Kenneth Copeland - How to Build the Spirit of Faith
— Hello everybody, I'm Jeremy Pearsons. Welcome to the Believer's Voice of Victory. Today, my grandfather, Kenneth Copeland, and Mark and Trina Hankins continue their study on the spirit of faith, teaching us about our position in Christ. See, the believer fights the good fight of faith from the position of victory, from a place of authority in Christ. Because we're seated together with Christ, His victory is our victory. This is going to be a great study, so get your Bibles and let's join in their discussion.
— We have just been in joy and determining to walk by faith and not by sight and to believe God.
— Yes sir.
— Jesus said if you can believe, all things are possible...
— All things.
— ...to them that believe. And the guy there said, "Lord, I believe. Help me get rid of unbelief". So the Lord had to get rid of unbelief.
— Oh, I love what he said. "Lord, I believe. Help me. Help me". You can criticize everything in him, but he got his help.
— Boy, he did it too.
— He got his help. He declared that with unbelief. Really, dad Hagin taught us there's two kinds of unbelief. First kind is just lack of knowledge, and that's curable with teaching of the Word. Second kind of unbelief is being unpersuaded to act on the Word, and that's curable by acting on the Word. So both kinds of unbelief are curable, and if unbelief is curable, nothing is incurable.
— There's no such thing as non-belief.
— Yeah.
— You can't just turn off and not believe anything.
— Yeah. They just believe in the wrong thing.
— You believe the wrong thing.
— Yeah. And so, just taking the Word and Jesus was a teacher and He went around teaching.
— Think about this. I drive a General Motors product. How stupid would it be for me to go get a Ford manual and see to try to fix my truck.
— Okay. I got it. Yeah.
— Now that's not unbelief.
— Yeah.
— That's just stupidity. You just ought to have better sense in that. But this, the manufacturer's manual.
— Yeah. This is a manual right here.
— This is what we believe.
— Wow. Unbelief is curable by feeding on the Word of God. Taking the Word. So, as we're studying the Word, we're really just studying the fundamentals of faith. Then, where Paul said we have the same spirit of faith we believe, and we speak. So we talked about David killing Goliath. And then, now we come over to Mark 11:23, where Jesus said to have faith in God.
— Just in these few sessions we've been in day after day, my knowledge is increasing. It's getting sharper and your faith is built on revelation knowledge. So, I believe I'm going from one level of faith to another level of faith today.
— Yeah. Praise God.
— Praise God. By hearing and hearing by the Word of God. And then, Brother Copeland brought up this scripture a while ago. And he said, first John 5:4. And that was one of my dad's favorite scriptures. He said, "Whatsoever is born of God, overcomes the world. And this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith". And so, our faith is the victory. And the name of your program for years was called the Believer's Voice of Victory.
— And as we were talking, it goes way back to the beginning. And I was in a little town in North Texas called Hereford, Texas. And I had all my outlines laid out there. And because I'm in, I've always started with Mark 11:22, 23, 24 and 25. Because that's where I learned it, from Brother Hagin. And I had all my... I did them back there then just like I do now. And I had them all out on the bed there in the motel and to which order am I going to put these.
— Yeah.
— And I heard the Lord say in my spirit, He said... And He mentioned that to me, this is the victory that will come to the world, even our faith. And I said, yeah, I believe that. He said, "Well, think about this. Every believer has a voice". Well, yeah, there it is, right here. There it is. Mark 11:23, whosoever shall say. He said, every believer has a voice.
— Yeah.
— And it is the voice of victory.
— Yeah.
— Right.
— "Or, it's the voice of death".
— Yeah.
— He said, "What about victory over death? And what about overcomes the world"?
— Yeah.
— But what about victory over death?
— Yeah.
— What about victory over the grave?
— Yeah.
— Yeah. And then, He said, "What about victory in the new birth"? Whoa, glory be to God. That was the one right there. That only not broke the devil's hold forever on my life. Victory in the new birth, but yeah. And He said, "What about victory in the baptism of the Holy Ghost"?
— Oh, yeah.
— Oh, that's when power comes in. What about victory in your financials? What about... Then, I said, "Hey, every believer has a voice and it's the voice of victory". That's what started this whole thing back there. I know how many years ago.
— Oh wow. And so, when you see what happened when you made Jesus, your Lord, Paul and his revelation in the spirit of faith, he said that we're new creatures in Christ. And he said, and we've been made alive together with Christ raised up and seated together with Him. Which means the believers never fighting for victory. He's fighting from victory.
— And from a place of authority.
— That's right. In Christ.
— He's on high, seated together. Well, think about that. Jesus, born from on high. If you study the gospel of John, you're going to get that.
— Yeah.
— Well, we got born again the same way John did.
— Yeah.
— Peter said, those that have gained like faith with us. As He, Jesus is the author of the faith. And He's also the finisher as the Bible put it.
— Yeah. So, the moment right there in the second chapter of the book of Ephesians. The moment we were born again, we were raised up together with Him, seated.
— Seated with Him.
— In the heavenly places.
— Yeah.
— He is on the right hand of God and you and I are on the right hand of Jesus. And we have first born status.
— The voice of faith. Well, the spirit of faith will take the victim out of your voice. The whine out of your voice.
— Yeah. That's good, man.
— You are seated together with Christ, with a consciousness of the triumph of Christ. That His victory is our victory.
— That is so good.
— We're seated there in a place of authority.
— A place of authority.
— And that authority must be exercised.
— It is. It is impossible to operate authority without operating.
— Yeah. And Jesus said that you say, and so speaking. But Paul said, you believe and you speak. And so, when you go from second Corinthians 4:13 we believe and I speak. And dad Hagin said that the door to the supernatural swings on two hinges, one is I believe and two is, I speak. In other words, believing and speaking opens the door to the supernatural. So here's the way the Lord said to me one time, because we were dealing with Trina when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor 30 years ago, and the doctor said it's inoperable. And she will be paralyzed for the rest of her life.
— Oh, what a report.
— And so, you're talking about fear that'll come and get you just like that.
— Even before that, before you dealt with it, I had the Word of God in my heart. I've been meditating on healing scriptures for years. And even before I came conscious in the hospital, the Word was in me. And, it felt like a fountain of living water just coming up. Himself took your infirmity. He bore your sickness, with His stripes you're healed. And that came up. And then, I opened my eyes and I saw the doctor there and he told me, it looks like you have an inoperable brain tumor. And it was, those words just started coming towards me. But they'd never pierced me. They didn't enter my...
— You didn't embrace it.
— No. It was the Word of God in me, was a shield.
— Yes.
— And those words hit that shield and they never penetrated my heart.
— Wow. "Thou, Oh Lord art a shield for me".
— The glory.
— And the lifter of my head. The shield of faith worked.
— Yeah. And from there, we just had to decide, either we're going to be in fear or we're going to be in faith. So we decided, well, we're going to resist fear. And we just said, the Lord is my light and my salvation. I will not fear.
— And I sang. I sang a lot in the midst.
— And we had eight days of praising. We call it the praise cure. We had eight days.
— Oh, I've heard you preach that. And I'll tell you what, everybody needs to hear that message at least 10 times and listened to it a hundred more.
— Yeah. Dr. Lilian B. Yeomans was talking about that praise cure, filling your praise basket. So, we had eight days, like it says in Romans four, that Abraham staggered, not at the promise of God through unbelief, but became strong in faith, giving glory to God. So, we had eight days of praising God that His Word is true. He is faithful. And while we're praising God, then I put a big lady at the front door and let nobody in that room.
— Oh yes.
— And so, then I put on the wall, no wavering allowed.
— Yes sir.
— You spoke to that tumor. I'll never forget. He came in the room and he didn't look at me. He looked... The tumor was down in my brain, somewhere in here. And he looked towards where the tumor was and he said, Mr. Tumor, I'm talking to you. According to Mark 11:23.
— Yes.
— Jesus said.
— I say to you.
— You have to be removed.
— It dried up from the roots.
— I said, you dissolve, disappear. There'll be no evidence you were ever there. And you will never come back. And so, right then we just kept praising God. And the doctor took you in to see. Well, he said, we want to do this and that. So he took you in for surgery and on the way in, tell him what you were doing.
— Oh my. God always sends His Word. Psalm 107:20.
— Oh, He sent His Word and healed and delivered you from your destruction.
— That's right. And He said, Romans 8:11, that the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, quicken your mortal body. Well, I put that together. The Holy Spirit and joy always go together. And I received that word with joy and I started laughing. I got the same spirit's in me that raised Jesus from the dead. It's working in me. And I just started laughing.
— Going all the way into surgery, she's laughing.
— Yeah, I was on the bed then.
— And the doctor's thinking, what did we give her other than this?
— There was a nurse in the room and she observed the whole week. She observed everything we were doing. And she saw how we went into surgery. And then, how we came out. She was so changed. But I went in laughing and I believe God did a miracle, right then. A supernatural operation.
— Yeah. And you were in there for six hours and we were in the waiting room. And the doctor came out. The neurosurgeon came out and said, "Now pastor, I just don't know what to tell you. But that tumor that was there has disappeared".
— Glory to God.
— We were praising.
— I can imagine this.
— We just stuck with that Word. And the spirit of faith believes and speaks. But it says in first Peter, "Yet believing you rejoice".
— Yes sir.
— "With joy unspeakable and full of glory".
— With joy unspeakable.
— So we're not only believing, but we are rejoicing. And we just started laughing and saying, "Devil, you can't win because Jesus is Lord and victory is ours".
— Did I tell you what happened to me at our prayer cabin in Arkansas? Now, when I was a young boy, I had asthma really, really bad.
— Oh, really.
— And back there then, everybody used aluminum cooking ware. And my mother was a prayer warrior and man alive! She just went to praying over me. And you could not... World War II, you couldn't buy aluminum. Because, everybody was turning aluminum in. My dad had just... Right there about the time the war started. And she already had this wonderful whole new set of aluminum cooking ware. And I had asthma walking, just couldn't lay down at night. Just couldn't breathe. During the day it didn't bother me all that, but it ran in my dad's family anyway. Well, and they got rid of the aluminum and I got all right. But, all of a sudden, here I am up there in Arkansas. Beautiful. I haven't had any allergies in so long, I forgot what they were like. I haven't forgotten about it, but I praise God I don't have them.
— Right.
— And, I got... started. I'm walking through, and I never knew what I had coming. She's giving her testimony. I said, if she got healed I'm healed. Get out! And, out it went. So, I was watching your broadcast and in that she's giving her testimony. And I said, she doesn't have it. And I don't have it. And I haven't wheezed since.
— And she did the same thing with that.
— The Word is healing. But you have to take authority.
— You have to.
— And that's what the Holy Spirit said. He said, that's a spirit of infirmity. Resist the devil, resist him.
— He will flee.
— Yeah. Use your authority.
— Now, there's two parts to that.
— You've got to keep it up.
— There's two parts to that. Submit yourself to the Lord, then resist the devil and he will flee.
— Yeah.
— Yeah. Amen. And here's where you submit to the Lord.
— The Word.
— Yeah. And so, now when you go from second Corinthians 4:13, believing and speaking, Mark 11:23, "Have faith in God, whosoever shall say, he'll have whatsoever he sayeth," to Mark chapter 5. Ah, we need a whole hour for this one.
— That's when the rocket leaves the ground.
— Jesus told dad Hagin this. He had a vision of Jesus and he said, now Lord before you leave. He said that I've got two different sermons I preach about. The woman with the issue of blood, Mark chapter 5. He said that, now it seems like I'm missing something. So Jesus gave him a sermon on Mark chapter 5, verse 25 through 34, the woman issue of blood.
— Yes He did.
— And the verse 34 says, "Daughter, your faith has made you whole". And so, dad Hagin said when he was on death bed...
— The next thing he said was go.
— Go.
— Yeah.
— Now think about this woman, Mark. Seventeen years.
— Yeah.
— Shut in for 17 years
— Sick and getting sicker.
— Sick, skin and bones.
— Yeah.
— Bleeding all the time.
— Yeah. It says, she suffered many things, many physicians. Now here's the way the Lord said to dad Hagin. He said, if her faith made her whole.
— That was so big.
— Your faith will make you whole. And then, He gave him the steps of faith.
— And when he was on that bed for...
— Seventeen years old.
— And you said, talked about this money. And he said, you believe as far as you know.
— Yeah.
— Then he said, "You believe you're healed, right? I sure do". And then Brother Hagin said, "I saw it. I have to believe I have it".
— Yeah.
— Then say it before I had it.
— Yeah.
— That's where 99% of Christian people get.
— Yeah. I believe I receive it, and then I have it.
— Then I have it.
— Yeah.
— That's what's so hard on people.
— It is.
— Now here's the funny thing. Because, just imagine us as preachers and you're preaching a sermon. And then Jesus tells you, now here's the way it ought to be preached. And so, Jesus tells dad Hagin this. He says, now I want you to get a piece of paper and write down one, two, three, four. And He said in anybody, anywhere that takes these four steps will always receive whatever they want or needs from God. Not only healing, but anything.
— Anything else.
— Now here's this funny thing because the Lord said, "Now what's the first thing that woman did". And dad Hagin said, "She heard of Jesus". Jesus said, "Wrong".
— No.
— No. He said, "That's what I'm asking". That's not the first thing she did. I want to know the first thing she did after she heard of Jesus.
— What was her first act?
— Number one, she said it.
— There it is.
— And, she kept on saying it.
— So action is the first step of faith.
— She said it. In other words, moves your mouth. The Lord said to me one time, "If your faith doesn't move your mouth, it isn't going to move your mountain".
— No.
— And so, first thing she did is she said. And, that word means, legos.
— Yes.
— She kept on saying.
— She kept on saying it.
— If you would have passed her, you'd have heard her saying it.
— She kept on. She kept on.
— That's her faith talking.
— She kept on. She kept on. She kept on. Then she did it. But, think about it. The devil is the devil. I know him. You know him. He hadn't changed a lick. He can't. He wished he could. But he can't. And he's saying to her, you can't do this, you're skin and bones already. You're going to die. What good is it going to do to you to get out there? They're going to stone you.
— Yeah.
— That's the leader of the synagogue Jairus right there with him. They're in Capernaum.
— She interrupted that whole...
— You know Jesus lives here. I know all of that. But, you can't get out there. You're skin and bones. You get out there and they'll stone you for sure.
— Yeah.
— Because she was in fear and trembling. I know he said that to her.
— Yeah.
— She's sitting there thinking, if I could just touch the... Now, let's talk about the garment.
— Yeah.
— It wasn't His clothes.
— Yeah.
— He's a rabbi.
— He has a prayer shawl or what would they call it.
— It was the hem of that garment. He had on the long one. You can see it.
— Yeah. She said, "I just need to touch it".
— I just need to touch that. That's where the power.
— Yeah. And I don't need a hug. I don't even need an introduction. I just need to touch the hem of that garment.
— And, I'm not just curious. I know.
— She's not just going, and I know I should.
— There's a lot of people doing that.
— And so the four things that she did. And let me give them to you real quick here is number one, she said it. This came from Jesus. Number two, she did it, she acted. Number three, she received the anointing of God. And number four, she told it.
— That's huge.
— Huge.
— A woman that was healed in this ministry. And she came back and said this. She had a bad heart condition. And, I had brought up the fact that, listen, you need to be testifying. And if you have any symptoms, you need to get out and testify to somebody right now. And you minister to somebody in that same area. And she had this heart situation, she was healed.
— Yeah.
— And so she said, man, the symptoms tried to come back on her. First, she went back to the hospital where she had been treated and she said, would it be all right for me to go visit with some of the heart patients that are not well. They said, for sure. And she'd go in and she'd introduce herself. And she said, sometimes her heart would be hurting her then. I want to tell you something. I got healed of this. And, I'm going to tell you something, sweetheart. I'm telling you, Jesus is the healer. And she said, before I'd get through, it'd be all right. And a few days later, it'd come again. She said, I got to where I was going around the hospitals and stuff. Then I just kept doing that, until all the symptoms were gone. And she said, it developed a ministry for me. So I just kept doing it from there on out.
— That's the power of a testimony.
— Wow.
— That testimony.
— That's the spirit of faith. The spirit of faith is always pressing for new territory. And number two, the spirit of faith is like a pioneer spirit. As you prepare the way for someone who's going to follow you.
— Oh, that's good.
— And so, now this woman with a spirit of faith, her testimony has probably gotten hundreds of millions of people healed, just by telling her story.
— She heard that other people were reaching out and touching Jesus.
— Yeah.
— So somebody testified to her. They just came and said, did you hear about Jesus? I touched His clothes. And I got well.
— Wow.
— So, that power of testimony. It just passes from one. It sparks the spirit of faith.
— Yeah.
— It lights the spirit of faith.
— Yeah. So she said it, she acted and she received the anointing of the power of God. And then number four, she told everybody.
— Yeah, she did.
— Imagine how frustrated the devil was that he'd been trying to kill this woman for years.
— That's not the last time she testified.
— She kept telling.
— She came down there. She got her health back, went right straight to the priests and showed them and so she's testifying to the priest. All the priests know it. They went, like it or not, it had happened brother. And she testified to me and I got healed.
— Wait. This is the victory.
— This is the victory.
— That overcomes the world, even our faith. We have run out of time again, Brother Copeland.
— Did we do it already?