Kenneth Copeland - Overcoming Double-Minded Thinking
— Hello everybody. This is the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast, I'm Kenneth Copeland. Let's have a word of prayer. We'll get right into today's Bible lesson. Father, we thank you. Our Father, who is a good God and we worship you and thank you this morning for the anointing of God. For words, the power is in words, your words, your words in our mouths. And we thank you for it today. And we look to you for the anointing to deliver this message accurately. And we praise God. And thank you for sending Professor Greg Stephens to us again today, and we give you praise and we honor you today in the name of Jesus. Amen. Glory to God. Welcome everybody. Praise the Lord. Welcome to you, praise God. God is a good God and we've spent considerable amount of time talking about that, ain't that good.
— It is good.
— It is good. Good God good. Good words and Word. And excuse me, God is a faith God. You can never separate the fact that he is a faith God and in order to get his man back, to get his earth back because he created this for people.
— Yes. And we've studied that. We know what Lucifer did and, and there's some other things about that. We can talk about it another time, but let's turn to the 11th chapter of the book of Hebrews, the great hall of fame chapter of faith. We won't go through all of that today. But there are some things that we need to talk about. Now, as the apostle Paul was writing this in that 39th verse of the 10th chapter, we are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe. See the word believe there. We are them that believe to the saving of the soul. Now faith is... I like that. Faith is now. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Now let's go over to the Classic Amplified. I want to read that. Now this is such a definition of faith. We could just talk and talk and talk and talk. And we do. We talk about believing when you pray and not being led by your feelings and so on. But now here it is spelled out, "Now faith is the assurance, the confirmation, the title deed of the things we hope for". Hey, get hold of this, "being the proof of the things we do not see and conviction of their reality, faith perceiving as real fact, what is not revealed to the senses". That said it. As real fact, it really is. It is really. And it's God's faith. Now you could go on down through here and Enoch was caught up and transferred to heaven that he did not have a glimpse of death. He was not found because God had translated him. Now look at this sixth verse, "but without faith it is impossible to please and to be satisfactory to him for whoever would come near to God must necessarily believe that God exists. And that he is the rewarder of those that earnestly, diligently seek him out". Impossible to please him without faith. Now listen, why? Ephesians 2-8. You can't be saved without it. Romans 1-17, Galatians 3-11, Hebrews 10-38, Habakkuk 2-4, "The just live by faith" so you can't live the Christian life without faith. Second Corinthians five, six, and seven, you can't walk the Christian walk without faith. We walk by faith, not by sight. That's what that just explained. And first John five, one through four, you can't overcome the world without faith. Romans 4-23, whatever is not a faith is sin. And second Corinthians 1-24, you can't stand, we stand in faith. Romans 11-20, you can't quench the fire and arch of the enemy without faith. That's the shield of faith. You can't be blessed without it. This is a necessary force.
— You have to believe in that blessing.
— Yes, you do.
— Because everything around you and society will tell you, "you're not". It'll point out every flaw. It's like a mirror. A mirror will tell you everything that's wrong with you, but it won't fix a thing.
— It won't do anything about it.
— And that's what everything around us does. It'll try to convince you, you're not.
— Hey, now wait a minute. Wait just a minute. And this, this will all come up in our study. Let's go to the book of James.
— Yeah. Yes, sir.
— Now this is the oldest book in the New Testament. This is the half brother of Jesus, same mother different father. And just to touch on this a little bit, he's one of them that thought he was absolutely crazy. And lost his mind because he wouldn't promote himself. He wouldn't do all the things he's supposed to do. But then of course all that turned around after the cross. And so what Jesus say, "Have faith in God". Now James was raised with this. And I said it before, how would you like to have Jesus for your big brother, never made a mistake. Never did anything. "Why can't you be like Jesus". Anyway. James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes, which are scattered abroad. Greeting. My brethren counted all joy when you fall into different temptations, tests and trials, knowing this, the trying of your faith. Well we're only in the third version and we've got faith. The trying of your faith works patience. That's a gift of the Spirit, a fruit of the Spirit, excuse me. Let patience have her perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire wanting nothing. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, or does not find fault. And it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith.
— That's right.
— You have to believe you'll receive it, when you ask for it.
— That's right. Not after you think you've got some revelation because the revelation is not coming unless you connect it with faith.
— You don't ask him thinking you deserve it.
— Oh Lord, no.
— You're asking in faith.
— It's a gift.
— Based on his goodness on the knowledge that you have of him.
— And wisdom is a gift from God. It is the God-given ability to use knowledge. So let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. "For he that wavers is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. Let, not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord". Let him ask in faith. That man is wavering, you're not going to receive anything from the Lord. Let him ask in faith. What? About this test, trial on temptation. How do I deal with this? Amen. Now God wants you out of the test in the trial of temptation. He wants you out of there quickly. Right now. He'll teach you from the word he's not interested in you staying in that trial, test and temptation saying "Oh God could teach you something". That's not right. The scripture is good for teaching. Now a double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways. So a single-minded man must be stable in his way.
— All of his ways.
— All of his ways. What is a double-minded man or a man of two minds. Now we'll take the time as the Lord permits in this study to do this, but I can just bring your attention to it. From what Peter said, you can look it up in the book of Luke. In the storm, Jesus is asleep and they woke him up. "Master we're dying". You're a master, but we're dying. What did Jesus say? "Where's your faith". See Peter, he was unstable. We're dying in this thing and he had the audacity to say, don't you care? But now Jesus back there sound asleep. They'd worked very hard. They didn't even have time to eat. He went to sleep. He put all of his life and everything in the hands of his Father.
— He entered into rest.
— Yes.
— Which is peace.
— Peter's frightened and scared. And they're all scared. And they woke him up. Master, we're dying as an unstable man. He's got two minds, you're the master where you're letting us die. And how many times I've prayed something stupid like that when I was just a spiritual baby and "Don't you care? I mean, how come you let this come on me. Don't you care"? And all the scripture says cast all your care over on him. Anyway, then we'll take a touch here at the 145th Psalm. My favorite of all the Psalm. Oh my, my my. You come down the seventh first. They shall abundantly utter the memory of that great goodness and shall sing of your righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion. Slow to anger and of great mercy. The Lord is good to all. And his tender mercies are over all his works. And all your work shall praise your Lord and thy Saint shall bless thee glory. He is a good God.
— John the Baptist is in prison. And if you want to, I'll submit this to you. It's a little double-minded moment. Are you really the one or should we see another. He knows who he is. And what Jesus point to. The words. Go tell John this. That's right there. That's Psalm 145.
— And they're not offended at me.
— At all. Wow.
— Now John is in prison and he's ticked off. He's offended. How come him, let me get in here. But he didn't know what the plan was. Jesus did. And then Jesus began to talk about he's the greatest prophet ever born.
— Right. Right. To renew my mind to double mindedness, to get rid of that in my life. Because I grew up in a family of double mindedness. Every time we'd go out to eat, where do you want to go? I don't know where you want to go. I don't know. What about this? What about that? We just couldn't make a decision about anything. But it carried over in every area, Brother Copeland. And so I've learned to, "I'm going here or here".
— I'd say Gloria, where you want to go to eat...
— I don't care.
— Come on now tell me, where are you going to want to go to eat?
— Anywhere? And she did do someone Healing School on a Saturday morning. She said, "I know he's going to say, let's go cafeteria". And sure enough, "I'd say, okay, we'll go to cafeteria". Because I like to eat at Luby's you know. And then I had to say, why didn't you say something? She said, the problem of it is I got to where I like to go to the cafeteria. Anyway, but we went back and forth like that. Then she made the point, you need to say something. That's when you become single-minded on this book, on these two covenants.
— Make a decision. Even if it's a wrong decision, make a decision and stick with it. And so I've learned to make a decision, not say, "oh, I don't care". And you do care.
— Yeah, you do.
— You're lying and you do care because invariably, somebody will say, well, how about this? You go, oh, no, I don't want that. Well, then you do care. And so what you're doing is you're training yourself to be double-minded. I know it's a little thing and it may not seem like a big thing, but in all his ways, if you allow that continued to continue, I don't know if we should buy this or not. I don't know if we should move there or not. I don't know if we should... It'll carry over into everything.
— You'll wind up not accomplishing anything and particularly in faith. Well, I don't know what to do. Seems like I don't ever know what to do. Why don't I ever know what to do. You're flip-flopping back and forth. But now when you center up, start with the book. So James was talking about wisdom, right? I'm like Keith Moore, what do you need to be scriptural? Scriptures. So we need at least a mouth of two witnesses. So we have one in the first chapter of James, let's go to first Corinthians. Chapter one, and we'll go to the 30th verse. Verse 29, "that no flesh should glory in his presence but of him, are you in Christ Jesus, who of God, who is good, and it's because he's so good that this is true. Who of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Who is made unto us wisdom". He is our wisdom.
— Yes.
— And you go through the book of Proverbs, glory to God, everything there belongs to us. And what did he say? The beginning of wisdom is the reverence of God. That he is. I stopped at a signal light one day. Now here's another thing. Are you double-minded. A signal light is green as many times as it is red. Did you ever stop for directions and they say, well, go down there at that second green light.
— No, no.
— They say go down there, it's that second stoplight. That's a gold light.
— Or hurry up, light yellow. I repent of that. I repent the minute I said it. I repent it right there. I knew immediately.
— Okay. So what do you get out of that? He's made unto us wisdom. Notice wisdom is the principle thing, so that's listed first. He's made our righteousness. He's made our sanctification or our separation from the world and our redemption. From what? The curse of the law. Isn't that wonderful. Praise God.
— Beautiful.
— Because he's a good God. And he's done all of that so that we could think like him, where we have the mind of Christ, the same anointing for our minds, that the mind of the anointed one. The same anointing on his mind is available to us through this Word, through these covenants.
— See when we're double-minded, what we're doing is we're trying to judge between this or this. Do I want that? Or do I want this? What if I showed you something about the wisest man that ever lived with, with Solomon? If you would, let's look at first Kings chapter three. Let me show you something. This will bless you. This is his prayer. When he's coming into office and place with his father. First Kings chapter three, verse nine, "Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge the people that I may be discerned between good and bad".
— That I may be single-minded.
— That I may be single-minded. For who is able to judge this so great a people. Now, if you go up to verse seven, you'll see something there. And now Lord, my God, thou has made thy servant king, instead of David, my father. But listen to this. And I am but a little child, I know not how to go out or to come in. Being able to judge properly in faith is a sign of maturity. And that's what he's praying right here. And because he prays, this is, he says, I'll give you. You didn't ask for riches, but I'm going to give it to you. Because the wisdom I'm about to give you will give you everything, provide everything that you need. I thought it was very interesting that phrase, because in the tree, in the garden, there's a tree of good and evil. And God didn't put that in there to cause Adam to stumble.
— Well of course not.
— And so he's asking for this, it was a tree that provided the ability to be like God, and this way you could judge. And God is the only judge.
— Yes.
— But now mankind sits in that seat. And that's what that tree really did.
— Well and he turned all judgment over to Jesus.
— Yes he did.
— Who is...
— A man.
— A born again, resurrected man.
— That's absolutely right.
— We have a man in the Godhead.
— Absolute.
— A man. Just as much man, as we are.
— Now, spiritually we're as righteous as he is. What we haven't received yet is a glorified, spiritual physical body. He's got a glorified, physical body, spiritual body. But we don't have that yet. That's the main difference.
— And for those of you in the television may not be quite acquainted with that. After he was resurrected and appeared to his people, he said, handle me, a spirit hath not flesh and bone as you see me. No blood. His blood is in the heavenly mercy seat of God. All of it. That's where his precious holy blood is. And one day we'll get to witness that, glory of God. I don't think it's all that far off.
— And that blood is still alive. It's not all crusty.
— No it'll never die. And there's not anything to make it decay. And because you get out of this atmosphere, there's nothing there to make it decay. It's in a perfect environment.
— And it's ever interceding on our behalf. It's wherever washed in the blood because of where it sits. It's on the mercy seat where the judge will sit.
— Man I just... No, go ahead.
— Well, I just wanted to show you that. To be able to discern between good and bad for your people and God gave him wisdom to be able to do that. That's a sign of maturity. And when you're in maturity, you're faith. You're walking in faith, knowing how to use it like a tool, you use it like a tool.
— All right, let's go back to the book of Hebrews. Now when we go back there, then we find the definition of a spiritual adult. Now this became Gloria and my assignment at the very beginning of this ministry because of what we had learned, both from Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin. Two powerful faith men. And Oral Roberts, a very humble man. And my first time to go back to ORU and preaching and over to city of faith and so forth. And we're out of time. But he called me in at lunch. He said, "now I want you to teach me faith". I said, "you got to be kidding me". He said, "no, no, no, no". He said, "you boys have learned things about faith. I don't know. And I want to know it right now". He said, "you're looking at the hungriest man on the face of the earth for God". And we're out of time. Come on Jeremy....