Kenneth Copeland - Speak Words of Life for Debt Freedom
And so if you'll turn there with me this morning, Romans 13, we'll read this seventh verse. "Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor. Owe no man anything, but to love one another for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law". I said what? How can you do that? Well, I look it up in the Amplified translation. Do we have that in the Amplified, I know you do. Keep out of debt. Owe no man anything, except to love one another for he who loves his neighbor. Who? Well, I thought... Gloria! She came in there and I read that to her. She looked at that, her feathers kind of fell, there went her house. My feathers fell. We'll never have an airplane. Whoever heard of paying for cash for an airplane or anything else. I never paid cash for anything.
Well, we got ahold of that and then well you cannot build on that one verse. But Proverbs 22:7 says that the borrower is servant or slave to the lender. But now open your Bibles to Deuteronomy 28. We have the blessing and the curse. When you study the curse of the law, you need to start in the 27th. But for what we're doing today, we'll just look at verse 28. Now this is a national thing, but to us it's a personal thing. God told them He would heal them and their nation. But with us, it's an individual thing because Jesus was made the curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone that hang up on a tree. Now that came out of that and then later on, it actually took place when they hung the king of AI on a stake, on a tree.
But now look at this. Deuteronomy 28:12. Verse 11, "The Lord shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your cattle, on the fruit of your ground. The land which the Lord swore under the fathers to give thee. The Lord shall open under thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, to bless all the work of the hand. Thou shall lend under many nations, and shall not borrow. Well, the Lord will make you the head and not the tail". Now just keep on going down till you get to the 43rd verse. Now we're over into the curse. Verse 43, "The stranger that is within you". Stranger, somebody you don't even know, a "Stranger that is within you shall get up above you very high and you'll come down very low. He shall lend to you and you shall not lend to him; he will be the head and you'll be the tail. Moreover all these curses will come on you".
Well, there it is, three witnesses. The borrower is servant of the lender. A stranger, people borrow money from somebody they don't even know. And churches borrowing money from the mob. Now I'm not guessing at that. I know the situation. It happened and I was invited to preach in the city where this man was pastor. And of course I didn't have any knowledge of that. And he walked in, I knew who he was, this tall, good looking man. And he walked in there and I knew it was him. And I walked over there and he was taller than me. All of them are taller than I am. But anyway, not all of them. Jessie's not, Jerry's not. I used to be taller than this. I was. I had that disc explode in my back and it cost me about an inch, inch and a quarter, inch and a half.
So anyway, I walked up to him and shook hands with him and the Spirit of the Lord came on me and the prophet's anointing came on me and I began to speak to him. And I said this, paraphrasing, I don't remember the exact words, but here's the bottom line of it. I said, "All of this trouble that you've been in and this terrible problem that's facing you and your church will very soon be completely wiped out". And he stood there, looked at me and grabbed me. I had no idea what I was saying, But then someone talked to me that knew him personally. The debt... They were having problems financing this new church project and he couldn't get the money anywhere else.
So he made some arrangements for that money. He had some people that offered little higher interest, but come to find out he was in debt to the wrong people and they were making threats to him. They were telling him, "Listen, you are going to come up with that money or we're going to come and have a meeting with you". They threatened his family. They threatened everything about him, scared him. He was afraid for his own life. But once those words were spoken, the angels went to work and just supernaturally paid that thing off. Now I'll tell you another situation. I brought this up not anywhere near to the length that I've gone to here this morning with you, and I'll tell you some more about the rest of this, but I taught this in a minister's conference. And there was a pastor there that they already had a loan application in.
And so he and his wife decided they're going to be debt free. And so he just went home after that minister's conference, went by to the bank and I walked in there and said, "I'd like to see Mr. So-and-so". And the secretary said, "I'll get him". He said, "In fact, they're discussing the church loan right now". So the banker came out there, he's all smiles and he said, "Pastor, we're working on your loan right now and it's looking good". He said, "Well, that's the reason I'm here. We have decided that we're going to build this church debt free. We don't need that loan". So he told me about this in the next January. He said, "That man's face changed. And he began to look at me". He said, "You know good and well, you can't bill that church without us. You can't do it". And he lost control of himself. And he began to blasphemy God and curse that pastor to his face.
And what I had said is, "When you borrow that money, you enter a covenant. So whatever spirit is in them is going to get into your church". When I began to teach this, I went to the Lord. I said, "Lord, am I to teach that it's a sin to borrow money"? He said, "No, I didn't say it was a sin". But he said, "You have to enter into a covenant if you borrow money on anything". It's a contract. You enter into that covenant and you make, in some cases exceeding, great promises. Not all that precious, but they're great. And you're swearing on paper that you will be just as able to make these big payments 30 years from now as you are now. They got any idea what's going to happen in 30 years. There were people two or three years ago that had no idea that gasoline in this country is going to hit five, six, $7 a gallon in some places.
Now people are having to go without something to eat just to pay mortgages on the house. My, my, my. Covenants. Debt is based on covenant agreement. And most people have no earthly idea what a covenant is. Just a contract, get a lawyer, break it. But the moment you took the pen in hand and signed your name, you entered into a covenant because they signed as the bank or the car company or whomever it is. So now you have two or more names on an agreement, an agreement. Any two of you on Earth agree as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father in heaven. Well, what about the devil when you get ahold of the wrong people? Gloria and I had to learn how. But anyway, the bottom line of it is this. We went through, go back over here now to the fourth chapter of Mark.
And I'll tell you what Gloria, I've told you all the time, Gloria is smarter than I am. She's more spiritually apt than I am. She just all the way around ahead of me, always has been. And so her terminology was this, Well, the sower sows the Word. Yes. Now that's the key that we have to put the Word in our mouth and we have to go through. Here's what she said. "This is on stony ground and all that". She said, "We're going to have to do a soil sample. We'll never get out of this stuff unless we do a soil sample". We went through those things. Am I stony ground? I cannot be. So I started looking up scriptures about my heart. Oh, he took a stony heart out of me and put a heart of flesh in me. So we began to say that. I'm softhearted when it comes to God. We made certain agreements ourselves. We talked with one another about it. And there I am in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was flying right seat on that airplane. But all that did was take care of my school expenses and any other fees that I had.
I got a lot of wonderful experience out of it. Cause it's the finest airplane I'd ever even been close to. But now what are we going to do? We didn't have any money, but God said, "I'll take care of you here". He said, "I'll take care of you here". So we began praying over that and put that in our mouth. We kept saying, "We're debt free, we're debt free. We're debt free. We don't have any debt. We just love everybody". Well then we had to start loving everybody. We owe it. Owe no man, anything but to love him. So this changed my whole idea. I mean, you have to love one another. That means I had to be not so quick to fly off the handle. I had to fill my mouth with those words and those scriptures went over them and over them and over them. And I learned from Brother Hagin. I've been redeemed from the curse of death. Glory to God. I've been redeemed from the curse of death. I've been redeemed from the curse of death. I've been redeemed from it. I've been redeemed from it. I've been redeemed from it. I've been redeemed from it.
Now, the sower sows the Word. So is the Kingdom of God as if a man should cast seed into the ground, sleep and rise night and day, the seeds should spring and grow up, he knows not how. For the earth bring of the heart. The heart brings forth the fruit. He's talking about the heart the whole time. Well, a good friend out in California had a Chrysler dealership out there, and we needed executive cars. And he had one that when I saw it, that car was just beautiful. It was a real light yellow and it had a brown leather interior, just a beautiful car. And then a gray one that for one of the men that was working with us in the ministry back there then. And the ministry was providing him a car.
And so I called Bob and he said, "Kenneth, this is going to your ministry". He said, "Why don't you just lease them"? And he said, "At the end of the lease, I'll just swap cars with you and we'll just keep doing it that way". And I was stupid enough to do it. Sounded good to me. So I took this beautiful car, I'd drive it to the airport and I'd come back and the battery would be dead. This car was demon possessed. Beautiful thing. They'd check everything and it's all all right. I'd drive it home, it would sit in the garage. Fine. I'd get up going, I'd leave town to come back and the battery would be dead. Never could find out what was the matter with it. And then the other little things started going wrong with it. And I thought, "What"?
I went to the Lord and I said, "Lord, now this car, these are Yours". He said, "They're not mine". No, he said "They belong to that car dealer," huh? No, he said, "They don't belong to you. You leased them". He said, "That's just another form of debt". So I called. I said, "Bob, I'm sending these cars back to you". And he kind of swallowed hard. I said, "No, now, now, now wait a minute". I said, "I know they have some miles on them, but now here's the deal". I said, "You sell the cars and whatever you lose on the deal, I'll make up the difference". He said, "Well, you don't have to". I said, "Yeah, I have to do this, Bob". So he sold the cars and there was some difference. So the ministry paid that difference. And then from that day till this, we've never leased cars again. Not ever. Anyway. We didn't have the money. We just go with what you have.
So later, a man that I didn't know called me and he said, "I got your number from Bob Harrison". Well, he's the car dealer. I thought, uh, oh. He said, "I understand you used to have this yellow Chrysler". I said, "Yes, sir". He said, "Copeland, I want you to know that's the finest car I ever owned in my life". He said, "I just keep putting miles and miles and miles and miles on it". I said, "Did you ever have any trouble with the battery running down"? And he went, "No". He said, "Not anything". See, got the devil out of that car and got it off that electrical system. Everything was right. I'm telling you folks, we live this way. You think I'd change now? Abraham like God, called things that'd be not as those they were.
Now God had the authority. When he entered Covenant and he said, I am El Shaddai. I am the God that is more than enough in the 17th chapter of Genesis. And he changed his name to Abraham. God put his name in the middle. Yod Hey Vav Hey. Hashem, covenant change of names. And he said, "I have made thee the father of many nations". He had the authority to make him that. I have made thee the father of many nations. There was a man, World War II. His name was Robert Scott. Christian man. And then the war got hot and heavy. Robert Scott was a lieutenant colonel. No, he was a major. And the general came to him and he said, "Scotty, I need you to be a colonel. So today I'm making you a full colonel". He had the authority to do it. God had the authority to make him the father of many nations. God had the authority to make you the righteousness of God. And he made you and he made me the righteousness of God before the foundation of the world. And knew our name. Well, praise God. Stand to your feet please and lift your hands and give the Lord a shout of thanksgiving. Hallelujah.