Kenneth Copeland - The Praise Cure
KENNETH: Hello, everybody. We're Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and welcome to the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast. Father, we just praise you and we thank you today.
GLORIA: Thank you, Lord.
KENNETH: Hallelujah. We open our hearts and we open our minds for revelation from heaven, Sir, and we give you the praise and the honor and the glory for it. Help us get across this life of thanksgiving. We need this Father. We need a deeper, more active revelation of this, and we thank you for it. We believe you for it. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Glory to God. Hey guys, welcome to the today. Amen. This is going to be a lot of fun. Gloria, you look gloriously beautiful today, as usual. Amen. Love of my life.
GLORIA: Thank you.
KENNETH: We're going to be... This is all Thanksgiving week. You know, Thanksgiving in the United States is this Thursday. And I want to read this to you. According to the United States National Archives on the 28th of September of 1789, the first federal Congress, first one, first act of Congress passed a resolution asking that the president of the United States recommend to the nation a day of Thanksgiving. A few days later, George Washington issued a proclamation naming Thursday 26 November 1789 as a day of public Thanksgiving, first time Thanksgiving was celebrated under the new constitution.
GLORIA: Isn't that something?
KENNETH: We're a nation of thanksgiving. Praise God.
GLORIA: In 1789?
KENNETH: Yes.
GLORIA: That's great.
KENNETH: And the very first federal Congress.
GLORIA: Praise God. We are thankful, Lord. We are so thankful.
KENNETH: So this is one of the places and one of the things... You remember in Isaiah 43:25, "I, even I, am he who blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake", and then he said, "Put me in remembrance of my word, remind me, plead your case, he said". And so when I pray for the nation, this is one of the things that I remind God of. Just keep reminding Him, Sir, hey, we gave thanks, number one. I mean we started this by giving thanks to you and for giving us this place where we can worship God freely. And you have to remember this. This is the only nation in history that was formed by a people because they love God and because they wanted to worship Him. Now the nation of Israel was formed because God loved them. But this nation was formed by people that loved God. And I'm telling you what, He'll never forget that.
GLORIA: Praise God.
KENNETH: But we need to remind and put Him in remembrance of that, is it isn't that He forgot it, but it's that we remember it and obey that scripture, and we give thanks for what we have in this nation. Praise God.
GLORIA: Yes, we do.
KENNETH: So that's what we're going to be talking about all this week. If we were to put a title on it, it would be developing a life of thanksgiving and gratitude. I think that's a better way of saying it. Developing a life of gratitude. Now let's go to Romans chapter one. This really, really puts a premium and shows us both sides of gratitude and thanksgiving. Verse 21 because... Oh, let's back up to the 20th verse. "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 show that they are without excuse, because that 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". You can look at that from both sides of the issue. A heart that's all the time, griping and grumbling and going on about what God hadn't done for me, and He should have done this. Why did He let this happen to me? And and all of that, and never thanking Him. I like what Keith Moore said. He said, "Well, show your hand hurts. Well, does the other one hurt? Do your feet hurt? Do your legs hurt? Does your head hurt? Well, give thanks for all the rest of it. Glory to God and you get your hand healed".
GLORIA: That's right.
KENNETH: You can see what Keith's driving at. And I experienced this and... Well, I'll go ahead and tell you about it now. Back in 2004, how will we remember that Sunday morning? Right after Southwest. It had been an exceptionally tough meeting. The devil fought that meeting. We came out with great victories, but it was one of those times. We had to fight the good fight of faith.
GLORIA: Amen, yeah.
KENNETH: And when we got home Saturday night and then in Sunday morning, I just stood there in that hot shower. Oh man. It felt good.
GLORIA: Did you wash that meeting out of your hair?
KENNETH: Yes, I did. And I bent over to pick up my washcloth, and it wasn't in front of me. It had fallen off of the bench there in my shower. And instead of turning in that direction, I twisted. And oh, when I did I ruptured a disc in my back. It knocked me to the floor. Oh, just terrible, horrible, awful, awful pain. And I had the absolute blessing and wonderful fortune to have Dr. David Weeter and Dr. Don Colbert. Glory to God. And those two ganged up on me.
Well, and Lynn Weeter, Dr. Lynn Weeter, David's wife. I called them and they immediately came over that morning and they begin to work on me and pray. The first thing they did, they had written out an agreement prayer of healing and deliverance. And the first thing they did was minister that agreement to me, and I moved into good and perfect agreement. So did you, and attacked that thing. So we went down to Florida where Dr. Colbert is and... I mean, he and David, they're just working on me, and they're just doing all their thing. And so they broke up that pain. Now, I still had a lot of, just an awful lot of pain going down my left leg, and got out in the backyard...
Now most of you know I don't like inside. And I go outside to pray, and in the wintertime I've got heaters out there. You know, I just don't like being indoors. And so I'm out there hurting, and I began to praise God and I began praising and just shout the praise just loud as I could just the top of my voice. And I noticed while I'm praising and giving thanks to God because I was doing the very thing, my right leg didn't hurt. None of the rest of me hurt, but the left leg, and I'd just given praise that nothing else hurt. Just worshiping, just shouting as loud as I could, the praise of God. And I noticed while I was praising the pain wasn't working, and I'd be quiet and here it would come back.
So I decided, well, I know the answer to that. And I wound up praising God for the trees, for the grass, for the birds that were flying by in front of me and just shouting and praising God for the weather, for everything that crossed my mind, for my family, just praise and praise and praise and praise. And long as I was praising that pain just kept subsiding and kept subsiding. Now on the other side of that is the dark side. When you don't acknowledge God... Now you may be born again and filled with the spirit of God and all that, but you're not acknowledging the good side. You're not praising. You're not thankful. Even praying over the meals. It is amazing to me that a lot of Christian people just don't have time to do that. Well that's, hey. I don't just pray and thank God for this. I got to eat this.
GLORIA: I'm sure he's not talking about my cooking. Poor cooking, I know.
KENNETH: No, I just wondered when you cooked.
GLORIA: I beat you to it. I beat you to it.
KENNETH: I wish she had good cooking because she's a dynamite cook. Her mama, here taught her how to cook and, boy. You talk about a cook.
GLORIA: My mother could cook.
KENNETH: Yeah. Amen. So Gloria fixed this, just stuff. I don't know what all was in it. This was back in the days when we had to watch our money in the grocery store to keep from getting too much. Didn't have money to pay our way out, and Gloria would call this... It was so good. And I said, "Gloria, I want more". And the kids would say, "Mama, we want more". So we wound up calling it more. "Gloria fix some more". Okay, she'd fixed more and it was wonderful. And we give praise for more. The glory to God.
Now the dark side of that is not being thankful and not developing a life of gratitude. So here you're presented with two pictures. One is all the problems and one is the blessing. So what do you do? You go back to Deuteronomy 30:19 where God said, "I place before you, life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore you choose life", dummy. I mean come on. But when you're surrounded by pressure and pain and so forth, this is when you have to practice the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, sow that as you practice it and practice it and practice it, it'll come up first. Show the renewing of the mind. That's the first thing you want coming out of your mouth. It's not some something you wish you hadn't said, but praise God.
Now that always reminds me, you'll remember this, back in the little, the first house that we had, and it was a new house. My dad bought it, and we rented it from him. It was a nice little house. And Gloria had this very, very large footstool, has an ottoman... I think ottoman is the culture word for it. It's still a footstool to me. The thing about that it was big and it was heavy. And we had just come home off the... several weeks of meetings. And I'm telling you, when I got home, I was so home. I didn't even want to go to bed. I just want to be home, you know? And so Kellie and John and Gloria were all already in bed. I did something very, very dumb. This is just stupid. Turn the light out and then walk across the room. Come on/b]
[b]GLORIA: Well, there's probably only one light switch.
KENNETH: Well, I don't know, but I did it, and I kicked that great, big stool and I heard my toe pop! Oh! Now all kinds of things could have come out of my mouth right now.
GLORIA: Did you speak words of grace?
KENNETH: Yes as a matter of fact, I did.
GLORIA: Well, good.
KENNETH: But it's if what's in there in abundance, and I just said, "Glory to God! Thank you, Jesus. I'm healed". So that was the first words came out of my mouth.
GLORIA: Amen. That's good.
KENNETH: Now acknowledging Him, what'd that say? They glorified Him not. Neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Now right then some dark something could have come out of my mouth, and then I would have been in trouble. But I just glorified God right then. And now the next morning...
GLORIA: You know, one reason it be so powerful? Because you would have meant it. The word that came out your mouth.
KENNETH: Yeah, that's good, Gloria, because that's what happens. A startling moment, a moment of sudden pain and whatever comes out of you, you really do mean it. And if it's full of fear, see fear is faith in the wrong direction. And when the force of fear comes out like that, and it's powerful unless it's dealt with right then. But what's more powerful is for praise to come out of your mouth. Glory to God. Thank you, Jesus. And the next morning, oh, that toe was hurt. I woke up and it's just throbbing, just throbbing it hurt so bad. And I had to maintain my faith statement like Jairus did. He never said anything but faith, and he is in a whole lot worse situation than I was. His daughter eventually was dead before they got there, and he still didn't say anything, but "You come lay your hands on her and she shall live".
So the next morning I got up praising God. Oh, that thing hurt. And the devil said, just immediately said, "Why don't you look at it? It's just black and blue". I said, "I don't have to look at it. I'm healed". And he just kept coming at, "It's just black, and it's just blue". And I said, out loud, I said, "Satan, I have friends and their toes are black all the time. Very close friends by the way. And so don't put that on me". You just hush that. You just shut up. And so I got my socks out of the drawer and shut my eyes, put my socks over that foot and wouldn't look at it. Now Gloria and I have long since learned to be very, very careful about those things upon which we agree. Any two of you shall agree.
Well, that works on the curse side the same as it does on the blessing side. I walked in the kitchen, I'm hobbling. She turned around and looked at me. I said, "Gloria, last night I kicked that big, old, green stool in there, in the living room and broke my toe, but glory to God I'm healed. Thank God". She said, "I agree with that" and turned around and laid her hands on me, still praising God. Had an appointment at the airport. I went out to the airport. I'm hobbling in there. The first thing I said to the receptionist, I said, "This morning about two o'clock, I broke my toe". "Oh, I'm so sorry". I said, "But Jesus said when he was on the earth, whatsoever thing you desire, when you pray, believe you receive it, and you shall have it. And I believe I receive my healing".
By the time I got that out, she was already... She just left. Good. Got her out of the equation. Amen before I left the airport that morning totally completely healed. I got in the car and it was hurting when I got in the car, and I drove around behind the hangar to look at the little red Skylane that we eventually bought. And I walked around there, and when I got around to the airplane... There weren't no way I was going to walk over there. So I drove around behind that hangar and when I got out and I set my foot down on the ground, no pain. No pain.
GLORIA: Praise God.
KENNETH: Now what was the first word? Praise and thanksgiving. The power of praise and thanksgiving. Brother Hagin called it the praise cure. That's good, isn't it? Developing a heart of gratitude, a gratitude attitude. Praise God. Say it. "I have a gratitude attitude. And I'm strong in the Lord, and in the power of His mind". Now give Him praise. Glory to God. Thank you, Jesus. How much time we got, Tim?
GLORIA: Hallelujah.
KENNETH: Oh, I can do a lot in two minutes. Praise God. Thank you, Jesus. Now let's turn over through the book of Philippians please. In the fourth chapter, now oh, this really does open up our mind and thinking, here. I'm going to bring this up and the classic amplified, and I'm going to go to Philippians four verse six. "Be careful for nothing". Now listen, "But in everything". Say everything.
KENNETH: What does everything mean? Everything. That's like the young man that did a Bible study on the Word all. He studied it in Hebrew and Greek and Caledeon and all this stuff, and he came back to brother Keith Moore, and Keith said "Did you do that study"? "Yeah". "What does it mean"? "All". Everything means everything. "Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer, and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known unto God and the peace of God which passes all understanding shall keep your heart and mind through Christ Jesus. Do not fret or have any anxiety about anything". Now you notice He didn't say try not to. He said don't do it. Now to us, that's a command. If He says, don't do it, then don't do it. "Oh, but I can't help it"! Well, now which one am I going to pick? You or the Bible?
GLORIA: You know, it'd be interesting to do a little book on the do nots.
KENNETH: Yeah, do not.
GLORIA: Do not this. Do not that. All in one little book.
KENNETH: All the do nots and then all the dos.
GLORIA: Mm-hmm. That'd be good.
KENNETH: Do not fret or have any anxiety about anything, but in every circumstance, even when you break your toe, in every circumstance and in everything by prayer and petition, the definite request with thanksgiving, continue to make your wants known to God. So I can make my wants known to God by griping about it, or I can make my wants known to God by thanking Him for it. And we're out of time.
GLORIA: Another keyword there is continue.
KENNETH: Continue.
GLORIA: Don't quit. Don't let it knock you out.
KENNETH: This has to be all the time. In everything all the time. Praise God. We're out of time. Did you get anything out of that?