Kenneth Copeland - Faith Follows the Plan of God
— Hello, everybody I'm Kenneth Copeland. This is the Believer's Voice of Victory Broadcast. Thank you for joining us today. And once again today, we're here with André and Jenny and the whole class. And we're talking about faith, of course, and the Faith Dome, which is just absolutely magnificent because I was there when it wasn't and I went back when it was. So I got the way before then after and it's amazing. But now we were talking yesterday, May had come and school was out and my landlord that owned that little house that we had rented that the university had that ORU had rented some of it before and he owned several of them. And he was a Mormon lawyer. I went to see him to get some things about the house and he said, "Now, Kenneth, you just think that us Mormons don't know Jesus," he look me in the eye. He said, "I'll tell you something, brother. Jesus Christ of Nazareth is my Lord and savior now, what else do you want"? So I had him draw up the papers. Kenneth Copeland Evangelistic Association in the state of Oklahoma, had it all ready to file. So here I am the next morning. Well, school is out. That happened back up during the year, and the Lord said, "I'm ready for you now". Okay... "I want you to go back to Fort Worth. Greatest part of your destiny is there". I don't want to do that. Because it was my hometown, I was sitting there murmuring about it. I really didn't want to. I wanted to continue to fly for him. Because I was so close to him and we had developed such closeness together. Anyway, phone rang and Gloria was sitting there at the little table. She found the base to it in a junkyard and she found the top to it in an old store and she put the two of them together and antiqued them. Give you some idea of the wealth she married into. The phone rang. Gloria said, "It's Brother Nichols". Well, he's pastor of the Grace Temple Church here in Ft. Worth. And when my mother and dad got the left foot of fellowship from among the Baptist. Well, they moved up, that's Brother Hagin's term, you know, what had happened to them to. So that was their home church. In fact, he had baptized Gloria and me and John and Kellie. And so that was our home church. When can you come preach me a meeting? And I said, "Well, Brother Nichols, I'd like to say that I need to check my schedule, but I don't have one". When do you need me? He said, "Could you come this next weekend"?
— Yes, sir. Well, and so we went. We got to the very end of the first week. That weekend, he said, we need to go on with this cause I was just teaching Mark 11:23, four and five and the saying part. And Lou walked around with her Bible in one of the morning service. She said, "I thought I knew something about this book". She had tears coming down. We got to the end and he said, "Let's go another week". I said, okay, we went another week. Let's go another week. Okay. Went three weeks, we got out in the car sitting there in front of the church. Where are you going now? I said, "I have no idea". Hilton Sutton called me, "Kenneth, when can you come and preach me a meeting"? I said, "When do you want it"?
— Next weekend. That one went three weeks. Now his dad... Dad Sutton lived in Beaumont and he was there at the end of that cause Hilton had called him, said, "You better come hear this young man". So he came. He said, "When can you come to me"? So I went three weeks there, and then we started. He said, "I want you every month". And then from that. And then we began to have some meetings in other churches. Then the Full Gospel business Men began to invite me, and then the Lord said, "You receive every invitation they give you unless I tell you differently". And so it began to grow and build. See he had a plan all the time. Well, it was in that meeting at Grace Temple Church. I was preaching from the book of Romans there at my mother and dad's house back in what used to be my bedroom. I came across, I was reading the 13 chapter of Romans, I was going to preach on the... got down to the 8th verse. Owe no man anything but to love him. I looked at the Amplified and said stay out of debt. So I hollered at Gloria and I came in there and she said, "If that's what the book says, that's what we're going to do". So it changed our entire destiny right there at that moment. I would have missed that entirely if I had ignored and stayed in Tulsa. I would have made a larger mistake as I did when I didn't want to go in the first place.
— That's right. Obedience.
— Yeah. And it was, you know, just those little nibbles at a time like that. And it began to grow and develop. And now here we are. So now let's go over here to the book. Let's see what Jesus said here. Cause I want to point out something to you. Now, each one of us have talked about the plans that he gave us. And then once we knew that plan, then you pray and you seek the Lord until you get direction. And make sure you know it is the right thing to do. And there's so many times I'd start in one direction and Gloria would say, "I think we better wait and pray about this". Well, okay. And sure enough. And then I'd think we can't borrow the money can we... No. Oh, the Lord stopped my impulsiveness right then. Greatest thing ever. Anyway, let's look at this in that 22nd verse, Mark 11:22. Now, wait a minute. Go down to that 14 verse. "No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever". 9 words. "And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots". If we are not at the root. What did God say and does it match this book? These blood covenants, I have to find it here because the way this book is written, it had to be spoken here for it to happen here. Jesus would say, "Have you not read of me"? Jesus went into Peter's house, saw his wife's mother laid sick of a fever. He touched her hand. The fever left her and she got up and ministered to them, when evening was come, they... Well who is they? Whomever the Spirit of God call. Because here's why. When evening was come they brought many who were possessed with devils. He cast out the spirits with his Word. Healed all that were sick that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, you have to go back to the book of Genesis to find that out. Because God spoke this whole thing into existence and gave all the authority to his man, all of it. So the Word had to come from heaven through a man and establish it on the earth so that at the exact moment in Bethlehem, which was spoken by Micah, the Prophet, 715 years later, it came to pass. Now... "Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever," that's me, "shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you", so he put this into motion right there, "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses". He said it. He spoke to it. Verse 27. They came again to Jerusalem. He said, "I only say what I hear my father say". That's what I wanted to get to. I only hear what I hear my Father's say, and I only do what I see my father do. He spoke to that thing and turned his back on it and walked off. He didn't care if... that tree could be standing there now with leaves on it and no man would ever eat fruit of it again. But as it was, his words went right to the roots of the thing. And they came back and saw that thing standing there dead, dead. Because the invisible, most powerful force known to humankind, the faith of God. It's the creative force. And in this case it came out of the mouth and the heart of God himself. And it just killed that tree. But what did he do? That was the end of it for him. He didn't check the tree out. Peter did. But he didn't, he just said, "Have faith in God". The faith of God. It was God's faith. And that's what I wanted to point out. Once you know the plan and you have God's Word on it and it is settled. It was settled between you and Jenny, and now you're an agreement pair. The two of you are in agreement. And the seed was in the ground. And the day, the way I see it in my mind. As far as I was concerned when I left there, that Citation X was as good as paid for.
— Come on, come on. That's right.
— Because I had a piece of this thing in East London, South Africa.
— That's right.
— And it wasn't very long after that until... I really didn't check on how much money had come in because I heard the Lord say it. I want you to believe me for a Cessna Citation X. If I tell you to go to Tokyo in the morning, I don't want you to have to ask somebody if you can go. He'd already said to me, "There's coming a time when the airlines will not be fit to travel". Well, that time has come and I'm not talking for the general public. It's bad enough for general public, but doing what I do and do it on airlines, I can't. I couldn't do 10% of what I do, I'd have to go where they go. I need to go where he tells me to go. Not where they tell me to go... anyway. But the point of it is once you have the plan, once it's settled, you believe it in your heart and you say it with your mouth. And you know it's God's plan. Turn your back on that. How we're going to do it... he has a plan. I thought that's what we said in the first place.
— Here's the thing Brother Kenneth, and I love what you're saying, is his plan comes, but it's amazing how our minds always try to create our own plan. It's amazing how this conflict comes in, who we are to want to do it our way instead of wanting to do it God's way. Now, I'll never forget with the dome, God spoke the plan to us and God said to us, "The money is in the floor". Jenny and I, we jump on an airplane, we come to America to raise the money. It wasn't God's plan. It wasn't God's plan for us to find the money. The money was already found by God, and I'd heard the word from God, but the natural mind, I was still trying to overcome this thing where I'm walking in faith, but my natural mind says, "Well, you've got to do something". You're on to us for four and a half million rand.
— Correct. And so here we are. We've visiting everyone in America. We've used our last resource to get here, to do this, to raise the money. And we're with friends of ours in Los Angeles. And we're in their house we visited about ten or 15 different places, ministries and different organizations hoping to get help. Because the natural man's kicking in to try and make the plan fulfilled.
— When did you hear that about the money in the floor?
— When God spoke to us under that anointing in the dome.
— You were standing, you were there.
— I was standing in the building and God said, "The money is in the floor". I said, "Lord, how are you going to pay for it"? Now I want to get to that part in a moment. But here we are. And the Lord said to us, "What are you doing in America? I told you the money is in the floor". That was the rebuke.
— We went home.
— We packed up our bag and we went home poorer than when we arrived.
— Yes, you did.
— Okay. Because when you try to do something in the flesh, you can't do the will of God with the flesh. You've got to do the will of God in the Spirit.
— And start in the Spirit and stays in the Spirit.
— It starts in the Spirit and it stays in the Spirit. We always try and do it in the flesh. We get back home and the Lord said, "I told you, the money's in the floor". Now we had to raise the money to be able to do this. I said, "Lord, what are you talking about"? Now, the money in the floor is twofold and I want to get to the second part in a moment, because the first part kicked in as soon as we touched ground again, he said, "I've given you 600,000 square feet. You're about to take transfer". Now, remember, we didn't own it yet. It was just the deal was done, but we had to wait for it to take transfer. He said, "I've given you 600,000 square feet, lease it out, and it will pay itself". All right. So meaning the money was in the square footage of the value of the floor. Are you with me? That was the first part, because I'm getting to the second part.
— We had a bunch of keys.
— And on the day of occupation that gave us keys for rooms and places we didn't know existed. There were people in it that were tenants in the building.
— We didn't know about it.
— I started collecting rentals from people that I never knew existed, but there was enough money in the building that I could pay the first payment and the deposit and I could start paying the people that had given us two years to give them the money because we never had the money. And that's another whole story of how we had to raise the money by who they put in the building in the form of tenants to be able to pay them back. We used their own money to buy their own building from them and to this day they don't know it. That's how God did it.
— Unless they watched the broadcast.
— Unless they watched this broadcast. Okay, but that's how God did it. He said, "I'm giving you a building and I'm giving you tenants and I'm telling you the money is in the floor. You don't need it from anywhere else". Little did I know the money is in the floor is twofold because the second part of it was the red timber that was in that floor was so valuable that we took just one portion of that floor out. When we moved in to start building the dome, we sold the piece of floor one piece, the rest we still have to sell, we still have the floors in there to still sell. We sold that one piece of floor. It was more money than what we paid for the entire purchase of the building. And God said, "I told you the money is in the floor". Rentals and value of timber twofold for what I'm wanting to do in your life, that's obedience. And of course we're going to be overlaying some of this cause we have pictures of all of that in a flatbed truck full of it. And so I said to him, "How much did it bring"? He said, "More than enough". Oh, I love it.
— That's obedience.
— Yes, it is.
— That's taking the will of God. Hearing the Word of Faith and applying nothing to separate your faith. Do not allow fear to come in. Do not allow anything to distract you in any way. From the faith that God has placed in your heart for what you believe in. And it will be.
— I saw it years ago and sometimes I do it in a meeting where you just make this line of faith. You step across it. And I call things that be not as though they were. So Word gets way behind me. It's already done. When God appeared to Abram and changed his name to Abraham, "H" he put into the middle of it; of course it's Hashem. It's the "H" in Yod Hey Vav Hey and said, nations will come from you. Now you take where we live... The Declaration of Independence was made and signed and started a war which General Washington won supernaturally. There was a British sharpshooter said, I'm not gonna shoot at him anymore. Don't even ask me to. He said, "I shot at him several times," I think it was five times point blank. He said, "It's a man of God. I'm not doing that anymore". And he got in and there were bullet holes in his coat. He opened his Bible at the 17th chapter of the book of Genesis. The first president of the United States opened his Bible at that and said, "This nation, this nation..." And he prayed, got down on his knee and kissed his Bible and lifted up his arm and said, "You'll be our God and we'll be your people". Those covenants are super important. And when you make an agreement with God and he agrees with you, that's it. You do the believing and the saying he's already done the saying. But our part, we have to say what he said... Amen. The future's in his hands then, and we're out of time again. Aren't these five minute broadcast wonderful. We'll be back in just a moment.