Kenneth Copeland - Eliminate Stress to Live in Divine Health
KENNETH: Hello everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland. Welcome to the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast. Let's have a word of prayer. Father we just praise you and thank you today. We worship you. We open our hearts. We open our minds for revelation from Heaven. Revelation about faith and hope and love and this life of faith and we give you praise on honor in the name of Jesus, amen. Glory to God. Come on, join in me in welcoming Doc and Mary Colbert. Can we do that? Praise God. Oh, we had a time last week.
DON: Amen.
KENNETH: I thought it was just... Hey it ministered to me. It helped me doc, it helped me. Before we came on air today we were talking about this. So we wanted to include you in it. The Bible says, "A merry heart does good like a medicine," and what we were discussing... Well a very, very close friend of ours and yours Bishop and Deborah Butler, Detroit and I was speaking there last year and there's a neurosurgeon in his church. He was raised there. Been at that church since he was eight years old.
DON: Praise God.
KENNETH: So he's raised on the word of faith and always wanted to be a doctor. He's just a delightful man, really. He said that and before I say this, I want to preface it with this. Doctor Colbert told me this a long time ago. Well I believed him and he made me mad one day. He didn't make me mad. Yeah he did. Man I'm telling you I was hurting. That sciatic nerve and he said, he said now, I'll never forget the way he looked at me when he said this too. He said, "Now you need a good belly laugh". I said, "There ain't nothing funny," and then I said, "Okay. Ha ha ha ha ha ha". Well then of course both of us got a tickle, but here's the thing. He said that medical science has proven and all that Doctor Colbert had told me about it all the time and the things I'd read about it, I don't know, just seemed like at that moment when he told me that, I'm sitting here trying to remember his name. Tell Young contact the Butlers and so before this week's up we'll have that doctor's name and his church, the neurosurgeon in his church. That it has been scientifically proven that your body and your brain cannot tell the difference between a put on laugh and a real belly laugh and it doesn't know the difference. They have classes there in the hospital where they lead people in laughter. They bring people in there, cancer patients especially, that are in so much pain and they go laughing sessions and he had video of it and some of those people, bless their hearts, their on IVs, some of them on oxygen and they're in there and they're leading them in a laugh and it's amazing how quickly that people begin to laugh. You start laughing at yourself and it just goes from one stage to another.
DON: It's true, but it controls pain and we've known this for years. I wrote about this about 15 years ago in my book Deadly Emotions, but Norman Cousins was the editor of the Saturday Review Magazine and he had a painful disease ankylosing spondilytis or Marie Strumpell Disease which is where your back becomes fused and it's extremely painful, extremely inflammatory and they tried all these meds on him and nothing relieved the pain. So finally he read about how emotions that were negative caused worse pain, so he figured in his mind, "Well if I started laughing, could that relieve pain"? So he tried it and he started taking old movies like the Marx brothers and other funny movies and he found that if he got a bunch of belly laughs that he was able to control the pain for hours and eventually he continued to do it, continued to laugh until literally the disease cleared up. They wrote about it in Harvard. They wrote about his condition and it's been documented in the medical literature.
KENNETH: Well, a merry heart does good like a medicine.
DON: The Bible's been telling us this for thousands of years and now that's why the Holy Spirit's so important to get in tune the Holy Ghost. He's trying to get this message across to Christians because when you have a merry heart, what else comes? The peace of God, the joy of the Lord, tremendous favor.
KENNETH: And that's your strength.
DON: Absolutely. It is your strength. So again, but most Christians that come to me have stress, anxiety, fear, depression and I like to tell people they have what I like to call the Martha Syndrome, the hand wringers. Remember when Jesus and the disciples went to Mary and Martha's house and here's Martha to greet them at the door. "Come on in Jesus. Come on in disciples," and finally here's Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to his teaching. Now what's interesting is Martha comes there to Jesus after. She's been working I'm sure for a few hours preparing a meal for what, 13 people or more because you include Lazarus and Mary and Pontus so we're talking about 15 people or 16, excuse me.
KENNETH: You know this was after the Jordan campaign. There were 70 others who may be a part of them. I mean who knows? It was a mess of people anyway you look at it.
DON: Who knows? But that was a ton of people in that house. Absolutely. So listen to what, so here comes...
KENNETH: And Taco Bell wasn't down on the corner either.
DON: So here's Martha. I'm sure she comes up to Jesus who's busy teaching and I'm sure all the disciples are sitting there, Lazarus there and here's Mary sitting right at his feet. Thinking about my wife Mary, sitting right at his feet. She's a lot like Mary. So here's Martha, comes up to Jesus. I'm sure she had her hands on her hips and was also wringing her hands and listen to what she says. She came to Jesus and said, I love the new living translation, "Lord doesn't it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits there while I do all the work. Tell her to come and help me". Now listen to Jesus's answer. The Lord said to her, well one translation of King James says, "Martha, Martha you're worried and concerned about so many things," but listen to the New Living translation. It says, "My dear Martha. You are worried and upset over all these details. There's only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it and it will not be taken away from her". Can you imagine Church sitting at the feet of Jesus, the son of God, listening to the Word of God. Having the peace that passes all understanding. In Him there's perfect peace. Having perfect peace, having joy unlimited and full of glory and having just that tremendous love and joy and peace and then he says, Jesus says, "It won't be taken away from". That's the key. That is the key and Jesus promises us that we will enter into that perfect peace...
KENNETH: Do you know there was another thing there and both of them had access to this information. They both knew what he'd done with the loaves and the fishes. 'Cause that was back before...
DON: He could have multiplied that.
KENNETH: ...and Mary just didn't care.
DON: Didn't care.
KENNETH: She didn't care whether they got fed or not.
DON: Exactly right.
KENNETH: I mean Jesus himself, she's sitting at his feet, she didn't care. She's loaded all the care over to him and she doesn't care about all of that other going on.
DON: He could have said, "Martha, bring me that food. Let me pray over it. I'm gonna multiply it so we'll have enough to feed all the people".
MARY: Now partly because Martha got her recognition from people. She got the "Oh you're doing such a good job". So she feeds off the need of everybody who recognizes...
KENNETH: She's the organizer.
MARY: Right, recognizing her hard work. Mary could care less what people thought. She chose that which was right and good and that was to be in His presence.
KENNETH: Mary could have come in there, just slid a bowl of beans across there and said, "Alright, I heard what you did with the loaves and fishes. If you want anything to eat, do it again, but I am not missing this. Go back where you started".
DON: Now Brother Kenneth, listen. Also what kind of ties into this is Matthew 11:28 when Jesus said, he says "Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden". I see, everyone that comes to me are heavy laden with disease usually and he says, I love the New Living, he says, "I will give you rest". He says, "Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart and you will find rest for your souls". Not stress for your souls, but rest for your souls. "For my yoke is easy to bear and the burden I give you is light". And then that goes just with first Peter 5:7 "To cast all your cares to God, for he cares about you". So in other words, if we sit at the feet of Jesus. If we literally meditate on his teachings, we can't have fear, we can't have stress, we can't have anxiety, we can't have depression. Now again you look at a merry heart does good like a medicine but the next verse says, "But a broken spirit or a depressed spirit..". okay so merry heart's good like medicine, "But a broken spirit drives up the bones or invites disease in". How many people with arthritis? How many people with osteoporosis. It literally eats away at the bones.
MARY: And you know Brother Kenneth, a lot of people and I understand this, so this is no condemnation to those who struggle in this area, no condemnation whatsoever. We understand that there are people it just seems, calamity is at every point. Nothing seems to work. They literally they come in and you hear their stories and it's like, you're just sitting here going, "Man this is a lot of stuff that they're having to deal with and they've dealt with," and what happens many times I believe is those people get stuck in the reverse faith.
DON: This is so good now, reverse faith.
MARY: When you have so many disappointments and we all have disappointments. You pray for the person to get healed and they don't. You pray for that job and it doesn't happen.
DON: They are expecting the next shoe to fall.
MARY: What happens is that in that struggle, we understand that. We all go through it, all of us. All of us live that, we do, but let me tell you what the difference is. Our expectation is something good's gonna happen to me. That's the difference. You keep expecting something good's gonna happen because what we have seen and this is so real, their faith is in reverse. They begin to expect the other shoe to fall. "Well that faith thing, that just doesn't work for me. I believe for this and this happened. I believe for that and that happened".
KENNETH: Lack of hope.
DON: Right.
MARY: Lack of hope.
DON: Disappointment.
MARY: Disappointment.
DON: They are stuck in disappointment. They expect the negative to occur and they're expecting this faith in reverse 'cause what they're expecting, the next shoe to fall, the next calamity to hit, they're attracting it to them and so literally it's faith in reverse whether faith is expecting the negative and the negative is coming toward them. I see this in disease, a person's disease or has cancer. They're expecting a bad report from the oncologist and now again, many Christians are disappointed because they don't hear that good report and so even though they're confessing the Word which is true, they get a bad report and then they start believing that bad report and it attracts the disease into their bodies.
MARY: 'Cause what you look at, you look at the Word. It says in Jeremiah, "I know the plans I have for you. It's not to harm you. It's to give you hope". So what you do is you go back to the Word and you speak to the circumstances of what's happening 'cause circumstances appear to be very real just like those guys in the boats and the water was crashing in and "We're getting ready to sink. Are you asleep"? Those are real circumstances. So we don't ignore the circumstances. We know that they are very real, but, but the Word is more real. That's where you realize the Word of God is more tangible and more real than the water that's splashing in your face.
KENNETH: Okay so when the apostle Paul got stuck in that hurricane. Days, days, days, days. That little ship got inside that thing and couldn't break out and it was going with the hurricane around around around. It was just stuck in it. Now he had already been told, "You gotta go to Rome". Then the angel came to him and said, "You gotta go to Rome". He said, "We had no hope for survival". We, he thought this was it. "I'm done". That angel came to him the third time. The plan, God's plan for him to go to Rome was bigger than the storm. Once he got back on that plan he said, "Cheer up. Cheer up, we gonna make it". Amen.
DON: The man rekindled his hope in faith.
KENNETH: The man that was let down through Jesus moved in his house. He said, "Cheer up son". I mean this guy is bedfast. He says, I can see him standing there, that spot on his head. "Cheer up son. Your sins are forgiven". So he must have had sin on his mind.
MARY: Condemnation.
KENNETH: Because he'd heard that, he'd heard that preached and that's what was preached in the synagogues of the day, the Kurds. He's obviously thinking, "This is the reason I'm in this condition," and now we don't know one way or another, but I believe since this was Capernaum, Jesus hometown and I believe like the woman on the issue of blood, he had heard about it. It got to him, Jesus preaching. Now when Jesus preached in that synagogue, they were for him. 'Cause that's the same synagogue where Jairus was leader of the synagogue. They're in Capernaum and I'm convinced, he told those other guys, he said "Get me over there. You get me over there right now. Get me over there. If I get in front of Jesus, if I can get in front of Jesus I'm coming out of office bid. Get me over there". They get over there and they say, "Charlie, we can't get you on the inside". He said, "Well don't you drop me. Get me up there, probably would tear a hole in the roof. I'm getting in front of him. You understand"? And the Bible said, "And he saw their faith". To flow this together, he expected to get it.
DON: Expectations.
KENNETH: That woman with the issue of blood, she expected to get it. Her hope was high. Just a few, couple three months ago, just recently, I was preparing to preach I was preaching on faith and the Lord said, "People thinking their faith is weak are low in hope and the faith, your faith be strong, but your expectancy is not high, then faith doesn't have anything to do". Faith is the substance of things highly expected. Intense and where the apostle Paul says right there in the book of Philippians "According to my hope and expectation". According to my anxious hope and expectation, praise God this thing's coming to pass. It's coming to pass. It coming... That causes the joy and the laugh and everything else. And God downloaded this into Mary a few years ago the key principles of faith.
MARY: Remember that?
KENNETH: I sure do.
MARY: You remember that?
KENNETH: Yeah I do.
MARY: Christmas Day night, I've heard people my whole life. I've been in the Word of Faith since I was 22 years old. Went off to Rhama. It's where I heard this man teach and Kenneth Hagen and ORU, but I had heard people have these expectations and stories and testimonies, but I had never personally expected anything like this to happen and I never expected it. I didn't, it to happen to me, but for some reason God did this. It was Christmas day night at 11:00. Finished cleaning, had all the grandkids there, I've got seven of them and my sons and everybody's there and everybody's going to bed and I'm exhausted. It's 11:00 and I go to bed and he's already asleep and the room is dark. Black 'cause he makes it black.
DON: I do.
MARY: So I have to feel, I feel my way through the bedroom.
DON: She has a little flashlight at night when she...
KENNETH: Aurelia does too, late at night.
MARY: They make it dark. So as soon...
KENNETH: You've got three minutes.
MARY: Yeah I know. As soon as I put my head on the pillow to lay down, the room lit up, like daytime. It was daytime and I thought, "I couldn't have gone to sleep that quick," and all of a sudden I heard a voice and I thought it was Kenneth and I thought I left the radio on and this voice, and I did, I thought it was Kenneth Copeland. I thought, "Man I've got his tape running somewhere. I forgot to turn it off". I could hear that authoritative voice, it sounded like Kenneth Copeland's and it didn't take me very long to realize, "Wait a minute. It sounds like Kenneth but that's not Kenneth," and the voice spoke with this authoritative "Mary, I have summoned you to teach My people the five principles of faith. Now write it down".
DON: But tell them how the voice came out. Say it like it came out. C'mon say it. Yes come on. Say it. It's gonna resonate with you. Go ahead, do it.
MARY: "Mary, you have been summoned by me," and when I heard the "me" and I thought it was you talking to me.
DON: Sounded like your voice.
KENNETH: It was. Praise God. Amen. So praise God.
MARY: But the five principles of faith he began speaking to me to teach the people of God and one of them was "Things hoped for..". Hope, hope just like what you're saying. When people's hope get shattered from the expectation and it doesn't meet what they're expectation is, we have to regroup. Regroup, find out what the Word of God says. Not what the doctor says, not what men are saying, what does the Word of God say because that is your authority is what God has said.
KENNETH: And you stay there till hope comes.
MARY: That's exactly right.
KENNETH: You don't get a... You ain't got anything better to do and particularly if there's something wrong, serious bad wrong, just be like Mary. I don't whether school keeps or not, I'm not getting off of this until my hope gets so white hot to where I'm expecting it and this is mine. Glory to God. I own this. This is mine and I'm not turning it away.
DON: And you sit at the feet of Jesus and you receive just like Mary did in Luke, Chapter 10.
KENNETH: Yes.
DON: That is the key. The other five principles or four principles...
MARY: We'll talk about them later because...
DON: Don't have time, but wow, they are powerful, but she called you 'cause she got stuck at number four.
MARY: Yeah, remember that? I told you and you said, "You were hunting," and I said, "Brother Kenneth, he gave me three and the other two he didn't finish with the other two. Can you tell me what the other two were 'cause it was your voice at first so I know you know 'em". And he went, "Yeah Mary, I think I do".
DON: When she woke up, 'cause you woke up.
MARY: Yeah, but what you said to me when you were getting ready, "You were hunting. You were in your truck. I told you the three that He told me and all of a sudden you said, "Wait a minute Mary," and you put it on pause and I heard you outside the truck shouting "Glory, glory to God". Then he got back in and go "Wait a minute Mary, the fire of God's all over me. Just hold on, hold on," and he said, "Yeah I think I know what the other two are but I'm gonna let Him tell ya".
KENNETH: And we're out of time, praise God. Come on, let's give the Lord... Oh thank you Jesus. Come on Jeremy.
JEREMY: Thank you sir. You know when you have a merry heart, the peace of God comes and you have strength and God did not give you a spirit of fear, but a power and a love and a sound mind and yet stress and fear and anxiety are so real to so many people. That's why we thank God that the Bible says "We can cast all our care upon Him". Why? Because he cares of us. He cares for you and you can enter in to that peace that Jesus promised you.