Kenneth Copeland - Faith Works From The Inside Out
We began talking about the very basic fundamentals of faith. Let's go to Mark 11 and we'll read Mark 11:22-25 again. The classic teaching by Jesus on the God kind of faith. Twenty second verse of Mark 11. Now, you remember, Jesus had just spoken to a fig tree 24 hours before. They went on into the temple and he spoke to the fig tree. It was in the morning. He spoke to that fig tree, he said nine words to it, "No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever". And his disciples heard it. They went to Jerusalem. He preached all day in the temple. I like that. That's my kind of preacher. No hour and a half, he preached until night, man. Glory to God. I've done it a few times and it's amazing what happens.
Now, Jesus spoke to that fig tree and they went back, then, that when evening was come they went out of the city. That's somewhere around 12 hours. Now, you know they didn't wait until completely dark to walk back to Bethany. It was evening. Don't you know they all looked at that fig tree and if anything had been wrong with it, Peter would have said something about it. But you couldn't tell anything. It looked just as nice and green and it had that morning when he spoke to it. But, now, the next day in the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.
Now, this is a huge lesson to learn about the spiritual force of faith. Faith is the creative force of God. Amen. Now, it's a spiritual force. It doesn't work from the outside in, it works from the inside out. When we were raised in this earth, we were outside in people because whatever we needed somebody else had it. Amen. Even when we were looking to God, he was out there, and we needed him to get what we needed and bring it here. But when we got born again, and when we were made new creatures in Christ Jesus... are you listening to me now? Listen carefully. We became spiritual people. We're not a dead spirit anymore. We went from death unto life. Life was ministered to us. Zoe life, the life of God was ministered on the inside of us, and we became then inside out people but we didn't know it. We didn't realize that, didn't understand it until we began to have our minds renewed to that fact and we realized that Jesus said the whole kingdom of God is on the inside of you. Everything you could possibly need or ever desire is inside you right now.
Now that's a little bit hard to grasp. We have a tendency to think in natural boundaries. In the Spirit, there are no boundaries. Let me give you an illustration here. Before Jesus went to the cross, died, and went to hell and paid the price for Adam's transgression, nobody had died and gone to heaven, Jesus said so. Well, then, where was paradise? Where was the bosom of Abraham? It was the upper region of Sheol, hell. A protected region in the upper part of hell itself. Only two people had gone to heaven itself and they haven't died yet. Enoch and who? Elijah. They're still there in their physical bodies. Don't you know they having a time? Amen. But, now, where was paradise? It was heaven but it wasn't in heaven. It was in that upper protected region. It looked just exactly like heaven. It's paradise but not on the planet heaven itself. It has to be a planet, it's got a north, south, and an east, and a west. Amen.
Are you listening to me now? The Lord was talking to me about this and in studying this I had the Lord say this to me. He said, "Kenneth, you're still thinking in natural carnal boundaries. You're trying to figure out where in the center of the earth and all of that". He said, "Forget that". He said, "In the Spirit I could put the state of Texas in a clothes closet". In other words, you could be in your closet praying, even if you have a nice size closet, and step over into the Spirit and see the whole state of Texas laid out before you. But when you come back to yourself. you're in your clothes closet.
See, we're talking about spiritual things. There are no boundaries here. That force... let me explain it like this. This, I believe, will make it clear. While we were in Tulsa, while I was a student at Oral Roberts University in 1967, and then we left Tulsa in the later part of '68 and went back to Fort Worth and our headquarters have been there ever since, Gloria began to save magazines with pictures of houses in them. She got so many magazines I said, "Gloria, why don't you just take the pictures that you like, Southern Living and all the different Home and Gardens or what all". My magazines are airplane magazines, I don't have house magazines.
Anyway, so she started taking pictures, cutting them out and filing them away and keeping record of those. We'd be gone for days and days and particularity back then in the early days most of our meetings were two and three weeks long. But we'd come home and boy, out would come the house stuff. Finally, she got here some graph paper where she could just plan and move rooms and then do all this kind of thing. She did that for 30 years. She came to me, she said, "Kenneth, this house just keeps bigger and bigger". I said, "What do you care"? She said, "I can't figure out anyway to cut it back". I said, "Gloria, that's a dream. Dream on, girl". Amen. She said, "Okay". She just doing this thing. But she came in one day, it had been just a little over 30 years she had been doing it.
She came to me and she said, "Kenneth, something's happening". She said, "We need to pray and find out if it's God's will to build this house". She said, "This has just been a dream of mine up to now". But she said, "I don't know what it is," she said, "I'm either gonna have to build it or quit". She said, "If it's not the will of God," and I heard her say this. We took off three days, a whole weekend. We didn't pray about anything else, just quoted James 1, "Any man lack wisdom, let him ask God who giveth liberally, and upbraideth not. Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering".
I heard her say, "Father, in the name of Jesus," just as happy as she could be. "Father, in the name of Jesus, if it's your will for me to build this house, what a thrill it would be. If it's not, glory to God. I enjoyed this for the last 30 years and I have no regrets and I'll never bring it up again". Just as happy as she could be. We're sitting on the couch and the Lord said, "You take these scriptures and you lay hands on Gloria and you minister the house to her because it's part of your prosperity".
Now, listen very carefully. He said, "The dream has begun to take upon itself faith. It's about to be born". What's happening see, Gloria had done all of this and she would pray over it, "Oh, Lord, what am I gonna do about this? What about this room? No, that don't work". I can just hear over there just praying in the Spirit, just playing house and just having a big time. That's better when she was a little girl out there on that farm and she played dolls in the outhouse. This was a better deal. You gotta really wanna play house bad if, you know. Anyway... oh, glory to God. She's watching online I know right now. Can you hear that? It's taking upon itself faith. What's happening? It's drawing it out of the Spirit realm which was on the inside of her. It wasn't in me. The Lord told me to stay out of it. He said, "Don't mess with it".
Now remember, we don't borrow money and we don't ask anybody or ask anybody to meet our needs. Never have, never will. Fifty two of ministry in January and never have yet. Amen. Listen to this. See, that house was in here. God's revealing that home to her, how it looked. I turned around and I said, "Gloria". And I began to read the scripture from the 54th chapter of Isaiah and she began to weep. I thought, "What is this"? And then she began to laugh, and she began to cry and laugh at the same time, "Oh, glory to God". She said, "Kenneth, when I wrote down, we read a little mini book by Oral Roberts, Don't Let Anyone Steal Your Dreams". And she said, "In that little book Oral had said, 'Write your dreams down.'"
We found that little list later, she had tucked it away some place. It was just a little small list. Right up at the top of her dream list was the perfect home for this family and this ministry and the scripture she wrote down was the scripture the Lord said to me to minister to her. I didn't know it, I had never seen that list. She just burst out, "Oh, hallelujah, we gonna build a house. We gonna build a house". It's a big house. If you don't like preachers in a big house, you better stay away from mine. We didn't say anything to anybody about it. Some of you partners may have done this, I don't know. But people would send something in and say, "I've added extra here for Gloria's house. I don't know what she's doing".
It took two years to get all of the architectural and we built it on ministry property out there and so pray until you find the right place where God wanted it put. I liked to foul that up too but the Lord didn't let me mess it up. And, so, the day we poured the foundation the money was in the bank to build it. Now, what happened? When the Lord had room in the Spirit we praised and worshiped. I don't remember ever saying and I don't remember Gloria ever saying anything like, "I believe, I receive it. I believe, I receive it". No, the Lord said, "Build it," so what do we care? I mean, I wouldn't have cared if it took 10 years to build. We were living good as it was. Had a nice place. We'd been living there for 20 years and enjoying every minute of it.
I mean, what if we had just believed God and just built it a little bit at a time? Who cares, you don't borrow the money. Amen. You just believe God. But what I'm attempting to make clear to you is the house was already built in the Spirit. Does that make sense, Bob? It was already inside her. Once faith began to happen, what happens? In the Spirit realm it begins to take form and faith will bring things in the Spirit realm into and manifest in the natural world. That's what it does. Now, too many people work at it. No, you rest in Him. When you working, He's resting. But, if you will rest, He will work. I don't want Him resting. No, I don't want Jesus resting. I want to rest in Him. I want Him working. Glory to God. I want Him working. Glory to God. Amen. Hallelujah. Glory to God.I hope you're hearing me because this is an area of the Spirit that the fig tree dried up from the roots. Amen.
Now, then, "Have faith in God". I like have the God kind of faith, that really ministers to me. "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, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he will have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever you desire, when you pray, believe".
When you pray, believe. I'm gonna say it again, "When you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them". The son of the living God said it himself, has to be true. Has to be true. Amen. Now, all the time Gloria's building that house, she's seeing herself with it. All that time she's building that house and just sitting in there, she's got house scriptures and hey, listen, she can give you chapter and verse, enough scripture to get all the furniture and everything it needs. She found that whole house in the Word of God. Amen.