Kenneth Copeland - A Prosperous Life Is a Healthy Life
Bless the name of the Lord today. For He is alive and well and on the throne. We thank you, Father. We praise You and bless You this morning. Thank You for Your wonderful, glorious, powerful spirit that was moving on the face of the waters and You spoke and said, "Light be," and light was. Hallelujah. Then four days later, You created the sun, the moon, the stars. We're so grateful to You. It was all good because You're a good God. We thank You this morning in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. I'll tell you what. Greet two or three people before you sit down and say, "Thank God. The healer's here". Thank You, Lord Jesus. Healer's in the house today. Thank You, Lord. Praise God. Well it's a good thing.
Now, open your Bibles to 3 John. The reason that the Lord has directed me to touch on these things, there's a couple of things. It has to do with what you do all the time, what you think all the time, and there are times that I'm just thinking about one hotel we were in one morning and walked past and this young woman had her cart out there. She's cleaning. I walked past her and the Lord said, "Give her $200". Well thank God you have $200. So when I'm preaching and so forth, I don't carry it with me, but David does. So I turned around and went back over there. I said, "Now, the Lord spoke to me when I walked past you and said for me to give you $200". She said, "Oh, the Savior knew". The Savior knew. That's a lifestyle, but you need to be listening all the time.
Now, today is my receiving day. Today is one day closer to the resurrection. Amen. It's one day closer to my birthday and one day closer to Christmas. Amen. My next birthday is a milestone for me because Brother Hagin departed this planet at 86 and I will be 86 years old next year. I'm not thinking about leaving. I don't have time to die. We've got too much to do. Praise God. Now, you have to realize this about Brother Hagin. He was born so premature that they had to induce labor to save his mother's life. When the doctor... when he was born, of course this is in McKinney, Texas in 1917. Anyway, they didn't think he'd live at all and Mark 11:23-24, he was paralyzed from the waist down 17 months.
Now, get this. The doctor told him, "We would have to change your heart, your lungs, and all your plumbing, all of it. You were born so premature. You have to die". He was going the same route they said he would, but he just stayed with Mark 11:22, 23, 24, and 25. Finally one morning, the Word of the Lord came to his heart and said, "Well you believe you're well now". "Yes, I do". "Well men ought to be up this time of day". So he kicked his... He said his legs were like clubs and he just kicked his feet out and he said they just hit the floor and he hung around the bedpost. He said, "I want to declare to Almighty God. I want to declare to all the angels in this room and all the devils of hell. I am healed from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet".
He said feeling started coming back into his legs and he said it hurt so bad, it hurt good when those nerves started coming alive. He stood up. He only weighed 89 pounds and he stood up completely healed and he began preaching that day. Well he started preaching when he's 17 years old. I'm way behind him. You understand? By the time he went on at 86, dear Lord, it'll take me long time to catch up to all the years that he preached. Amen. So he had to stay focused that whole time. Some of the doctors said, "Son, don't you read anything? Don't you read Western novels or anything"? He said, "No, I don't have time". He said, "My life is in this book". Amen.
So by point is that's what he thought about all the time. Now, I've read other books down this line. What you think about all the time you will eventually become. I'm talking about when you just sit down to do something, that comes to your mind. The things you do every morning makes a lot of difference. So let's turn in our Bibles, I talked about it last night, to 3 John 2. Now, notice the word wish is number two. The Greek word here is pray. "Beloved, I pray above all things..." Above all things, now. Listen. "I pray above all things that you may prosper and be in health even as your mind, your will, and your emotions prosper". Do you have a prosperous mind? You can have a prosperous mind and prosper in the soulish whole of your mind, will, and emotions and not have much, but it'll get you there.
I wonder when you open your cabinet, 75 or 80 used margarine bowls fall out that you will never use. Huh? And you'll stay in a hotel like some of you are here now and you paid for that room so those little soap bars are yours. Did you really enjoy using that while you were in that hotel? Then they squirt out of your hand, but nevermind, you have a shoebox full of them that you will never use. They're not worth giving anybody. Do you have a whole drawer of twisties that came off of the bread? And your toothpaste, do you suck the last ... And you and your spouse fuss about one you pinches the tube at the bottom and the other one in the middle. Get two tubes. I'm telling you now. I'm telling you. You got stuff you will never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever use, got sweaters that will just hang around.
Every so often, I cull my closet. I start pulling things out. I haven't used this in a while. Somebody else can use it. I have a prosperous soul. My job on this earth is to prosper people. So is yours. I walked into a men's room and this guy was pulling the towels out of the... ould have washed his hand 15 times, just pulled them out. Somebody has to pay for those towels. You don't need that many. We prosper people. Somebody has to come in there and clean up. So you use what it takes to dry your hands and then what you have left, wipe the water off of the basin. Use as few towels as it takes and clean up after yourself. In learning all of this over the years, I put my socks in the dirty clothes. Don't put them in there wrong side out. Somebody has to do that.
When we stay in a hotel room, I don't walk off and leave all the towels and stuff in the floor. That's one room. How many she's going to have to clean, I don't know. There's no reason for her to have to bend over every time she walks in my room. Put them up on the top of the counter where she has to work as little as possible. Amen. It's just prospering people and just leave a trail of prosperity behind you. That is having a prosperous soul. Now, Ephesians 6 if you will. Look at Verse 5. "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling and singleness of your heart as unto Christ. Not with eye service or as men pleases, but as servants of Christ doing the will of God from the heart".
Now, isn't that what we're talking about here? "With goodwill doing service as to the Lord and not to men knowing that whatsoever good thing any man does, the same shall he receive of the Lord whether he's bond or free". Now when you have a prosperous mind and you begin to prosper other people and you walk up, we just came in last night after service and walked up there and there was a young man there at the car valet thing, and I just walked up to him and I said, "Hey, brother". He looked at me like, "What do you want"? He really did. I mean he's a man of color and me calling him brother. I noticed he wasn't smiling all that much. I caught him by the hand. I said, "I just want to know if the Lord is doing you good". "Oh, yeah," he said, "He's doing me good, man".
I got a smile out of him. He was working hard. He was working outside at night out there driving those cars around and people, nobody paying any attention to him much. "Yeah, He's doing me good". Just take prosperity everywhere you go. It'll keep you well. It'll keep you with a merry heart. That does good like a medicine. Amen. Then people will begin to prosper you. That's just the way it is. It works. Jesus said it this way. Do unto others what you would have them do unto you. That's a spiritual law. It works. You mumbly grumbly to other people, they mumbly grumbly to you. "Well I don't feel good". That may be the reason why you don't feel all that good. So it causes you to perk up and put a spring in your step because you're bringing prosperity everywhere you go. Glory to God. Thank You, Jesus.
I'm thinking about a time, what we call the Glory Riders, and Jerry and Carolyn and Dennis and Vikki Burke, Jesse and Cathy on our motorcycles, Gloria and me, and Happy and Jeanne Caldwell. We were in Branson, Missouri and we went into a video store there and we were looking for just funny stuff. We just walked in there and this little boy about that tall, "Are you the ones on TV"? "Yes". He walked up right in front of me and Jerry was right there. He said, "Would you pray for my mother? She has cancer". We said, "Well yeah, we'll pray". "No," he said, "she's in the car. Would you come"? We did. We just all went out there and ganged around his mother.
Now, what happens is when you live that kind of lifestyle, there's an air about you. We were up riding from Estes Park, Colorado and we went into a restaurant and all of us. They had to put larger table together. The waitress came over there and she didn't like that and she's jamming the tables all up and all that. So she came out there and "What do y'all want to drink"? We told her iced tea. Then she, "Could we have some water"? So she went back and got some. I said, "Hey, we're going to have to pray for her," instead of, "Boy, she's not getting any tip out of me today". People don't just act that way for no reason. "We need to pray for her".
She started back over there so I just pulled a chair about here. I said, "Sit down here, baby". So all of us gathered around and we just began to pray. "Oh, Lord. Whatever's wrong here, whatever's hurting her heart". "My sister, you don't know what she did to me". We laid hands on her, prayed for her, made sure that she knew Jesus. She completely totally changed. "What else can I get for you"? She said, "My sister just left me holding the bag over a wedding and I just... You just don't know how she talked to me and how she treated me". I said, "Well hey. Wait a minute. It's over. Forgive her. It's just momentary". "Okay". Oh, she brought the food out. Oh, she's so happy and she followed us, we were in leathers and all of this. She followed us all the way out the door. "Y'all have a good ride".
Now, that healed us. It's a lifestyle. Prospering people all the time and you don't go in there and leave a gospel track and a dollar tip. There better be some cold hard cash with that track enough to make them go, "Oh, yes. Really? This is for me"? Amen. We've seen it. The Applebee's there in Fort Worth that Gloria likes to go to all the time, we have an Applebee's ministry. Jerry does too. Jesse does too. I mean we've bought cars and people just wound up without any car.
One young man got to where he wasn't feeling all that good and he just seemed like it was bad. I gave him Gloria's book on God's Will For You and I said, "Now, read this". I made sure he was born again. "Oh, yeah," he said, "brother". He said, "I love the Lord God with all my heart". So we prayed for him. He just wasn't feeling all that good and laid hands on him. He just suddenly died with cancer and left a little daughter over whom he had custody. We had established a relationship with that family and our ministry paid for the funeral, paid off his truck so that grandmother raising that girl would not have any more expenses. She wept and she wept and she wept and she wept. Prospering people and any good thing you do, the Lord will do the same for you.