Kenneth Copeland - Faith Knows the Answer
— Good morning, I'm Kenneth Copeland and this is the Believer's Voice of Victory Broadcast. And we are blessed today to have André and Jenny and I have mispronounced your name for 18 years, and you never did correct me. Whatever his name is... Roebert is here, and I say it right?
— Roebert. See, I did it again wrong. Roebert, a good Texas name, Roebert.
— Come on. Oh, okay anyway, forgive me.
— No, no, no.
— Thank You, Jesus. We have two scriptures that in praying over these broadcast, these are vitally important and have to do with their ministry and in different ways, but especially from the 8th chapter of the book of Romans, the 8th chapter of Romans contains the Gospel.
— Amen.
— I mean it's all in there. Starts out with no condemnation. So anyway, if you... praise God, thank You, Jesus. Let's go to the 12th verse. "Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father". Now so many people don't know how to be led by the Spirit of God. Don't understand that this is a book of blood covenants. And then well, let's go back over here to the 6th chapter of John, and I want to thank you for helping me receive offerings over the years, and I put up your picture of the building and then the new building and all that. The 6th chapter of John's Gospel, the 3rd verse. "And Jesus went up into a mountain, and there he sat with his disciples. And the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh. When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence or where shall we buy bread, that these may eat"? Now that seems like a simple enough question. He said that to Philip to prove him for you already knew what he would do. That's a key phrase. "Philip answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little". He didn't ask him how much it cost. He said it directly to him, where? "One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto him, There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many"? Jesus already knew what he should do. So what should have been the faith answer would have been this, "Lord, you know, we don't know. But you know. What do you want us to do"? They didn't listen. And that's the problem. That those two things, being led to the spirit. My Father in the Faith, Oral Roberts, talked about the prayer failure because people don't listen. And so the first structure at Oral Robert University was the prayer tower. That was number one. And he said this to me personally. He said, "Christian failure, most of the time is a prayer failure," not praying at all, not knowing how to pray or praying and not listening. That's the huge problem. Now, then the first thing I'd like to know. And I'm going to ask Jenny, she's smarter than you... I understand that, though, you know... Come on. I've been there a long time.
— Right.
— Jenny, how did you and André, how did the Word of Faith idea and message come through to you guys?
— Actually, through you...
— I didn't ask that for that reason, because I didn't know that. I'm honored, though. Thank you.
— I mean, we were both brought up in Christian homes and went to church that taught the Word, but just never with the element of faith. Just never. And then I think is probably the saddest thing for us, because even today, there's churches that just don't teach what the Word says. They don't teach faith. And so it's a very watered down message, a watered down gospel. And it's more, it's kind of like you have two types of faith or two types of truth, really. One that's based on the circumstances in the natural and our physical senses and then one that is based on the Word of God. And I know for myself, I've never, never really had the scriptures open up to me as I had through picking up, a Believer's Voice of Victory where it was called so many years ago. And that just changed our lives forever. Everything we saw in that just...
— Was it the magazine or the...
— It was the magazine. It was.
— Think about that. And all of these many, many, many, many, many years ago. Gloria called Pastor George in and she said, "George, we need a newsletter, news before it happens". And so it started out as that little newsletter. And then the Word of the Lord came to me. He said, "Do a magazine on faith. Don't ever charge a subscription for it". Not ever. But get it out so that people can well, can read about faith testimonies.
— Absolutely.
— That really blesses me, Jenny. Thank you.
— You know Brother Kenneth, we've been serving God 32 years, full-time ministry now. And our lives were so impacted about 26 years ago by your ministry that when we picked up that magazine, we realized, hold on, there's more. There's more. We've had the Word of God. We've been in ministry. But there's a level of faith that we want to begin to operate in. And it became a revelation. It's like it jump off the pages. That's all I can say. It's like jumped off the pages into our hearts. We grabbed a hold of that and the Lord said, "Would you believe, would you be prepared to believe"? Because you got to understand, we in Africa, we right there and we, going back many years ago now.
— We were doing revivals back then.
— We were running all over the nation, lighting fires of revival, having a move of God. But it was in our hearts to release the Word of Faith, in that move of God, that they would be a residual of faith that is left, that would grow with every seed that we release. And it's those days when we started to grab a hold of this message of faith, everything started to change in our lives.
— Sure it did. And that's when I said and I think that's the basis of where we may be going to go over the next few days as we talk about this on the program. It was in those days and I've often made the joke even, you know, I've preached it where I've said I didn't have much, but I knew what you were saying I needed, and I needed that message to be alive inside of me. And there were times you were believing for things that were just outrageously big in our terms, all right. And I said, if you can believe for those big things, I can believe for those big things. Because there is no favorites. This is not an American gospel. This is not an American Word of Faith. This is a God's Word for every one of us, wherever we are in the world.
— You know, Bishop Oyedepo, someone said, "You're preaching that American gospel". He said, "No, Jesus was not born in America". That pretty well answered it right there.
— But what I want people to realize is, as partners and as the family of Kenneth Copeland Ministries, the impact that you're giving, you're sending this Word to the nations of the world, that had such an impact on lives like ours. So what we decided is we would sow back. We wanted to sow back. And this is the joke that I kept making. I kept saying, I don't even have enough money yet to put air in the tire of your airplane. That was the joke. But I will pay for the air in the tire because I will believe God. I'm going to invest in a ministry of a word that has been preached of what I'm believing needs to grab a hold of our hearts and our lives. And that was the journey that we started just short of 30 years ago, following the ministry, receiving it and 25 years ago, we're coming up to the 26th year of this year. I started to come to the ministers gathering every January right here on Eagle Mountain. It changed my life. It changed everything of the perception of my thinking and put me into a different realm of saying, "God, if you can do this in America, you can do this in Africa".
— Any way.
— For any way in the whole wide world. And that was our journey of getting into that place of obedience that you're talking about. Because then when God's Word comes to you, you grab a hold of it and you say, "This is the Word of God. If God, you've spoken to me, I need to hear you and I need to obey. I need to apply my faith in that level of obedience".
— Well, we were there in the 8th chapter of Romans. The 10th chapter of the great apostle said, talking about faith. "The righteousness which is of faith, speaks on this wise". Now listen to this. "But what saith it? The Word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the Word of Faith, which we preach;" That's where that phrase came from. It's a biblical word. The Word of Faith, which we preach. Now, the two of you being led of the spirit of God... That's the reason I wanted to bring this up. Set out to do something impossible. And why would anyone be interested in a dilapidated old sheep barn that nobody wanted that was for sale and they wanted too much money for it. The Lord said, "Pay this". They said, "Well, okay", which when I heard that I thought... I'm glad the Lord said that because he could have just kept going down after you look at that. When I saw it, I thought, well, okay. Mm hmm. Now, that was something like 18 years ago. And they had invited us there to preach and so forth and put me on a golf cart and took me across the way and showed me this place with all these pillars in it. And we're going to do this, do that. The reason I know how long ago it was, we had our faith on the line for that Cessna Citation X. And he sat me down in front of their cameras and presented me, if I remember right, a check about that big for a million rand. 1 million rand and said, this is for the Citation X. And that's the reason I pointed to the title of his new book, The Gift of Giving. There is an anointing to do that. Jesus had that anointing. You remember in the middle of the night, what is now called the Last Supper. They didn't know it then and he sent Judas out of there. It's the middle of the night and some thought he told him to go give something to the poor because he was the treasurer. He had the bag. They had no idea that he was the traitor. But what reputation do you have to have? That is the gift of giving.
— Right.
— So you used faith and a direction of the Lord. That is the most wonderful thing about faith, when you start off with nothing but a direction. And you begin, you just keep listening and keep listening and keep listening.
— We knew this. We knew that the Word of God had come to us to do what God told us to do.
— Now go back to that. How did you get there?
— Prayer.
— That's what I wanted you to say.
— Pray.
— You're right.
— The Lord had taken us...
— We were in a all night prayer meeting.
— We were going to pray the whole night.
— What was the situation in the first place that you had outgrown your facilities.
— We had just launched the church. We were one year down the line. We had a rented facility.
— That's what it was, I remember now.
— It was a rented facility and it was a theater. And we needed our own place. We were setting up every morning, Sunday breaking down.
— I remember now.
— And that's what had happened.
— And we were traveling. So we would get back on a Saturday with our trucks and our crew and our team. We would get a little rest, wake up at 4 a.m. Sunday morning, set up, do church Sunday morning, pack up the trucks again with all the same equipment, drive out to the next city and we would be in revival by the Monday night, the following week, week in, week out. That's what we were doing. And I went before the Lord and I said, "Lord, we need a base, we need a facility". And we decided to call a half hour to pray. And we went in to a full night of prayer and we went in. And the reason why I said a half night is because God spoke so strongly halfway through the night, that the anointing of God hit me and I saw the vision complete. So before it was even a reality, he had birthed it in the spirit. And in the spirit, now I'm talking reality of the flesh. But what we've got to understand is before it can become a reality in the flesh, it becomes a reality in your heart and in our life.
— I want to point out something right here, They didn't try to do this on the run by praying about it each morning. No... They called everybody together. So it was corporate prayer and that environment in which the spirit of God who already had the plan.
— Come on, come on.
— They just needed to tap into it. And that's one of the thing. Here's the situation, it was a dire need. God called them to build a church. He called them to preach the Word of Faith. And the way I saw it, the Lord wanted it done from one facility with television, the facility. If you want to go somewhere, get your airplane and go. Which they believed for.
— Absolutely. And we knew it would take a seed in the ground to produce the harvest. So in other words, when the vision had come to us and we knew what God wanted us to do, and we can get into that story in some time. But when we had taken that, we needed to get that seed in the ground. And I said to Jenny, "There's only one place that I know where this seed will grow. And where this seed will multiply".
— And when we dedicated the building, they did it again.
— Yes we did, amen.
— Another check about that big. Amen, now come on, give the Lord a praise now, amen.
— Praise God.
— You've got to hear the voice of God. And then you have to obey. You see, there's a key over there. Because if you choose not to obey, you will get distracted. You will get taken off, off on a journey on the side that will not be the right journey that God has for you.
— That's what happened right there among the disciples, they saw that huge crowd and couldn't deal with it. And some reason or other the Lord Jesus had Philip on his heart and he said this personally to Philip. And you know, to test him to see what answer he would get.
— Faith works.
— Yes it does.
— Faith works.
— And you have to stay focused...
— But you have to stay focused on your faith, doubt and fear will try and separate you from God's purpose for your life. And that's part of what we'll get into in the programs to come. But that is what God said to me. He said, "André, if you would stay totally focused on what my plan and purpose is, once you know that seed is in the ground, that seed has to produce". It has to produce. It cannot... you can't plant a seed, and it will never, ever contradict, violate what God has said in his Word. And that's where too many Christians go off, because they say in the time that we wanted to work, it doesn't work. And you need to understand this miracle started when God spoke to us from the very first word was 1999. 2020, we were supposed to open 21 years later, the dome as we know it today, but then COVID and we won't talk about that right now. But I want you to understand that was a 21 year journey from a seed of the Word of God into our lives to the fulfillment of the purpose and the plan of God for your life. You have to be prepared to wait, that you have to debt free.
— Debt free.
— Amen.
— The whole process was debt free.
— Correct. And everybody comes with every idea. Everyone comes with every direction. Everyone tried to distract us. Everyone said, do it this way, do it that way. And I said, no. I'd heard God, I'd heard God and God had given me the clarity of vision in this. Therefore, we will stay with God's plan because God's plan is the only plan that will succeed in every area.
— I think it felt a bit like Noah's Ark. There was a time that everybody was saying, Why would you want to do that here of all places. Why in East London, the Islamic... in South Africa it's broken up into different provinces and the Eastern Cape is where East London is situated. And it's the poorest at that time was definitely the poorest in the natural. So just the thought of financially doing that is absolutely impossible in the natural. But besides that, why? Nobody comes to East London, everybody goes everywhere else... why? But we just knew this is what God wanted. And we know, I think as well, we didn't want to put our minds in the why. We just thought, Who cares? God's says...
— Do what God says.
— Yes, amen.
— That's the key. Do what God says. No matter where you are, no matter who you are, no matter where you were born, no matter anything about you, you've got to do what God says to do.
— It might not be for you and your generation. It may be to start with you in your generation, but then to go forth for the generations after you because you're part of the plan of God, which is eternal. So it's really not about of... and I think we limit our... we limit what God wants to do by putting ourselves in our own vision, where we just have to hear what he says and obey his command. And we're out of time. But I know where I want to start tomorrow. You just gave me the clue and praise God. Yes, it is powerful. Praise God. Amen. Well, we'll be back in just a moment. Hallelujah, praise God, thank You Jesus.