Kenneth Copeland - How To Pray In The Spirit Of Faith
Hello everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland. This is the Believers' Voice of Victory broadcast and I'm going to tell you my brother and sister, I got some good news today. Jesus is alive and on the throne. Hallelujah. And prayer still changes things and changes people. Glory to God.
Father, we just thank you today. Hallelujah. And we worship you. We worship you, sir, in the name of Jesus.
All of you just join me right now and just praise and worship, praise and worship him. Praise and worship him. Glory, glory, glory, glory, glory.
And in the name of Jesus, we praise and honor you for every Word that's said and every deed that's done throughout this radio and television... Because we know thousands and thousands and thousands of people are getting healed and getting saved and receiving baptism of the Holy Spirit and all of these wonderful things, we know they're happening. We know they're happening. You said they would, and we know they are and we thank you for it. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Glory to God. Don't forget to download the three study notes. Kcm.org/notes. praise God, very important. Hallelujah. And let me say this about the downloads or the of those notes. You know we're, particularly on BVOVN we're talking about being totally immersed in the Word of God. And now what does that mean? That's when you just become so committed and just sold out to God and sold completely out to his Word to know his Word, to know the wisdom of God, where you just totally immersed yourself in it.
Now, I know you can't do that when you're on the job and doing things like that. Those of you that have control of your time, you can. And I remembered back in World War II right at the... I had read and learned that of course they needed bomb man. They all of a sudden they needed people that could speak and interpret German and Japanese and then all these different languages and then, man, nobody in the United States hardly spoke anything but English and they couldn't go get Germans to do it. They didn't know. What the Germans were a spy and so forth and so on.
So they developed this language school of total immersion. That meant, and I did some of it in Spanish some years ago. And that meant when you got in there, you were not allowed to speak English. You didn't have anything to do with English. And all you heard night and day was whatever language you were studying and then total immersion in four to six weeks, you became conversationally fluent in that language. Can you imagine that? Four to six weeks. Why? That's how amazing the human brain is. And so I thought, "Wow, that'll work in the Word of God".
So I did that the first year we were in this ministry, we just totally immersed ourselves in the Word. We didn't look at television. We didn't have time for that. I didn't read anything else. We just got in the Word of God and stayed there. Amen. And what happened within a few weeks, not months or years, a few weeks, we were not only strong in faith and powerfully literate in the Word of God and on our way manifesting and from January to May, the Lord developed enough to where he said, "now I'm ready for you in the field right now," amen.
I mean, we had to stay totally immersed to do it, but within those few months we were, Gloria and I were already strong enough in faith and in the Word of God enough, where we were ahead of our peers. I mean, who knew that it would work that fast? You see, Spiritual growth isn't like physical growth. Physical growth is programed in by God into the the body to grow on a time basis, you know, so many years. But Spiritually, no you can stay a baby for 50 years. Or you can totally sell yourself out to the Word of God and the Word of faith and get in there and totally immerse yourself in it. You'll grow just as fast as you keep on doing this. It'll just grow and grow and grow and in a few months, whoa.
Now, if you're watching on BVOVN, see, that's, oh my goodness, Oh God, we want to do that. Oh Lord, help us do that. We know what happens to people if they can totally immerse themselves in the Word of faith. And learning faith, learning how to pray, learning these Spiritual laws. We know we know what will happen to them. Well, and we just prayed that and believed that and believed we received that and we stood on that for a while and got little glimpses of it here and there, but then just just over a year ago, well, it's been 18 months now.
We got this opportunity to go on with a Dish Network, with our own channel so that we could bring other Word of faith people in here, you know, Jerry Savelle, Mark Barkley, Creflo Dollar, Keith Moore, and bring these men and women, Mark and Trina, Hankins and so forth. Men and women that know the Word of faith, live the Word of faith, speak the Word of faith 24 hours a day. But you notice on there, we play a lot of the same thing over and over...
And I noticed that Brother Copeland, can't you put something else on there? No, no, no, no, no, no. No. This is not entertainment. This is training. This is training your Spirit. You're a Spiritual Olympic athlete and you're in there, brother. I mean, you take the same workout every day. You take the same message and you listen to it again, and you listen to it again and you listen to it again and you find a message that clearly strikes your Spirit. You get online and you order that one and you replay that over and over and over and over and over and over. I don't care. Preachers, you ain't preached a sermon until you preached it 50 times. And you get in there, what's happening? Your Spirit's growing, your Spirit's growing, your Spirit's growing, and then you begin... Oh yeah.
When I come out in here that the other day, yeah, that's right there. Yeah. See what's happening. As your Spirit grows up, you teach something to a five year old, and then you teach the same thing when he gets seven years old, then you teach the same thing when he's nine years old, the more you're teaching the same thing, the more of what you're saying he or she can understand. Well, the same thing's true in the Spirit. The same thing's true in the renewing of the mind. I told you yesterday as I was praying in the Spirit over something for, actually months Gloria and I'd been praying over the same thing, but I had let that... Hebrews chapter 1, "don't let a promise slip" and I'd let that slip that it just wasn't in my mind. I was just praying about this.
All of a sudden, while Gloria and I are praying about this, this came out while I was praying. I just prayed this prayer. I prayed these Words and I thought, "Whoa. Whoa. Hallelujah". Why hadn't I remembered to pray this way before? I had let it slip. I had forgotten it in my mind. My mind became, as I was praying in tongues concerning it all this time. See that's the pull, man, that's the reason every born again, child of God is supposed to be baptized in the Holy Ghost speaking with other tongues. Praying in tongues, you see the Spirit of God knows what needs to be prayed. He knows how it needs to be prayed. He knows when it needs to be prayed. He knows for whom it needs to be prayed and he'll pray all that. He'll use you to pray that.
It don't mean a thing in the world to you because you're building yourself up on your most holy faith. Why is it your most holy faith? Because you don't know enough about it to foul it up. So you're just, by faith, praying in the Spirit. I believe I received the interpretation as the scripture says in the 14th chapter of 1 Corinthians at 14:4. And so I'm continuing to pray. What happened? I just kept on and kept on and kept on. And wisdom is rising. Wisdom is rising. Wisdom is rising by the Spirit. See it's the love way, the Word way, the faith way, by my Spirit saith the Lord. These things are functioning in there by the Holy Spirit. Whoa. As it came up and it came up, it came out my mouth and I realized, oh. Oh, ah, 10 minutes or so later I was going, "Whoa, glory to God. Thank you Lord". And I thought, "Yeah, I had let that slip. Oh Lord, forgive me for letting that slip". And then I thought, "That's what I've been praying over this situation in tongues all these months", glory to God. And as I'm praying about...
See the Spirit of God's working all the time. He's working in that area of the realm of the Spirit. He's working in there. He's working in it. He's working in me. He's working in that. Praise God. And as it came up inside me and it came out my mouth, the interpretation of what I prayed in tongues came out my mouth. I wasn't thinking about it. I'm just praying. And Gloria and I are just praying about this same situation. And as we did, woo, out it came. And I've thought, "Gloria, you and I prayed about such and such yesterday". She said, "Yeah". I said, "You know, I never thought to pray what we prayed about that yesterday". She said, "No, I never did either". I said, "Girl, that's what happened in both these cases". She said, "I can see that". She said, "I can see that. Praise God. You and I both did". She said, "You know, we're both praying about this in tongues and the for a long time". But out it came. Out it came.
I'll tell you, things will just start coming out your mouth. You're praying and you're going along here and you're praying for somebody. This happened to me this morning as I was getting dressed there at home. Somebody I'd been praying for and you know, kin folks. And I'd been praying for. Somebody I love. And I'd been praying for them in the Spirit. I just been praying for them in the Holy Ghost and praying about their situation and just rolled all the care of it over on the Lord. And you need to do that. These things don't work, you carrying the care. That's pride according to 1 Peter 5:6-10.
Anyway, I rolled all the care of that over. I don't worry about thing. Because that's God's problem once I roll the care of it over onto him. So, I'm just sitting there this morning praying and I called their name before the Lord. And I prayed... I'm talking about in my natural mind. I will pray in the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 14th chapter, how is it then I will pray in my understanding. I will pray in my Spirit. I was seeing with my understanding. I was seeing with my Spirit. So and I'd been doing that, see, all this time, but here I'm praying in my understanding. And I prayed a prayer. Why? I'm just praying for them.
And, oh my. I could sense my faith coming up in there. I could sense the Spirit of God taking hold together with me against this thing. Strong faith was active. Just come up. And I was just so calm in my Spirit about this. Said, "Lord, thank you. I just, I believe I receive that for them. That is so precious. I just believe I receive it. I just believe I receive it. Thank you all, Lord. Oh, Thank you, Lord". And I said, "Lord, I have never prayed that like that before".
And there it was again. This other happened last night. Gloria and me. And here I am this morning praying for someone else that I had on my heart and I thought it's happened with them. What am I doing? I'm praying in wisdom. God knows how that should be Worded. He knows how that should be prayed. Remember Jesus said though, "Believest thou that I am in the Father and the Father in me. The Words that I speak are not mine. It's the father that dwelleth within me. He does the works".
Now God knew just exactly what he was needed to be prayed so he could do it. Well, why don't he just do it anyway? Well, is that any of your or my business? No. But actually if you study it out.... You know John Wesley, the man that founded the Methodist Church said something, you know, many, many, many, many years ago. He said, "It seems as though God is limited in our prayer lives until somebody asks him". And that's absolutely scriptural throughout the Bible, old and new covenant. God doesn't just come in and just doing anything.
So that prayer needed to be Worded that way. I didn't have those Words in my mind, but God knew exactly... What were the wisdom ago, huh? We read about yesterday. Let him ask God for his wisdom. Let him ask in faith. That prayer needed to be Worded a certain way. And once I heard it coming out of me and I saw it, I thought, "That's brilliant. I ain't that smart". But the Holy Spirit is. Whoa. Oh, glory to God. Amen.
Well I'm praying. Lord, I'm praying for that idiot kid of mine. I don't know what he's coming to. Well, he's coming to the devil the way you're praying about it. He probably already got, the devil's got ahold of him and you're probably at fault. How did I get to be at fault? Well, I'm telling you the way you talk. Anyway, I won't get into that. I know. I've had God say to that, thank God he didn't call me stupid if he'd call me stupid, I'd have been stupid the rest of my life. And so God won't say that to you. And you and I don't need to be saying that to our children either. So. Lord. And the Lord would say, "Pray this".
Okay. Uh-huh. I've been asking you all these years to save him. And nothing happened. And the Lord said, "Pray this". My Words, and I'm talking, about Jesus had just appeared to you and stood right in front of you. Now and Jesus would say, "You know, it's the devil causing this". Really? Yeah. We don't wrestle with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers and rulers of the darkness of this world. Those are the ones that are the problem. Not your son, not your daughter. Not your wife, not your husband, not the government. It's the devil. And Jesus said, "If you're going to spoil a strong man's house, first bind him".
Okay. He's telling you how to do this and get your get your son or your daughter straightened up. Okay, Jesus. If you say so. Yeah, I say so. And I said in my Word, pray this. Pray The Lord of the harvest send laborers into the field. Oh, so you said that. Uh-huh, yeah. So let's do this where that boy is concerned. And you say this, you can do this right now. If you want to. Just follow me. Now this is Jesus. He's standing right there in front of you. And he said, "Now, call that boy's name". Jimmy Smith. Okay. And say this, "You Spirit operating in the life of my son Jimmy Smith, to keep him out of the Kingdom of God, I bind you. In Jesus' name".
Now, that's as far as you need to go, you don't need to add a... No, no. You just point to your Bible. And say, "Now, Jesus said that and that's what I'm doing". And the scripture says, you resist the devil, he'll flee from you. Okay, now pray this. "Lord know who my son Jimmy Smith will listen to. I'm asking you to send a laborer across his path with the Word of his salvation, the Word of his healing and the Word of his deliverance". Now pray that. Okay, if you say so, Jesus. Then you just pray it. Now, what have you done? You have prayed the prayer that Jesus described in his Word. If he said it in his Word, it is more powerful than if he appeared to you and said it. We know that from what he said to Thomas. Now, in the 20th Chapter Book of John.
I've done this over the years many, many times. It's amazing the kind of results. Some of them the next day, some of them two weeks later. Sister just came in and said, "I don't know what you've been doing, but I got born again yesterday". Why? Praying the prayer that Jesus said. You start off with the Word of God and that the promises of God covering your situation, see, we just covered your situation with your, with your children. So you covered that. Well, that's what happened to me this morning. As I was praying for that person, the wisdom of God came up in me. Every Word of it agreed perfectly with the written Word of God, but I prayed a prayer that was not in my natural mind. It came up out of the Holy Spirit by my Spirit into my mind. I've been praying for that person in tongues for months.