Kenneth Copeland - Faith Works By Agape Love
Now think about what Jesus said. Well, let's look at it in the sixth chapter of Luke. Six chapter of Luke is... Oh, it is just... Of course, it's Jesus's sermon. So, but it is so powerful. You remember that this is also the one that said, "Give and it'll be given unto you". Well, in fact, let's just back up here. 6:27, excuse me. "But I say unto you, which hear," What, Jesus? "Love your enemies". What? "Do good to them which dislike you, no, that hate you. Bless them that curse you. Pray for them which spitefully use you". "But now, Brother Copeland, this couldn't mean the soldier". This absolutely has to mean the soldier. Especially the soldier, especially the police officer. Now, I never thought I'd live to see the day when people were so fouled up that you'd want to get rid of the police force. You got to have BBs for brains to do that. "Now, Brother Copeland, there's bad cops". Yeah, there's bad soldiers too. There's bad governors and bad mayors. No, sure there is. But what did he just say? Those are the ones you need to be praying for.
So anyway, what did he say? "Bless them that curse you. Pray for them that spitefully use you". Well, what kind of guff are you going to take on the battlefield? And all you drink is milk and say, "Praise God". They're going to call you everything they can think of, for a little while. But after a while, it changes, doesn't it, Jeff? It changes. I remember a Southern Baptist chaplain, I never will forget him. And the others just kind of... We were just in the way. But not this big, tall, good looking soldier. And he's one of them kind. He'd been there and come back, and became a chaplain. Those are the ones that are so real. And the others would say, "Oh, I'm going to tell you right now. You go down there and you get drunked up in town. Don't call me. I don't care nothing about... You know better than to do that". He was just exactly the opposite. He would say things like, "Now I'd a whole lot rather you didn't go down there and make a fool out of yourself. But if you do and you get in trouble, I'm the man to call because I'll help you".
Then I paid attention to him. And back in those days, I mean, I was lost as a goose in a hail storm. I was trying to go to hell, mother wouldn't let me. But that Southern Baptist chaplain really, he gave me a New Testament that had an olive wood back on it with a cross engraved in it. Chap, it was precious to me, man. And that chaplain, I thought about him a lot. I loved him. Because he loved me. And as bad as my mouth was, there wasn't no way it was going to be bad around him. Because he's a combat soldier. Had become a chaplain. Glory to God. Somebody say, "Amen". Hallelujah.
Now then, "Give to every man that asks of thee and of him that takes away your goods, ask them not again " and so forth and so on. And verse 31, "And as you would that men should do to you, do you also to them likewise. For if you love them which love you, what thank have you? For sinners also love those that love them. And if you do good to them, which do good to you, what thank have you"? What's he saying? "How can I thank you for that? You're not helping me at all. I'm Your Lord and I'm Your Savior, but the only one you'll have anything to do with is the one that like you. And you won't have anything to do with the nasty people. But if you'd be good to them, I'll be good to them through you, and we'll turn some of these folks around".
What if everybody did that? You'd be surprised how many of those early on very wealthy men actually believed that and did it on purpose. There was one man that tithed for a long time before he ever got saved because he saw that it worked. It worked for these other men and he did it. "I'll give it to God. I'll give him 10% of what I have. I need him. Don't know anything about him". And it worked. And because it did work, then he got saved. This is the way service works. I don't know a thing in the world about the man that started Amazon. I don't know anything about him personally is what I'm saying. But here is a man with a really good idea to serve people, particularly people that couldn't go somewhere and shop. And he's got his own spaceship, for crying out loud. And just went in space just because he could.
It's about time Holy Ghost folks got some of those ideas. Those ideas come along all the time and people pass them off as nothing. But did you know every invention that ever happened at one time or another was an idea that just wouldn't quit? The cell phone. What? A cell phone. Cell phone. Does that mean it came from jail, a cell? A flip phone. They got the idea from Star Trek. Somebody decided they'd have a phone. Like I said, I'm old. First week of December, birthday hint, I'll be 85. Ah, anybody can get 85. It's just one day at a time. But I remember, any of you remember Dick Tracy? And his watch radio. That's almost what this one is. "Say, what is that thing"? Well, that little guy right there says it's 9:03 and so far I've done 3,988 steps today. That's pretty good. It's nowhere near what I usually do, but it didn't work out today. I had to come here. I can't talk over it, but it gets on me when I don't work out hard enough. It was a good idea. A good idea that somebody had, and now it's an app. Huh? An app. App. There was no such word as app, but somebody had an idea. "Well, you can't put application all over the"... Good ideas. Then there's God ideas. But they're all wrapped up in love, and they're all wrapped up in service. Amen.
Now let's talk about faith. This is still strange to me. Open your iPads. That was a good idea. Wasn't it? Let's see what faith is. In the Classic Amplified, "Now faith is the assurance, the confirmation, the title deed of the things we hope for, being the proof of the things we do not see and the conviction of their reality. Faith perceiving as real fact, what is not revealed to the senses". There it is. And you know how faith has been used? That people talk about, "Well, what is your faith? What faith are you"? That's talking about a denomination or something like that. There's not anything wrong with that, but that's not what faith is. Faith is a creative force of God. By faith, we understand that the worlds during the successive ages were framed, fashioned, put in order and equipped for their intended purpose by the word of God. So that what we see was not made out of things, which are visible. Of course not. It was made out of the creative force of faith.
Now it was not made out of nothing. It was made out of something you can't see. And you can't see faith, but you can see the results of it. But now wait a minute. In the book of Galatians, boy, isn't that a great little book? 5:1, "Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. Be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Behold, I Paul, say unto you that if you be circumcised, Christ, the anointed one in his anointing shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is debted to do the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law. You're fallen from grace, for through the spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ, neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith, which works by agape love". It works by love. Of course, it does.
Mark 11:22, "Have faith in God". Your cross references will say, "Have the faith of God," or as Brother Hagin used to say, "Have the God kind of faith". Well, we're talking about the God kind of love. "Have faith in God". Folks, that's the answer to everything. Have faith in God. Have faith in God. What is it Brother Schambach used to say? "You don't have any trouble. All you need is faith in God. Somebody shout amen, somebody". Lord, I get talking about these men. I miss them, man. I tell you. I got such a big kick out of him. He said, "They run those things in the paper there. What do they say? Maybe there's some money for somebody". And somebody says, "Oh, it ain't no use looking in there". He says, "I do". He said, "I look for Schambach, Schamboozle, Schambanger. Anything. If it just got a Scham on it, I want to know". Hallelujah.
And then of course, he learned from A. A. Allen, miracles. Oh, bold men of faith. Now my father in the faith, Oral Roberts, two things he said all the time, "God is a good God". Now Until... Then was written by Stuart Hamblen, and so was God Is a Good God. "God is a good God". And he played that on all of his radio broadcasts and then his television broadcasts. Now you can copyright lyrics, but you can't copyright a title. And there's another one. I like this one. "God is a good God, yes He is He is a good God". And he's the soldier's best friend. But you have to do it his way. Everybody stand with me please. Thank You, Lord. Thank You, Lord Jesus. Praise You, Lord Jesus. Let's just praise the Lord here for a few moments. Praise Him and thank Him. Praise Him and thank Him. Praise Him and thank Him.
Now of course, I don't know you, but Jesus, you have to understand this. Nobody, no man before, no man ever will again suffer like he suffered. No. He not only died on the cross. He not only bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we might, being dead to sin, should live under righteousness, by whose stripes we were healed. No, not only that. Study the New Testament. Study all of the first testament's types and shadows. It plainly says that Jesus went into hell and suffered there for three days and three nights. No, this was a High Sabbath. It did not start at Friday. It started Wednesday evening. It says so in the Gospel of John. He did all the hard part. He took those stripes on his back, beat almost to death, to the point where, according to the book of Isaiah, the 52nd chapter, he no longer resembled a human being. And after all that, he still shouted with a loud voice and took all of that on himself. Went into hell and paid the price, so that you, so that I could just simply pray a simple prayer. He did all the hard part, but he could not pray your prayer. He could not pray my prayer.
So the first week in November of 1962, just a little before eight o'clock in the evening, I had just flown a charter trip for a man... This is North Little Rock, Arkansas with the Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company, by the name of Weir. I came in and just had gone... Gloria was preparing supper. And I had gone in the bedroom and changed clothes. And I came out, I had one shoe on and one shoe off, and all of sudden, the room filled up with the glory of God. And I heard it down in here. "Kenneth, if you don't get right with me, you headed to a devil's hell, son". I said, "I know it. Well, what do I do now"? I heard my Sunday school teacher's voice. I heard Mrs. Taggart. We called her Old Lady Taggart. She called herself Old Lady Taggart. And she said, "Boys, you have to ask Jesus to come in your heart". I can just see her right now. She was a little short... She was a widow woman. And she wore black all the time. And she wore a little black straw hat with a little artificial flower in it.
Old Lady Taggart, Old Lady Taggart, won me to the Lord. So she gets part of everything that comes in the ministry. "Ask Jesus to come in your heart". I thought, "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 did it. I just said, "Jesus, come into my heart". Oh, the only way I have ever been able to describe that is if you had been raised in a boiler room and suddenly somebody turned it off. The silence would've been the loudest thing you had ever heard in your life. And I felt this square feeling kind of a block in my mouth. And from that day until this, second day of November, 1962, from that day to this, I have never used profanity of any kind since. Amen. All I said was, "Jesus, come into my heart".
Gloria had done so two weeks before. She didn't say anything to me about it. Now she was raised in a church that didn't say anything about the new birth. She had never heard the phrase born again. She had never heard anybody pray the sinner's prayer. She just said, "Lord, take my life and do something with it". Well, I would say he did. And she never heard born again until after she was baptized in the Holy Ghost in 1963. So whoever you are and wherever you are, if you've never accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, don't you go one more second without him. This is your moment. This is your time. And all of us here, we're going to pray, and we're going to lead you to the throne of grace. And anyone in this room that's doubtful about your own situation, we're just going to all pray this together. So let's just lift our hands before God:
Oh God in heaven, I believe with all my heart that You raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus come into my heart. Take my life. I give it to You. Do something with it. I receive Your life. Fill me now with Your precious Holy Spirit to overflowing. I receive now the infilling of the spirit and I fully expect to speak with other tongues. Just like they did on the day of Pentecost. Jesus the gift to the world. The Holy Spirit the gift to the church.
Oh, glory to God. Now let's just lift our hands and let's just praise him and thank him. Thank You, Lord Jesus.