Kenneth Copeland - Faith Positions You To Prosper
— Tuesday's here, glory to God and it's the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast. We were talking about it before yesterday's broadcast. My father in the faith Oral Roberts and they were itinerant preachers. So you finish a meeting in a church and you just go to the next one and you live with a deacon or the pastor and Miss Evelyn got very tired of that. And she said, "Oral, if you don't get me a house I'm taking these kids and I'm going home". He said, "You wouldn't do that". She said, "You just try me..". So it was a Wednesday night service. I can just see his face now, his eyes would light up when he'd tell this. And the way he started telling this, he said, "Most people know me, you know, for the healing and miracle ministry. But I didn't get that first. I just got paid $50. And our whole paycheck... And we were having the service. And I just stood up in that Wednesday night service. And we're just going to build a parsonage". And so he said, "Somebody get a hat". So the piano player got a hat and he put his $50 in there and blessed that. Then he said, "What am I going to tell Evelyn"? And he said, "It's January. I went in there, and she said, 'Oral, you didn't do that.'"
— Yes I did...
— "What! Our whole paycheck! What are we going to do"? Well, it's about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. And they were staying in a home with a deacon. So he got up and answered it. It was the wealthiest farmer in the county. He said, "Oral, I didn't put anything in that offering tonight, and I'm ashamed of myself. I'm a farmer. And I know if you're going to get a crop, you have to plant a seed". And he dug up four $100 bills out of a... he set up, "I'm playing the stock market and I'm about to lose my farm. And I dug this up, I had this in a can in the backyard. I want the Lord to have it through you" and it's 4 $100 bills. And he said nether one of them had seen $100 bills. He said, "I went in there and I just fan those bills". And he said, "Look, this is the harvest on our seed". And that's where it came from.
— God's Word never returns void, it always accomplishes what it says it will. That's why I love the Scripture, because in the area of our finances in particular, plus every other area of our life, God says, "Prove me now. Test me". And that's what he did. He put his faith and he said, my faith is on the line. I'm going to believe God for everything that you need. You know, I was reminded of a story...
— Now that brought on something else I need to put the finishing to this. That broke him through in an area of prayer. And he got so hungry for the miracle ministry that God promised him when he healed him of tuberculosis and his stuttering, just a short time after this, a member of his church had an engine, mechanic, fell on his foot just a short time after that, he went in there and he said, "Oh my God..". And he just touched his foot like that. And the guy, there was blood coming out of his boot, he said, "Oral, what did you do"? He said, "I didn't do anything". He said, "Yes, you did. I'm healed". And he got up and stomped down on that boot. And it was right after he had the revelation of sow the seed. Well he had sown a seed that was bigger than he thought he had. And it broke into that miracle ministry.
— And it just shifted into another level.
— When you mentioned that, it pulled him over there.
— The revelation.
— Yeah, the revelation of it and he said after that he said, something like, he said, after that the deal was on. So they left there, decided they would go to Tulsa, they always wanted to live in Tulsa anyway. And she said, "Well what are we going to do"? He said, "Well, you know, we have some good friends. We'll go stay with them". So they called them, they said, "Yeah, you guys come on over here till we find a place for you". And he said, "Oral, I'm having a tent meeting here. Would you like to preach or night or two in it". He said, "Believe I will". And a couple of nights later, a deranged man walked in the back of that tent and took a shot at him with a 3030. And it went through that top of that tent right above his head. And it was the shot heard around America, a tent evangelist. Whoa. And it started with that $50.
— Everything changed.
— Everything changed.
— Everything changed, you know?
— Now your tent happened to be a conglomeration of buildings sitting on a river down there that nobody said you could do it.
— But it started with a seed.
— Yes it did.
— You see it started with a seed for God to come through to take you to the next level. You have to watch what he does. And see the testimony. Your testimony of what God has done in your past. He's going to position you for your future.
— Say it again please.
— Your testimony for what God has done in your past is going to position you for your future.
— That's in your book.
— I believe it's somewhere. But here's what I want you to understand, because everything...
— You want me to read it to you? Get on the giving side. Position yourself to prosper. You put yourself in position.
— Correct, and you never get out of that position. I want to share this brief little thought. When God had spoken to us about the building and I was reminded of it as you were speaking. We had the vision, God had shown me the structure complete of the building in the vision. But everybody for many years said it could never be. Everyone said it is impossible to do what we want to do. And we had gone on many years believing God financially for it and believing God for a breakthrough to come. And I got to the point where we had hired four different architects, four different engineer companies. Everybody came, looked and left the project... cannot be done, cannot be done, cannot be done.
— Four different ones.
— Four different companies and at the end of that, that was a process of about two years of my life. And I was saying, "God, you gave me the vision. Why would you give me a vision that we can't complete"? In other words, you've said something to me, we've grabbed it, we've got the promise on it. Why would it be not be able to complete in the natural? And the Lord really dropped in my spirit. And he said this to me. He said, "What I've given you can be done, but it's got to be Spirit led. It cannot be done naturally". They were looking at a five story building over 100 years old, five floors high to put on a dome roof that I said, No pillars inside. You were there, you saw the part...
— That's why I couldn't understand. I mean, but I believed it. I just couldn't understand how you gonna do this.
— The natural mind it was impossible in the natural. But this is the amazing thing with God, when it looks like it's impossible in your natural mind, get out of your natural mind. Because your natural mind is going to hold you back and restrict you from everything that God has for you, because you're always using everything of your natural to measure where you are. And I went before God and I said, "God, you spoke this building into being. You gave me the vision. I saw the dome roof. I was under the anointing. I know, I've recorded it. Lord, how can everyone be telling me it cannot be". And the Lord said, "It shall be". I said, "Lord, they don't know what to do". He said, "I do".
— Praise God. And I'll never forget I took a piece of paper. He's told me, "Get a paper and a pencil," and I got a blank piece of white paper and I got a pencil under the anointing, and I drew what God told me to draw from an engineering perspective. I have no engineering background. I am under the anointing here right now.
— From your spirit.
— From my spirit was speaking, not my mind. In other words, my mind, everyone had said no. But in my spirit I had what I believe was God drawing it, laying it out, and I drew it all out. I found another set of architects and engineers that had previously said it can't be done. I said, "God has given me the way for it to happen". They said, "All right". It was like you could hear the hesitancy on the phone. I said, "I'd like to meet with you". We had the meeting the next day. They came. We sat around a table like this. I had the piece of paper. I pushed it across the table and I turned to face them and I said, "The Lord says, 'This is how you to do it. This is how it has to be engineered.'" They looked at it. They looked at each other, they looked at the paper, they looked at each other.
— They got the calculations out.
— They said, "We never thought of this, but we can't give you an answer now because we have to put it into the computer and the computer has to validate what you're showing us over here. Can it handle the pressures of the engineered structure of five floors high on the way that you saying it needs to happen".
— If you've ever been inside there, you'll know what he's talking about because it had to have that cantilever shape like this to hold all that up in all kinds of weather, in all kinds of situations and circumstances to keep that thing from collapsing with a bunch of people in it. And when I first came in there, I was astounded because I saw it both ways and I looked up at that and I thought, this is most miraculous looking. Well, it was miraculous, I hadn't heard this part. But I looked up at that and I was just awestruck and riding in there in that golf cart that morning. And here's the thing. It was really raining outside. It was really, really, really raining. This is the big thing. It was really raining. You stepped inside. You could hear no rain. The elements were not touching it at all. And here was this magnificent dome structure that all of this engineering had to go into this thing to take a beat up old barn and structure it so that it would never, ever collapse. Now, this is a huge thing.
— Here's what I want you to hear, they go away they enter the data into the computer. They come back to me the next day. They sit across the table and they say these words, "Our computer agrees with God".
— You think that wasn't a witness to them.
— Our computer agrees with God.
— Of course it did, he invented computers.
— Come on, victory for God. I mean, have you ever heard someone say, "Our computer agrees with God". And I sat there's the anointing hit me in such a strong way. And I realize, God, you are faithful. You are faithful. You will never let us down. You will never tell us something. You'll never take us halfway and not all the way through. You'll never take us to a point where we have to retreat. What you have spoken to us. The Word you have given us. We're going to push through. Why? Because, God, you have spoken. Your Word is always yeah and amen, your Word is always faithful and it never returns void.
— And there's no such thing as an obedient seed sown not coming to pass.
— That's right.
— There's no such thing as that. The only thing that can happen is for us to contaminate it. There's another very extremely powerful force at play here. "Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst". There was three. One, two, three.
— But Brother Kenneth, I got to tell you this because that scripture is so powerful and that Scripture confirms something to me. When they engineered it complete and this is the final little part of this engineering testament, they had the scaffolding, everything set. It was all D-day to take the pressure off it. Because they built it up with the scaffolding and then they had to release the pressure on the scaffolding for it to relax.
— See what it's going to do.
— See what it's going to do. They said if it moves more than four inches, you need to understand this is 110 meters, which is 400 and something feet in one direction and another 75, which I believe is about 265 feet. All right. If it drops more than four inches, we've got trouble, it was D-Day. And we stood there and we watched them release the pressure and the structure moved half an inch, half an inch.
— The computer agreed with God. If two or more agree over anything it shall be.
— Now, this is nowhere near in that larger complex, but it's the same thing. We left Tulsa and Gloria immediately begin to... She wanted her own home so she would take pictures and things and then she got graph paper. And she had all of her furniture in there and everything. She had it all laid out there. She came to me. She said, "Kenneth, I'm either going to have to build this house or quit. I've worked on it for 30 years now, and it's getting big". And I said, "Well, Gloria, you know, it's a dream, dream on". I remember saying that just dream on. I said, "Let it happen". So she said, "Okay, we're going to have to pray". So we went to our place where we always prayed there like that. That time it was Steamboat Springs, we went up there for a weekend sitting there on the couch that third morning, which was a Sunday morning. And here's what the Lord said. This is what I want to get to. He said, "Her dream has taken upon itself faith". And he said, "She is giving birth to that home. You minister this house to her. It's part of your prosperity". He had me turn to the 54th chapter of Isaiah and read the first three verses. I said, "Glo, I have the answer. And the Lord asked me to read this to you". I read it. She began to cry. This is important because this is the same thing. I said, "What's the matter, babe"?
— Those were the scripture I wrote on my little list from Brother Roberts' book Don't Let Anybody Steal Your Dream for the perfect house and home for our family and ministry. And then the architect... now Mac Hammond's brother in law. Lynn was a twin and his brother in law was an architect. Well, he builds big things, but he had a residential architect, I can just see it in my mind, he looked at that. She had this graph paper out there, now, he said, "I believe this is the easiest job I've ever done. All I have to do is transfer this to architectural drawings". She had already picked out the company, The Parker Company. Come to find out there were dedicated Christians. And they tore out one thing in our home. He came to me and he said, "Listen, it sure wasn't Gloria's fault. It was mine. We misread the plans". Now, the first of next month, we will have lived in that house for 23 years. Nothing, very rarely ever goes wrong with it. It was a God house. And the Parker Company said, well... and don't write me letters, I won't answer them, because they said, "We've never built one this large". Well, it looks bigger than it really is because it has a guest garage on one end. You see it from the front and it is our garage on the other end. But they said, "But we're believers and we can do it". But it was the same thing. Her dream. Your dream took upon itself faith. Began to produce. The vision came and then God did the engineering. And then they put it in the computer and it moved a half an inch.
— Praise God.
— Your dream took upon itself faith. And the two of you walking in agreement, the two of you never doubting this thing one way or the other. Just stay with your faith because it's a God plan.
— Hallelujah.
— It's a God plan.
— It is.
— The Lord told me. He said, "You stay out of it". He said, "I never told a wise man to build his nest". You tell her what you want and let her put it in there. I want you to stay out of it. I don't want you to go out there. So I went out there the day they poured the foundation and course we'd been, you know, believing all these long years for that one. And the day they poured the foundation it was paid for. Of course, it's ministry land. But anyway the house was paid for. And we had some friends. It was framed up almost. They wanted to see it. I took them out there. They said, "What is this"? I said, "I don't know".
— And what is that?
— I don't know.
— You act like you've never been here. I said, "That's right". I said, "This is hers". And what she had seen in her spirit, she already knew where to buy the antique furniture that she wanted. She already knew what the colors were. And she kept picking to... her dream took upon itself faith. And that house grew out of it. And we lived up the other end of the lake. Now, here's something I want to add to this, because I hear it in your story. We'd get the boat come down to that property, and we'd anchor up out there and she'd say, "Okay, Kenneth, at the end of it's going to be over there". I said, "Is that right"?
— And the other end is going to be over here. See, I didn't have any vision. But I believed her.
— That's awesome.
— 1st of September, the year 2000, we moved in. And I saw it for the first time. And I walked out there at the edge of the lake, and I just sat down out there and I cried. I said, "Jesus, a little country hick from Abilene, Texas. And look at this". To thank him. And so we got in the boat, and we anchored out there, and we said, "There it is". But that house was 30 years in the making. And this dream began to grow because of your need. No place to have church. Listen, you cannot do what you're called to do in a place that doesn't belong to you. So you got one that did. And we're out of time again.
— Can you believe it?
— No, but I have to. Just let that kind of just soak in it. Don't ever let anybody steal your dream. And Brother Roberts wrote a little book like that. "Don't let them steal your dreams". Their dream is from God. He dreamed of that university. He dreamed of it. We will be back in a moment.