Kenneth Copeland - What Does It Mean To Live by Faith?
Hebrews Chapter 10. Look at the 38th verse. "Now the judge shall live by faith". That happens in Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, Hebrews 10:38, Habakkuk 2:4. Now, anything God says four times, but what does it mean? What does it mean to live by faith? Let me give you an example we can play that clip of Gloria, please.
Gloria Copeland: The way you tell if you've got a spiritual mind or not is when you hear something, when you hear a bad report, are you established in the Word or do you cave in? The first thing when sickness tries to come to you, are you dependent on something else or do you start saying the Word of God? When you hear on television about how bad things are and so on. I don't think they're as bad as they say either really. Someone was talking yesterday and they said, "Well, where we live, people are doing so well, businesses say they never had so much business". You can't believe that television if it's not the Word of God. You've got to believe this Book here. And even if it were true out there in the world, you're not in the world. You're in God. And that makes all the difference in the world. Glory to God. So you have to have that just ready. You have to be strong. When discouraging things come to you, what do you think about? Do you just rebound, you ought to just rebound with the Scripture. I mean, you know, somebody says, "Well, we're going to have a crash in 93, financial crash in 93". Well, up out of Ken's mouth came, "No crash for me in 93". See, that's what you need to do. You need to rebound with the Word of God. You need it in you and to such a degree that fear doesn't even have a place to start. I like that. I never said that before. You need to have the Word of God in you to such a degree that fear doesn't have a place to start. You ought to immediately respond with the Word of God, whatever it is it's trying to take your peace, Your spiritual mind ought to bring up the Word of God, to rebuke it and to stop it. Glory to God.
Kenneth Copeland: Now, isn't she pretty? Isn't she beautiful? And she's mine. The people that live by faith all the time are the same way when you get up in the morning, the same way when you go to bed at night, the same way at the breakfast table. You're the same way, I don't care where you are doing what you are. way all the time. The person that lives and walks by faith never has to change his lifestyle because of the times. Now that was 1992. The New York Times Article May 1993, "Growth in the United States economy slowed to a near standstill in the winter of 93, while inflation sped up, the Commerce Department reported yesterday in its second look at economic performance between January and March. The gross domestic product expanded at a barely perceptible rate. the first quarter 91. And it just gets worse and worse. The United States entered a recession in 1990, which lasted eight months through March 1991, although the recession was mild relative to other postwar recessions, it was characterized by a sluggish employment recovery, most commonly referred to as a jobless recovery".
What a jobless recovery is... I don't... What is that? "Unemployment continued to rise through June 1992, even though a positive economic growth rate had returned to the previous year". KCM donations went up 18%. Why? We said it. And if you're around our place and you say anyt you're an oddity because our household does not tolerate that. And it's so foreign to our ideas that there's any possibility we could fail. And I hear people say, "This United States is down the drain..." No, it isn't... So some of it may, we're not, the Word of God's got the drain plugged, brother, amen. I'm not going down the drain. I'm standing on the Word. But you have to think that way and you have to stay in the book continually, constantly, all the time. It has to become a way of life, until that's just what you are. And you are that all the time.
Now the pitfall is to get in a habit of being that way and it becomes mental ascent and sounds good. The Lord began to talk to me years ago about a positive negative and you want me to demonstrate one. Now Devil, I'm telling you, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, you have to go. You have to go. You have to go now. I'm telling you, Satan, you have to leave now. You have to leave... no he's not going anywhere. You're just badgering me. James 4:7 says, Submit yourself to God and then resist the devil. He'll leave. So Father I submit myself to you, Satan, get... in the name of Jesus. You're gone. At that point, it doesn't matter how you feel or how it looks. He's gone and just keep holding the Word on him. Just keep holding the Word on him. Just keep holding that Word on him Amen. All right. We are going to talk about faith.
Now let me read down through these and then we'll go Faith, active, living faith is the secret to success. That life is the secret to success. Let's go, turn the page. "Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen". They can put it up on the screen. I want to read that from the Classic Amplified or just listen to me. Now faith is... Now that's a statement, faith is now, hope is future. But you put the two of them together and God's plan comes to pass. The easy way to look at this. Real Bible hope is when you see that word that says by his stripes you were healed and praise God by his stripes I am. How can you dare, how can you hope to say that? Why would I not hope. God said it. "Well, don't get your hopes up". "Well, your faith won't work".
Jack it up as high as you can get it. Shoot for the moon, brother. "Faith is God's invisible creative force. Faith is the assurance, the confirmation, the title deed of the things we hope for being proof of the things we do not see, the conviction of their reality. Faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the physical senses". When it becomes real fact, then it belongs to you. Thank you, David. When it becomes real fact, then it belongs to you. Amen. It's the title deed, it's mine. Praise God, amen, can you say amen? All right, now then. Through faith, we understand that the words were framed by the Word of God. Now, Psalm, we won't turn there, but Psalm 33:9 says that, Or 33:19 says that... by his wisdom, he did it. "We understand that the worlds, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear".
God did not create this universe out of nothing. No, it said it wasn't visible. He just said he did it by faith. You couldn't see it, but you can sure see the result, because he said light be. Light travels at 186,000 miles a second. 24 hours and there was over 16 billion miles of universe and it's still expanding because he said it and his faith did it. It's the same thing. Jesus said Mark 11:22, "Have the faith of God". Well it said, "Have faith in God". But the cross-reference says have the faith of God. Well, let's look at the book of Ephesians then, because you can't get saved without faith. In the 2nd chapter 8th verse. "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:" You didn't have any, I didn't have any.
If I'd already had some, I'd have been in a whole lot better shape than what I was. But I was in bad shape. I didn't know it. Well, I did do, but I found it out. He just arrested me one night, the second day of November 1962, about 8:00 in the evening, North Little Rock, Arkansas. He arrested me. I'd just flown a trip, came in, Gloria waited supper on me, and I came in the living room there. All of a sudden, it just seemed to me like the whole room filled up and I just froze and shut my eyes and I heard him. "Kenneth, you don't get right with me, you're going to a devil's hell, son". Well, that'll get you to thinking. It shocked talked me up for sure. I said, "I know it". I did know it. But I didn't know what to do. I said, "What do I do now"?
I heard my Sunday School teacher. I was 12 years old. Mrs. Taggert won me of the Lord in 1962. And she was, we called her old Lady Taggert. She was old, she called herself old lady Taggert. She's a widow woman, wore black all the time. A little black straw hat, little artificial flower stuck out of it like that. Southern Baptist Sunday school is too much like school to start with. I mean, they just keep doing grades and all that. Well, all of us boys just told the Sunday school superintendent that if he promoted us away from Mrs. Taggert, So they just promoted us and Mrs. Taggert along with us and that's the reason why, because she always led her boys to the Lord. Well she finally got me after a lot of years. But I heard her voice. That seed was still on the inside of me.
Now you know what that says to me? Mrs. Taggert had faith in her words. They stuck to me for all those years because I was 25 years old. So they'd been with me, I guess, you know, 12, 13 years. I heard her voice. I said, "That's Old Lady Taggert". She said, "Boys, you have to ask Jesus to come into your heart". "Boys, you have to ask Jesus to come into your heart". And I thought, well, that sounds just as dumb as it did the first time I heard it, but I don't know what because other than her, I'd never heard that phrase.
Now in 1963, Gloria and I, in January then of 63, this is 2023. How long was that... that was a long time ago. We were both baptized in the Holy Ghost. When she received the Holy Spirit is the first time she ever heard the term "born again". We were scripturally illiterates, both of us. Every time we saw a church steeple, we wanted to find out what is in there. First time I ever read this letter, chapter of Hebrews. I said, "Gloria, I found the Hall of Fame right here. We figure out how to get this faith, we got something".
Well then Brother Hagin came along. We figured out we already had it... it's the faith of God. But you can't go any further into this without realizing that all of this... well let's get over there in the book of Hebrews, I was still in Ephesians. All of this entire 11th chapter has to do in the lives of all the people up to there. Faith, God started it in faith, and Malachi was ministering in faith when he finished it up. Praise God. By faith, by faith, by faith, by faith, by faith, by faith. By faith. "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain," By faith he offered it. He did it by faith.
What does that mean? He had come to the place there where in his inner man that this powerful force was so alive in him that he gave God the best he had. Don't get the idea now that Cain was in trouble because he didn't have a lamb. That's not right. He maybe could have bought one from Abel, but that wasn't the issue. He's a farmer... but if you study it, he was taking God the nubbins. Now, if you're not from the country, you don't know what that is. That's when you keep the best corn and you give God the nubbins, the runts.
I was very impressed what Oral Roberts said, his family were corn farmer. He said, "Now boys, we tak, the best we have, separate the best and biggest ears of corn, put them aside. We're not going to eat those. That's our seed corn. We're going to sow the best. because if we keep sowing and if we eat the nubbins and keep sowing the best, within five years the nubbins will be as good as the best was five years ago". That's what faith will do to your crop particularly if you're tithing and you give him the best. And he said, "Now that's the way God does things. He gave us his best, the very best and he did it by faith". Well, how can you say that? How can you say God gave Jesus by faith? It says he did. He gave his only begotten Son so that many could come to glory. He planted him as a seed. It got me and it got you. It worked and a lot more of them are coming more now than ever before.