Kenneth Copeland - Attend to God's Word
Let's go to Proverbs 4:20. On that 20th verse, you note a paragraph and thought change there. "My son, attend to my words;" In Texas and Missouri and Oklahoma. We just say we tend to it. Well, yeah, I need to tend to that today. Take care of that today. And someone were to walk up to me and say, "Brother Copeland, I'd like to talk to you a little while". We'll have to do it later. I have this to attend to first. I must take care of this today and we'll talk later. Well, you wouldn't take that as an offense. I just have something very important that takes precedence over everything else. That's the reason the Word of God must be first place and final authority in our lives. Amen. And I keep in... I guess you think I'm harping on it. I am. This is a blood book. The blood of animals, after sin, immediately an animal died to provide the first two people.
So blood was shed in the Garden of Eden. Once blood had been shed in that garden, then they had to get out of there. Adam was created an eternal man, the cells in his body would not have had... They would not regenerate over a period of time. They're called stem cells, as you know. But each generation produces fewer and fewer of them. The most, most stem cells you'll ever have is the day you're born. But the day you're born, you begin dying. And so your body just doesn't produce as many stem cell. And that's called aging. And of course, you can detect it in your body. But then once that took place, then they had to be removed from the Garden of Eden. They keep them from eating of the tree of life and live forever. He was an eternal man. She was an eternal woman. And they could have lived forever. But they sinned. They just simply disobeyed God and broke covenant with him.
So now it's important to see "My son attend to my words..." Not word. You could say that "attend to my word", but that doesn't say it. My words, all of them, all of them together constitute the Word of God, because this is his bond. But this is a father teaching his son. "Incline your ear under my sayings". What does that mean? Well, listen to me. You'd be incline to listen to me. Now as a young boy, I remember one day I saw baseball pictures. They always had a plug of tabacco in their jaw. Well, I'd stuff my jaw full of bubblegum. But I decided I'm going to try this. Well I'm out in the yard, it's an old push lawnmower, you know and it is kind of hot out there pushing... My dad walked up behind me. He said, "Son, how are you doing"? I swallowed that tobacco. The yard started doing this.
So he took me on in the house. My mother said, "What's wrong with him"? He said, "Nothing. He'll be all right". Does it, that ended my tobacco chewing? But he didn't... He didn't jump on me about it. He just let me heal myself. That's the way God is. Amen. He just walked up there behind me and he knew good and well what I'd do. I didn't hear him come back home. I'm not, that lawnmower's loud, you know. How you doing, Ken? I was not inclined to hear him when it came to chewing tobacco. But later in years, I was inclined to listen to every word he said, all of it because he had proven himself to me. And I was inclined to listen to him because when I wasn't, I paid the price. He only spanked me twice. I needed it both times. I will never forget it. Amen.
So I was inclined to listen to him. And then there came a time when I wanted to hear what he had to say. So now look at that. "Incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes;" See yourself healed, see yourself debt free, see yourself an encourager. Not one that just needs to be encouraged all the time. See yourself with it, which means you'll have to spend time meditating on it. Now stay with me now. "Keep them in the midst of your heart". What does that mean? I mean, don't think about anything else. I mean, just put it there first every day. I mean, God's the last thing... He's the last one I talk to at night. And the first one I talked to in the morning. Amen.
And as I was saying to a guy, I did a new Healing School outline and it just kept expanding, expanding and expanding. And I wound up with enough material here for you to do a whole weeks meeting on nothing but healing and deliverance and the power of God. And so, I mean, this is a healing Book. It's a miracle Book. The Book itself is a miracle that it could all tie together over so many years and come out right. And people say, "Well, you can find mistakes in it". Well, find one. Now, there are things in there people don't understand until later, but don't ever become the judge of the Word. Let the Word judge you. I've had people say to me, I tried that faith stuff and it didn't work. No, the faith stuff tried you and you didn't work because you didn't, you know, take a shot or two at it. And but that didn't work.
Now and working our way through this, notice this. "Attend to my words". Put the Word first place in your life. Final authority, "Incline your ear unto my sayings". Make up your mind that the Word of God is speaking to me. This is my Bible. It's mine. It has my name in it. This is my Bible. This is God speaking to Kenneth. And I can have what it says I can have. I can do what it says I can do when I do it by faith. And I am what it says I am. What am I? I'm a born-again, Spirit-filled preacher of the Word. Well, what else am I? I'm in Christ Jesus, and he is in me. So go through the Letters and check out the "in him", "in whom" scriptures. Well, what are we in Christ Jesus? Amen.
And let's finish this now. "My words are life." John 6:63, Jesus said my words are... Let's turn over... Hold your place there in Proverbs because let's go there, John 6:63, John Chapter six, "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; makes alive the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and they are life". Say it, "The words that Jesus speaks to me, they are Spirit and they are life. They are life to my spirit. They are life to my mind. They are life to my emotions and they are life to my physical body". Well, give him praise. Glory to God. Hallelujah. "They are life unto all that find them", How do you find them? Again you find them by meditating upon them and seeing yourself with them. Amen.
So when that happens, then the 18th verse comes to pass. "But the paths of the just is as the shining light that shines more and more under the perfect day", in other words, it gets brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter. What is that? Revelation is being revealed on the inside of us. Amen, "And health to all their flesh". Now, I have a little note there, and you come over to the cross reference, medicine. What are we doing? We're taking our medicine this morning. Whooo. This is medicine to our flesh. Glory to God. But now at my age, I have a few prescriptions.
In other words, I have a thyroid supplement. And, you know, I take supplements to take up for the years I've used this body. Well at 86, and I have certain supplements and I don't just take One A Day vitamins. That's not going to get it. You could do One A Day with four or five glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice, that'd be vitamin C for the day. And that's the big one because your body doesn't produce that one and I take a lot of it. But my supplements are prescribed, I won't go in all of that, but there's specific to certain things in my body. Well, and they come by... my thyroid comes in a little, little bottle about like that. It doesn't do a bit of good in the world sitting on my nightstand or in my bathroom. No other prescription will do that.
Well, Doctor, you gave me this medicine. I got it. You know, I went to the drugstore and I got it filled but I'm no better. "Well, have you been taking it as prescribed"? "Not well, no. But I look at it every morning and every night". What's the problem? It is simple. You have to get it into the system. We are triune beings. If all one ever reads our dime novels, that's mental candy. I don't have time for that. And I used to read some things like that. I don't have time for that. I just put all that away. And now, I mean, you have to make your own decision for that but I read this book primarily, this is number one. And then I read other books about this Book and I'm careful after whom I read. And F.F. Bosworth, Christ the Healer. Glory to God. T.L. Osborn.
Oh, Oh, man. And E.W. Kenyon. It's so powerful. I couldn't read but about a chapter at a time, I mean a paragraph at a time. Just impacted me and impacted me. And then I found out what was behind it. He pastored a church. And he began to realize that he's teaching and preaching active faith but the children coming up didn't have it. And then he realized it's because the Sunday school teachers didn't have it. He had a radio program, but they were busy doing things other than that. So he took his radio broadcasts and made outlines, and he taught the teachers and he taught the children. And it came to the place where finally there was no sickness nor disease in his church. Amen.
Well, what do you think I did? I ordered those, and it was the beginners and it was the advance. And I ordered those and punched holes in them and put them in different books and studied them and studied them and studied them. And taught. I taught some out of those on my radio broadcast. And the power was phenomenal. I was on the radio and I said one day I just suddenly came out of my mouth, "You're not sick and you're not going to die". I thought, "Oh, that had hair on it. I don't know... I just went ahead with the broadcast". Now here is the testimony that came out of it. There was a woman in the hospital and they had just come in and said, "Well, it's over for you. You have to die". She said her hand just went over to the little radio that was in that hospital room.
So somebody else had been listening to my broadcast in that hospital bed. She said, "I turned it on", and she said, "Brother Copeland, you said, 'You're not sick, you're not going to die.'" I said, "I'm not"? Okay. She inclined her ear to that saying, she didn't own a Bible. She sent somebody down to the flower shop to get her a Bible. Then she started following along. Well, she got born again, kept listening to the broadcast, baptized in the Holy Spirit, led her husband to the Lord. He got baptized in the Spirit. Their son was baptized in the Spirit. Praise God. Then they paid his truck off to be debt free. And she said, "Just so you know, we're all in the ministry now".
What happened? She inclined her ear. She didn't say, "Well, you don't know what the doctors just told me". She just said, "I'm not"? So she started saying, "I'm not sick. I'm not going to die". Amen. So now let's follow along with this. "They're medicine to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all diligence. For out of it are the issues of life". The issues, the forces of life. And you've heard Gloria tell the story. Well, I was in the Philippines, with her I saw the same fountain but it really impressed her.
Well, we were preaching there with Lester Sumrall, and David Sumrall had a church there and he sponsored the meetings there in the Philippines. And we went twice. Oh, it just powerful meetings and but this right outside our hotel room, there's this big fountain. Out of that fountain flow the issue of water, it's an issue. It's a flowing force. Even with just a little water coming out of the top of that fountain, you couldn't get any trash in it. And as long as it ran, it kept the pipe clean.
I was preaching in a small town in Oklahoma one time, and I was in the bed in the afternoon just sitting up there in the bed with my outlines. And all of a sudden I saw this huge pipe up there in front of me, huge about that big around. And there was a flood of water coming down to that pipe and it spilled over the ends and there was a little spew of it. I could physically feel it, even though it was a vision. I could feel it just... and suddenly it went away. I said, "Lord, what is that"? He said, "That flow is my glory and power. And your spirit is so full of forgotten sins, you even haven't repent and people you haven't forgiven. I can only get just a little spew of it through to you". I said, "Oh Lord". And I just started in forgiving everybody and everything I could think of, to clean out the pipe. Well, that fits along with that fountain.
See, there was junk in my spirit. And one he reminded me of. We had come in and there was a man right beside the road there where were turn in off the freeway exit and turn on the road to our house, selling cantaloupes, the umbrella over it... big cantaloupes. I really like cantaloupes. So Gloria bought a whole sack full of them, brought them in there and took those top two out. Oh, they were not. And the rest of them were spoiled. I said, "Gloria, give me that. I'm going back up there". She said, "No, no, no, you're not going. I am too. I won't spank him. I didn't like that". She said, "No, you're not. He's probably going anyway". Well, I had to forgive the cantaloupe guy, anyway. That's what that's about. You put away from you a disobedient mouth. Just get rid of it and be on his Word.