Kenneth Copeland - Is It God's Will for Me to Be Healed?
Hello, everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland. And this is the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast. Let's just give the Lord praise and thanksgiving. Hallelujah. Yeah. Glory to God. Thank You, Lord. Don't forget to download the notes, huh? Amen. For the next three weeks on these broadcasts, we're going to be actually following Jesus and tracking Him as He ministers to people, particularly ministering healing. You know and I know that Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Amen. Hallelujah. His will and His desires were to fulfill the will of the one that sent Him. He said that.
Now, over the years, I've noticed, and I've read very closely after Brother Kenneth Hagin and Oral Roberts, of whom were mentors in my life, and others, and discussed this with ministries, that the major problem in people receiving healing is the not knowing whether it's God's will to heal me. Amen. And when people come up with this idea, "Well, how would you know if it's God's will to heal you or not"? "Well, I just figured if you pray and then He didn't heal me, then it, well, probably wasn't His will".
Well, see, that is so far off that, well... This is the will of God. And all the promises of God in Christ Jesus are "yes" and "amen". Hallelujah. So why would God, and how could He ever promise you something that was not His will for you to have? "Well, you know, Brother Copeland, it might be that He don't want me to have it right now". Show me. Show me an example, and I'll go along with you. Show me where Jesus, show me where any of the apostles, show me Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the book of Acts and all the rest of the New Testament, show me where any one of them ever said, "No, you can't have this today".
Now, I'll tell you who did say that. The leader of the synagogue answered with indignation. And he said, "No, no. There are six days of the week for men to do work. You don't heal on the sabbath day". Well, that woman had been bowed over for 18 years. He had over 5,000 days, according to his formula, to get her healed, and he didn't do anything about it. Jesus said, "Ought not this woman be loosed from this infirmity today"? It's shouting time. It's shouting time in the household of faith. Glory to God. And we're just going to follow after Him and watch the Master work. Hallelujah. Oh, you've got to love Him, and you've got to love this Book.
Let's open our Bibles to Matthew, Chapter 4. And look at Verse 13. "Leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon, and Nephthalim: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet". Now Jesus said, in the 14th chapter of John, "The words that I speak unto you are not my own: for it is the Father that dwells within me, he does the works". And we summarize it like this: "I only say what I hear my Father say. I only do what I see my Father do".
He didn't move his headquarters to Capernaum just because it was a nicer place than Nazareth. He didn't make that decision. Jesus did not decide to move to Capernaum. No. If anybody made that decision, it was the prophet Isaiah. Huh? He found himself in the book of Isaiah. Isn't that right? He preached from the 61st chapter, what you and I call the 61st chapter of Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; for he has anointed me to preach the gospel". Ha-ha. Hallelujah. So, that was His method of operation. He moved to Capernaum and had His home and His headquarters there because the Word of God directed Him there. Say, "Amen" if you understand what I'm talking about.
Now then, don't forget that. When I say, "Capernaum," you think, "Home". Okay? Capernaum. Oh, you got it, didn't you? One more time. Capernaum. I love it. Hallelujah. All right, now, let's go to Mark, Chapter 3. Mark's gospel, Chapter 3. And look at the 7th verse. "Jesus withdrew himself with his disciples to the sea: and a great multitude from Galilee followed him, and from Judaea, and from Jerusalem, and from Idumaea, and beyond Jordan; they about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they heard great things that he did". I wanted you to see, let's go on down to the 19th verse. "...and Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him: and they went into an house".
Now, my cross-reference has a little number four there. Does anyone else have that in your Bible? What does it say right there next to that? Home. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Home. So it was in Capernaum. By the sea. He had a lakeshore home. Hey, I'm not kidding you. Now, that place has been found. They thought it was Peter's home because it was so big. Come to find out, it was Jesus' home and headquarters. And this just changes a lot of our concept of Jesus' ministry and so forth, by just learning this little fact. It's what I call "going widescreen". You see something, and you read it for 50 years, but you read it one verse at a time, and all of a sudden, the Spirit of God's, "Whoa". And all of those verses just whoooo, and make a picture within themselves. And it is just so rich when the Spirit of God does that.
Now then that we know that He was at home, we realize then that He taught this entire 4th chapter from His living room. And if you'll track and find out, He taught the whole 18th chapter of Matthew from the living room. Amen. It doesn't say, "living room". But you check it out. If Jesus was there, it's the living room. You understand? Ha-ha-ha. Amen. And you know the scripture in Matthew 18 where He brought a little child and set that child in the midst of them? That was in His house.
So the disciples and everybody were there. There were other people, this is a big house. Amen. And obviously, somebody's child was there. And He called that child and just sat there and just hugged that baby while He taught that whole 18th, ooh. Oh, son, mm. When I get to heaven, one of the things I want to do, I want to find out what happened to that child. I want to find out what happened to those other kids that He blessed and laid His hands on. I've got a lot I want to find out when I get there. Amen? Don't you? How fun that's going to be. You don't want to miss it. Now then, let's move along here to the 5th chapter about faith. Wait a minute. Just right at the bottom of the 4th chapter, when He finished this teaching, what did He tell His disciples to do? Verse 35, "Let us pass over to the other side". So He's leaving home, going across the Galilee to the Gadarenes.
So let's move with Him. Chapter 5, they ran into that storm out there in the night. The devil's trying to cut them off, trying to sink them, trying to kill them. "They came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes. When he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit". Now, I want you to notice the man had an unclean spirit, one. One spirit dominated this man and controlled a legion of spirits through this man. In the 6th chapter of the book of Ephesians, you can see that. "We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities powers rulers of the darkness of this world and wicked spirits in the heavenlies". So that ruler class is what Jesus is dealing with here. And notice what happened. "When he saw Jesus afar off, he ran".
Oh, let me back up a little. He had an unclean spirit, "had his dwelling among the tombs; no man could bind him, no, not with chains: because that he had often been bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him. And always, night and day". So this man didn't sleep. That's one of the reasons I'm satisfied that everybody in that whole region were so frightened of him. They considered him supernatural. He never slept. They couldn't tame him and all that kind of thing. But there's something I want you to notice and pay very careful attention to. He was a cutter. He cut himself. That manifestation is going on today where people are cutting themselves.
So, "When he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, and cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that that thou torment me not. For Jesus had said unto him". Now, he didn't say this to the man. He wasn't dealing with the man. He said this to that ruling spirit. "Come out of the man", come out of him, "you unclean spirit"! So let's rearrange the text here a little bit and get a linear look at what happened. Jesus came across the lake, landed, got out of that boat. This man ran and fell and worshiped him. But now, as Jesus saw him, he said, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit"! And that's when that spirit retaliated.
Now, everybody there heard Jesus, and they heard what they thought was the man. That's important to recognize that. "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit," and He asked him, He's not talking to the man. He hasn't said anything to the man yet. "What is your name? He answered saying, My name is Legion: for we are many". Right then, Legion left. He's gone. And then what happened? "He besought him much that he could not send him away out of that country". That devil had been assigned to that country by Satan, and Jesus is the only one that could tell him to leave. Amen. So, "Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying". See, Legion doesn't have any authority over Him anymore. They're speaking up and talking. Legion's gone. "Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them".
Now, when the devils began to speak, the people couldn't hear that. They heard Jesus. They heard the man. They didn't hear it when these other devils started talking. You would have had to be operating in and functioning in the discerning of spirits like Jesus was. See, Jesus operating as a man, He wasn't hearing those devils because He's the Son of God. He's hearing them by manifestation of the Holy Ghost. All of the gifts of the Spirit that we read in I Corinthians 12, all of those gifts were manifested in the life of Jesus except diverse kinds of tongues and interpretation of tongues. That's unique to this dispensation.
So, one of the reasons, I wanted you to get a handle on what everybody else heard and saw, scared the daylights out of them. They're hearing these two talking back and forth. They're seeing this man fall down and worship Jesus. Now, he had never acted like that before. But all of a sudden, just all of a sudden, 2,000 hogs committed suicide. Hey, now, listen, can you imagine the noise 2,000 pigs make when they break and run all at the same time, and they're right out there where they are? What? And no telling what kind of noise those pigs was making. Man, I mean, you know, they're hollering and squawking and snorting and a running. And over the cliff they went. Boy, this is an exciting morning, you know? And it's not all that late in the day because they just got out of that storm. It was night when they were out there in the middle of that lake. And so your first thing that morning was to get on this deal. Whoa.
Now, there's a point here I want you to see. If there could possibly be a person so controlled by the devil that the devil could stop him from worshiping Jesus, that would have been the man. And he couldn't stop him. Couldn't hold him back. Couldn't keep him from falling on his face in his presence. All that devil could do is argue with Jesus, you know, just a second or two there, and into the hog pen he went. And I want to talk to you about this. I want you to hear me now, particularly if you're doing anything like cutting or drugs or anything.
Let me tell you something, darling. There ain't a devil in hell big enough to keep you from Jesus. And there's not a devil in hell big enough to keep Jesus from delivering you! And I want you to see, I want you to know, He set that man free that quick. I mean, Jesus, He didn't say, "Now you have to keep this demon another two weeks because we're going to teach you something". No, man. Two seconds is too long. Amen. Boom, and he was free and in his right mind. And somebody got him some clothes to wear. Don't you know he's saying, "Hoo-hoo-hoo. Oh! How wonderful it is. How glorious it is to be out from under that". Praise God. That same thing can happen to you right now. That cutting, just stop. That drug addiction, just stop. Just gone. That cancer, just gone.
Glory. Hallelujah. Because this proves right here it's Jesus' will for you to be set completely free. Hallelujah. Glory to God. Thank You, Lord Jesus. Thank You, Lord. Thank You, Lord. Well, praise God. Come on, let's give the Lord praise here for a few moments. This is exciting. This is exciting. Praise God. And so He ministered to this man. He said, "Go home to your friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for you, and hath had compassion on you". Now, the devil was ruling that whole region over on that side of the lake with fear. So what greater message to preach throughout the Decapolis, the 10 cities, the compassion and the love of God? Thank You, Lord Jesus.