Kenneth Copeland - Merge Your Will With God's Will
Hello everybody, I'm Kenneth Copeland and this is The Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast. Let's have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you today. We give you praise and we thank you for the privilege and the honor of teaching, preaching, and healing like Jesus. Oh, glory to God. And we praise you and thank you and we open our hearts and we open our minds for revelation from heaven. In Jesus' name, to you be all the glory. Amen.
Hallelujah. And welcome everybody. Those of you that were here last week, you know that our fanatical group is here again this week. Praise God. And I said last week and I stick by my evaluation that a fanatic is just somebody that loves Jesus more than you do. You know where that word comes from? The word fan, a football fan? It comes from the word fanatic. Well I'm a Jesus fan. I don't mind telling you, I am a Bible fan, glory to God. Yeah. I am. Yeah, somebody said, "Well, Copeland, you're just out of your mind". Yeah. I sure am. And I ain't planning on getting back in it either. So just bug out, okay?
Last week we were talking about developing and training or educating the born again human spirit. And I want to take a moment to point out something, Jesus preached. The scripture said in Matthew 9:35, Jesus went about the villages and so forth, in their synagogues teaching, preaching, and healing. But now remember this, you know, it's amazing to me that most Christian people don't have any idea that Jesus preached. They thought he just walked around and just healed everybody he saw. No, no, no, no. In fact, everybody didn't get healed.
Now there were places where the scripture said that all were healed. Not everywhere. In his own hometown of Nazareth, there he could, didn't say he wouldn't, he could do no mighty work. Save he lays his hands on a few sick people. Well, if you check that out, it was people with minor illness. Now, everywhere he went he preached the same text. We see it in Luke 4:18, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to preach. He's anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor". He's anointed me, I want you to get that. Jesus ministered as a human being and he was as helpless without the anointing as you and I are. In fact, in the 14th chapter of John, he said, "It's the Father that dwelleth within me. He does the work". So he really didn't claim to heal anybody. Now listen, he said, "They that believe on me, the works that I do shall they do also because I go to my Father".
Now what is he talking about? He's talking about being glorified, going to the Father and sending the Holy Spirit to anoint you and me. Jesus, as a man, was in a class by himself because he is the divine Son of God. But he didn't do anything in this earth except go to the cross as the divine Son of God. He did everything as a human being anointed. He had to be baptized in water and he had to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Amen. Never did one miracle until after that. Didn't do any teaching or preaching. Amen. He just worked and helped his dad and helped his family. Amen. It's so good, and all of us in this room know that, but there are people in this radio and television audience that do not know that. Well they do now. But that is so important because he didn't do anything in this earth as a minister of the gospel that's not available to you and me. That same anointing, hallelujah. Thank you, Lord.
Let's go once again to Mark 11:22 in the Mark's classic teaching, a recording of Jesus' classic teaching on faith. "Jesus answering, saith unto them, have faith in God. For verily I say unto you that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea and shall not doubt in his heart," now that's what we're talking about is the developing and the training or educating of the born again human spirit. We talked about it last week, this is not referring to your physical heart. And the reason it's called heart is because it is the core, the physical heart. Oh my. My, my. I mean, your body can live without your brain functioning, but it can't live without your heart functioning. So it is the main issue. I tell you, I just thought of something really funny, I ain't got time to tell you. But, well, I will tell you.
There's a friend of mine that was in a parts store. And he was standing there and this woman came up there and standing there and the parts guy was waiting on Bill. And Bill said, "No, go ahead and wait on her. She looks like she's got a problem". He said, "May I help you, ma'am"? She said, "Well, I sure do hope so". She said, "Now, I really don't know hardly how to tell you, but when you raise the hood on my car, there's a little black box right up there, just right up there and sometimes when the car won't start, my husband just takes a stick or a hammer and he'll kind of tap that little box". She said, "Now, I don't know what to call it, but that's the main suction of the whole deal".
I'm going to tell you something, this thing right here, that's the main suction of the whole deal here, you understand? When that thing ain't operating, boy, like they said, "Uh-huh, don't he look natural"? Jack, he's dead. But now when that takes place, what happens? The spirit man is still alive, whether you're born again or whether you're not. A spirit will never, ever, ever, ever, ever cease to exist. Once a spirit being is released into this earth, it will never cease to exist. But we have a choice of where we spend that eternal existence. And I made my deal. Glory to God, hallelujah. I know, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
Now then, "Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, shall not doubt in his heart," in his inner man, "but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass. He shall have whatsoever he saith". With the human heart, the human spirit, you are a spirit, you have a soul. You have an intellect, the psyche, that's the soul. The mind, will, and emotional part of you. And you and your soul live in this body. We know that it's important, very important to train and develop the human mind. Hey, proper education. Of course, education is not the answer to everything, particularly, if you don't know God, you're not educated.
I don't care how many degrees you've got out at the end of your name. But to properly train, what does that mean to born again people? That means that our minds should not only be scripturally educated, but renewed to where you think like God thinks. You know, the scripture said in the 55th chapter of Isaiah, my thoughts are higher than your thoughts, my ways are higher than your ways. But he didn't intend for us to stay stupid. I mean, you know, come on up here. For my Word goes forth out of my mouth. Glory to God, and it will prosper in the thing where unto I sent it. This is God's thoughts right here. And it's the Spirit of God that gives us revelation of how he thinks and how he sees things. Then as we renew our minds, then you get down to this physical body. This physical body needs to be fed correctly. It needs to be exercised. It needs to be developed for long life. Pain free life.
Did you know that over 90% of all chronic diseases are self-induced? Cancer's not contagious. It's outside things. And certainly heart disease, I'm talking about the physical heart. That's self-induced, unless there's some genetic problem there. But spiritual problems, nearly all of them are self-induced. God didn't induce any spiritual problems into us. And don't blame the devil for all of it. A lot of things that people have the idea that Satan is at the root of it and he's not. He's just taking advantage of it because we were brought up saying the wrong thing. Because see, this is spiritual law. 'Cause whatsoever you believe in your heart is what you say with your mouth. And when you come up saying, "Shew, you know, I believe I'm catching the flu". Well, you're catching it because you said what you believe.
Well don't blame the devil with that. Of course, he'll oblige you. Oh, yeah. Man, he'll slip it to you just as quick as he can. It tells us right there in Mark 11:23, it tells us that this, our born again human spirit, where we believe, that's where spiritual forces reside. Spiritual forces don't reside in the mind. Those are intellectual forces. Did you ever notice that the more time you spend in the Word and, of course, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. And so does fear. Fear comes by hearing and hearing by the lies of the devil. See these are spiritual laws and they work all the time. But the more time you spend in the Word of God, particularly developing the human spirit, well think what that's doing for your mind.
Did you ever notice the stronger your willpower gets, that's intellectual strength. Willpower. Your and my will, oh, it is so important because it's your will. Don't you remember what the Word of God said in the gospel of John? "If you abide in me and my Words abide in you, ask what you will and it will be done unto you". Now what's happened? Get in the Word of God and your will begins to merge with God's will and he's revealing his will to you like Colossians 1:9 where the Apostle Paul wrote to the church there at Colossi by the power of the Spirit of God. And he said, "I desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all wisdom and understanding". Whoa. Amen. Hallelujah. Well, when you know God's will and your will, I have for many, many years have done my very best, this is my will. It is my will.
Somebody says, "My will needs to crumble". No, it doesn't. It's already crumbled. It's already so weak you can't. What needs to happen, your will needs to be strong. I am a very strong-willed man on purpose. And it is my will to do his will all the time. It is not my will to hold unforgiveness against any human being on this earth for any reason. Nope, I'm not going to do it. I will not, you hear me say that? I will not defy the law of love. I'm not going to do it. Praise God, just not going to do it. But now, I'm not speaking in myself. Amen. 'Cause I'm in Christ and I'm strong in him and in the power of his might. All right, let's get back online here.
Last week we began talking about step number one in the development and the training of the born again spirit. In Joshua 1:8, you must spend time meditating. What is meditating? Meditation is you spend time considering the scripture. What does this scripture mean to me? And I'm not talking about whole chapters. I'm talking about a verse. For instance, he told Joshua, he said, "Meditate on my Word night and day and you'll observe to do these things and you'll know what to do".
Well, he was about to go across the Jordan and he's headed into combat. And the last time he was over there, there was a bunch of giants and some really high walled cities. And he didn't have any idea how to take Jericho. That thing was huge and that massive wall around that thing. And particularly for that day and time, impregnable. There was no way to get through there. Boy, once those people got it walled off, they'd just outlast you, if nothing else. 'Cause you could drive chariots, several abreast, on top of that wall. "Well what are we going to do? I don't care if there is this many of us, how are we going to get in there? They just up there on that wall. We don't even have any weapons. They'll just pick us off one by one". Not if you're meditating in the Word of God and God tells you how to do it.
You see what I'm saying? It's healing, I need a manifestation. I need to hear Jesus say, "Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole". I need to hear that. Well, he's already said it. These tabs, all with the exception of a couple of them, I tabbed all of the healing scriptures. And I tell you where I got most of them was from Dodie Osteen's book and these are the scriptures that she read and meditated every day until she was completely clear of liver cancer. And they told her she had to die. Well she's not dead yet. Amen.
See, I can just flip through here and on any one of those tabs and there's a healing scripture there. Well, I need to be meditating. 1 Peter 2:24, himself, bore my sins. Boy, that's good news. In his own body on the tree, that I being dead to sin. Now you start meditating that and the Lord starts bringing some things up you need to deal with in your life. Stop right there and deal with it. It wouldn't have come up if he was mad at you. Are you listening to me. And then you begin to meditate. By his stripes ye were healed. Isn't that wonderful? In fact, one woman said, "I've been healed for 2,000 years and I just now found out about it".
Now how does this change my life now that I'm healed? You meditate that. When you first start out on it, if you're new to it, it may be a bit difficult for you to do. No, this is the Bible. This is the truth, not a truth. Just meditate that and meditate that and meditate that and meditate that and meditate that until hope comes. And then faith is the substance of things hoped for. And we're out of time. Hey, Jeremy.
JEREMY PEARSONS: Thank you, sir. You know, our minds have to be renewed to the way God thinks because his thoughts and his ways, they're higher than ours. And what we think affects what we say and then it affects what we have. So come up to his way of thinking. And the born again spirit is where we believe. Spiritual forces reside here in the spirit, not in the mind.