Kenneth Copeland - Choose Your Words Wisely
— Hello everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland. This is our brother, Professor Gregory Stephens. Thank you.
— Thank you.
— You know, I kind of like you.
— Thank you. I like you.
— I appreciate you.
— I like it that you like me.
— Yeah. Good, good.
— Yeah.
— Just trying to think... Well, anyway... Believer's Voice of Victory Broadcast, and right before the Southwest Believers' Convention of this year, which was the first week of August. And the Lord began to talk to me about it, and about the fact that words are spiritual containers. And everybody since day one has spoken words.
— Yes.
— Ever since there have been human beings on this planet, all of them speak words. 99% of them are totally unaware that their words mean anything. I was one of those, had I known, I would've never talked like I talked. But November 2nd, 1962, about 8:00 in the evening, I had flown on executive with the Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company to Shreveport and back. Gloria and I lived in Little Rock. And that evening, Gloria was at the stove preparing supper. She waited for me to get back in. Anyway, I changed clothes and walked back in the kitchen and I had put already one shoe on and another, and all of a sudden it just... And I heard words in my spirit. "Kenneth, if you don't get right with me, you're going to a devil's hell, son". Words. And I said, "I know it. I know it. What do I do now"? I heard the words of my Sunday school teacher. Her name was Taggart. She was a little short woman. She was a widow woman. She wore black all the time, smiled all the time, little black straw hat, and a little artificial flower in it. Every Sunday morning she looked exactly the same. We called her Old Lady Taggart. She called herself Old Lady Taggart, and so in Southern Baptist Sunday schools and the like schools, they just promote you every year. So all of us boys said, "If you promote us out of Ms. Taggart's class, we're not coming back". So she just promoted along with us. She's the one that said it, and I recognized her voice. "Boys, you have to ask Jesus to come into your heart". So I did that. Now, the moment I did it, Gloria had just shortly said to me, "I'm not going out in public with you anymore". I said, "Why"? She said, "Your terrible mouth". I said, "Well, what the... did I say"? I had a habit of that.
— Yeah.
— That moment that I said that, it felt like... I mean, I could physically feel it, Greg. My mouth felt like it had a square block in it, and for a few seconds I couldn't close it. Once I closed my mouth, profanity was gone until this day.
— Praise God. Your spirit is a container. Your soul is a container, your mind. Her words went into you. They had been there dormant.
— They had been there all those years.
— It's like this. This is a lemon. This is real. That's what I appreciate about, it always has real fruit.
— Yes.
— Not fake fruit. That's a container. Inside of this, if were to cut it open, there's seeds in there...
— Now, you know what? When you held that up in front of me, my jaw started tightening up, because it's sour. Yeah, see? My experience, all you had to do was show me that.
— Right. And it started.
— And it started.
— So there are seeds in this, and each one of those has the capability becoming a lemon tree. Who knows how many lemons will come off of each one of those trees, but it's in this container right now, dormant until somebody plants it, somebody removes it and sows it. That's what the words are that are in us. You're the container. Your spirit man's the container. Your soulish man's the container, until you release it by words of faith. Then you've sown that.
— Now this is why names, you talked about it yesterday.
— Yes.
— The different names, and God's names.
— Yes, revealed.
— Now his name, he said, "I am the Lord that heals you". The person that stands up and says, "Healing has passed away" is unaware of the fact that he would have to change his name for it to ever pass away, and he said, "I am the Lord, and I change not".
— Or he would have to pass away. Yeah. So what you're saying with your ignorance is really a bad thing. This is why the Lord took me to task on this, about he came to me, "Why do you take My name in vain"? Now I'm a pastor. I used to, and then again, "Why do you take My name in vain"? I do not GD anything anymore. I don't do that. That's not what I do. But see, I thought curse words was taking His name in vain. "No," he said, "who did I say that I am"? "I am". "Are you in me"? "Yes". "Am I in you"? "Yes". "Then quit saying, 'I am sick.'" I'm not sick. "Quit saying, 'I'm broke.'" I'm not broke. I have streets of gold. I sit on a sapphire throne. But what I'm doing is I'm sowing into myself.
— Now, back in the very, very, very beginning, when John and Kellie were very, very small, Gloria and I, in our praying over our children that we would never, ever teach them to say, "I cannot afford that". Never. But to change that with, and this is the way we taught them, that if they had a desire for something, which they did... Kellie wanted this bicycle. I said, "Do you have a picture of it"? "Well, no". Well, I said, "You get a picture of it, you come back and show it to me". "Well, yeah, but Daddy, that thing cost," I said "I didn't ask you how much it cost". Now we're talking about words here and what they contain. I said, "Kellie, don't you dare say you don't have the money for that, and don't you say you can't afford it. Do you have faith"? She said, "Yes, I do". "Well now you know what you have to do". She sit there for a minute, and she said, "Yes, I do". I said, "What"? She said, "I have to take something of mine that I really do think a lot of and sow it". Now you're coming, girl. Now what you have to do, you really need to be careful about this, because when you teach your children this way, they may go into their toy box and get something you stood in line for, and something that people were trying to jerk out of your hand when you got it at Toys "R" Us, and it was under the tree. But you need to say this, and you realize this, that's her most precious seed.
— Yes.
— That's his most precious seed. You should be honored at that, because now they're on their way to never being in debt, because they know now how to use faith-filled words that bring prosperity. Amen.
— You taught them that their yes is yes. Matthew-
— There it is. Let's go to that.
— Matthew 5.
— I'm glad you reminded me of that, Greg. Matthew, oh, dear Lord. Verse 34. Now this is red letters, right? So they win. I say... What'd he say? I say. So here's a word. "I say unto you, swear not at all". Well, I wish I'd read that when I was younger. "Neither by heaven, nor it is God's throne. Nor by the Earth, for it is his footstool, neither by Jerusalem. For it is the city of the great king. Neither shall you swear by the head, because you cannot make your hair white or black. But let your communication be 'Yay, yay, nay, nay,' for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil". Now I want to say what he said. That neither shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. But you can, by faith.
— Yeah. Yeah.
— Because, when the Lord said, "Will you do this for me, live to be 120"? I said, "Yes I will". And I said, "Now on this one condition: That you do your part," of course I knew he would. I said, "If you want a bald-headed preacher, fine. If you want a white-haired preacher, fine, that's fine. But my hair is not white now". Well then over time, some gray started showing up. Well, I speak by faith to my hair all the time. And I walk up to my mirror every morning, and I talk about it when I shampoo it every night. And I just started thanking God that I have no gray hair. So I began to speak to it. And I saw some gray coming in there, I said, "No you don't". Now, I know it's there, because if I let my beard grow, there's a bunch of white in my beard. Not all together, but it's there. But I go clean shaven all the time anyways, so that doesn't matter.
— I'm just the opposite, when in my family, you're either balding or you turned white prematurely, in my family. And I used to say all the time, "I'm not going to be bald. I will turn white before it turns loose". I would do white before I let it turn loose. And I would always say that, "I'm not going to let my hair turn loose. I'd rather it turn white than turn loose". Guess what happened?
— Yeah, it did what she said.
— And it did it early, earlier than it probably should have. But that's what I said all the time. And I'm not bald. I have a full head of hair.
— And I notice this, Greg: Words. Some men will look in the mirror, and say it, say something they shouldn't have said, "I'm losing all of my blankety-blank hair". Well, certainly you are. You cursed your hair, you cursed your head. Amen. Now, it's no disgrace to be bald, but when you're in the business that we are, that words mean something. So now in Mark 4, the sower sowed the Word.
— Yes.
— Let's look over there. In fact, verse 14, this is where I began at Southwest. The sower sows the Word. And I made this note: right here in Jesus teaching, so is the Kingdom of God as if a man should cast seed into the ground, 10 times, he that has ears to hear. So words are worthless if you don't hear them, or if you're sitting there arguing with it in your mind while somebody's teaching.
— Right. Right.
— Now, that happened in Jesus' home here in the Book of Mark. It says, "He was in the house," not a house.
— His house.
— Where the four broke up the roof to let the paralyzed men, or actually, if you check that out, he'd had a stroke. And so he was, it's called the palsy, but when you look up the word, translated is it, paralyzed on one side. So he had a stroke. And Jesus said, "Son, your sins are forgiven".
— Right.
— They got sidetracked by saying this. They just thought it. "This man blasphemes. Who can forgive sins but God"? But Jesus perceived what they said. So he straightened them out. He said, "Which is easier to say? Your sins be forgiven, or rise, take up your bed and walk"? To prove that the Son of man has authority on the Earth to forgive sins, he turned and said to the man, "Take up your bed and go home". Now isn't that amazing?
— Those were the Pharisees. The Pharisees always challenged him by what he said-
— By what he said.
— Or, what he didn't say.
— To catch him in his words
— Always. And remember with Peter, they said, "You're one of them". Not because he had a Galilee accent. Maybe he did, but he started to sound like the Master. See, he's starting to sound like Jesus. "No, I know you. You're one of them. I can tell". By what? By the way he's saying...
— By the Word.
— Way he's saying things. Perfect example of this is over there in Mark, with the woman who was healed of the issue of blood. I don't call her the woman with the issue of blood. She doesn't have it. She's the woman who was healed of it. I always ask myself when I study the Scripture, who set the conditions for something to happen? Peter walking on the water, Peter set the conditions. If that's you, knowing who he is, tell me to come out there. Jesus would've had to deny who he is and his ability to tell Peter to stay in the boat. He said, "Come on out". And instantly, they get back in the boat, and they're immediately in Capernaum. So here we are in Capernaum. If you tell me to come, I'll come out there. Matter of fact, that name Capernaum is wonderful. It's one of my favorite places. It's ruins today, because Jesus cursed it.
— Yes, he did.
— Three cities, he cursed. They're still ruins today. Capernaum is Capharnaum is the name in Hebrew. Capharnaum. It means village of Nahum, the Prophet.
— I did not know that.
— There are two prophets. It's very interesting. I think it's in John 7 where the Pharisees are questioning him. They said, "There's no profit from Galilee". No. There were two. If you'd study the Bible, there were two. Jonah, Nahum. Jonah is called to the Gentiles. So is Nahum. So is Jesus. It's not a coincidence his hometown as minister headquarters are where the prophet Nahum was. Jonah prophesies to Nineveh. He doesn't want to do it. I know what you're going to do. You're going to save them, because I know how you are, and I don't want you to do it. That'd be like us. I do not want to witness to Nancy Pelosi, because you're going to save her, and I'll spend eternity with her, and I don't want to do that. But no, seriously, that's a Jonah spirit.
— It is.
— And so what happened? A hundred years, then Nahum comes along and curses him, and Nineveh is destroyed. But it means comfort. So Jesus sets up his ministry in a place where a prophet before him had come to prophesy to the Gentiles. It's not a coincidence. I got off the track. Here we go. In Capernaum, this woman is there, and she says this in verse 28, where she said, "If I may but touch his clothes, I'll be healed of the issue of blood". She set the condition for what was about to happen with her mouth, with her words. Now she had heard of Jesus-
— You know, I want to say something right here.
— Yeah.
— Nancy Pelosi is a strong Catholic.
— Yes?
— Very strong Catholic. And I have prayed for her for years, and prayed for her the same way that I do Mr. Biden and other people, I mean, on both sides of the-
— That's right.
— What Spirit of God said through the Apostle Paul to pray: to open the eyes of their understanding. He said, "Pray this for all who are in authority. Open the eyes of their understanding, that they may be flooded with light, and come to the knowledge of the truth, that there's one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all to be testified of in due time".
— That's right. This is why God can trust you with other things because you'll do...
— And I want to say this to you: You can take that very prayer out of 1 Timothy chapter 2. You can take that, and you can add kinfolks' name in there. And then you can go to where Jesus said, "Pray the Lord of the harvests and the laborers into the field". I have prayed that for President Biden. I have prayed that for Nancy Pelosi. I prayed that for Donald Trump.
— You did it for Barack Obama?
— I did. I prayed it for Barack Obama. I've prayed it for people over the years. And I just suddenly, and I have ridden Honda Gold Wing motorcycles for years, and I got to thinking about a new one. I had a perfectly good one, but it just stayed in me and just stayed in me. Well, and then I saw one that already had the trike kit on it and everything. And it was in Springdale, Arkansas. Okay. So I talked it over with Gloria, and I had the money to do it. But I got up there, and just the way I always did everything, I got on it. And all these young men around me, particularly one tall kid named Cody. I said, "Okay, boys, lay your hands on this thing. We're going to dedicate it to Jesus". So they're going to hear a dedication to Jesus, whether they ever heard one or not. Now Greg, here was the thing: Cody came over there to me, and he said, "My dad called and said he'd like to come down here and meet you. But I told him we didn't need a crowd down here". I said, "What's the matter with you, boy? How far away is he"? He said, "It's just a little ways". I said, "Get him in here". He walked in there, and he said, "Copeland, I'm a Rhema graduate".
— Praise God.
— He said, "I was there when you preached there".
— Amen.
— But he said, "I need prayer for my heart," and some other things that they needed prayer for. And then I got out of there, and the Lord said, "That's the reason I wanted you to go up there and get that motorcycle".
— For that. Your steps are ordered. Amen.
— And we're out of time.
— Oh.
— We'll be back in a minute.