Kenneth Copeland - Love Is Healing
Oh, there's so many places that I'd like to go with this. I want to go here to the Amplified in Proverbs 3. "My son, forget not my law or teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments; For length of days and years of a life [worth living] and tranquility [inward and outward and continuing through old age till death], these shall they add to you". You can add years to your life by doing it from the heart.
"Let not mercy and kindness..." This Bible is new and it... "Let not mercy and kindness [shutting out all hatred and selfishness] and truth [shutting out all deliberate hypocrisy or falsehood] forsake you; bind them about your neck, write them upon the tablet of your heart. So shall you find favor, good understanding, and high esteem in the sight [or judgment] of God and man. Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding". Praise God.
While we're right here this close, let's go on to the fourth chapter of the 20th verse. "My son, attend to my words; consent and submit to my sayings. Let them not depart from your sight; keep them in the center of your heart. For they are life to those who find them, healing and health to all their flesh". My son attend to my words... You attend to it. You see to it. You stay in it. Attend to my words. Incline your ear unto my sayings. Instead of "Well I don't know about that". It's his Word. You lean in that direction. I'm inclined to hear that. I'm inclined to believe that. God said it in his Word. God said it. I believe it. And that settles it.
Now look at it again. "Keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh". The cross reference says medicine. "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues"... One translation said the forces of life, the life force comes out of here and you've possibly heard Gloria say this. We were in the Philippines, we're there twice. And the thing that sticks out in my mind just, well, a number of things, but one young girl had been bitten by a rabid animal and they didn't get to her in time with the shots. And we laid hands on her and God healed her, Oh, my, lot of miracles.
But anyway, in our hotel there was a large... we were up on a higher floor there and there was a big fountain out the back. And this thing is shooting up like this. And Gloria was about to go teach Healing School and she saw that. And the Lord said, "That's your heart and the issues flowing out of it". And he said, "As long as there's pressure on that water, you can't get anything in there, even if there's just a little bit out of it. But if you turn it off and the water settles down a little bit and then all kinds of trash can begin to get in there". I was teaching and preaching in a meeting and I was... Gloria wasn't there. I don't remember why not.
But anyway, I was in a hotel room and I'm just sitting up in the middle of the bed and I had my books and so forth, and all of a sudden I had a vision and I just looked up like that. And there was a pipe right there. It looked like it was about this big around at the other end, and there was water coming in that pipe from this top piece. And there was just... I literally could feel it and it was just this little irritating sprout of water hit me in the face. There we go again. Hitting that's "hitting", "hitting" me in the face. And I was doing this. I said, "Lord, what is this"? And it went away. He said, "That's the small unforgiveness that's built up inside your spirit, and that's my glory trying to get in there. And your spirit's so clogged up with stuff..." I said... He said, "Yes, you do. If you think about it a little bit". I said, "What"? He said, "Remember the cantaloupes".
Oh... No. Kellie, you remember when we lived on Florentine, before we would turn sometime there'd be vendors out there in the street. Then you come to our street and out... Just little ways. Well, Gloria came in one day. I really like cantaloupes and had this sack of really nice looking cantaloupes that she bought from a vendor. And so we took the cantaloupes out. And, you know, I was looking for. The top two were just wonderful. The rest of the sack was rotten. I said, "Give me that". She said, "What are you going to do"? I said, "I'm going to go and spank him". She said, "No, you're not". Well then I just forgot about it.
That's wrong. Well, I was one of them. And then how much other stuff like that, that I didn't take the time to repent of and it'll just build up. Look at it like this. Let's say you have a straight line. This is the straight and narrow way. The love walk is and you're on that line and you're walking in love. When you step out here, the devil's right there. I mean, he's just waiting on you. As long as you walk in love he can't bother with it. And what else is waiting there? We read it in First John. Perfect or developing love cast out fear because fear has torment. Once you step out there, the spirit of fear just hang in there waiting to tag you with something. So Jesus called it a straight and narrow way. And so we walk in that.
Now let's continue here. I want us to go to... Let's see. Hold that Rufus. Thank you. It's sharp. Let's look at some scriptures here. Matthew 8:16 and we read this "When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his Word, and healed all that were sick: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses". Matthew 12:15. "The Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how they might destroy him. But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew himself from thence: and great multitudes followed him, and he healed them all;" It's never been part of mine, nor has it been Gloria's problem with the will of God. But Jesus said, "Your traditions make the Word of God of no effects". And there have been church traditions.
Now Gloria's grandmother told Gloria that "Well, now Oral Roberts pays those people to say they're healed". That's what she'd been taught. And Gloria said, "I wonder, what he pay them? $5"? Now to a little girl, that's a lot of money. She just forgot about it. Now, that was so prevalent that when he went on television, he had a judge and he did had him write an affidavit that these situations were not staged, that they were they were live audiences. And that it was absolutely true. And the judge signed it and it was sealed because that was such a big tradition in the United States that healing was no more. But it's the same Jesus. Amen. But she and I didn't have that problem because we didn't have that tradition in our background, I particularly didn't because my parents would have never said something like that. My mother just prayed about everything. And that way it was no problem with them either.
So anyway, and now let's go to Matthew 19:2. "And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these sayings, he departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judaea beyond Jordan; And great multitudes followed him; and he healed them there". Well, we could go to Mark 6:56, Luke 4:38 through 40, Luke 6:17 through 19, Luke ten, ten through... There was a leper, came to him and fell down before him. He said, "I know you can heal me, if you will". You remember that? What did Jesus say? I will. I will is the strongest assertion in the English language. I will. Or I won't or I will not. You can't get stronger than that. Jesus, one translation, I really do like it. He said, "Of course I will". So in other words, that's why I'm here. Of course I will, glory to God.
So now I want to go to the 10th chapter of Matthew. "And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease. Now the names of the twelve apostles are these;" He names them all. "These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, the Samaritans... But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his hire".
So what does that mean? And these men are used to having a large income. They were very successful people in the fishing business and Matthew was a publican and a tax collector and, you know, a little iffy there about what he was doing. But he was a wealthy man. There's no deadbeats in there. One of them was Judas Iscariot. But and people said, well, you know, Jesus, poor... Poor people don't need a treasurer. And the scripture said he carried the bag. And the night of all nights when Jesus told him, "What you're going to do, do quickly". And he left the room, middle of the night. And some of them thought that he told him to go give something to the poor. You would have to have a poor giving reputation. Yeah. If we were all together and in the middle of the night, somebody got up and left.
Well, you know, where's the man's room? But Jesus gave so much money to the poor in the middle of the night in a Passover meal. When he left, they thought, surely he's gone to give something to the poor. So don't tell me he was poor. So what he said here, "Are you going to work for me? Don't take different changes of clothes and you're worthy of your hire". Now, I said this in a prison in Mississippi not too long ago. And I said, Do you think that they just wore the same clothes over and over? And this little voice said, "We do".
Well Burrel came, a warden and then he took over the commissioner of prisons in the state of Mississippi. And he has so much authority and that he could order the men and the women together in this large gymnasium to hear the Word. And afterward, this young woman came up to me and smiles and she's just smiling. And she just walked up to me and said, "Brother Copeland, I'm on death row. And I'm believing God for a stay where I stay in here in my ministry". She said, "My ministry is here. But I win either way".
Well, there was a serial killer. And in Texas, I won't go into all the story. But he had kidnapped a woman and she kept telling him she's going to love him. And he kept telling her, "Shut up, or I'm going to kill you". And she said, "Do you mind if I play my tape"? He said, "Woman, I don't care what you play". Well, there was one of my tapes and he slammed on the brakes and stopped. He said, "Who said that"? She said what Stephen? He looked in the backseat. He said, "I heard it". She said, "What did you hear? Stephen, son, this is your last chance". She said, "That was God".
Well, I baptized him in the county jail there in San Antonio, Texas. And then he had me down as his spiritual advisor. And I won't go to all the different stories. But it's an amazing story and so when he was executed, he had killed 21 women. But they proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt on 2 so I was with him just a little while there and they had this thick mesh screen and he was up here talking to me and I said, "Stephen, do me a favor". "Yeah". "You know, the Scripture says, 'Grace is enough.' Let me know". Yeah. I can do that. The warden was Lawrence Harvey. He's a Spirit-filled warden. He and I were good friends, so they had him strapped to this gurney.
Now, what does this have to do with healing? Everything. Because people are afraid of death. And a fear of death makes people just... You can be so afraid of it. It'll make you sick. We don't have anything to fear in death. Now, if you don't know Jesus as your Lord, it's time for you to get scared. Well, he's strapped to this thing with vision. Both arms and it's dark in there because they were people that came in there that wanted to see him dead. Well, this man's born again. They hate him. So they're guiltier than he is, but they don't know that. But Steven was born again, filled with the Spirit. And I told him, I said, "You have time to become an expert on prayer". And he did.
And anybody that came anywhere close to death row, you'll have to deal with Stephen Morin I mean... You are going to hear the Gospel and every which way you can think of... Got everybody saved that came in and you pray for him, anyway. And he said, "Stephen, you're having the last word" He started preaching and he's strapped in here and he's having to look over here like this. And he said something like this. He said, "If the Holy Ghost could do something for something like me, consider what he could do for you".
And finally the warden said, "Stephen, Stephen, son, we've got to take care of business". He said, "Oh, I know that", strapped down here, couldn't move. I was as close as from here to Kellie and but looking up towards him, he looked down at me, two thumbs up, more than enough. And when that thing turns on, it makes a loud bang. So, you know, in a few seconds, I'm out of here. He lunged and he was gone. And I carry it with me all the time. I held the prayer that he prayed. I keep it in my book all the time just to remind me. More than enough.