Kenneth Copeland - Keep Meditating On The Word To See Results
Father, thank You for this wonderful day today. Thank You for the privilege and the honor, what a privilege it is to come around Your Word, to study it and have You involved and have You in our presence. We thank You for it and we worship You in it. I'm asking You to bless this radio and television audience beyond measure. In Jesus name, amen.
Thank You Lord. We have a group of very excited people here. I'll tell you what, if somebody can't preach you guys, just forget it. You can't preach. Amen. Thank You Lord. Now, we're talking about the developing and training or educating the born again human spirit. The spirit man, the real you. You are a spirit. You have a soul, that's the intellectual part of you. You live in a physical body. This physical body is not the real you. Now, you're going to get it back because see we get everything that Jesus got. You know, it wasn't that didn't anybody recognize Him after He was raised from the dead. They knew it was Him.
I've heard people say, Brother Copeland, you think we're going to know one another when we get to heaven? What kind of place you think heaven is? Of course we'll know one another if we know one another now. If we don't know one another here, we'll have to be introduced there. But I mention this Monday, when the rich man and went into hell, went into Abraham's bosom, no he went into hell and saw Abraham. Lazarus was in Abraham's bosom. The rich man recognized Lazarus, he recognized Abraham and he'd never met Abraham.
There's a lot of people in heaven that you and I are going to recognize. They may be kinfolks that go back centuries, but we're family. Amen. But you know, because then you're knowing as you are known and you know a whole lot more than you think you do, particularly in your spirit. Amen. It's not less alive than here, it's far more alive than you are here. Hallelujah. But now, this is what happens when you begin... We're talking about developing the spirit, though the very first step is meditation in the Word, that we talked about yesterday.
When you begin to meditate into the Word of God and as we read He told Joshua, you will observe to do all that's written there in. You begin to meditate on it day and night you just think about it all the time, you're thinking about the Word and particularly certain scriptures that have come alive to you and they're so important to you in the situation that you're in at the time. The more you meditate those scriptures and the more you see yourself changed because of those scriptures then what happens? It starts expanding what you already know. Amen. Because hey, that's God living in you and me.
A dear dear man, Rufus Mosley, he was a very very wise man in early part of the twentieth century. He was talking about a meeting that they were having in Chicago and oh just nobody was coming. He was laying in the floor crying his heart out to God. Oh God, oh God. He said, I suddenly quit and I thought, here lies a fool that knows nothing. Doing all the talking to somebody that knows everything. When you begin to meditate the Word you quit talking and let Him begin to expand your thinking. It's not coming out of your mind, this is coming out of your spirit. The more you do that the more active your spirit is in that endeavor. It gets good at it. Amen.
Oh Copeland, you're just a dreamer. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. But my dreams have to be oriented in the Word because to dream is to hope and faith is the substance of things hoped for. When Gloria, I mean for 30 years, Gloria, I mean she likes to play house, okay? She kept magazines and stuff and finally she got so many magazines I said, baby why don't you just cut the pictures out that you like and make files of them? That's what she did and then she had all files of all these different houses and all of that.
Now, don't misunderstand me, we were living good. God has He has put places for our home, just really good. We had never built. We were too busy building the house of God to build us one. But everywhere we'd go, we'd come back home she get all of her pictures out and her head straight to the dining room table. She's going on this thing. She finally got her some graph paper and she's moving stuff around. Finally one day she said Kenneth, I gotta either quit this... Well, first of all she said, this house is getting big and I can't find any place to cut it down. I said, sweetheart, it's a dream. I said, dream on girl, don't try to cut it back just dream on. She said, you mean it? I said, yeah. She did.
She came to me one day and she said Kenneth, now remember we're talking about meditating in the Word because Gloria Copeland is a Word woman. She was a Word woman when I was still a scripture illiterate. Just buried in the Word of God, and she's still that way. She had all these house scriptures. She had furniture scriptures. She had everything. She had scriptures covering everything from the curtains... I mean, you know. See where her interest was? She meditated those scriptures. She's working with all the house plans and everything.
She came to me one day and she said Kenneth, I'm going to have to either build this house or just forget it. She said, but I think we should take off a few days and see if it's God's will to build this house. She said if it isn't, I heard her pray, she prayed it with a smile on her face she said Lord, if this is just a dream of mine and not Your will to build, she said You let me know and she said I never regret it. Of course, the Lord ministered to us over that weekend and here's what the Lord said to me later, I want you to minister this house to her. He said, read these scriptures to her. I turned to her, we were there in our living room. I just turned to her and I said, the Lord said for me to minister this house to you, Gloria. You're to build this house.
I read those scriptures, she just started weeping and laughing at the same time. She said, those are the scriptures, those are the scriptures that I've put on my first little list while we were living in that little rat hole. She didn't call it a rat hole, but it was. Those are the scriptures at the top of my little dream list. See what that did to her spirit? Amen. Well, I heard the Lord say this. Now I'm going to talk about meditating those scriptures, see? That's what she's doing when she's working with this house. She'd quote those curtain scriptures. She'd quote furniture scriptures. I wouldn't be able to find a furniture scripture in the Bible, but I got some airplane scriptures if you want to hear them. See?
These are tools that we needed in the ministry. Here's what the Lord said, I want you to get this because this goes on with meditating the Word. Meditation in the Word of God will expand your spirit and build your hope and faith is the substance of things hoped for. Amen. Here's what I heard the Lord said, He said, Kenneth, that dream began to take upon itself faith and it had to be born. Now we never mentioned that to our partners. We never said anything to anybody about it. Just kept following the spirit of God.
People, you know it took over two years from the time we decided to do it to get everything ready and all of the architectural plans. The architect that was helping Gloria he said, this is the easiest job I ever had in my life. He said, all I had to do was take what you had on your graph paper and just put it over into architectural plans. See, this didn't come in two months. It was 30 years she did this. There's a lot of things you don't have time to mediate on for 30 years, but there are certain scriptures you ought to be meditating on the whole 30 years and then all the rest of your time.
But my point is, there were people that would send their usual support in the ministry and a lot of them say, I'll put an extra 100 in there for Gloria's house. I don't know what she's doing but whatever she's doing it's for her house. It might have been $10 and it might have been $5, $100. Over a period of two years, the day we poured the foundation the money was in the bank to build. That's the way this works. Hallelujah. Thank You Lord Jesus. Meditating the scripture. Meditating the Word of God, hallelujah. Now then, thank You Lord.
Well I'm not quite done with that yet. Let's take family situations that look absolutely totally impossible. Don't meditate the impossibility of it. Look up family scriptures. Back when our children were young Gloria and I set ourselves aside and we found scriptures, great shall be the peace of your children, glory to God. So forth. We looked up kids scriptures. We made certain agreements with God. Now, if and when our children did things that we didn't approve of, we didn't come all down on them. We didn't get off of our scriptures. We'd already meditated that and we kept on meditating that.
Get back over there in Joshua chapter one. I want to show you something here. How much time do I have, Tim? Good. We're right there in that first chapter, let's move over to the second chapter. Now, we were doing this when they were little and we still hold on to these same things today. We're just not afraid of what the devil is liable to do in our family. He don't get away with stuff in this family, because our hearts are established, our hearts are established trusting in God. How did you get that way? Meditating on those scriptures.
Don't you remember the scripture that said, lean not to your own understanding? But trust God with all your heart, all your spirit, the inner man. Trust Him, trust Him. Don't ever blame Him. Well God just see there I did that and He didn't do anything. Don't be doing that. No no. You remember when the storm was blowing they said, master. Start off with the word master, here's a double minded man. Peter said, master, carest thou not that we're dying? That is a serious statement. Don't you care? God, don't You care? Don't go going there.
Now you're going to have to do something about it before that situation comes. This is the reason you need to be meditating in the Word all the time. You don't get blindsided then by something stupid that the devil is doing. Now then, let's go to the second chapter of Joshua. I want you to notice this. Joshua sent two spies. He knew better than to send that whole raft, he'd already been there once. He found him two faith guys and sent them. They went across there and you know the story. They got in connection with Rahab the harlot. Now you need to be careful with Rahab the harlot and the scripture is very pointed about calling her that, even over in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews to let us know, amen, that Rahab the harlot became Jesus great great grandmother. Whoa. You know, God can handle a harlot part. It's religion that can't handle it. Amen.
I want you to notice something here now, verse nine. She said unto the men, I know that the Lord hath given you the land. Now I'm talking about you meditating this, meditating these scriptures right here. I know that the Lord hath given you the land and that your terror has fallen upon us and all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you, for we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you. When you came out of Egypt and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites, look at verse 11, and as soon as we heard those things our heart didn't melt, neither did they remain any courage in any man because of you. Had they not judged themselves as grasshoppers they were already afraid of them.
God wasn't sending them over there without preparing the territory before they went. God hasn't called you and sent you to some foreign land without preparing it before you get there but you will never know if you don't meditate on it long enough to find out about it. I'm talking about seeing yourself there, seeing yourself blessed of Abraham, glory to God. With all of my financial needs met. He don't send you in there to get poor like them. He didn't send you in there to get them rich like you and break the poverty and bring the blessing of the Lord. Hallelujah. But if you meditate the hard part, the hard part is all you ever get.
Everybody, everybody died in that desert older than 20. You know why? It wasn't because God was mad at them. It's because they kept saying it, they kept saying it. We're going to die in this desert. He brought us out here to kill us, we're going to die in this desert, we're going to die in this desert. There's these old people are too big, the cities are too bad, we're going to die in this desert, we're going to die in this desert. All the time everybody over there was absolutely scared spitless of them. They gave them 40 years and a whole generation. Had they gone immediately they were so afraid of them it would have been like the Gulf War.
Those Iraqi soldiers they were surrendering to helicopters. They wanted out of this thing. The terror of the American military had fallen upon them, and that's what happened to that. Meditate those verses. You find this and you think, look at this. Why this not a big bad deal that I'm called into compared to what they were facing. But God already had a plan. He already had it fixed and it was a blessing plan, not a curse plan. Amen. He said, I know the plans I have for you and they're good. They're good.
Well those kind of scriptures need to be meditated and meditated and muttered and talked about and thought about. Instead of just going day in and day out and wonder what the politicians are doing. Just meditate on all that all the time. Well that's all you'll ever have in your mind. It'll choke off your spirit. You don't know it, but it does. Because you can't feel it and you get into the Word and you're standing on these scriptures and so forth and then still not much happening. Wonder why? Junk. Junk.
Now how much good would it do me, or anybody else for that matter, how much good would it do to me at 82 years old to be on a strong exercise program, strong one? How much good is that going to do and never do anything about my diet? It's going to do be more damage than good because my body it won't have the wherewithal and the nutrition to take that physical stress that's being put on it and most likely at my age I'll fall and get hurt or something because I'm pushing it. Well, it's spirit, soul and body. Spirit, soul and body. It's not easy, but you can meditate it long enough and stay in the Word long enough. I hated exercise, and I said so. If you say something long enough that it get into your spirit it'll control your life.
When I started this strong program I grabbed a hold of those two rope handles on that A-frame and the first pull I made it came out my mouth before I could get my hand over my mouth. God, how I hate this. I slapped myself. I slapped my hand over my mouth, I repent before You. I love this. I love it because it's You and I thank You for it and that thing lifted off me immediately. I can't hardly wait to get in there. I love it. I love daily television. For years, I didn't. I won't go into all of that. Stupid is hard to fix. Anyway, the Lord straightened me out on that and I began to confess it several years ago. My, how I love daily television. It's thrilling. Well what's happening? My spirit is being strengthened and nourished on the Word of God and we're out of time.