Kenneth Copeland - Operating in God's Faith and Wisdom
Hello, everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland. This is the Believer's Voice of Victory Broadcast and welcome to ground school. Now, we're talking about the fundamentals of faith. These two airplanes are fundamentally the same but are they different. This one is a piston engine or what is properly called a reciprocating engine and the one that I fly has... It's been upgraded to a Pratt & Whitney R-985 engine and it's a round engine instead of an opposed engine and it makes really great noise. It's a sound, not a noise. We were talking about this yesterday. I had to go through all of these fundamental things to get from here to here. I've flown both of these airplanes but they're fundamentally the same.
Now, I remembered there's a high wing Cessna. That's what I soloed in. Just a little two place Cessna and the tail number, its ID number was N5523E. Echo. And it was two, three, echo. The phonetic for E. Standing underneath the wing, I read to checking the inside up behind these ailerons. Now, the reason I'm bringing this up, my instructor, first thing he said, "Kenneth", he said, "Wait a minute. Don't stick your finger up in there". I'm about to make a mistake. You can make faith mistakes. This is all hard metal. It's aluminum. He said, "Hold on to that thing because you need to stick your hand up in here". But he said, "If it's gusty wind and it blows it and you don't have a good", he said, "It'll slam down on your finger". And he said, "It'll cut it and it really hurts". That's fundamentally a good thing to know. I never did do that.
Now, low wing airplane. You have in your pre-flight go through all of these things. You don't just kick the tires and light the fires. You'd kill yourself. You only have to kill yourself once and it's permanent. Because airplanes are fundamentally dangerous. The minute you get here, it's dangerous. Cars are fundamentally dangerous. Cars are more dangerous than these are. Read the statistics. There are more accidents on the way to the airport than there are in the airplane because they're fundamentally, they have been tested and tested and tested and tested and tested and tested now for over a 100 years but then it depends on who's flying it. There's a lot it depends on. There's a lot of... It depends on here. Thank You, Lord. Let's go to the 107th psalm and I'll show it to you.
Now, if you were using your faith, excuse me, There's some information you're going to have to have and we'll go through this. You're going to have to know what it is fundamentally. What faith is, how it's released, what feeds it, where it comes from. Now, that's fundamental knowledge but that's just a license to learn. Now, look at the 107th Psalm verse 17. "Fools because of their transgression and because of their iniquities are afflicted". That's not the end of the story. "Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat and they draw near under the gates of death". They get up to the point where they're about ready to die. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble and he saves them out of their distresses. He sent his Word and healed them and delivered them from their destruction. But if a person is sick unto death and they don't know that, don't know how to engage faith.
This thing doesn't have an autopilot in it but I had to learn how to engage the autopilot in that. I had to learn how to engage my faith and that's what we're talking about here. There you have it. There's some mistakes made here and the way they were living. Not paying a bit of attention, doing very foolish things and just get a little worse off and a little worse off and a little worse off and then it get right up the point they're about to die and then they say, "Help me". God says, "Okay". But it takes faith. Now, let's go back over there where we were in Mark chapter 11, please. Now, we found out yesterday the situation here and particularly by looking into the Amplified Bible and it explained it. "When a fig tree is in full leaf, it should have figs on it". That was a disobedient tree because it was not time yet for figs. It was premature.
Now, Jesus as a busy man, he went happily. He finds something to eat on that tree. "Look. That tree's a little early here. Surely it has figs on it". He's hungry. He's fasting and it was a lie. He answered and said onto it, "No man eat fruit of thee hereafter forever". What is that? Nine words. Turned around and walked on. They came to Jerusalem. Jesus went into the temple, began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple and overthrew the tables of the money changers. Now, he went in there the day before. Didn't do anything. He just stood around and watched. He needed to sleep on this. "I only do what I see my Father do. I only say what I hear my Father say". He didn't do anything.
This is the first wisdom of faith. Don't get in a hurry. I'm going to give you another aviation saying. What is that? "Stop and wind your watch". If it's a fire emergency, there are memory items to that and you do them immediately but you have to have those memory items but there is a checklist and there's an emergency checklist. The checklist is the Bible of that airplane. The manufacturer wrote this and the manufacturer wrote the checklist of that. The checklist in this is very short, but it's extremely important. A lot of people get hurt because they don't pay attention to a checklist. At any rate, it's so important. Don't respond or react to fear. If you're going to do that, train yourself over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
Now, they have simulators for this. They never did have simulators for these. They didn't have simulators when I learned how to fly. I would sit in a chair and I would see it in my mind. First, I'd go sit in the airplane and look at every instrument in there. Every instrument. Now, of course, they have better things now. With these, you had a foldout where you can go home and sit there and look at the panel of that airplane but it didn't have that back then. I would meditate on it. Think about it. Meditate on it. And I would sit in that chair and I would place myself in that airplane. "My throttle quadrant is here, the yoke is here". I do this and I'd say, "Now, what am I going to do if an engine stops"? "Oh. Okay. What'd that checklist say? First thing I'm going to do is figure out which engine has stopped. How do I do that? Weak rudder, weak engine. Strong rudder, strong, I got it".
My simulator was in here meditating on it. Practice emergencies. Okay. "Ow. Jesus. Not... Ah!... What on earth is that"? And the devil will say, "Would you believe cancer"? "No. It couldn't be". "Jesus. Glory to God. Hallelujah. Thank You, Lord God forevermore. I'm healed". First words. Because when you say something under a lot of pressure like that, it'll come out of your spirit. I have demonstrated it with congregations. Stand the whole congregation. I'd say, "Now, say this after me but say it firmly. By his stripes, I am healed". And everybody would do it. I said, "Now, we're going to do it again. Only this time at the top of your voice. Scream it". By his stripes. And when he got through "Glory to God" it came out of here instead out of here. Train. That's what makes this safe is training, training, training, training. Remember?
I told you last week. Recurrent training in this, "This thing is fast. This one is harder to fly. This thing will bite you". It was built that way to train pilots. You're supposed to be already trained when you get into this but this thing, the landing gear is real close together and he got this little wheel back here that'll actually do this. That's called a ground loop and it can get up here. It can get over here. That's not good. This takes a lot of practice. There is a way to do this but the one that's particularly on pavement. The one that's harder and this is the one I like is practice, practice, practice, practice. "No. No. No. No. No. Get out of here". Over and over and over and over and over before I soloed.
Now, all of this has to do with the fundamentals of faith. Before I solo, I come in and say and then, "Oh, man". I was shaving one morning, standing there, had a flight lesson that morning. I can do that. What happened? Revelation. That's the reason I brought that up. Now, at that time, I wasn't born again but my spirit was telling me. Now, I was really close to being born again because my mother prayed and prayed for me all the time and I had a heart for God. I wasn't anti-God at all. I saw it. I went right out there that morning and I came around on base leg. I knew it when I got over here. It started to turn final. I knew it. I knew what I was doing. I reduced the power just right on time and got two "squeakies". I was so thrilled. I'm talking about having things revealed in your life but the Lord says, "My people perish for a lack of knowledge".
Now, in order to explain something here, on an instrument landing system which at the time I had no knowledge of, the outer marker would be right here and you're coming here, You're on the instrument landing system and right here is where you're ready to land. Coming down here. I'd never heard of that. This is August 1961, it's hot and I'd been training in the mornings while it was cool. "Get this instructor out of my airplane. I want to fly this thing by myself. I'm ready". My instructor said, "I'm ready to solo". But I soloed at four o'clock in the afternoon at Meacham Field which is Fort Worth Municipal Airport.
Now, I've been doing this thing in my little 150 Cessna early in the morning and there's no traffic. I'm soloing. I came around here and I said, "Meacham Tower. Cessna, two, three, echo. Downwind. Touch and go". "Roger that. Two, three, echo. You're number eight in the pattern. Follow a DC-3 just outside the outer marker". "What? They got something painted on a barn? I never heard of an outer marker". I said, "Sir, this is my first solo". "Oh. Okay". He's happy, I'm happy. He said, "Can you hold your altitude"? I said, "Yes, sir. I'm doing it by myself". "Yes". I'm bouncing along here because it's a little bumpy.
Now, knowledge. This is knowledge. I had to have more knowledge then I had to have more wisdom to use that knowledge. He said, "Hold your heading. Hold your altitude. I'll tell you when to turn base". "Here I go". And I get to fly a little further. He said, "two, three, echo". "Yes, sir". "See that DC-3 off your left wing on final"? He's about to land. I looked. I said, "Yes, sir". "When that DC-3 passes under your left wing, turn base". And I looked. I thought, "Yeah. I couldn't hit him if I tried". My first wisdom and knowledge of that aeronautical law. If I'm here and he's here, I cannot hit him. With everything I had go at it, he's going the other way. Pilots use it all the time. I learned it the day I soloed in that little two-seat Cessna 150. Knowledge with wisdom.
The more we know about the spiritual force of faith, what it is... Because you hear it used... What faith are you? Faith in God? What else you want to... No. What denomination? There's not anything inherently wrong with that but it doesn't say anything. You won't find that in this book. Now, what is it? It is a spiritual force. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews is the faith book because the 11th chapter is the "Hall of Faith". Hebrews 11:1. Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for. The evidence of things not seen. Faith is always now. There's two things in there. Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for. There is such a thing as real Bible hope.
"You're coming to the healing service in the morning? Healing School"? "Yes, sir. Brother Copeland". "You are going to receive your healing, right"? "Brother Copeland and I sure do hope so". No. That's wishing. You could say the same thing. "Yes, sir. I hope to. My hope is high". Oh. Don't get your hope up. I don't want you to, Hope is the blueprint for faith. It's the substance of things hoped for. The evidence of things not seen. Listen to this from the Classic Amplified. Now, faith is the assurance. Is the assurance. The confirmation. I like that. The title deed of the things we hope for being the proof of the things we do not see and the conviction of their reality. Faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses. It is the title deed. Amen. I own that healing. I was hoping for it. Now, I have it. I'm not in but more healed than I was and we're out of time but this is where we're going to grab a hold tomorrow. Amen. Bye. We'll be back in just a moment.