Kenneth Copeland - Renew Your Mind to Gratitude and Thanksgiving
KENNETH: Hello, everybody. I'm Kenneth, and this is Gloria Copeland. We welcome you today to the Believer's Voice of Victory Broadcast. Let's have a word of prayer, and we can get right into today's Bible lesson. Father, we thank you.
GLORIA: Thank you.
KENNETH: And we praise you, and we honor your word today. We come before you with praise and thanksgiving, and we uplift our hearts to you to receive revelation from heaven. We thank you for it in Jesus' name.
GLORIA: Thank you, Lord.
KENNETH: Amen.
GLORIA: Amen.
KENNETH: Praise God. Let's open our Bibles once again to Romans chapter one, which is our golden text in this study concerning developing a life of thanksgiving and gratitude. Praise God. In verse 21, because... Well, let's read verse 20. "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead so that they are without excuse. Because when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools".
Now a fool, the definition of a fool in the Bible is one that says there is no God. This attitude got them to the place where they just acted like there wasn't any God. No praise. They didn't acknowledge him in all that they did. They didn't praise him. They didn't give him thanks for what they did have, praise God. It just kept on and kept on until they were darkened. As you read this, you begin to realize that they got this, and there's a very serious situation that they got into. We don't have time to go into all that. But the key to it, as I see it, as I...
Now, go back up to the 16th verse. "I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it's the power of God and the salvation to everyone that believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For it is written, the just shall live by faith". The difference between that and people that just didn't acknowledge him at all, darkened them and brought them to a place where it looks like to me that they were in extremely serious spiritual situation. Now, developing a life of gratitude and thanksgiving to where we're in a giving of thanks mode and consciousness all the time. What do you have to do to do that? You have to renew your mind to thanksgiving and praise all the time. All the time. Gloria emphasized it again yesterday, and Monday and Tuesday of this week. To continue. We got that out of Philippians chapter four.
Let's turn over there and read that, Philippians 4:6. "Be careful for nothing. But in everything, everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God". Now, I'm going to go a little further with this passage of scripture today. And the peace of God, if you want the peace of God which passes all understanding to keep your mind and your heart through Christ Jesus, then you're going to have to have an attitude of thanksgiving and prayer...
GLORIA: Amen. Praise the Lord.
KENNETH: Where you're involved in. Somebody asked Smith Wigglesworth, "How long do you pray"? He said, "Oh, I don't usually pray over about 15, 20 minutes". They were shocked because of the enormous miracles. Dead raised from the... People raised from the dead in his ministry. "But", he said, "I don't usually go 15 to 20 minutes without praying".
GLORIA: Yeah, there you have it.
KENNETH: In other words, he prayed all the time. He prayed unceasingly. That's one of the reasons why being able to pray in other tongues is so important. Right there in the 14th chapter of first Corinthians, he said, "When you pray in tongues, verily you give thanks well. You bless well". Now, he was referring to people praying at a meal or praying together, but there'd be some present that don't know anything about tongues. Well, pray in English because they don't understand what what you're doing. But if all of us are all of us in the know and we pray in the spirit and understand what we're doing...
GLORIA: We're veterans.
KENNETH: Yeah. There's not a thing in the world wrong with all of us just catching hands and just praying the spirit, and give God praise and thanksgiving, because you can say things in tongues that you can't say with your mind. Supernatural way of thanksgiving and praise. Now, when we talked about being instant when something happens as that praise comes out your mouth. Amen. Now, rather than just depend on your mind to pray, particularly if it's a sudden danger or something like that, just begin in the spirit. Just start praising God in other tongues, just praising him and worshiping glory to God, and watch the situation turn.
GLORIA: I got this yesterday. Speaking in tongues, you can truly get out of your mind.
KENNETH: Yeah, and stay out of your mind.
GLORIA: That's right.
KENNETH: People say, "Copeland, you're out of your mind". Thank you very much. I'm glad you noticed. Amen. Now then, I want to get over to this scripture in where we were yesterday in the 107th psalm. If you'll turn there with me please. As I was saying yesterday when we ran out of time, this is a tremendous praising psalm. But I notice a correlation here between... I've used this verse so many times. He said his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction. I've praised God. He said his word and he healed me, glory to God. You can take that. He sent his Word and healed me, and now I receive that healing. It's one thing to acknowledge that he's done it. It's another thing to receive it by faith and just then don't let go. Praise God. But the first verse says, "Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so".
Now, how do you say so? In praise and thanksgiving. I'm redeemed, praise God, and I thank God for it. I'm redeemed from the curse of the Lord, glory to God. Now see, the writer of the psalms knew that. He's a Jew. He knew he's redeemed from the curse. Amen. He's praising and thanking God for it. You come up here to the top oh, that man would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men, for he satisfies the longing soul and fills the hungry soul with goodness. And he said his word, and he healed me.
GLORIA: Praise God.
KENNETH: Hallelujah. Oh, that's praising ground.
GLORIA: Thank you.
KENNETH: Oh, that's thanksgiving ground. I mean, you can give God thanksgiving and get full of joy over that, praise God. And you just have one more opportunity to prove his goodness, and his Word is alive and wonderful and well, glory to God. Amen.
KENNETH: Now, the redeemed say so through praise and thanksgiving. Let's go to second Corinthians, chapter two. Second Corinthians, chapter two. Let's look at the 14th verse. Go ahead now and look up Acts chapter 16, because we want to turn right back there to that. Okay. Second Corinthians, chapter two, verse 14. "Now, thanks be unto God, which always causes us to triumph in Christ and maketh manifest the savior of his knowledge by us in every place". Praise God. Thanks be unto God who always, always, always causes us to triumph. Thanks be to God.
GLORIA: That's a victory burst.
KENNETH: Boy, that's a victory burst of gloriousness.
GLORIA: Yeah, it is.
KENNETH: Now, I want you to get... He always causes us to triumph. Now, who wrote that? The apostle, Paul. Let's go over to the book of Acts, chapter 16. "Then came here to Derbe and Lystra, and behold a certain disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a certain woman, which was a Jewish and believed. But his father was a Greek, which was well reported of by them that were in Lystra and Iconium. Him would Paul have to go forth with him, and took and circumcised him because of the Jews which were in these quarters".
Now, you know what happened here. Oh, they got upset. Everybody got upset. And I wish I had time to get in there and show you some things out of that. I want us to come right on down here. Now, what happened? Verse... Oh, let's see. Verse 19. "When their masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas and drew them into the marketplace and the rulers", and so forth and so on. Verse 23. "When they had laid many stripes..". Say "many stripes". The whole way of that time, they did this with Jesus. Their cruelty was, and they were masters at this, you whip a man til he's almost dead, but you don't kill him.
You just let him hurt. But just deep, deep pain, beat him nearly to death. And then, put him in stocks where he can't move and he's bleeding and hurting. The position is in, think about all bent over and that back is all ripped up. "They laid many stripes upon them", Paul and Silas. "They cast them into prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely, who having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison and made their feet fast in the stocks. And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed. They prayed and sang praises unto God". The praise part.
I want you to get the praise part. The power is in the praise. When God, the Bible says, enters into our praise... We pray, we enter into his presence. We praise, he enters into ours and power is made available. Great, great power. They're making a lot of noise about it, a lot of noise. "The prisoners heard them". They heard them. "Suddenly, there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. Immediately, all the doors were open, and everyone's bands were loosed".
Now, this happened because of praise. I am totally convinced that the Holy spirit saw fit to put this in the book of Acts as a type of hour midnight. At midnight they did this. At the midnight hour of our trials and tests and the hardened, the tough stuff that that comes, hurt stuff that comes.
I remember, Gloria. Oh my. I remember it so when it was on a Sunday night right before Southwest, and John and Marty and our little niece, Nikki, and her husband, they'd left downtown at the venue where they had been working, setting up. I remember that night John called and said, "Daddy, Nikki's dead". It just, just slap you just right across the face. I just shouted in the name of Jesus, and I cursed death and began to praise God. Just begin to praise him and praise him.
Instead of, "Oh God, why did you let this happen to my family? It seems like we always get in trouble". Well, you're headed for more trouble that you need to attack back. Just do it in praise, and you do it in honor God. God didn't have anything to do with that. A drunk man had something to do with it. Amen. Marty was injured, but Nikki was the only one that went to heaven out of that. You get that kind of news, there better be a praise in your mouth. The only way you get there is just like the Paul and Silas. Out of the abundance of their heart, their mouths prayed and sang and worshiped God.
Now here's another thing that is really, really, really powerful here. That power didn't hit anywhere but that prison. It was localized to that prison. And somebody said, "Well, how do you know that"? Because earthquakes don't take your chains off. It didn't tear the building down, it just loosed all of their chains. And there was such a presence, such a presence nobody could move. Now...
GLORIA: When I've thought about that before, I was thinking about the earthquake out here breaking the chains in the prison and all. But I think it was the earthquake came out of them.
KENNETH: Yeah, it did. That's where the power was.
GLORIA: And that's why it broke. The power of God broke the chain.
KENNETH: Yeah, it came out of them. That's exactly right, Gloria. That's where the power came from was out of Paul and Silas. It didn't come from heaven. Well, it's the spirit of God, but he was in them.
GLORIA: Yeah, yeah.
KENNETH: See, here's another thing. The Lord has had me for months now, months and months, talking about developing a God inside consciousness. The God that they were praising is on the inside of them. The praise and the worship, he's right there. The more they praised him, the more they worsened the power, and just shook that place. And then, the power, the glory, was so strong nobody could move. That jailer became the church pastor at Philippi. And we're out of time.