Kenneth Copeland - Listen To the Holy Spirit Within
— Hello, everybody I'm Kenneth Copeland. Let's get on right into this. This is Greg. This is them. We have a lot of ground to cover this week. Let's go back over to the book of Exodus, and I'll show you how you can just pull little verses of Scripture out, make them say something they did not say. Now, look at verse 25, "You shall serve the Lord your God and he shall bless your bread and water. And I will take sickness from the midst of you". Whose the he? Well, it's God. No, no, it isn't. It's an angel.
— That's right.
— Well, verse 20. "Behold, I sent an Angel before you to keep you in the way to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him and obey his voice. Provoke him not for he will not pardon your transgressions. For my name is in him". It's the angel that will bless your bread and water. Now, over in the first chapter of Hebrews, are they not all ministering spirit for the heirs of salvation? So you go into a restaurant and you begin to pray over the meal and you say, Father, thank You very much. We're receiving what we've ordered, ministering spirits you go back in there and you make sure that food wasn't dropped on the floor before they put it on my plate and make certain that it's done well and cared for because I might have to eat this in a little bit... my angel.
— Yeah, but Gideon seems to be provoking this angel. He's not intending to, but I believe that this angel being given instruction Hesed with him because he's got an assignment to do. A fleece is of your senses. Guys, let me help you. Of your senses is not of your spirit. You don't access the will of God that way, through your senses. There are three voices. Your spirit, your human spirit has a voice. Your mind has a voice. And your body has a voice. Your body's voice has feelings. Well, I just feel like God heard my prayer. That's the dumbest thing.
— I just feel the Spirit. Which one?
— Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have people today say, "I just want a visitation from the Lord. I want an angel to visit me". Why? You have the greater One living on the inside of you.
— Yeah, you brought it up. The first meeting I went on with Brother Roberts was in Memphis, Tennessee. First one. So I did not know what the procedures were. They didn't tell me much, I was finding this out. Well, Brother DeWeese had the afternoon service. Then I found out later that a lot of people got healed in those services, but a whole lot of people got baptized in the Spirit. But nobody told me this, so I just followed him and wound up. There were so many sick people in there, you could smell it. It scared me. I'm a scripture, predominately illiterate. I've never seen things like these before. I just went to the exit, went outside. I just stood out there kind of trembling, and I heard the Lord say, "Where are you going"? I said, "I'm gonna go get a Greyhound bus and I'm going back to Tulsa". They can get that airplane home anyway they want do. Why? Well, you know why. He stopped me right then. And on the inside he said, "Kenneth, I could have filled you with an angel". I said, "What"? He said, "What do you think demon possessed people, their fallen angelic beings. I could have filled you with a mighty angel, but I didn't trust you with an angel. I filled you with myself and you speak my supernatural language. I have called you and anointed you to do something about this. Now it's your choice. Go home or go back in there". I step through that door and fell in love with the Miracle Deliverance Ministry. I couldn't get enough. Let me in there and get my hands on these people. I realized who's in me. And then I read it in the book. "Greater is he that is in me, that he that's in the world". And he's right here and he talks to me here, glory to God.
— He's this close, he's this close. Romans eight. We started the week with it. Romans eight verse 14. "For as many are led by the Spirit of God. These are the sons of God, for you've not received the spirit of bondage again to fear". That's Gideon. "But you've received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba Father. The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit".
— Beareth witness, get that, get it, beareth witness. That's what we're going to talk about for the rest of this week.
— We are the children of God, then the children heirs. Heirs, according to God, joined heirs with Christ.
— Now joined heirs with him. We're not sub heirs.
— Equal.
— By hesed, we're equal to him by his blood and his name. The inward witness.
— How does this work? Let me give you another verse. Proverbs Chapter 20 in verse 27. You'll know what the minute I start to say it. The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly, the spirit of man. He resides in your spirit. God's never going to speak to your mind because he's not in your mind, he's in your spirit. This is where it's going to come from. It's going to come from your belly. Lord doesn't communicate with your mind. He's not in my mind. He's in my spirit. He's in my human spirit. That's why I said when we started a while ago, there are three voices. The voice of my body, the voice of my mind, will, emotions or the soulish voice and the voice of my spirit. The voice of my body is feelings. The voice of my mind is intellect, reasoning. It'll be like this. This is how you would say it. Well, let's list all the pros and the cons. No, that's right here. You see, and there's a lot of people that only access God right here, mental assent. But the voice of your spirit. The best way to put it, my human spirit sounds like conscience. My conscience, it'll sound, and now it's learned to train, to hear his Spirit in my spirit. A lot of times it'll sound like authority. Have you ever heard in here something Brother Copeland said? I have. I've heard Brother Hagin right here. I've heard my own father and mother right here. Well, that's the Lord speaking to me because I can prove it with little Samuel. He goes running to the prophet Eli, thinking that he called him. Finally, Eli got through. Oh well yeah this is the Lord. It sounds like authority.
— The night I accepted Jesus as my Lord and my Savior. You heard, I was born in Lubbock. Then six weeks later, because my dad had a better job with the same with Drones Business College. We moved to Abilene but we went to the University Baptist Church in Abilene, Texas. That church was connected to Baylor. And Hardin Simmons University and the University Baptist Church was his. We had... and the Baptist Church Sunday school was whole lot like school, you graduated up in years. Well, Mrs. Taggert was such a good teacher and she loved us boys. And she just I mean, she just sit and put up with us. And so there was a handful of us went to the Sunday school superintendent and told him, now we want Mrs. Taggert as our teacher and if not, we're just not coming back. So Mrs. Taggert graduated with us. So the second day of November, 1962, I came in from a trip where I had flown an executive of the Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company. You've heard me tell that story here but they haven't, maybe. I thought it's a day like any other. And so I had to wait for him, planned on that, Gloria waited until late waited on me and she was still at the stove when I got home. I went to the bedroom, change clothes to come out there. I had one shoe on and off and all of a sudden, just suddenly I heard it in my spirit. "Kenneth, if you don't get right with me, you're headed to a devil's hell, son". I said, "I know it" because I was raised right. But what do I do now? Now, here's my point. I heard her voice. I recognized her. Now we all called her, she called herself old Lady Taggert. We called her that. It wouldn't disrespectful. And I thought, that's old lady Taggert. I heard her say kind of like this. "Boys, you have to ask Jesus to come into your heart".
— That was the last voice of spiritual authority you'd heard.
— That's it, that's the point I want to make. And I said this to myself, this sounds just as dumb as the first time I heard it. Well my goodness. I mean, had it been so many years ago, she was still in here. That's my point. She was still in here. Heaven says she won me to the Lord.
— You just had your moment of how can a man be born again? You know, that sounds just as dumb as the first time I heard it, you know.
— I did it. That moment I didn't know I was a new creature. I just knew I couldn't close my mouth for about 5 or 6 seconds, and profanity was gone forever. But that's my point. Her voice was still in my spirit. It was in my dead spirit. A dead spirit is one that does not have a relationship with God.
— That's all.
— And like we said, hence the term born-again. And so Gloria had never heard that term. She's raised in Church of Christ, they majored on water baptism, they didn't use it, she'd never heard it so she didn't know to pray that. She just said take my life and do something with it. And then after, when she received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that's the first time she heard that term being born again, a new creature in Christ Jesus. Now, this new creature, world calls it a hunch, because I'm born again, people can have it. We call it an inward witness. Roy Hicks, overseer of the Foursquare Church. Of course he's in heaven now. A very close friend of Brother Hagin, I met him and anyhow... Did you ever meet him?
— I did. And to visit with him, man was so brilliant I just sit there and said, "Uh huh, uh huh..."
— I open my mouth and prove what I don't know. I know I get it.
— Yes sir. Thank you. He did a research study on people in his church and people that he knew that had had drastic accidents or deaths over the years. Now, listen to me, class. He did not find one single one that did not have a warning witness in their spirit before they did what they did. Cost some of them their life.
— That's right.
— Now a very close friend of ours and he was... they were scheduled on the airline he and some of his people and one of his men in his church. He had an inward witness. No, he said something like, no, I'm not going on this flight. And he said, "No, I'm not going on this flight. No, I'm not going on that flight". Well, the man that did died. Now, when Gloria and I were on the airlines, we spiritually hijacked that thing every time we got in it. But still, if it rose up on the inside of me. Why don't you go take care of something else. I'm gone. I will not violate that. Even if it turned out to be wrong, I rather be wrong than dead. And besides that, I'm going to honor that with God. Because if I don't, I'll get so spiritually dead to his voice. I won't hear it when I need it. That inward witness. And over the years, one of the men that Brother Hicks talked about, he said that this man is a member of his church. He and his wife had gone on a trip and he was trying to hurry her up. Come on and let's get dressed. Come on. They were just trying to get back home. And so they backed out and left just in time. Now, listen, class, listen to me out there. Just in time. Just as a signal light turned green, he took off and a car rammed the right side of their car and killed his wife. And he said, "Well, you know. I kept thinking, why am I in such a hurry? Why am I in such a hurry? I'm just in a hurry, no reason to be". And he said, "I kept thinking, well, you know, whatever". But he said, "I just kept pushing her". Now he had to live with that. That's a terrible thing. There were things like that. Just listen to that inward witness. There was a young man. He came to one of our services there at Grace Temple. He was so excited and he was so thrilled about the things that he had learned and so forth. And he left church there one night, there was a... I think it was a butane truck or something that just rammed into his car, just rammed into it. Now, he had prayed and was very excited about the protection of God, and he prayed that. And so going home from church, that butane truck hit his car and his car burned. Class, suddenly he was standing on the curb there watching his own car burn. And he had the proof of it. Because he had his Bible and my book on The Laws of Prosperity in his Bible. And it was up on the dashboard of the car and it didn't burn.
— Had the witness.
— Had the witness...
— Don't override it.
— Never, never. I don't talk about it much. I get that witness. I will with Gloria. What do you think about this? Now, let me give you a good inward witness. We were at Southwest. I don't remember now who was preaching. In my memory I have Jerry Savelle, I think probably it was. Well, I was sitting back there and Kurt like I always did, listen to everybody, you know, and sometimes I didn't get a chance to listen, but I'd get all the tapes and relisten to them but anyway, listen to everybody. I was sitting back there and I heard this in my spirit. I want you to believe me for a Cessna Citation X right now. If I tell you to go to Tokyo in the morning, I don't want you to have to ask someone if you can go. Well, at that time, that's the fastest civilian jet on the planet. The rest of the manufacturers had to catch up with it. Suddenly, Gloria popped through the curtain. She'd been out there listening to Jerry preach. She popped through there. She said, "Kenneth, the Lord just spoke to me". I said, "He just spoke to me. What do you say to you"? She said, "You first". I told her. She said, "That's exactly what the Lord said with me. We had the inward witness. We sowed the seed". See how it works? I didn't hear an audible voice. I've only heard it one time, but it was in here. It was very strong, but you practice the presence of God.
— That's why you renew your mind.
— Yes.
— Paul tells you to renew your mind. You listen and you listen and you listen and you take the time. Take off and pray in the Spirit and get your notebook. And you just sit there. Then you say, "Father, give me utterance, please". And you begin to write and... Well, now wait a minute. I don't know whether that agrees with the Word or not. We'll just put that up on the shelf.
— See, that's a person, a police person is a person and won't take responsibility to listen to the Father and find out his thoughts and his will. Last week you shared about a pastor in Columbia that learned how to do it. He spent half the day. He retrained himself. Most people don't want to wait on him. They want microwaves answers.
— He got up 4:00 in the morning until lunch. His first meal of the day was at noon. Nobody came to his church except the handful of people that helped him started, for 15 years before he heard the Lord say that. And then he got so big that just a few years ago and our Spanish team went to check it out. He had a convention and had 1 million people there. You think it was worth it? The inward witness, the Lord told him what to do. You praise and worship on Sunday. You praise and worship for at least an hour. And I'll do the miracle. So his Sunday morning process. He obeyed that and he began to do that. And they would praise and worship. That is very scriptural. We enter into God's praise when we pray, but he enters into ours when we praise him. And the miracles begin to happen and the miracles begin to happen and the healings and just outlandish things begin to happen, then what did he do? He gives an invitation, first, not after he preaches. He didn't get the memo that you're supposed to do it the other way. I was there on two different Sundays. I saw it. He gives an invitation. Packed the front of that church. Then after he gave the invitation, then he would preach. Well, then he would have me preach. And he said in Spanish, "I call Brother Copeland up here and I do this. All I get is faith". That's what he said. He said, "If I ring him like a rag, all that comes out is faith".
— So he followed what God told him to do. It's not up to you to tell God how to lead you, listen to him and he'll tell you. He may tell you to get up in the morning like that. He may tell you to do something else, but be obedient to him.
— In this last 30 seconds more than once. More than once. I'll just pray until the scripture comes up on the inside of me and I go to that Scripture. And I'll say, "Here's what You said. This is what You said," because I heard him say, "Let my Word fight its own fight". It is of the sword of the Spirit. This is what you said, now do it. And we're out of time. We'll be back in just a moment.