Kenneth Copeland - How to Activate Your Faith for Anointing Power
Welcome, everybody, to the Believer's Voice of Victory Broadcast. I'm Kenneth Copeland. Let's have a word of prayer. We'll get right into today's Bible lesson.
Father, we praise You today. Oh, we worship You, Sir, and we thank You. Holy Spirit, You are welcome to manifest yourself in this studio and in this radio and television audience just any way that pleases You. And we thank You, and we praise You, heavenly Father, for revelation, divine words, that move heaven on the earth in Jesus' name. Amen.
Glory to God. You remember now, we're talking about faith. So let's go over here to the 11th chapter of Mark. And you cannot study faith without thoroughly studying the gospel of Mark and the words of Jesus concerning faith because this is the faith of God and exactly how it works. And I'll comment more then, because I've gotten some things, if I get to it today, I've got at least one, yeah, we'll get to it, the Lord just said we would. Amen. Mark 11:22, "Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God," or actually, the Greek text says, "Have the faith of God". Now, "For verily I say unto you, Whosoever". Say, "Whosoever". Say it out loud if you're in a place where you can. "Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, 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 shall have whatsoever he saith," or says.
Now, I want you to notice this here: This faith is of the heart and not the head or the mind. "Shall not doubt in his heart". Well, what's he supposed to believe? He's supposed to believe that those things which he says will come to pass because what you say is coming to pass whether you're a believer or not. This is the way faith is released. This is also the way fear is released. This is also the way doubt and unbelief is released. Amen.
Now, this is what shocked me when I first found this out a number of years ago. I read an article that this man, he was not a believer, he decided he was not going to have the flu. There was a flu epidemic going around. And he just stood in front of his mirror and said, "I'm not going to have the flu. I'll never have the flu". He didn't say, "In the name of Jesus". He didn't know nothing about saying, "in the name of Jesus". "I'll never have the flu. I'll never ever have the flu". And he said it every day. And he said, and he said it, and he said it. And the man hadn't had the flu in something like 20 years.
"Oh, Brother Copeland, how could that happen to him not even saved"? Because this is the way the spirit realm works whether you're born again or not, because you can stand there and say and say and say, it'll work. Amen. That's shocking, isn't it? But think about it. In the ministry of Jesus, it worked, right? Well, nobody in the ministry of Jesus was born again. It worked for Gentiles. Yeah. Don't you remember the centurion? I'm way out ahead of myself, but that's all right. I'm out here. Now this centurion said, "I'm not worthy that you should come under my roof: but you say the word only, and my servant shall be healed. I'm a man under authority: I say to one, Go, and he goes; I say to one, Come, and he comes". What did Jesus say? "I have not seen such great faith, no, not in Israel".
Now, Israel were the people of God at that day. Amen. But here is a Gentile, an Italian, but he had faith in the word. Now, what did Jesus do? Jesus said the word, and his servant was healed. Now, I don't know whether the servant was a Gentile. Probably. But the point is, these are spiritual laws. And they work every day all over the earth just like gravity works every day all over the world. These spiritual laws work all over the world. Some fellow says, "You know, that saying just don't work for me". Well, it just worked for him and it don't work. And here's another, you just think about it. These are spiritual laws. That's the reason it says, "whosoever". Say it, "'Whosoever' means me". Glory to God. Yes. Amen.
Now then, what does it mean to believe in the heart and not in the head or the mind? Let's look first of all here at I Peter 3, and look at this 4th verse. "But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible". Do you get? Let me read it again. "Let it be the hidden man". This is the man. It's a man. Now, that means women, too. It's talking about mankind. The Bible always talks about mankind unless it's specifically talking about a man or a woman. Mankind. "Let it be the hidden man of the heart". Now, as we said yesterday, you can't believe anything with your blood pump anymore than you could the liver. "Let it be the hidden man of the liver". No, no. Hey, that ain't going to work. Okay, let's try this. "Let it be the hidden man of the kidney". Let it be... no, of course not. "In that which is not corruptible". The physical body is corruptible, but this born-again, inward man, this born-again person, the spirit himself, the real you is not corruptible. This is the born-again man. Now, your flesh is.
Now, it can be corrupted, but I ain't got time to get into that. Now, let's look at I Thessalonians 5:23. "And the very God of peace," listen, "sanctify you wholly". Not holy "wholly". "W-H" All one piece. W-H-O-L-L-Y. "Sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, and also will do it". Now, spirit and soul and body. It's amazing how that most Christian people have the idea that the soul and the spirit are the same thing. I used to think that before I learned anything about the New Testament. And I was very blessed that I came from a scriptural illiterate.
When I enrolled at Oral Roberts University in January 24th, 1967. The day I enrolled, I was scripturally illiterate, but I was very, very blessed that I immediately was introduced not only to the ministry of Oral Roberts, because as most of you heard my testimony, I became part of the flight crew on his airplane back there in those days. And so I was in all of his meetings. But just right off of the bat, I was introduced to Brother Kenneth Hagin's ministry. And man, I'm telling you, I was listening to his tapes night and day. Well, I was in it. Praise God. I remember one day. Glory to God. I had all my books in my hand like this... not all my books, books for the class, but it was right at the very beginning. This was my first day in my Bible class. And we were studying the book of Romans. And I had a book in my hand. I look down at it, and it said, "Roaming Through Romans". And I thought, "Roaming through Romans". "Maybe I better read Romans before I roam through it".
I thought that in my mind, and let me tell you how I studied it. I got into Brother Hagin's tapes. I was listening to him, listening to him. I mean, I'm listening to him night and day because he's teaching the Word of faith. I'd never heard anything. See, what was such a blessing, I wasn't New Testament-brainwashed, religiously brainwashed. I didn't have anything to unlearn. Everything I knew I knew was wrong. I didn't know anything except to screech. Amen. So I thought, "Well, here's the way I'm going to do this". And when he gave a Scripture on tape in those days, I wrote that Scripture down. I went back and read the whole book from which that Scripture came. And so as I was listening to those tapes, I was reading whole books of the New Testament as we were going through there.
So I began to catch on. Well, when I saw this, "spirit and soul and body", and, of course, he was teaching on it, and it straightened me out right quick because I didn't know anything about that. I just thought the soul was the soul. Your soul got saved. And I didn't know the difference. I didn't care, really, until I heard this. And that's in proper order. You are a spirit. You have, in your spirit, a soul. And your spirit and your soul, which is made up of your will and your mind and your emotions, live in this flesh, or corruptible, body. Amen? Are you following me now? So the spirit man should be in ascendancy. The real you should be full of the Word of God in faith, and you need to be in ascendancy and tell your mind what to think and tell your body what to feel.
So now you can get an idea here of what it means to believe with your heart. And faith comes out of the born-again spirit. Let's look at it again in Mark 11. Faith is of the heart. "and shall believe, and not doubt in his heart," or in his spirit. Now, why is it called "heart"? Because that's the most important part of the human being, the heart of the spirit. It's the heart of it. It's the heart of the issue. The heart of a tree, the heart of a watermelon, it is the most important thing that we're talking about here. So it is the heart of the matter.
Now, let's look over here in II Corinthians and we'll see it again. I want you to see these things for yourself. The 4th chapter of II Corinthians in the 16th verse, "For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man", that's talking about the flesh. "The outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day". Hallelujah. Now then, in II Corinthians 5:7, let's look at that. "For we walk by faith, and not by sight". Now, what does that mean? Okay. Let's talk about that now, now that we have it divided up spirit... say, "Spirit, soul, and body". And you'll hear someone say, "Body, mind, and spirit". Now, that's being more body conscious than spirit conscious. Someone would say, "Soul, body, and mind". Well, you've said mind twice. You can see where the confusion is.
So let's go with the Bible. "Spirit and soul and body". And once you rightly divide that... and then the Word of God is the only thing that will divide it. "Dividing asunder the soul and the spirit, and the joints and the marrow". You find that, of course, in the book of Hebrews. Now, "we walk by faith and not by sight". Now, faith is of the heart and not the head or the mind. Now, we can say it like this, "We walk by faith and not by common sense". Now, common sense is important. People that don't have any common sense much, I mean, they just foul up everything. The people with good common sense can see through an issue and be smarter about it particularly than people that have been educated beyond their intellect, and all they see is what somebody else said in a book. But then you've got somebody that's lived a long time, and he knows better. He knows that won't. He's seen that tried. He's seen communism, socialism tried all over the world and ain't nobody ever made it work.
So common sense would tell you, "Why keep trying to do this? That's insane". Keep doing the same thing over and over and over again and to eventually get different results? No, no, man. It just doesn't work like that. Well, anybody with any common sense knows that. And that's wonderful. Now, common sense would tell you, "Whoa, get back out of the street. There's a car coming down the road". "Well, I walk by faith". But if you try to apply really good common sense to faith and actually where faith belongs, it just won't work because good common sense is based on what you have learned in the natural world and what you have found out that works in the natural world and what doesn't work in the natural world. But we're not talking about the natural world. We're talking about the supernatural world, the world of the Spirit. The most supernatural thing that can ever happen to any human being, the most powerful miracle there is, is the new birth. That is so supernatural. Amen.
Now, I believe I receive by faith. You believe what? I believe I receive healing, and in the name of Jesus, according to Mark 11:23-24, I believe I receive it. It's mine. Jesus bought it and paid for it. Glory to God. It's mine. "Well, Brother Copeland, yeah, I prayed over that, but there didn't anything happen, so I didn't get it". No. The problem is here you don't get it spiritually.
Let's go back to Mark 5 where we were yesterday. Let's look at that again. And I want you to notice the woman with the issue of blood. 25th verse, "A certain woman, had an issue of blood twelve years, suffered many things by many physicians, spent all she had, was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, when she heard of Jesus, came in the press, and touched his garment. For she said, 'if I may touch his clothes, I'll be whole'. Straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body".
Now, she didn't feel in her body and then believed it. She believed it when she said it. And then when she acted on it, she drew the healing power of God. What did Jesus say? "Daughter, your faith made you whole". Well, it wasn't her faith. It was His anointing. Oh, yeah, it was her faith because other people touching Him and no anointing flowed out of Him. But when she touched Him, wow. She believed it in her heart; she said it in her mouth. Even though in her head, she was afraid to go out there and do it. Glory to God. But faith in God took that healing before she could feel and before she could see it.