Kenneth Copeland - God Is Love and Love Gives
— Would you join me today in welcoming Brother Jerry Savelle to this broadcast?
— Thank you, sir.
— Bless you, sir. Just right before we turned the cameras on, I asked Jerry where he wanted to start with today. And he gave me the scripture on the 68th Psalm. And we read that. I'm just going to turn it over to you right now because the joy of the Lord is absolutely all over me over this. And he said, the 19th verse, "Blessed be the Lord who daily loads us with benefits". Glory.
— That's something to shout about, isn't it?
— Oh, yeah. And just before, I mean, just as we opened it up, it just rolls up in me. He's loading me up again today.
— Keeping it on.
— He's loading me up. Glory to God.
— I don't mind it when that says, "That guy must be loaded".
— I'm loaded. Oh, amen. Praise God. Jerry, it's just wonderful to have you on here for all this week and all next week. We're going to have some fun. Praise God. I'm already having it. Amen. That just got all over me. He loads us up. And, you know, religion's taught us for years that he's holding back and just barely doling out a little, you know, twice in a whole lifetime, maybe. But then, but when you find out the truth about the whole matter is, he's just going to load you with everything he has. That's the reason he created man in the first place.
— Well, He can't help Himself. The Bible says God is love, and love gives.
— That's what love does.
— Love gives. You know, somebody wrote a book years ago about the five love languages, and one of them is giving. And that's the way I love people. People I love, I'm constantly looking for a way to give to them. I got that from God, and that's the way God is. He is in so much love with us, which, you know, a lot of people find hard to believe, even Christian people. It's amazing to me the number of Christian people that still are not convinced that God loves them that much. But a loving God is always looking for an opportunity to bless his people, to bring benefits and advantages into their life. And, you know, that's what love does.
— His love, desire for the world. The world-famous verse, John 3:16, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. His desire to love and give far outweighed all of the bad, the sin, and all that the devil could do to separate God and man. His desire to give far outweighed that. So that where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. And that's really what we're getting into. I mean, when you get right down to it, grace is so big, man. It is so huge. It is what love does.
— It's how we got in when we didn't deserve to get in. That's what grace is. It allows us to get in when we didn't deserve to get in. And then when we get in, it loads us up.
— Glory to God.
— You know, that's why Paul, I believe, in Ephesians 3, prayed for the body of Christ to get a revelation of the length, the breadth, the depth, and the height of the love of God. If it ever becomes a revelation to you of just how much God loves you, your days of failure and defeat are over.
— They're over, yeah. I know that from my own personal experience, and I know that from the Word. It's all over the Bible. When David got a glimpse of how good God is, it overcame everything that looked like it was going to destroy him, looked like it was going to destroy his relationship with God, his relationship with everything he ever knew that was good in his life, and the end was better than the beginning.
— One particular psalm that was such a revelation to David that about five or six different times in one psalm, and I can just see him do it, "Oh, that men would praise him for his marvelous work, for his goodness". He'd write about what God did, and then he'd just have to lift his hands and say, "Oh, I wish men would just praise him if they knew how good he was".
— Well, by the time David wrote this 68th Psalm, he was the chief musician. I mean, and here he's the one that said, "Blessed be the Lord who daily loads us with benefits, even the God of my salvation". Oh, it was flowing through him just like it's flowing through us in here today.
— And then notice the last word in there is selah, which means stop and think about this.
— Think about that.
— If God's people would stop and just meditate on that for a couple of weeks, you know, don't read any other verses for a couple of weeks, just read that one verse. Meditate on that, get a revelation of the love of God, get a revelation of how much love wants to give to you and the fact that he wants to do it on a daily basis. You know, religion has tried to convince Christians that, you know, God may or may not meet your needs. Don't get your hopes up too high. Don't even talk to him about desires and wants. He's not interested in that. But that's a lie because right here it says he will daily load us with benefits. I looked up before coming in here the word "benefit", and it says something that aids or promotes well-being. God is looking for a way every day to bless us with things that aid or promote well-being. He's not wanting any of us to hurt. He's not wanting us to suffer. He's not wanting us to barely exist, barely get by. I don't care what the economy is doing. It doesn't make any difference what Wall Street is doing. It's God's desire that every day of our life, we are experiencing something from Him that promotes well-being.
— Praise God.
— No wonder Jesus said in John 10:10, I've come to give you life and life more abundantly, but the Amplified says not only life more abundantly and have life, but enjoy it to the full.
— Overflowing.
— Overflowing to the full. Now, that swallows up needs long ago.
— Oh, yeah. Yeah.
— But God's not talking about needs. He's talking about richly giving, supplying, benefiting, overflowing every day.
— Yeah, every day.
— And what strikes me about every day is every moment of the day, every day.
— Yeah, that's right. Well, you go back to Genesis 1 where God created man and immediately after creating him, he said, the Bible said, and God blessed them.
— And He blessed.
— And God blessed them. Now, at that time, sickness and disease didn't exist. Poverty didn't exist. Lack or want didn't exist. Suffering, affliction, pain, calamity, none of those things existed and God blessed them. Now, when they became disobedient is when all this came in. But Genesis 1:26 through 28 reveals God's original intent and that was that man lived blessed every day of his life. You move over to Psalm 115, I believe it is, and it says, "The Lord hath been mindful of us. He will bless us". That tells me that what's on the mind of God 24-7 is blessing His people. Making life better for His people.
— He never changes.
— No. And you get over to Jeremiah 29 and 11, I know the thoughts that I think toward you, they're good and not evil. And one translation says, to give you the future you've hoped for. Hallelujah. Yeah.
— Amen.
— Man, I'm living that. I never dreamed growing up and going to that little country church where my mom and dad took me, because I never heard anything like this. And they were wonderful people. The pastor was a good man. He just didn't know these things. So we never heard that. We weren't taught that God wanted to bless us every day of our lives. But growing up in that little church and just hearing a basic religious message, you know, mostly, you know, all of sin and come short of the glory of God. We heard about sin every Sunday. You know, and consequently, every time he gave an invitation, everybody in the church lift their hand and get saved again. You know. But to know that God's intent was that we live blessed every day of our life. I didn't know that until I finally surrendered my life to the Lord in 1969. And, of course, getting a hold of your messages and you teaching me about the blessing of Abraham. That's the first time I'd ever heard that phrase. I didn't know there was a blessing of Abraham until I heard you teach it. And going through that tape and taking me through the Bible and showing me how that Abraham's blessing belonged to me. Well, we didn't see. Carolyn and I didn't see the results of that overnight. We didn't see results of it or it even manifesting over a period of days or weeks. But eventually, it started happening. And then, of course, I began to study the blessing. And it became a major course-setting event in my life. And from the blessing, I learned that favor was one of the major characteristics. And I started studying favor. And the next thing you know, I come away realizing, hey, God is wanting me to see His blessing and His favor operate in my life every day. Hallelujah.
— All the time. Everywhere you go, whatever you do, His role in it is to see to it. He's your Lord. His role in it is to see to it that you are overly supplied, overly protected, overly directed, overly corrected, and all of these things because, now, I really want you to get a hold of this. This is at the heart of this whole thing. God sees us already in heaven, supplies our needs according to His riches in glory. Ephesians 2, we've been raised up together, made to sit together with Him in heavenly places. Philippians 3.20, our citizenship is in heaven. Colossians 3, if we then be risen with Christ Jesus, set our minds on things above. Or thinking like we are already in heaven. So the reality of it is, we're not employed here by heaven. We are deployed here. Like, we're the army of the Lord, and we're deployed in the earth. Our supply comes from home. When we get to where we think like we're already there, and we've been sent here, instead of just being here, looking to go there. But we're already there, and we've been sent here.
— And His will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
— His kingdom has come on earth. When we renew our minds and get to where we think that way, then our supply is every day loaded, abundant. Amen. That ought to be our mindset, shouldn't it?
— Yeah. And it should create an expectancy of it. And, of course, the more you expect it, the more you're going to experience it. I get up every day expecting the blessing of God, the favor of God, to manifest in some way before the sun goes down.
— Yes, I do.
— And it does. It's not a rare thing that I experience that. It is, in fact, for me not to experience the favor of God in my life on a daily basis would be uncommon in the way that my life is today. But I had to develop that way, back there as a result of seeing verses like this that God wanted something happening in my life on a daily basis. Even go to the prayer that's been called the Lord's Prayer, you know, the model prayer. And Jesus said in that prayer that we receive our daily bread. Bread is symbolic or representative of sustenance or provision. So even in that Lord's Prayer, Jesus is saying, we can expect something from God every day.
— You know what? I never thought of this until right then. But Jesus was praying that prayer, Matthew 6, according to this.
— He had to be.
— He had to be. I mean, give us this day our daily bread. Bless the Lord who daily loads us with benefits.
— Another translation there says, "Bless the Lord God of our salvation who supports us day after day". Supports us. In other words, whatever we might need, and then it even goes beyond what we might need, whatever we desire. If you're delighting yourself in the Lord, He will give you the desires of your heart. You know, to me, now this has taken years to get to this place. But to me, meeting my needs is the lowest form of God's provision in my life, that when it becomes a revelation to you, that God supplies your needs. I mean, that's just part of life. God supplies your needs. But then you get over to what Paul said to Timothy, and he says that men ought to trust in the Living God who giveth us all things richly to enjoy or for our enjoyment. That now it's a matter of whatever is manifesting in my life as a result of the blessing and the favor of God on my life, it's God doing it because He knows it will bring joy to my life.
— Oh, yes.
— And He knows that it's not going to drive me from Him. I'm not going to get my eyes on the things that He blesses me with. I'm still delighting myself in Him. I'd be a fool for getting my eyes on the things and getting them off of Him when He's the one providing the things.
— Now, you go load yourself with things. They have sorrow in them. They'll cause you trouble.
— Or you stay up all night trying to figure out how you're going to keep them.
— But the blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich. And He adds no sorrow with it. So the source of the things makes all the difference in the world. I was thinking right down these lines, and I was just praising and worshiping the Lord there. He gives us all things richly to enjoy, and I was just thinking about that. And the Word of the Lord came to me. He said, "Kenneth, do I give you things to meet your needs"? I said, "Yes, You do". He said, "No, I don't". I said, "Really"? He said, "No. I give you all things richly to enjoy. They meet your needs". But He said, "My purpose was not to meet your needs. My purpose was to see you be in joy". Joy is His purpose.
— Well, that's the prayer Jesus prayed over in the book of John. Father, that the joy I have might be their joy, and that they might be full of joy. So obviously when a need is met in my life, it brings joy. But God meeting that need was not just for the purpose of meeting a need. What He's after is bringing joy to my life.
— Generate that joy. Which is your strength, by the way.
— Mm-hmm.
— And then He went ahead to say, "Ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full". So joy was the purpose all the time, wasn't it?
— But you know, there's a higher level of joy than that of when a need has been met in your life, that produces joy. But when you're able, that God is blessing you so much, daily loading you, that you're able to meet the needs of other people. Now there's a joy that's even on a higher level.
— Well, I kept thinking maybe this was going to come up down the line, but it ain't going to hold. Let's look over here in the book of Mark. Let's mark our place here, because we're going to come back here to Psalm 68. Let's go over here to the book of Mark 10, and Jesus telling His disciples, Verse 29, "There is no man that hath let house, brethren, sisters, father, mother, wife, children, or lands, for my sake and the gospel. But he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time houses". Plural.
— Plural.
— Brethren, sisters, mothers, children, and lands. Now, a hundredfold. Now, what pops into your thinking with houses? Do I need more than one house? Maybe a vacation home somewhere? Maybe that would be houses, or maybe a third house, houses. See, we're still mully-grubbing down around here in one or two or three. But He's talking about kingdom business here. Seek first the kingdom of God, giving for His sake and the gospels, and all these things shall be added to you. Now, I was in Brother Keith Moore's Sunday morning service down in Sarasota, Florida a few weeks ago, and he started talking about houses, and it was just like it just, and he made this statement, this is kingdom business. All of a sudden, it was like God just pulled back a curtain. I saw housing development. Now, that's houses.
— Yeah.
— And here's what I heard the Lord say. All of these things shall be added to you. All of these things come into the kingdom of God by the faith of the people who believe beyond themselves. Amen. He said, "If you're having trouble with a second house, how could I ever give you a housing development? How could I ever give you a thousand houses to help people with"?
— Right. And that'd be the purpose of it, to be a blessing.
— To believe beyond yourself. To be a blessing. To believe beyond yourself. Houses. Lands.
— Now, that's loaded.
— That's loaded.