Kenneth Copeland - Disconnect from Fear Through Faith in God's Love
There are two spiritual laws. Well, actually, there's only one. One of them's running one way, and the other's running opposite to it. It's like the directions of a compass. In one way, they're all the same because they are all directions of the compass. So, north is exactly the same as south when it comes to being a compass direction. But, on the other hand, north is exactly opposite from south. Now, the same way, faith and fear, the law of the Spirit of life, the law of sin and death, they're both spiritual laws, aren't they? Sin is not a flesh problem. Sin is a problem of the spirit.
See, sin came into the world and death by sin. Death didn't come into the world and then sin by death. And it was a spiritual thing. Now, the results of it is manifest in the flesh, in the soul, in the spirit. It's manifest in all those areas. But now, I want you to see the opposites of these things. Here is the law of the Spirit of life going in one direction in Christ Jesus. Here is the law of sin and death going in the opposite direction. Or, if you quoted those two exactly, mirror image of one another, you would say the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus and the law of sin and death in Satan.
Now, the law of life, the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus are in the anointing of the anointed one. In the area that we're studying right now and looking into the heart of this, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is the law of faith. The law of sin and death is the law of fear. Now, there's not two laws. There's only one. One of them's going that way and the other one's going that way because Satan did not create anything, not one thing, and he never will. All of the laws introduced into this universal envelope are here by God, from God, through God, in God. There are no other laws except the laws of God. Now, what Satan has done, consequently what men do, is twist that law and cause it to work against you instead of for you. See?
Now, let's go back to the introduction of this thing in the Garden of Eden. No human being is sovereign. He is not a spirit unto himself. He has to be spiritually connected. Here is Adam connected to God. Now, God is love. So here is Adam connected to love. Love created him. Love, joy, peace, goodness, meekness, kindness, long-suffering, gentleness, temperance created him. Isn't that wonderful when you think about that like that? And he's connected to him.
Now, he's not almost like God. He's not a little copy of him. He is exactly like him. When they separated, now, remember the man can't exist sovereignly. It can't be. And when he separated from God, he was going this way. He separated and in the twinkling of an eye went that way and was connected with Satan. What was love is now hate. What was faith is now fear. And when he heard the voice of God, instead of faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, fear fled by the Word of God.
Now, why did Adam run? Who was that that called him? Who'd he run from? Huh? He ran from love, didn't he? Well, doesn't perfected love cast out fear? You can't get no more perfect than that. It is love himself that called him. And it cast fear out. Fear ran, hid behind the bushes. You following me now? It was just moments ago that that same spiritual force connected to God was faith. Now, that same spiritual driving powerful force is now connected to Satan, so now it's fear. You got it now?
Now, fear comes by hearing and hearing by the words of death. It's exactly the way faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of love. Now, we've done all that to bring ourself to a knowledgeable, working definition of fear. Fear is faith in reverse. Faith, actually, faith in God. Mark 11:22. Have faith in God. But God is love. Faith worketh by love. You remember the book of Galatians saying that? Faith worketh by love. So listen to what Jesus said. See, in English, we wrote the word "God" in there without having any concept, without having any insight, without having any idea of who G-O-D is. It's a supreme being. Well, it's the Father. Well, it's God. Well, it's the Creator. God is love. Have faith in love.
Now, when a child is still such a small child, it doesn't even know what the word "mama" means. But it knows who loves it. And it will grow and bond to the one that loves it, I mean, within moments after its birth. It will latch on to love. It'll hang on to love. It may be a year from now before it ever says "mother", but I want you to know by the time it says "mother", it knows mother is love. Daddy's trying, but mama is love. That's like that guy said, "I bought that kid football clothes. I bought him shoes. I trained him. I worked with him. 18 years I worked with this kid".
And he finally makes a winning touchdown. They put the camera on him. And what does he say? "Hi, mom". It's true, isn't it, daddy? Yeah. Why? They found out mama loved them before they found out we loved them. They found out mama loved them before they ever knew what mama meant. And we found out mama before we found out love when it comes to the Word of God. I'm using the word "mama" instead of God there, see? We learned the word "God" and had no idea who God was, is, or anything about it. Some people lived and died and went to heaven before they ever found out anything about who He was. And that's not gonna be anymore. Amen.
Now, have faith in love. So our definition of fear is faith in death. Faith in the law of sin and death. You can talk to people day in and day out and gradually build up their faith in healing and deliverance. Well, if they could just see a miracle, and they see a miracle and they think, I wonder if they were really sick. Maybe the cancer just went into remission. Why? Seeing stuff doesn't bring faith. But you inject love into that equation. And now faith begins to come quickly because we understand love just because we're creatures of love, desiring love, looking for love, instinctively know what love is.
Now, the whole world is fear-based. So now take the definition now. Someone that's afraid of a snake has fear in that animal's ability to hurt you. So fear is faith in the deadly side of that snake. Are you following me here now? So now the definition of fear, say it. Fear is faith in death. Fear is faith in death. Faith in the laws of death, see. Having confidence, here is an excellent way to say it, and you might want to teach it like this because, man, I mean, you can just hang your hat on this. Faith in what Satan did in Adam in the Garden of Eden. Lot of confidence in the fall. Highly developed unbelief.
Well, unbelief is actually, there's no such thing as non-belief. You can't not believe because you got a believer in you and it works all the time. Unbelief is believing something other than what God has said, what love has said, what life has said. Amen? So unbelief is believing something other than what God has said. So that means that biblical unbelief is not believing what love has said. So what are you believing? You're believing what death has said, what the curse has said, and God will get to blame for it.
Now, now that we know that definition and we keep that in track, keep it before our eyes and watch it work... Fear tolerated. It doesn't have to be terrifying. Just enough to get you to believe something other than what love has said. Fear tolerated produces contaminated faith. Now I'm talking about the born-again believer here. I'm not talking about the person out there in the world that doesn't know God. I mean, their life is ruled by fear. But we're talking about, let me inject this here because this is vital. When you were born again, you went from being connected to death and connected with love, light, life, God. Hallelujah.
Old things passed away and behold, all things became new. And this living vital faith came alive in your born-again spirit. Now you do not have a fountain of fear inside your spirit being like you had when that faith was going the wrong way. You don't have a fountain of fear on the inside of you. You have a fountain of faith on the inside of you. But you can minister or administer fear to your spirit through your eyes and your ears and out your mouth and meditate on it until you can get fear into your soul and you can get it on down into your spirit where it will run and rule your life. But your spirit is not producing it. You're feeding it in there by wrong thinking, wrong speaking, wrong attention to the environment around you.
Now, he that feareth is not developed in love. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of love. It doesn't sometimes come. It doesn't come by the Word one time and some other way another time and well, you just don't ever know what God's gonna do. See, that's fear talking. Doubt, unbelief talking. But Romans 10:17 said, so then faith cometh. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of love. Hallelujah. Now, hallelujah. Luke chapter eight. Jesus gets out of the boat. Thank You, Lord. Yes, Sir, I will. Let's back up a little ways. I just had Jesus get out of the boat.
Let's get him back in the boat and back him across the lake. Now, he has just ministered to the madman of Gadara. Has he not? Back up to the 35th verse. "Then they went out to see what was done and came to Jesus and found the man out of whom the devils were departed sitting at the feet of Jesus clothed and in his right mind and they were afraid".
So what happened? They also which saw it told them by what means he that was possessed of the devil was healed. They told him that Jesus walked up there. They told them that the madman of Gadara attacked him. They told him that Jesus just stood his ground and said, "Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit". They told that whole story and that all those hogs ran off of the cliff and committed suicide. Now, they heard all that. Were they filled with joy? Let's see what happened. "When the whole multitude of the country of the Gadarenes round about besought him to depart from them for they were taken with great fear".
You see it? They were taken with fear and they ask the Son of love, the deliverer to leave. Why? It's very obvious why. They were afraid of those devils that got loose out of that man into the hogs and the hogs couldn't take it and now those demons are dancing around out here somewhere and he's the one that stirred them up. They weren't bothering us until he came over here. They were all in this one man and he was just living up here in the graveyard.
That's how the fear-based mind works. Sure, well, that don't make any sense. Who said it made any sense? But look what it did. And he went up into the ship and left. He never argued with them. He never said, "Wait a minute, you don't understand". He never said, "If you just sit down here and listen a minute, I can tell you how to be delivered from those demons".
No, he had no connection to them. They were connected to death. They were through fear, connected to oppression. Fear is a connector the same way faith is a connector. You shall be far from oppression for you shall not fear. From terror, it shall not come nigh you. They will surely gather together, saith the Lord, but not by me. Are you catching on to the... are you seeing in... are you getting concept of this whole thing? Satan cannot do anything to you apart from fear any more than God will do something for you apart from faith. Without faith, you're disconnected. Without fear, you're disconnected.