Kenneth Copeland - Believe The Word of God Is Powerful and True
Father, we thank You today for Your Word. We thank You for the power of Your wonderful, marvelous name. And our faith stands in power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit. And we thank You for it in Jesus' name. Amen.
Let's go once again to Mark 11:23. If you're going to study faith, then you have to study Mark 11:23. Now, of course, faith's all over the Bible. Amen. "What do you mean it's all over the Bible"? Enoch. Do you remember about Enoch? That's right here in the front of the Bible. In the 11th chapter of the book of Hebrews, Enoch walked with God by faith and pleased God, and God took him. Now, that doesn't mean it like most people think, "God took somebody meaning He killed them". God has never taken anybody. "What"? Put your religion back in the drawer. I haven't got time to talk to you about it right now, but He didn't. He took Enoch, spirit, soul and body. Enoch has never died.
Oh, you talk about a long life. This boy lived her out, didn't he, he and Elijah? Praise God. We won't have to go into all the discussion of that, but I wanted you to realize that faith pleased God. In book one, faith pleased God. In the book of Revelation, the Bible is a faith book because God is a faith God. By the force of faith, He created the universe. How did He do it? Believed it in His heart and said it with His mouth. Glory to God. Think about it. The Spirit of God was moving on the face of the deep. Wasn't anything happening. He was moving. Wasn't anything happening till God said, "Light be"! Whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa! At the speed of light, this universe was born, 186,000, what, some 280 miles... I don't know. Really fast, 186,000 miles an hour. And it's still expanding. Isn't that wonderful?
And that same God, that same Spirit, if you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, He is living on the inside of you right now. Ooh. Isn't that wonderful? I'll tell you, I heard the Lord say to me one day. He said, "Become more God-inside minded". And I thought, "Oh, yeah". You know, in my mind's eye, I'm praying, "Well, that prayer didn't seem like to me it got any higher than the ceiling". It didn't need to get any higher than your nose, because He's right here. Glory to God. But, see, that's when you begin to live and walk by faith. You begin to believe in the God that's within you. You begin to believe and take His Word as His Word. It's the Word of God, not a Book. The Word of God is a covenant. It's a bond. His Word is good. Amen.
One thing they used to say about my dad, they said, "I'll tell you one thing, that man's word is good. It is his bond". God's Word is good, and it is His bond. Hallelujah. I done preached me happy. Glory to God. Now, Jesus said, "For verily I say unto you, whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart," or in his spirit, "but shall believe that those things which he saith," or what are those things? Their words, those words which he says, "will come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he says".
Now, that's true whether you're born again or not. When you call things that are the way they are, they continue to be the way they are. But like God who calls things that be not as though they were and then they become. Amen. That's the way you change things. They don't change and then you believe it. You believe it and then they change. Now, "Yeah, but Brother Copeland, you know, I just have a hard time with that". I know it. Everybody does. Everybody has a hard time with that. I didn't have quite as hard a time as other people have with it for two reasons: One, I was a scriptural illiterate when I got born again. And the first thing that I ever studied was the Word of faith. And so that's all I've ever known and walked in now for over 50 years.
And, now, that plus this. Being an instrument pilot, I remember one day, I was learning this and I was struggling with it a bit. Abraham, like God, strong in faith considered not his own body. He refused to believe his body. And he had to believe what God said instead of what he could see and what he could feel. And I said, "Oh, Lord, I got it"! When I learned how to fly instruments, but before I became an instrument pilot where I just flew by contact, you know, what they call a VFR pilot, visual flight rules, where if there's any clouds or anything, you aren't allowed to fly through them because you can't see; and not being an instrument pilot, you'll kill yourself.
So you get vertigo. Man, when you get in the clouds and you can't see and you don't know enough to read the instruments on your panel, you can feel like you're doing just fine. Or you might feel like you're turning and try to straighten the airplane out. Why? Your inner ear doesn't have anything to make its mind up on. It can't see the horizon. It can't see anything. And you fall out from under that cloud and you thought you were like this, and you wind up like this. And in a lot of cases, people kill themselves like that. I experienced it one time years and years ago. Thank God I had learned how to get out of it, and I got out of it. But this is a good example, too.
I was an instrument pilot, but I was flying an airplane that I didn't know anything about. And I don't like to fly on instruments when I don't know anything about some old airplane. And this was back when I was in that business and flying this old dog. And I was trying to stay below the clouds and I'm flying along here. And my own dumb fault. And it started getting dark and the clouds kept getting lower. And I'm trying to keep my eye on the ground. And, whoa, man, I got it. My head rolled over. I felt like I was turning and I wasn't and it just grabbed me. And so what you did back there then, and now, as far as that goes, you had to get your head between your knees and so you're not seeing this out here, and look up real slow like this and lock onto the instruments right there and don't let yourself look outside.
If you look outside, your head will tilt again. You go back in there like this. What you're straightening out that inner ear. And you come up like that and you're looking at that panel and you fly those instruments, fly those instruments. "I don't believe what I see. I don't believe what I feel. I believe these instruments". Are you getting it? That's your instrument panel right there. And you get spiritual vertigo and you're thinking, "Whoa. Whoa, man. I know I'm supposed to be healed, but this feels so bad". "By his stripes ye were healed. By his stripes ye were healed". Don't look at anything but this. Look at this. Say, "By his stripes I was healed. If I was, I am now. A thousand years is as a day, a day is as a thousand years. 2,000 years ago was the day before yesterday. I was healed the day before yesterday". Glory to God. Don't turn it loose. Stay right there.
And I realized and I said, "Lord, I already know how to do this because I've been flying instruments for years. I know how to do this". Amen. When I'm flying in that airplane, I cannot be moved by what I feel. I cannot be moved by what I see. In this case, I can't see anything. I have to be moved by what I believe and I believe these gauges. I believe these instruments, these flight instruments. They'll tell me right. Well, you could even have a bad instrument in an airplane, but hey, this is never wrong. Final authority to the man and woman of faith. Final authority.
"Well, Brother Copeland, but look at this. I just don't understand it". I know it, but it is final authority. And you go before the Lord and say, "Lord, reveal this to me". Oh, yeah, your work... the day Gloria and I saw the scripture, I mean, brother, this is the first year of our ministry, 1967. I mean, I'm green as a gourd, you understand? But I knew something about faith, and Gloria and I stood up in Brother Kenneth Hagin's meeting, one of his meetings, and he said, "Anybody that wants to do this, stand on your feet". Well, we jumped to our feet. I mean, we were so gung-ho on the Word of God. And we jumped up and raised our hand. "Whatever I see in Your Word, in the name of Jesus, I receive it first place and final authority in my life". Amen.
Romans 13:8, "Owe no man anything, but to love him". What? Well, I get my Amplified. "Stay out of debt". I didn't know you could live without borrowed money. I said, "Gloria, come here". She came in there. I had my Bible in my hands. "Look at this". She looked at that and read it. Her face fell just like mine did. You know, I mean, there went my airplane and there went her house. I mean, brother, and, granted, at the time, we was so broke, we couldn't pay attention. And she put her finger on that verse and she looked at me as she said, "If that's what the book says, that's what we're going to do," and turned around and walked out of the room.
Now, don't misunderstand me. You can't build a doctrine on one verse of scripture. And that actual verse was not referring to money. But when you begin to search the rest of the Bible and you find out borrowed money is under the curse, whoa. Yeah. And then that becomes a command. Amen. So we put that first place. Well, what had to happen? We had to turn to the Word and have God reveal to us how to live that way. Man, I stumbled up. I made mistakes. I fouled it up, but God just stayed with us. Glory to God. And Gloria and I were out of debt in 11 months. And the thing of it was, we were 24,000, Gloria said she married me and my notes. Well, I wasn't about to tell her about that before we got married. That is Kenneth B.C. I would have lied about it, probably, till after we got married. She'd ask me. Wasn't either one of us born again. And I asked her to marry me on our first date and she said, "Yes". Well, you know, well, I mean, it may not last... of course, it lasted 55 years, but... now, anyway.
So what I'm pointing out to you is, that's the truth. The truth will change facts. Now, you know, Jesus said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free". How? "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God," or by the hearing of truth; not facts, truth. "Yeah, but Brother Copeland, see here, this thing, this rash here I got on my arm, that's the truth". No, no, that's not the truth. That's a fact. That's not truth. The truth is, "By His stripes, ye were healed".
Now, here we go. Common sense, or what I feel and what I see, tell me I am not healed. Well, that's a fact. This flesh is not healed. But the truth is, I was healed 2,000 years ago, which here, again, I'm going to keep saying it to you. A day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day. So day before yesterday, Jesus was crucified and He bore your sins, sickness, diseases, pains, all of that. And by his stripes, you were healed, day before yesterday.
So that's in the spirit. Your spirit man has healing force in it. And as you believe the truth, "My words abide in you, and you abide in me, ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you". Now, you go to the Word of God. You find the promises that cover this situation and you believe them. "For all of the promises of God in Him are yes and Amen". If the prayers you pray are based on the Word, then that's the answer to the prayer. It's not, "yes," "no," "maybe". When people get into that, why are they there? Because they abide in Christ, but the Word doesn't abide in you. But when you put the Word first place, if the Word says I'm healed, I'm healed.
I don't care if my nose is running and my ears are running and my head is hurting and I've got bumps all over me. That doesn't have anything to do with it. Those are facts. But you stay in the truth as faith arises, praise God, and you begin to realize, "Jesus said this. What He says is true". Amen. If you will learn to take Jesus as your healer as well as your Savior... let me ask you something. You were in a church service or someplace where you heard the word "preacher," on this broadcast or something, and we told you that Jesus, you know, believe in your heart that He's been raised. Well, we didn't tell you. Romans 10 told you, 10 and 9 told you. That, "Believe in your heart, and say it with your mouth. Believe it in your heart God raised him from the dead, and say with your mouth that he is Lord, though shalt be saved".
Okay. Well, did you have to pray to get to get faith to be healed? I mean saved. "Oh, God give me faith to believe this. I want to be saved. I want to be born again, but, oh, I feel so ugly. Oh, I feel like such a sinner". Well, you are! Amen. You haven't been born again yet. You're sitting there begging for it and all the time He's giving it to you and said, "What's the matter with you"? No, you didn't say that. Why? Because when you heard it, faith came. The moment you did this, "Lord, I believe that. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Oh, thank You. Take my life and do something with it. Oh, glory to God".
Well, you didn't have to ask for faith. Faith was there. You believe He would do exactly that because you heard it from the Word and the Spirit of God gave you faith. I mean, the same Jesus on the same day that He bore your sins, bore your sickness and disease, weakness, and pains. Exactly. Receive Him as your healer. You don't have to feel anything. You don't even have to look any different any more than you looked any different or felt any different when you got born again.
Now, feelings come and you may have been in a place of worship where feelings were there. Amen. But remember this, feelings are not. His Word is truth, and truth believed will make you free. Amen. Whether it's sin, sickness, disease, pain, poverty, anything that's under that curse, say it, "The Word of God is final authority in my life. It says I'm healed, I'm healed. I believe I take it now in Jesus' name".