Kenneth Copeland - How To Take Every Thought Captive
Mark 11:22, "Jesus answering saith unto them. Have faith in God". "Well, Brother Copeland, what about the elections"? Have faith in God. Have faith in God. "What about the next four years"? Have faith in God. "What about the economy"? Have faith in God. "What about my health"? Have faith in God. "What about my future"? Have faith in God. "What about my past"? It's gone. Have faith in God. Forget about it. "Well, that's not easy to do". I didn't say it is easy. I said, forget about it. How? By faith. I've had to do that. Well, what is that called? Casting down imaginations. And every thought, bring every thought into captivity. Put it in prison. Don't let it out.
I've literally done that at some time the Lord just working with me and working with me and the devil just drilling something just drill on me on something I do not want to think about, something that happened a long, long time ago, and I don't want any part of it and just, "Shut up". That doesn't work. Let's look at it. Second Corinthians chapter 10. That third verse, "Though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but dunamis, power... through God, to the pulling down of strongholds". All strong holds are not bad. Faith strong holds need to replace the bad ones. Have faith in God. "Yeah, but just don't", yeah, but just have faith in God. "How do I do that"? Very, very, very own purpose. Very, very, very own purpose. "To the pulling down of strong holds, casting down imagination," or the cross-reference says reasonings, "And every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God".
Every high thing that exalts itself against your knowledge of the Word of God, if you don't have any Word of God knowledge, you're whipped. If all you have is religious knowledge, well then just lay there and sing Bringing In The Sheaves. Well if that's all you know, do it. "Bringing into captivity every thought. Every thought to the obedience of Christ, having a readiness to avenge all disobedience". What? All disobedience of thought. And there's been times right there in the nighttime particularly. And I just visualize in my mind this prison cell and I put that thought in there and I'm not letting you out. I'll keep you locked up in there, you can't get out.
And then the next time I think, no, you don't. No, you don't. Get back in your cage. Just get back in your cage right now. If I have to get up out of bed and go into the other room and not wake up my wife and put that rascal back in it's cage, then that's what I'm going to do. That won't be long. It just doesn't sneak out anymore. And that's when you begin to praise and then as you praise God. Amen. Have faith in God. Let's just take a little refresher here. There's times we need to go back to the fundamentals. I'm pretty big on fundamentals. Fundamentals are important. I heard Jeremy say, what are you watching when you're watching the super bowl? Masters of the fundamentals. And they get away from those fundamentals, they get beat. Amen. The very fundamentals, rather than going through a lot of different... Vince, the coach, Lombardi had a losing season. That don't work with him.
Now he's coaching... These guys are the best there is. So spring training, he walked down and he had a football in his hand and he said, "Gentlemen, this is a football". They went back to the fundamentals. Amen. During World War two... During the war, anything that had wings on it I wanted a piece of it, and watch all airplanes in the sky during the war and all that. I got such a thrill out of that. I was in elementary school and we had a two-story brick school, it was a nice school, Fair Park Elementary School. Mr. Anthony was principal. And if you were an upperclassmen, you were upstairs, and I was upstairs. Anyway, we heard this really bad sound. The moment I heard it, the moment I heard it, I had a sense of what it was because there was a P47 training base just a little ways out of town. And I could hear that big round engine and it was blowing and sputtering, man, we all ran to the windows. This thing, smoking and just kind of wallering around in the sky.
Now our school was on 7th Street, just off of 7th. We lived just off 11th street. We were on South 11th street. This thing finally, and this that's what it was, a P47 Thunderbolt. And it just bellied up and crashed in the street in South 11th. It just went over our grade school. We were standing there in a window looking at it. My mother had faith in God. She prayed all the time. Glory to God. What had happened, this thing started... I don't remember now what the problem was with the engine, but he flew that airplane way out, out in the country and bailed out of it. Well, airplanes don't just roll over and fall. They keep on flying if they can fly. He bailed out, and this thing turned around and came back to town, Tom. But it hit in the middle of the street. The engine came off of it.
If you know how to research it and you want to read it, it is in the, let's see, Abilene Reporter news. That thing hit in the street, the engine flew off of it, just missed this little boy playing in his sandbox and hit the side of a man's garage and burned his garage and burned his car. That's it. Big old hole in the street. They carried that thing off in pieces. Faith in God. Faith in God. Faith in God. Say it, faith in God. So, what got me off on that, fundamentals. During the war they had kids, some of them actually had never been up close to an airplane. For those of you that don't know, we didn't have television during world war two. We laid on the floor and watched the radio. We actually had radio stories. We lay there and watched the radio like we were going to see something on it. You watch the radio? Well, what else was there to watch? They would actually start, "Gentlemen, this is an airplane".
So what? Now, how many pilots do I have in the room? Raise your hand. Okay. Now you guys keep your mouth shut, okay? Well you can laugh. Now, Gary, we're going to get into some fundamentals here. Everybody in this room knows everything about airplanes. I'm going to be your instructor. And when I start, you're going to think, "What is the matter with him"? And they will start like this, so I'll start like this, David. This is a propeller. The engine is in there. This is a wing.
Now, if you follow me around this wing, the next thing you will notice is an aileron. Huh? A what? An aileron. You don't know what an aileron is? Well, we didn't take long, did it? Fundamentals and we'll go around this way. And this is the empennage. How about fuselage? You've heard fuselage. That's the whole thing, you know. Then you come around this way and there's a vertical stabilizer, rudder to you. But it's not just rudder, it's in two pieces. The vertical stabilizer, the rudder is connected to the vertical stabilizer. How about the horizontal stabilizer? What's connected to the horizontal stabilizer? The elevator. Tailwheel do you get that. You get into the fundamentals, everybody had to start the same way. Everybody had to start exactly the same way.
Now, some people continued and went all the way up the line. Now here's the amazing thing. The 747, no propellers, oh, wait a minute. Yes, it does. They're just inside that trout only now it's called a fan. There are blades in there and they are doing the same thing that a propeller did on a piston airplane. But you know what? It has a rans, it has a horizontal stabilizer, it has a rotor, it has a vertical stabilizer and a rotor, horizontal stabilizer, an elevator, it has a fuselage, empennage. It's an airplane. It's an airplane. An airplane would have flown, a 747 would have flown in the Garden of Eden. Just nobody knew how. Nobody knew the fundamentals. And they had to come up through the fundamentals one at a time. And it's amazing to me how every time somebody had tried to learn those fundamentals, there were a thousand times that many people were screaming and hollering and belly ached about it, "It'll never work. It'll never work. Now I'll never get on one". Thank You Lord.
Now, The fundamentals of faith are very, very basic. Faith is a spiritual force. The most powerful forces, far more powerful are the unseen forces, whether that's natural or in the spirit. The laws of physics can't be seen. When Boeing left the 707, at that time, that was the biggest airplane they'd ever built. Then they went to the 747. They had to learn physics all over again. Built a whole new plan. The engineers had to relearn. They couldn't go to computer and find out what it had to say. But they realized that fundamentally this airplane was so big and had such a wingspan that you can't see it, because it happens so slowly, but it actually flaps its wings. I've forgotten now what it is, something like 15 feet of flex in each direction or tear the wing off of it. And in turbulence, it kind of flaps its wings. You better hope that thing keeps flapping it's wings. If it didn't, it would break it off. Amen. Then they had to learn to do with two engines what they did with four. Hallelujah. I'm talking about fundamentals.
So, the fundamentals, spiritual forces are powerful. Far more powerful than anything you can see. Turn with me to the 11th chapter of the book of Hebrews. This is so misunderstood. How many of you get Keith Moore on Faith School? What's the matter with the rest of you? I'm telling you get online, get it. The thing that's so important about it is Keith goes through fundamentals. How many broadcast did you do on faith just to start with? 125, 130. In Faith School, just on faith. Well, I treadmill with him. I get up, and when I get on the treadmill, and he's not the only one that I watch, but when I'm on that treadmill, to really concentrate on faith and healing, and Keith is like, Brother Hagin. Brother Hagin said, "We're going to go bug hunting. We're going bug hunting. And We're going to turn every leaf".
When I was a little boy, we used to do that, my goodness. you can turn up a chip and, "Whoa, look at the bugs under that one, man". Maybe one or some you want to put in a jar. Scare a girl with it. There's a lot of girls who made out like they were scared and they weren't any more scared than we were. But anyway, that's fundamentally, well anyway. We're going bug hunting. We're going to look under every chip, look under every leaf. I mean, we're going to find out what's bugging us. And we're going to look and look and look, and we're going to take this thing apart. In this 11th chapter, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen". Evidence of things not visible. Say it, evidence of things not seen, not visible. "For by it the elders obtained a good report".
Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen, were not made of things which do appear. It's made out of something you can't see. I have actually heard preachers bragging on God created the universe out of nothing. No, He didn't. No, He didn't. He created it out of something you can't see. Believed it in his heart, said it with his mouth. Glory be to God. And there it is. I just gave you the fundamental of faith. Wow. It's really difficult, isn't it? He believed it and said it. He believed it and He said it. It works all the time. It is a spiritual law. Fear in your heart, say it with your mouth, and the stuff you didn't want comes to pass. You believed it and said it. I mean, it's just simple as this.
Now the law is as simple as this, but then there comes a time when it has to be developed. You understand? If you have to develop it and continue to build and work in it, of course. But it's as simple as this. Well, pastor, I think I'm going to go back up there to the podium. Pastor, I believe I'll go back to that podium. Big difference. I think I'll go to the store. Andrew. I need to go, I think I'm going to go to the store. I think I might go to the store. You ain't never going to get to the store. Somebody going to butt in on you somehow or another, you're never going to get to the store, while you're just thinking about it. Turn that around. I believe, I believe I'll go to the store. Yeah, I believe I will. In fact, I believe I'll just go there now.
Well wait a minute, I'm not there, but I believe I'm going to the store. I believe I'm going. If I don't change my confession and the way I'm acting, I'm going to get there. Can it be that simple? It has to be that simple. I like what Charles Capps said, "It is so simple, you have to have help to misunderstand it". And we've had some really high priced help, that's what Brother Hagin said. We've had some real high priced help here to help us misunderstand that, because it is so simple. I think I'll go to the store. That's going to have to turn into, I believe I'm going to the store and then you're going to have to head towards the store and I'm going to that store. Praise God. And I am going to that store. Thank the Lord. And now, hallelujah, I'm at the store. I'm there.