Kenneth Copeland - Faith Never Quits
— Here it is Monday, isn't that wonderful. I'll tell you, the resurrection didn't happen last night, but it could be before dark tonight. Oh, Jesus is coming. I'm telling you now. And we need to be aware of it all the time and sing songs about it and just have a good time. And, Father, we thank you again this week. There is a wonders of faith and action and the things that you've taught us over the years and the wonderful, marvelous things. And the more we learn, the more we find out how much we don't know and we're hungry. I'm the hungriest man on this planet for the Word of God and insight, ideas and concepts. We thank you. And today we give you all the praise and the honor and the glory for all of the words spoken in Jesus' name, Amen. And let's welcome again this week, André and Jenny Roebert.
— Yes sir. And the reason this is sitting on my desk here this morning is they gave this to me and this is their logo and I have it in my closet. I have a walk in closet there and my suits are over here. And sports are just... But right here, this is a chest of drawers right there. And faith looks me right in the face. I can't walk in that closet without seeing faith with that blood red star right over the top of it. Now you finish it and tell where that came from.
— Hallelujah. Well, what a great honor to be with you again this week. And faith is now. And eally when the Lord spoke to us about building the faith dome, about establishing the Faith Church, establishing the Faith TV network all over the continent of Africa, we knew that the job God had for us and the purpose for us, Brother Kenneth was not in our strength. We could not do it. And I want you to realize that's the difference between where you walk and where faith kicks in because you walk in the natural. But what God's purpose and plan for your life is, and the vision for your life is always something bigger than where you are right there. There's always a greater call. There's always a greater purpose. There's always a greater reason.
— God is never finished,
— Never finished. And he's always stretching us. He's always, you know, we were joking the other day. We've been in ministry 32 years now and we were joking the other day. We say, "Does it ever stop"?
— No.
— And we came to realize it never stops. The walk of faith never stops. If you think it's ever going to get easy... All right. If you think it's ever going to get okay not to be in faith, you're missing it. All right. The walk of faith is a continuous journey. When you give your heart to Jesus, you move into another level. You operate in faith and you watch faith produce for us in every area. That's the joy. That's the pleasure of faith. It's watching faith work on your behalf. And that's what the name God gave us. And that's where the logo came from, the goodness of God in every area of our lives.
— And these come in all sizes. But this is one in my closet. And I just brought it this morning to let you see it and realize what it means to me to have that. And Andre of I had this... this came up in my spirit in the night last night and I mentioned to you this morning in the beginning God and people don't research. Notice this in your mind. A, ask. Seek and what? Knock. ASK The Seek can be translated research. The BLB "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". Well, so what? Well, I'll tell you what. So what? In the beginning God, Elohim. Plural rulers, judges, divine ones, angels, gods, plural, intensive, singular, meaning. God, is God like work or special possessions of God. The true God, Elohim. "In the beginning, God created the... And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said..". The Spirit was moving. All three of them were there. L God, Elohim, plural. If you just read God, you've missed a major thing. Huge. And then you go to the book of Hebrews and you find out he did it by faith. I mean, those two things... Oh, Jesus. Oh, he did it. Oh, and listen to this. And here's another thing. And then I want you just take it up and talk on what you were talking to me about this morning, but this was just so strong within me. "In the beginning Elohim created the heaven and the earth and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters". It had been flooded already. This was the first flood. Noah was the second one. And we can go to the book, Isaiah and so forth, and see it, we can prove it but nobody even talks about that. But we need to, because he did it by faith. What about the millions and millions of year? Didn't he do it in seven days? The fossil record does not lie. They're there. There are eons of time. The heavens prove it between those two verses. So there's no need for us to debate whether it was done in six days or not. It was most definitely redone in six days and he rested on the seventh. It was done. So now we know why, he's the only one that knows when our star is going to shut down. He created it. He put it there. He knows the second that he turned it on. And that's his business. And anybody else tells you any different, you refer them to Jesus. That's in his prerogative but to show the goodness and the awesomeness of our God. At the speed of light of doing morning services in a synagogue, we didn't have a place for the morning services. And the rabbi came in and showed me in there and he said, "Now Brother Copeland, this is my office in my study. Just help yourself". And I found in one of his translations in one of his books, and God said, "Light be and light was". And Young's analytical comes that close. So go.
— The walk of Faith is something that you have to be in a place of never quitting. You know, Jenny we were talking and maybe let's talk about that a little bit. You know, great faith, little faith. And it's very interesting. There's different measures of faith because I want to tie... Jesus used those phrases. O Man of little faith... And no faith... Marveled at their unbelief. Go ahead.
— But there's something very interesting, isn't it?
— You know what I love about the Word is it just keeps on confirming itself all the time. And when Jesus spoke about faith.
— Say that again, Jenny.
— I said that the Word keeps on confirming itself again and again.
— If it doesn't, you're on the wrong page...
— ...or in the wrong book.
— Those promises are there, Peter called them the exceeding great and precious promises. And that's what they are for.
— So when Jesus spoke about faith, which is so encouraging because we know that we have no option, that's how we live. The just shall live by faith. So we kind of really need to understand everything we can about faith so we can live it because it's the only way we please him and he would speak about the different measures of faith, just like Brother Copeland said it. And you know, what I found so amazing is when he spoke about little faith, whenever he used that phrase ye of little faith, it always was associated with fear, worry or fear. So when we speak about it, when he spoke about the measure of faith, I believe that so much was quantity as much as it was quality. Because every time faith is contaminated with fear, it just reduces its power almost immediately. And so we find... and I'll give you examples when Jesus spoke about this little faith, remember the disciples when that huge storm, they were all on the boat and they were terrified. They were terrified for their lives. And when Jesus stood up and, you know, his first reaction was, "O, ye of little faith," because there was so much fear that contaminated their faith. The other time was when Peter was walking on the water. The most amazing experience. I can just imagine anybody ever having walking on the water with Jesus. But the moment as we know the story, he took his focus off of the Lord and onto the circumstances around him. He got overcome and overwhelmed by fear and began to sink but Jesus reached out, took his hand, pulled him up, and his words, "Oh, Peter, why do you doubt? You of little faith"? Again.
— He's the only one that got out of the boat.
— Exactly. Absolutely. We will always give him credit for that. But then I find also in Matthew chapter six, the same thing comes again when Jesus speaks about, you know, do not worry, be faithful, do not fear. And even in there he speaks about don't be of little faith. So every time it's connected to worry or doubt or fear. But when he speaks about great faith, it shows there's an instance of absolutely no doubt, no fear, completely persuaded, just like Abraham. And that happened... the centurion. Remember Jesus greatest day I think was in Matthew chapter eight. It's just one healing after the next of great miracles. Just wonderful. But do you remember when the centurion came and said, "Oh, you know, my daughter is so sick, I need you to come, please come to my house". And Jesus said, "Sure, I'm coming," because he's always willing, always willing, but to remember what the centurion said. He said, "No, you don't even have to do that. Just say the Word. Just speak the Word. And I know she will be healed". And Jesus stopped. Everybody turned around and said, "I have never found anybody..". In fact, in this whole area that has as great faith as this man. Why? Because there was no doubt, there was no questioning, there was no fear involved. He was literally speaking from the conviction of his heart. He believed. He believed. And so Jesus called him, you of great faith. Now, the other time he used, which really touched my heart, was with the Syrophoenician woman. Oh, she's also been known as the Canaanite woman. Just amazing. I believe she's in Matthew 14. And there again, you know, Jesus said to her because she wanted her daughter to be healed because she was demon possessed and kept on hurting herself. And I remember Jesus saying to her, "Well, it's not my time. It's not my time to heal you. This is for the for God's children first, the Israelites first. You're a Canaanite" if you paraphrase. And in fact, he insulted her and called her a dog if I remember correctly. I'm thinking, Wow, Jesus, you did that. But all he was doing was testing her to see how much she really was prepared to hold on to who she knew he was.
— Let's take a look at her. hanging on...
— Matthew 14, 15.
— But I'm going to look at something else here.
— She's Matthew 15.
— Jesus said it here. "While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, Saying, What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he? They say unto him, The son of David". Mercy in Hebrew is hesed, it's covenant word. That means the greater in covenant becomes equal with the smaller, the greater brings, the smaller up. Jehoshaphat inquired of the people and they said, We'll put out singers in front of the army. What were they crying in the King James? God is good. His mercy... God is good. His hesed endures forever. The moment they did that, then God moved and turned that whole army against itself because of hesed. She shouted, "Son of David. Son of David. Have mercy on me". He finally had to do something.
— Yes.
— She stepped out of time and over in what he would eventually be and there was no way... he just going to see how long. And the disciples came around and said, "Get her out of here". He wouldn't answer them either. He just kept on ignoring her. And finally she called him Lord. Then he said, "Well, okay..". Son of David, do hesed for me. Bartimaeus, son of David, son of David, Do hesed for me. Mercy. Have mercy on me. He stopped. He recognized the covenant. Isn't that amazing? And that's the reason that... That's the reason Cornelius got his attention. He's a soldier and he said one translation said, "I am not important enough for you to come under my roof. You speak the Word only". And now you see something. Cornelius at the crucifixion said, "This must have been the Son of God". He kept praying. And an angel came. If you check that area out right there, Caesarea right there close, Pilate was from the same area. They're right there together. He was a garrison commander, only one centurion. in that whole area. Cornelius. And the Lord picked him because of his giving. Well, that angel said, "You send for a man named Peter". I'm so impressed. You took this... The two of you took this assignment from the Spirit of God, totally, completely impossible. Can't do that. There's too many buildings here. This doesn't work. No, no, no, no, no, no. Come on, André. Just forget this. You can't put this together. There's all this. All these hodgepodge... buildings and that. That doesn't work. Why don't you behave yourself. That's really what they were telling you.
— Correct, correct. Every opportunity that the enemy had through people to be able to try to chisel away our faith, try and break down what we were believing, what God had shown us was another way and another opportunity that they were trying to... Can I use the word, in a sense, break us down to cause us to stop believing.
— They thought they were doing you a favor because it's never going to work and you're going to be disappointed, not get your hopes up because they will be dashed but that's what people do. Well, not all of those are.
— Correct. And the thing that we have to learn and that's why what Jenny was saying over, it's so critical.
— Don't be distracted
— You cannot allow yourself when God gives your Word, when God speaks to you, you cannot allow yourself to be distracted and you cannot allow yourself to listen to the voices in the wilderness and those that have not heard from God, those that haven't got the clarity, those that haven't got the Word on it. And that's the amazing thing about the Word. Once you've got the Word on the inside of you, you become a lion on the inside of you. You have to roar with faith. Your faith just has to come out of you in every area, whether it's sickness over your body or whether it's a lack of finances or whether it's family dynamics or problems that you're facing or situations that come or work environments, whatever, you've got to understand, all of these things are trying to break you down for what reason? To allow fear to come into the situation. That's why I wanted Jenny to share that, because yes, the key, when fear gets in, you move from a position of great faith into a position of little faith. You compromise. Your faith is... now it's the same faith. It's the same faith. But your faith is then officially contaminated. So what we have to do as children of God is we have to make sure our faith is never, ever contaminated.
— And you know what? It's not even that you need the great quantity because we've all been given the measure of faith. But Jesus said it just has to be as small as a mustard seed. It's just little faith as long as it uncontaminated faith.
— And it can increase the great faith.
— Yes. Yes, absolutely.
— And she proved that, Cornelius proved that. Forgive me if I interesupted you, Jenny. Go ahead and finish...
— Praise God.
— I've noticed this going on 57 years now. And I had wonderful training. Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin and T.L. Lowery and men like that and others... TL Osborne. And I've noticed this. There will come an opportunity to compromise. You're going to get the opportunity. And Brother Roberts preached on that on the fiery furnace when he preached on the 4th man... And he said, "Whatever you do, don't compromise your faith". He said, "You bow, you burn. If you don't bow, you can't burn". You're just like Jenny saying you keep that faith on the line. And it'll just keep growing. And you go over there to the book of Luke, you find out faith is your servant. Jesus said so.
— Amen. Praise God.
— That's right. Oh, oh... The sign went up. We're out of time. Okay, well, let's see. Oh, yeah. Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord Jesus. We'll be back in just a moment.