said it to the Lord. I said, "Lord, it was her unconditional love that brought me to you," because he's really the best thing that ever happened to any of us. He's a good God.