Kenneth Copeland - You Can't Fail When You Walk In Love
— Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast, broadcast, broadcast. Well, all right. Hallelujah. We're here in southwest Arkansas. Amen. I don't know, this place just does me that way.
— It's a happy place.
— It is a happy place, isn't it? And we just enjoy this place so much, and we want to give you the opportunity to be a part of it here and join us in the things of God. Father, we thank You today. We receive Your presence. We receive Your grace and mercy. And, Father, help us, help us get greater insight into the fact that You are love, that trusting love is trusting You. And trusting You, we must develop our trust in Your love, Your mercy, Your goodness, Your kindness, which endures forever. And we receive it today in revelation from heaven today concerning it. And we thank You for it. In Jesus' name, amen. We had, a couple of nights ago, we had about 4 12 inches of rain here. And so every, oh, the pond is overflowing, and they'll show you pictures of the little brook. I know you've been able to hear it. Well, these are not sound effects, folks. I mean, we out here, you know what I mean?
— And it's the real thing.
— Amen. The birds and everything. We had, you remember the one person that wrote us and said, "Your bird machine is too loud"?
— Where is our bird? Where's Word Bird?
— Word Bird.
— Have you heard him?
— Just a little bit. I haven't heard him.
— Tim says he heard him.
— Real loud. He was not right as close as he was at that time. Anyway, we said, that was not a machine. That was a bird. Amen. They got to call him Word Bird anyway. This little brook, we sat down here and Gloria said, "See that little stream right there"? I said, yeah. She said, "That's just like the Holy Spirit. You can sit here and watch it, or you can go get in it, but He's always flowing. He's always moving in a direction towards outpouring. He's always moving a direction towards grace. He is always out to bless and to empower. The way to get the biggest you can is to obey what He says". Well, I just... Now the moment you start to whining, you're not trusting the love. Yeah, but what if... Yeah, but what if God loves you? So you learn to turn it around instead of, yeah, but what if... I remember when the Lord first told us to go to Tulsa, to Oral Roberts University. I didn't know anything about the Word. Oh, I was so determined. I'll tell you, I was so in love with Jesus. I wanted to do everything I could, but we had two little children. I said, "Gloria, if we just take off and go up there, we'll starve". She said, "Kenneth, we're starving now. We might as well starve in the will of God than out".
— Weren't we great, deep?
— Well, but that, hey, that... I saw it when she said that. I saw what I was doing, and later I began to realize I didn't trust Him. I thought I did.
— Well, we just didn't know enough.
— But I didn't. I didn't trust Him. The Word says, "Lean not to your own understanding". Well, that's what I was doing, but trust in the Lord with all your heart. Now to do that, you're going to have to believe His love, and you're going to have to trust His love. That comes from developing it and renewing your mind to the fact that He is love.
— Always has the best plan. Always has the best plan. Not second best, but the best.
— He's not trying to hurt you. He's trying to help you. He's not trying to put you down. He's trying to raise you up. Now, let's read our scripture there in I John today. And remember this, what is it you need to be scriptural?
— Scripture.
— Scriptures. Amen. Amen. I got that from Keith Moore. Praise God. Who got it from Jesus? Now, I John 4, Verse 8, "He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love". Now, Verse 15, "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God". Now, remember God is love. "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, who is love, God who is love dwelleth in him, and he in God, who is love". So in the beginning, love created the heavens and the earth. Amen.
— Look around you.
— Yeah. And think about that garden. I mean, He created that garden out of His love. It was the best He had. And He created this, and He saw it was good. Created that, and saw it was good. Created man, and then He created his wife, and saw that it was good. And then it was the bad... There's nowhere in there it said He created cancer, or created storms, and all that came after man's sin.
— Didn't create sin, either.
— No, no, no, no, no. No. All that came after man's union with Satan as a result of Satan's absolute hatred for man and God. Now, let's look here. We have known, verse 16, "We have known and believed the love that God, who is love, has to us. God is love. And he that dwells in love who is God, dwelleth in God who is love, and God who is love in Him". Now, I kept adding that in there. I want you to start doing that so that you begin to have a higher reference for love. Don't be going, we won't take time to go back there, but don't be loving your new car, loving your new clothes, or loving pizza, or whatever else it is. Everybody just slings the word love around like... But that's the reason you have really no regard for the word love. And you can carry on with that study. That's simple. But the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy and said, "Tell them that they're rich in this world, not to be high-minded, but to be ready to distribute, ready and willing to distribute, to give, to sow, to help people. For he gives us all things", say all things. "All things, richly to enjoy". Now, how do you receive all things? Jesus said, seek ye first the kingdom of God, the kingdom of who? Who is love. Seek ye first the kingdom of love, and all these things will be added to you. See, that's what love does. Love adds to you. He doesn't take away from you. Now, the devils lied on God and said, "Well, you know, He'll take away everything you have".
— You know what he's always trying to get people to do? We see it in Scripture. Curse God and die. He told people in Scripture, curse or at least one person. That's what he tried to do with Job.
— Curse God and die.
— That's his whole deal. Die, die, die, die.
— He talks bad about God. He talks like God's the problem instead of him. He's the problem.
— Well, he tries to divert your attention.
— Yeah, that's right.
— And when you say things like, well, that just scared me to death. Don't that thrill you to death? Oh, don't you just love it? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all you're doing is praising him because he's the author of death. He's the author of fear. I mean, that's what you're doing. You're giving him praise. Anyway, let's... Once you know better, you don't have to do that.
— "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love. He that dwells in love dwells in God and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect or perfected that we may have boldness in the day of judgment because as He is, so are we in this world".
— Glory to God.
— "There is no fear in love". Yeah, thank You, Lord. Yeah, I'll do that. Glory to God. Thank You, sir. Oh, two places, Philippians 2. Let's turn there. Philippians 2. We'll look at Verse 5 there, and then I Corinthians 2, Verse 16. Now, let's look at I Corinthians 2, Verse 16. We'll look at that first. For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Now, listen, very familiar Scripture, but we're looking at the love of God here. Amen? "For who hath known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ". Translate the word Christ, the anointed One, His anointing. We have the same anointing available for our minds as Jesus has for His and what He had while He was in the earth. Now, that's the love of God. But let's go over here to Philippians 2, and let's find out what the mind of Christ is. "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God". Now, wait a minute. He said, let this mind, that's the mind of Christ, Gloria. That's the way Jesus thought. That's the way He thinks now. He didn't think it was robbing or taking away from God to be called equal with God. But now, what about us? How can we think like that? I mean, you're not taking away from the deity and the majesty of God to be called equal with God?
— Think about it, though. That's why we had to be born again.
— Well, yeah. You took the words right out of my mouth. That's exactly what it was, because He recreated us in the very image of Jesus, who is exactly like and equal with God. Now, what does that make us? We're born of love.
— Born of love, born of God. God is love.
— One more step. God is love. So are we.
— That's right.
— We're not just born. Well, I mean, we're not just filled with His love. We're born of that love. Our spirit man is as much love as Jesus is, because He said this, God loves us as much as He does Him. And right before He went to the cross, He prayed that. God revealed to the world. You love them as much as you do me. Well, then we were born of the Spirit, born of the Word, born of the Spirit of love, born of the Word of love, recreated into the likeness of love. I'm talking about the inner man. But now, inside your born-again spirit is the fruit of the Spirit. That's not the fruit of the Holy Spirit. That's the fruit of your reborn spirit.
— It's in there.
— It's in there, because He's in there. And, of course, it's the fruit of the Spirit of God.
— You know, this, as you know, this area up here used to be peach orchards, and my granddaddy's peach orchards. And, oh, those peaches were so delicious. There was nothing wrong with those peaches. But somebody had to go pick those peaches to partake of them. And that's the way it is with the fruit of the Spirit. It's born in us. It's in there. Love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness is part of the newborn human spirit. But we've got to yield to that fruit to walk in it.
— For it to grow. It has to grow and become dominant in your thinking.
— We yield to love. We yield to faith. Whoo, hallelujah.
— You want to finish this? You're taking the words right out of my mouth. I love it.
— Go ahead.
— Okay, that's the way, those are supernatural. That's the way the Spirit of God moves supernaturally. I was one time with Jerry Savelle. He came from one city, I came from another. And they said, "We want both of you to preach today. Which one's going to go first"? I don't know. And so the guy said, "Brother Copeland, why don't you go first"? I said, okay. Jerry went to his room, I went to mine. We hadn't talked to one another in months. We got in there that night. And no, wait, I had it backwards. He said, "Brother Savelle, you go first. Brother Copeland, you follow". I said, okay. And I had this very notebook right here. This was about, oh, this was probably 30 years ago. I had my notebook sitting right here. And I had the message outlined there, faith in the name of Jesus, part two. Because that's what the Lord told me to do. Well, I'm sitting there like this, and I'm sitting next to the man that was the head of the Full Gospel Businessmen's chapter there for whom we were speaking. And Jerry walked up there, and he starts preaching on faith in the name of Jesus. I said, "Do you want to see a miracle"? He said, yeah. I said, "Okay, watch". I never said anything to Jerry about this. And he preached.
— You're both heard from God.
— Gloria, he preached right down to where I was going to start, and he read the scripture. He said, "You know, I believe that's, I want to finish this point right here, and I'm going to turn it over to Brother Copeland". It was just a moment.
— Led by the Spirit.
— Supernatural move of the Spirit. And I want you to learn this. People miss the supernatural looking for the spectacular. These things are supernatural. The Spirit of God is living in you. And the more you speak about love, the more you talk about God being love, the more you confess it with your mouth, the more you practice it, fear gets flushed out of there, and love, joy, peace, long-suffering or patience, gentleness, goodness. Amen.
— That's good.
— Isn't it good? It starts growing up in there... Faithfulness.
— Faith works by love.
— Amen. And, oh, and God is good and His mercy endures forever. And what happens? You get to where you're the same way. You get to where, instead of launching back at people, something rises up in you, and you say, no, no, no, no. Now, wait a minute. Now, what difference does that make to me? I got any part of this, or am I just judging those folks? Particularly watching news broadcasts and stuff like that. And the Lord said to me more than once, He said, "I can't trust you with the news broadcast until you don't quit. I'm going to command you to stop watching it". So I did for a while. I just quit watching it and totally immersed myself in the Word of God. You can get news before it happens if you know how to listen. And then the Lord said, okay, now, but you watch your mouth. Can't get mad at them for what they're talking about. Anyway, you can't get mad at the news broadcast and develop the fruit of the Spirit. No, you develop your flesh when you're doing that. That's the difference. Why? Let this mind be in you. For instance, let's go over to I Corinthians 13, the great love chapter. Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not love. And you notice the King James translation translates agape as charity. And I wonder, why, why would they translate that like that? Of course, it was translated hundreds of years ago. And I thought, why do that? Why didn't they just say love? And one day it just, it came as a revelation to me. They were trying to get this across because back there then, charity was a big deal. You had to be a charitable person and to be part of a charitable organization was to help people that absolutely could not help themselves. And, I don't want any charity. Yeah, you do. They were talking about the giving love and nature of God. And they used a word that we don't use anymore. But if you go back and look up that word charity in old English... I'm seeing something if I can get it out. It's the reason it's called charity is because charity, when you give to charity, you don't expect anything back from that charity. And that's the way giving love is. You walk in that giving love, even if somebody's not walking in love with you. You're blessed and you're free.
— Look what he said, though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not the love of God, I'm become as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Now, he just talked about the nine manifestations of the Holy Spirit and the way he works. Now you come over here and, and you just, you just tear the gifts of the Spirit here, the ministry gifts of the Holy Ghost, the power gifts of the Spirit. You just tear them apart with not having any love. So you come on down through these. We won't take time to read all that. But now look at the fourth verse. The love of God suffers long. Now remember, Jesus said, or the Holy Spirit said in Philippians, "Let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus who thought it not robbery to be called equal with God". That's the mind of Christ thinking that way. Now, you've been recreated when you made Jesus Lord. Your spirit man is totally recreated, not just forgiven, but born again, born of the Spirit. So now let's get back to this and let's touch on this very carefully now. The love of God suffers long and is kind. Stop right there. Glory to God, then so am I. I'm adding my faith to this. See what I'm doing? And in order to add. Yeah. In order to do that, I have to confess it with my mouth. That's what faith in God does. So that's what faith in love does, because faith in God is faith in love, is faith in God. Love of God envies not, doesn't vaunt itself, is not puffed up, neither am I. Does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, then glory to God, neither do I. Rejoices not in iniquity, neither do I. But rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. The love of God never fails, and neither do I when I walk in love and walk in His commandments. Glory to God, because I have no fear. And without fear, I have faith in God and in His love.
— Praise God.
— We're out of time. Gloria and I'll be back in just a moment.