Kenneth Copeland - Faith Stays on the Receiving Side
— Hello, everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland, and this is André and Jenny. And so... Well, Jesus is coming today. My mother would say, "Kenneth, Jesus coming this year". I said, "Mama, that's what you said last year".
— Yeah, but he's coming this year. She did that. She kept me aware of that all the time. She talked about him all the time. She talked about him all the time. Right up until the time she departed. And people are not talking about it, so we need to be talking about that. This is something that's very interesting to me. Talent: God's rich deposit on loan to you. Singing was always easy for me. I couldn't remember when I didn't do it. And I had experiences like that. And anyway, I thought it was mine. And there was a guy one time he said, "You have a nice little voice, but you'll never make a living with it". And I thought, "You wait and see". And then came up with the record. I thought it was mine to use, and I did use it and I used it to get whatever I wanted. And then the Lord began to talk to me about that, that's the reason I want to bring this up. It was not mine. It was a gift that he gave me. And he asked me and again, talk to me about it. And I was in a meeting and just singing one day and it rose up inside me. You're selling the song. Well, that's what I used to do in nightclubs and things like that, you're selling the song. And I just stopped, and I said, "That's enough of that". I didn't explain it, but I waited almost a year before I sang anymore because it was his. It wasn't mine.
— That's right. That's right.
— And if something is easy for you, you didn't do it. And I might add this too. It's a grace. And you have graces and develop them. There's talent on the inside of you. Think about now what André was talking about, what God just downloaded. The engineering, the wasn't trying to get him to be an engineer but the talent there and it is a talent. The talent there was the development of faith on a project that came from God and you knew it and Jenny knew it and it was going to happen one way or the other, and it was based on God's Word and it built a place that was impossible for the engineers to figure out how to do it.
— That's right. That's right.
— And it seems easy, but there's a lot of prayer in this, a lot of faith in it. Some people math comes easy. Other people, it doesn't. It never did with me. One of the reasons why I was dyslexic did I mix the numbers up. But nobody knew that back then. But I still have to read very carefully. But it's important... I'm not going further with that. But that came up in me to bring that up.
— Brother Kenneth, what I've developed and what I'm growing in is to make sure I stay on the giving side of God. Because if I'm on the giving side, I'm on the receiving side.
— Absolutely.
— You see, as soon as I get into a side of me that allows doubt and fear to come, what it does is it robs from me where my spirit is listening continually to God, because then I start allowing my natural senses to measure what God has for me in the natural. And I'm looking at it naturally and it doesn't work. I have to continually and you have to continually allow your spirit to be the guiding force in your life. Because if the Spirit is the guiding force in your life, then when you look at something, you're not looking at it from a perspective of a problem. You're looking at it from a perspective of if God has said it, this will be.
— You will have the plan.
— You would have the plan for it. And do you remember right at the beginning last week, we spoke about that left and right. And I want to just touch back on that just for a moment, because I want to bring us into something yet today that I really feel. Do you remember that that left side of your mind is that cause to doubt that part of you that says hold on, doubt and fear is going to dominate you, that right side is that receiving side. There's two different sides to where we've got to be. We've got to step into that right side. Now, when you put this all together and you look at the scripture and you look at that, and I want to read it in a way that maybe you've never seen it before, because do you remember Matthew six? It speaks of this. It says when you give, don't let the left hand know what the right's doing. The side of you that brings doubt. Allow the side of you that allows the increase to come forth. Don't let it affect you. What that means when you read it out in detail. And I wrote it out in a way that is from the original that I want to read to you for a full understanding. Do not let the part of you that causes doubt... Allow the part of you which receives and accepts the blessing to stop gaining and bringing forth in your life that when you give, when you put into practice what we know, when you give that seed that we gave, when you give, may it be from the inside of you and may your heart motive... This is according from the original. May your heart motive and your attitude behind your giving be from the inside of you that when God sees, that he will reward to you manifestly openly clear and obvious for everyone to see displaying your acts of giving before all men. In other words, God in that area of faith, when you step into the side of you, that is the giving side. everything changes in your life. God begins to show up over your situation. God begins to manifest himself. Now, I want to cross reference here to something just very quickly. You remember the story in the Word in John, when the disciples are going out fishing on the boat? All right. I want you to think about this, because this is the exact same scripture that God showed me from Matthew in the book of John. Do you remember in John 21, down in about verse six, there's a scripture where he says to them, he says, "Cast your nets on the right side of the boat, and you will find some". All right. He says that to the disciples. When you look at the original, that word side is not in the original. So Jesus speaking to the disciples, he's saying this, "Cast your net on the right". Now, if you know anything about fishing, you want a boat in a lake, whether you drop a line on the right or drop a line on the left, why would the fish be on the right of the boat and not on the left of the boat? Come on, you're in the middle. Have you ever thought about. I think about things like this. All right. It's like, how can the fish be on the right side but not on the left? He wasn't talking about a side, the right is put the word side... when you study, and this is why I love going back into when you look at it and that word side in the King James version is in italics which means it's not in the original. So, Jesus saying to them, "Guys, get your net on the right". What was he saying? Your net has to be dropped in faith.
— That's it.
— You are in doubt. You are fishing because you are complaining about being out all night. You are in a place of utter despair, frustration in your life. The things of everything, of the frustration of the night has played an effect on where you are. You will never be able to catch like that. And what he says is he says you've got to get yourself into a position of faith, because if you get yourself into a position of faith, you get yourself into a position of receiving.
— So they had a direction to follow,
— Correct.
— They had a plan.
— Yeah.
— And when they obeyed him and they released their faith, the fish had to do that.
— Yeah. Right.
— They had to watch it.
— They had to respond. Now, I asked as I started studying the Bible, I started looking at left and right and I started going through, just almost too much to even talk about. But what about the sheep and the goats? Come on. Think about it. Just start studying it. Where do the goats go? On the left. On the doubt. Where do the sheep go?
— The faith side.
— On the faith side. All right. And I went right through. I went through the Bible and I got to something that really, really blew me away and really set me in a thinking process of this to understanding that as born-again believers and as men and women of God, people of faith, we have to live on the right. And I want to read just something very quickly to you, because I looked at the Black's Medical Dictionary, and I want to touch on this just for a moment then I'm going to give you one last little thought here. The Black's Medical Dictionary, this is not the Bible. This is a medical dictionary, states that the human brain is made up of the cerebrum that consists of a left and a right side or ventricle. Most of our operations, such as speech, memory, taste, touch, emotions, physical senses and decision making, operate from the left side. In other words, everything that we think about all day is left side in the physical. According to an article written by Dorothy Leonard and Susan Straus, calling Putting Your Company's Whole Brain to Work an analytical, logical and sequential approach to problem framing and solving, left brain thinking clearly differs from the intuitive value based on nonlinear one right brain thinking. Now, listen, this is where it gets good. I would dare to say. Now this is the dictionary, the Blake's Medical Dictionary. I would dare to say that left-minded thinking is based on natural circumstances and facts. While right-minded thinking is based on the supernatural, faith in the unseen.
— That's it right there.
— This is in the Black's... Think about it. The natural man says seeing is believing while the born-again spirit man says believing is seeing. In other words, we've got to get to the believing, the faith side, which is when you operate on the faith side, that is the receiving side. And I went through the Bible and there was one thing that just hit me, and I want to throw this out to you. Jesus, he hangs on the cross. A thief on his left and one on his right, one would not. But there was one that would receive. He was on the receiving side at that point. It's a place we've got to live. It's a place we've got to get into. It's a place we've got to position ourselves because when you position yourself in faith on that place of receiving, it changes everything in your world because suddenly you no longer are affected, you're no longer controlled, you're no longer dominated with the fear, with the analytical thought process with well, you know, I don't have enough. I can't do this. This is what I had to learn, that we have to get out of this because in this journey of life and Jenny, you can add this was the change we had to make.
— And, you know, sometimes there's no information on the outside. So you could be in a situation where there is no logical or earthly way to do it. Just like they said, there is no answer to put this structure up in the way that you have seen it without columns or without other structures to support it. But because God said it was going to be that way, that means in the Spirit there is an answer already, which is why Kenneth Hagin said this once. And I've actually put it on my computer. He said, "If we can teach people how to follow the Spirit, we can help them in every area of life". So every single born-again child of God, who's been baptized in the Holy Spirit, we have access to a reservoir of absolute divine intelligence. The Spirit of God does that.
— Did God not give David the design of that temple?
— Come on. Come on.
— He wouldn't let him build. So Solomon did. But he had a vision and he saw that. He saw it. Moses saw the tabernacle in the wilderness. Because God designed it. And it was a place for him to dwell. This is really powerful. And you think about right and left. And I was thinking it follows that in just natural... It follows that in government thinking, the right is always conservative, the right is always tend to lean toward God and the left is socialistic. And that's where socialism came from. And Adam did it. trying to... The light went out. And they were naked. And they put together fig leaves not knowing what else to do. But God had to step in. They were afraid. They were uncovered. They tried to meet their own needs without God. And that's what the left-hand side of thinking always does
— Take him out and it,
— It is follows natural conversation. The left always... That's where socialism came from.
— That's right.
— Social ism. And then you get to Tower of Babel. Then you get Nimrod, then you get the first war. And that's where the clash of the thinking happens. And it's still going on.
— Oh, it has to. Yeah.
— And that's what we face every.
— That is an amazing revelation.
— Every day.
— That's amazing.
— And we have a choice.
— We have to choose. We have to push in and you know, that's why, I mean, even in the book and I deal with this in one whole chapter in the book, and the thing is this. We are the gift of giving. We are the gift. It's not about a gift. It's about you are the gift of positioning yourself to always be a recipient.
— If you stay on faith.
— If you stay in faith. So God has dropped it in you. It's not about I'm a believer of seed time and harvest. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying, but what I'm wanting you to realize and you at home, I want you to realize you're the gift whose God made you to be, you position yourself at that perfect place of that right side, the giving side of God, that position of faith in every area of your life and everything will come into... everything
— For some reason or other. I know, I know. I'm speaking to someone. The talent. That's a grace. It's a gift. And praise God... had a very outstanding, very successful musician. And he came to the Lord and he said this and think about what this means. Now, this is a talented person that comes into the family and says, "I know we're going hungry here, but I have to make it in this business". No, you don't. Go get yourself a job. Oh, it's my music. It's my music. And he said this. He said, "A carpenter never comes in and lays his hammer and nails down and said, 'I have to be a carpenter and I can't do anything else but be a carpenter.'" But because that's the only thing I'm good at. And we'll go hungry till I become a carpenter. That's left hand thinking pushing selfishness into a place It pays no attention at all to God. Jesse Duplantis... And I've talked about this. He really didn't know any better. Because of his situation, he had to start making a living. Well, he's good guitar player. He's a good bass player. He's good piano player. So he's out on the street and he was playing in some joint some place and he heard Billy Graham say something, couldn't get it off his mind then after the break he couldn't get what Billy Graham said off his mind and all of a sudden God took over his music. He took over his music. And he was so completely dedicated that he didn't want to do that anymore. He didn't want any part of that business anymore. I didn't either. I didn't want any part of it. I wanted Jesus. I wanted the Word. And the only time I ever raised my voice at Gloria, we were in a little rent house. I don't even remember what started it there, for few minutes, I'm just going on. And, you know, I came to myself. I just stopped. I said, "Oh, Gloria, you didn't deserve that". And I just fell over on this couch. I'm saying this for real. Here's all this music in my background. There's all this airplane business in my background. At one time, "Oh my God, what happens if I flunk the physical"? And all of this compounded in my life and I fell over there over all that green couch. I went to sleep. I thought I slept around the clock. But I realized when I woke up, I didn't. She was right here. I said, "Oh, Gloria, I got to preach". She said, "I know it". From that day to this, I don't care what happened. I never questioned the fact I'm called to preach, never did she. And most marriages would have probably ended. I deserved it. She could have just boxed my jaw, it would have been fine. But her love took over and all of that other that's went out the door. That decision was made. That's what triggered it. And we'll be back in just a moment.