Kenneth Copeland - Express Your Faith With Corresponding Action
Back to the fundamentals of faith. Brother Hagin called this the ABCs of faith. And actually it's what it is but there's a little more to it when you look at it as the fundamentals. Because anything worth doing has basic fundamentals to it. When you learned how to drive there are basic fundamentals involved in that. And then you learned how to be safe and you had to be good enough at it to get a driver's license. And what is amazing to me is that they found out today. There was some guys trying to steal a car that they didn't know how to drive a stick shift and they ran off. Of course, I learned how to drive a stick shift. I wasn't but nine years old.
I was on the farm with my grandfather and he said, "Kenneth, get in the truck and go up there to the tractor place and get me a clutch". I said, "Papa, I don't know how to drive". "How old are you"? I said, "Nine". He said, "Come on". So we got in the truck and got out there in the pasture. Man, I ground and made noise with those gears. They were not synchromesh. There just old Ford gears. You know, come over here and slap it down here and up and over there and up here and then, like, that. Had to make the H. That's the way I learned how to drive. But it was a basic fundamental of that. And things progressed over the years based on the basic fundamentals of the people that invented it.
So you take... I've always been an athlete all my life. My dad was a pitcher and so he taught me in baseball and then I played football. But now the game of baseball is a very old game. And for the big money, why do they call it basketball? The clock's ticking. Well, anybody could have come up with that. It liked to have been called box ball. You got it? They were looking for a game between baseball and football that could be played indoors. So took a pole and stuck it up and got a box and put up there and Spalding made the first ball and they threw it up there in that box. But they had to go up there and get it but he was looking for more boxes and he found some peach baskets and cut the bottom out of it where the ball would fall through it. That was the first basic fundamental of basketball. And it had a purpose. You could play it inside.
So what do you see now? Masters of the Fundamentals. Nobody's ever mastered the game. Nobody has ever mastered the game of golf, even at the Masters, that game will eat you alive. I decided I was going to play a little bit and I thought man, "I'm frustrated enough now. I don't want to get into this". I couldn't settle down at it I was too competitive and finally I decided I wouldn't do that anymore. But when you watch the World Series, when you're watching the Little League World Series, they're the masters of the fundamentals at their age, what does it take? A lot of practice and learning and going back over it and over it and over it. Vince Lombardo, arguably the best... had a losing season. He did not like to lose. So at the next training session, he walked out there and said, "Gentlemen, this is a football. This is where we're going to start".
Well, I've always taken things to aviation because I spent more time studying that other than the Bible, I've studied that more than anything else, because there was a time that it was a huge part of my life. And well, it still is but anyway, during World War II, the basic fundamentals... It was so basic that an instructor would walk up to the airplane and say, "Gentlemen, this is an airplane. And beginning here at the front end, that is a propeller. And that's the engine. This is the leading edge of the wing," I'm going to go through some fundamentals and I'm gonna lose you real quick. So far you're okay, right? Stay with me. We're going to walk around the end of the wing. And this is the aileron. The what? The aileron.
Okay, okay. Stay with me. This is the fuselage. This is the empennage. This is the horizontal stabilizer. And back here we have the elevator. You mean an airplane has an elevator? It does go up and down, you understand. Well, that's just not hard to understand at all, that's just fundamental as you can get. And all airplanes from a J-3 Cub to a rocket ship started off on those basic fundamentals. And when they built the Boeing 707, it was the... it was it. But when they went to the 747, Boeing had to revisit aeronautics to build that big of an airplane because the wing had to have 15 feet of flex. 30 feet, I believe that's right. 15 up and 15 down.
That thing so heavy. But it still, a fuselage, a leading edge and ailerons and a horizontal stabilizer with a rudder and a vertical stabilizer with an elevator in the back that goes up and down and some of them had some on the inside that went up and down it's so big. But that's fundamental. That's where it all started. So you take those fundamental aeronautical laws and you build on them. When you begin to learn the laws of the Spirit, where you see a spirit created the atmosphere in which the airplane flies. He already knew that because there's been birds for as long as there has been an Earth, and men couldn't help but look and wonder. Why can't we do that? And now we can. As I told you earlier, the ones that did it first, there was a German that was right behind them, but the Wright brothers, born-again Methodist and their dad founded the Wright Methodist Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.
And so the Lord had an interest in it. And as I told you earlier, they sent him a wire and said, "We have an audience with the king". He said, "Wonderful, don't drink her wine". So God was in the middle of that all the time to get us off of the ground because his preachers needed to go high and fast and get it done for all things. But television wasn't created to sell things to people. That's fine. There is some stuff on there that is not fine, but all things were created for and by him. And a man told me he said, "Can you help me"? And I said, "Well, you know, I will if I can". He said, "You're on television". "Well, yeah". He said, "Our denomination preached against it". And he said, "I know full well that some of our ministers have them in their home, but they don't dare talk about it". And he said, "We're losing out. We can't get on there now after we shot our mouths off and preached against it, what do we do"?
I said, "Repent, tell the truth and get on there". Oh, he said, "I never thought of that". "Well, yeah just stand up and tell the folks we're wrong". I mean, he's the overseer. Just get up there and tell him, folks, we're wrong, we're losing out. We call this the one eyed demon and it turned out to be God Almighty. And here we are on the outside looking in. So now the fundamentals of faith, faith is a spiritual force, and it is the substance of things hoped for. So it is a spiritual force and not mental. Of course, you begin with Mark 11. Let's turn over there. I want to read this. The RFW translation from the book of James. You don't need to turn there because you know it very well, but we're going to incorporate this in our study in the second chapter.
"My brethren, while holding to your faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the glory... Who is the glory, do not show partiality. Suppose a man comes into your meetings wearing gold rings", and so forth. Now come to the 14th verse. Well, I'll tell you what, I'm going to turn there and compare it with the Standard version. in chapter 2 and verse 14. "What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone".
Now listen to this. "What good is it, my brethren, if a man professes to have faith, yet his actions do not correspond? Can such faith saving... Suppose a brother and sister, poorly clad or lack daily food and one of you says to him, Fare-you-well, keep yourselves warm and well-fed, yet you do not supply their bodily needs. What's the use of that? So also faith, if that unaccompanied by obedience is dead in itself. Hmm. Someone would say, You have faith. I have actions. Prove to me your faith apart from corresponding action, and I will prove mine to you by my actions. You believe that God is one. And you're quite right. Evil spirits believe that and shudder. But I don't boaster. Are you willing to be taught that faith, apart from obedient, is worthless? Was it not because of his actions that Abraham, our father, declared to be righteous when he was offered up his son Isaac upon the altar? You notice that his faith was cooperating with his actions and by his action, his faith was perfected and the scripture was fulfilled. It says, And Abraham believe God. His faith was accredited to him for righteousness".
Amen, that seems like it just all of a sudden, action that corresponds. I preach for a pastor one time and he said, "You're just way too picky about words". I said, "No sir, I'm very picky about words". My words. What you do with yours is your business. But I'm going to give you my testimony. That's all I can do and tell you what Scripture says about it. But I learned the hard way. Well, not altogether, because I had so much advantage by listening to Brother Hagin and Oral Roberts and the things that they had learned about it and others too, T.L. Osborn, my oh my... I talked to T.L. Osborn, he said, "Kenneth, you're born free". He said, "You didn't have any religion to unlearn". I didn't. The first preaching I ever heard was faith, Gloria too.
So we came up under that. And so Gloria and I began to say to one another, "That's your confession and I believe it". And the Lord began to correct me. He said, "Stop using the vocabulary and words based in the law of sin and death to express yourself," the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has redeemed us from the laws of sin and death. I said, "How is that, sir"? He said, "Use biblical words to express yourself, they are there". That is wonderful and it's marvelous in my eyes. That's the work of the Lord and it's awesome instead of, "Doesn't that just thrill you to death". What? That is a huge habit. Not in only English, but in other languages also. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, my. My feet are just killing me. That's a lie. You didn't die. Then the Lord said, "When you tell somebody you're going to be there at 3:00, don't get there at 3:05. When you did you lied".
Be punctual, be a man of faith. Be a woman of faith. And if there's going to be a problem with it, let someone know. I had a man call me one time and he said, "I want you to come hold me a meeting" and so forth and so on. They said, "Will you do it"? I said, "Not till I pray about it". So I prayed about it and Lord said, "No, I don't want you to go there" and so I didn't need anymore than that. I did not need to know a reason why unless I had a desire to go. But I just doing what this man said. And so then he called me back. He said, "Are you coming"? I said, "No". "Well, why not"? I said, "Well, two reasons. One, I don't want to, and another when I prayed about it, the Lord said, 'Don't come'". He got mad at me and all I did, I didn't say it ugly, but he's not used to anybody telling him the truth.
Well, you see, I'm already schedule, blah, blah, blah. The whole mess would have been a lie. I could have been more tactful about it. But at the time I was learning, no, I told him, I said, there's two things, I said, "When I prayed about it, in the first place, I don't want to come. I don't have anything in my spirit that calls me to want too. But I told you I'd pray and I did. And I spent time enough to find out. But my answer was, 'Don't go'. That doesn't mean it might not be in the future, but if I told you anything else would be less than the truth". That's almost unheard of. But that's basic fundamental in the Spirit. Because if you're going to walk by faith, then these things have to be part of your life.
Now, let me tell you this. It took me a while to find this out. The just shall live by faith. We live this way. Our lives are sustained by our faith in his Word and by our faith in the covenants that this Book establishes. We live that way. No person that lives by faith has to change his or her lifestyle because of the times. We walk by faith when times are good, we walk by faith when times are calm, we walk by faith when times are terrible. Now let me share this with you. The largest fortunes in this country have always been made in bad times, not good times. That's when the people that have the funds to do so invest and take advantage of what people dump out of fear. 99% of it is out of fear. Oh, let's get rid of this. And then after it's over, try to buy it all back at a higher price.
You remain the tail and not the head throughout that whole thing. And that is not what the Bible teaches. What did the Apostle Paul teach Timothy? Preach the Word in season and in out. You just preach the Word all the time. Good times, bad times. When it looks good, we doesn't look all that good. And besides that, how would you like to have the Apostle John and the mother of Jesus in your congregation? That'd straighten your day up, wouldn't it. Look out there and say, "What am I doing here"? That's the reason he said, "Don't let anybody despise your youth". You're pastor of that church, God put you there, so pastor it, preach the Word. Don't preach your opinions and your ideas, preach the book.
Now, let's go back here to Mark 11. This is where I learned it from Brother Hagin. Now, I want to remind you something now, he was born very, very premature to save the life of his mother in August of 1917, in a very small town in east Texas to start with. Back in 1917, Dallas didn't have but what, something like 9,000 people in it. 1917. That's World War I, you understand. And he was premature to start with in a little small town in McKinney, which over there close to Dallas. And he was so premature that when he was born, the doctors thought he was dead and his grandmother found a spark of life about him.
Now, premature is one thing, but 2 or 3 pounds is another. But he had a call on his life and his grandmother fed him a little milk out of an eyedropper. His heart wouldn't work right. The day he was healed he weighed 89 and he got it right here in Mark 11, he said, "I knew my healing was there" and he told the Lord, "If you ever get me up off this bed, I'll come off here preaching". So one morning he just been staying. He said, "I finally realized I'm going to have to believe I have it before I have it so I can have it".
Now that's a basic fundamental, you have to believe I have it before I have it so I can have it. That throws a lot of people. But he got it right here. So one morning the Lord said, "So you believe you're healed"? He said, "Yes, I do", of course he wasn't hearing it audible, but he's speaking out loud. "Yes, I do". And the Lord said, "Healed people ought to be up this time of day".
So he started getting up and he was paralyzed from the waist down and he had to throw his legs out of the bed. He's just like two chunks of wood and draped around the bedpost and he said, "I want to announce to Almighty God, the Lord Jesus Christ and every angel in the room and every devil in hell, I am healed from the top of my head to the soles of my feet". He said, "I didn't want to leave out anything". And he said, "I hung there on that bedpost and all of a sudden I started feeling in my legs and those nerves started to come alive". He said, "It felt like 10,000 needles sticking in my leg. I began to cry. I began to cry because it hurts so good. I could feel it". And he said, "Within..." what was it Keith, 30 seconds or so, he was standing up straight in the room at 89 pounds, healed.