Kenneth Copeland - Stay With God's Power for Inevitable Victory
Now then, I wanted to get over to that place where we begin looking at covenants of promise, being strangers from the covenants of promise. God is a good God, Jesus is a good Savior. Faith in God who is so good is good. Faith is good. Fear is bad. God is love. Love is good. The devil is hate, that's bad. A good God delivers everything from fingernail biting to drugs. You know, I'm serious about this, when I was just a little boy, I got over into biting and picking my fingernails. And then I had a piano teacher that if you had fingernails, he didn't like that. Well, I didn't like him. But anyway, I won't go into all that. But the tobacco habit was tough, but the Word of God separated me from it. The foul language habit went away the night I was born again. I physically felt in my mouth, somebody said it probably felt like that bar of soap your mother stuck in your mouth. But profanity was gone from that moment.
That was over. But this fingernail thing just irritated me and drove me and I hated it. But I finally made the decision I'm done with this, I am done with it. And I found in the scripture that mutilating yourself is not good. And I thought, "I am not accountable. I'm not going to eat my fingers anymore". And I began reminding myself of that. Praise God. Reminding myself of it, reminding myself of it, reminding myself of it. And praise God, it's so nice to be able to scratch. Somebody shout amen. Don't be laughing at me. You got some stupid habit you need to dump. Praise God. Hallelujah. But it happened because I found it in the Word. That was the only thing that would break it. It was the Word of God that separated me from tobacco. Glory to God. The first meeting I was ever in where there was faith being taught and that... it was so marvelous. And I drove up there and these preachers were friends of mine. And I thought, "I'm not going in there with these cigarettes," and I just stuck them up over the sun visor of the car.
And I had been there for two weeks under the Word, listening to it nearly all day every day. The only reason Gloria wasn't there, I didn't have enough money to get her there. And I quit... I was halfway to Houston and I quit my job. I didn't have money enough to go back and get her and get to Houston. So I called... I was working at the same company that my dad was with, and I called my dad and I told him, I said, "Sir, I can't do this any longer. I'm called to preach. I can't.. Anyway. There was a meeting going on down in Houston at Hilton Sutton's church and I need to be there". And he said, of course my dad was always a step ahead of me anyway. I used to say, "Daddy, how come you know what I was thinking before I was thinking it"? He said, "Because I thought it before you, boy". And then John would come up and say the same thing and I had the privilege and smile to say the same thing.
But anyway, I'd been there two weeks and a man walked up to me and just slapped some money in my hand said, "Copeland, go get your wife". I said, "Yes, sir". I went out there in got in the car and there was that package of cigarettes. Gone. Now before that, my born again Holy Ghost baptized tongue talking self would throw those cigarettes out the door and then stop and tried walking around out in the weeds trying to find them. That's the answer to the question, how dumb can you get? And the same thing happened now, the same thing happened. I was a student at Oral Roberts University and I was a newspaper guy. Get up in the morning. Now this was back in the day when they had funny papers, they weren't very funny, but they were... they were just mostly stupid. And then the sports page and I'd read front page news stuff, look at the funny paper and throw it away, and maybe look at the sports page a little bit. But I was in the habit of it every day. Well, I heard Brother Hagin talking about fasting unnecessary things, and I thought... I never heard anything like that before, to fast something that's unnecessary. So I thought, "Hey, look at this newspaper. You talk about something unnecessary, this is it". So I said, "Seven days, I'm not reading that".
Now that was in 1967. I haven't read one since. Don't care to read it. It separated me from it. The Word separated me from the tobacco habit. The Word separated me from mutilating my fingers. It will separate you. It will separate you. You look it up, the word translated sanctify. It sounds really religious, sanctified. It means to separate, and the Word will separate you. It will separate you spiritually. It will separate you mentally. It will separate you in your emotional life. It will separate you physically. Glory to God. It will separate you unto God Himself. And when we were born again, we became God's own property. Hallelujah. And here's another word that gets a religious bouncing around, righteousness. Well, that is not some super almost unattainable place as a saint of God. No, it just simply means right standing with Him. Right standing with God. And the moment you said... I just simply said it. I heard my Sunday school teacher's voice, Mrs. Taggert, and my spirit that night in November 1962. I heard her voice say, "Boys, you have to ask Jesus to come into your heart". And I thought, "Well that sounds just as dumb as it did the first time I heard it, but I don't know what else to do".
So I just did it. It separated me. I didn't know all this back then, but that moment I became a new creature. I didn't know that either. Had I known that, had I known that I was a new creature in Christ Jesus, I would have been more easily separated from that tobacco habit, but I didn't know that yet. I was raised in the Southern Baptist Church and hey, now don't put down the Baptists, all right? Thank God for them, and because of them there is a lot of people born again. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord. And I didn't know that that old nature had passed away. I thought I was just an old sinner saved by grace. Well I was an old sinner and I got saved by grace so I'm not an old sinner anymore. Glory to God. Are you getting anything out of this? You're not getting as much out of it as I am. I needed to hear it again this morning. And a good God is a delivering God.
Let's look at Ephesians 5:26 now. Thank you, Jesus. And we see where we're going. This week we're paying attention, we're no longer strangers to the covenants of promise, but we are walking in the promises of God, walking by the promises of God. Hallelujah. And let me tell you this, I don't care how bad it looks or how bad it seems, and it just seems like it's just drug out longer than it should. Well it may be. But you stay with the covenants of promise, you stay with the Word, you stay with the name, you stay with the blood. Victory is inevitable. And I say this advisedly, I don't care how long it takes because I have cast that caretaker over on my God who is my caretaker. Over on Him for He cares for me. Glory to God. He cares for me. He cares for my family. Thank you, Jesus. And to keep that care there. Keep it there. And I have to check and recheck and get on myself. Don't you pick up the care of this. Don't you do it. I've cast that care over on Him and I refuse to touch it anymore with my thought life. And I repent before God and I repent before you for allowing it to get into my thought life. And this morning, I reaffirm that care. That's been cast over on you, Jesus. I'm through touching it with my thoughts.
Now, I touch it long enough to do this, as I said before. And I did this today. I've missed it. I've missed it, a lot of times in a lot of different ways in a lot of areas of life. But don't just keep missing it. And like I used to hear Brother Hagin and like I've heard Bill Winston say over and over and over and over again, if you've been on the same road for 20 years and you're not there yet, it's a pretty good indication you missed a turn somewhere. Well, it hasn't been that long with this deal, but it's been too long. What was it? What was the old... oh yeah, this is like the old Wolf Brand Chili commercial. How long has it been since you had a bowl of Wolf Brand Chili? Well that's too long. If you touch that in your thought life at all, that's too long. Get rid of it. Just dump it over on Jesus. He's the healer. He's our caretaker because He cares for us affectionately. Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Praise you, Lord.
Now, as you continue in this Book of Ephesians and like I was about to read you in Chapter 5, and you begin to read, here are instructions. Now he's writing to born again Spirit-baptized people. Do you remember what happened at Ephesus when this group of Baptists met the apostle Paul? And he questioned them about being baptized and they said, "We don't know anything about any baptism but John," so they'd been baptized in water. Glory to God. No, he said there's another baptism. Now, remember baptisms is in the principle doctrines of Christ in the sixth chapter of the book of Hebrews, baptisms, there's more than one. You're baptized into the Body of Christ, you're baptized in water, and baptized in the Spirit. Praise God. Right in the center of the principle doctrines of Christ is the laying on of hands. It's right in the middle. Glory to God. Principle doctrines. We've not held those doctrines in the kind of reverence that we should. These are principle teachings of Christ. Principle. Then he said, "Let's go on to perfection".
Well let's don't go on to perfection until we get this. Glory to God. So by what? Instructions. Don't be drunk with wine whereas in excess. You, born-again, Holy-Spirit-baptized, tongue-talking Christian, don't get drunk. But be filled with the Spirit. Well, you can choose your spirit or God's Spirit or distilled spirits. It's your choice. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. I've heard people say, "Well, Brother Copeland, I just don't have a very good singing voice". God's not calling you to record. He's calling you... now I'm not smart enough to get a hold of that, Keith Moore came up with that. Glory to God. Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name. Say in the name. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of the Lord. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord, for the husband is head of the wife even as Christ is head of the church and He is Savior of the body.
Now there's been small wars fought over that. He's simply talking about chain of command. One submitting to the other. Chain of command. And when everybody's trying to be boss, you got some problems. They won't put up with that in the military. Chain of command. So therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it that He might sanctify, that He might separate, and cleanse it with the washing of the water by the Word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loves his wife loves himself for no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it even as the Lord the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife and they two shall be one flesh. The washing of the water. Look at it again, Verse 26, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of the water by the Word. We throughout this week are going to bathe in the Word of God.