Kenneth Copeland - Love Is the Key to Your Success
Kenneth Copeland: Hello, everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland and this is the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast. Hey. Now, some of you may not have seen this. That's the real thing. Before, we just had a picture up there.
Greg Stephens: Right.
— That's right out by, that's in my backyard.
— That's video.
— Yes.
— Right there.
— That's real deal.
— It's beautiful.
— The boats that are coming through there are actually coming through there.
— Yes, sir.
— I wanted this for so long, man, because now as we get ahead of it and we can start videoing the different seasons, it can look like whatever time the broadcast is going to be aired.
— Amen.
— Don't you like that? I thought you would. How many partners in here? Uh-uh. You paid for it. Thank you very much. Well Gloria and I helped.
— Yes, sir.
— Thank You, Jesus. Father, we do praise You and thank You today. It's with great honor and joy that we come before these cameras and come before this radio and television audience all over the world and we praise You and bless You today, sir. We minister to You today, Jesus. You minister to us all the time and we minister to You today. We love You so much and we praise You and worship the... Thank You, Lord Jesus for being who You are and what You are to us. We praise You and thank You and we ascribe all of the glory to Your precious and mighty wonderful name. Amen.
— Amen.
— We're going to be talking about love, the key or the gateway to success.
— Yes, sir.
— Amen.
— Amen.
— It opens the doors. Well of course, what could be our golden text but John 3:16?
— John 3:16.
— So let's turn there. May I suggest to you you read the first three chapters of John. Don't just land on this one, but this is Jesus speaking. "For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved". He so loved that He gave. He so loved. Now, let's go over to 1 John and we'll look in the second chapter. "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him". Now, in the English language, not just in the United States, but in the English language, love is a slang word. Don't you just love pecan pie? No, I don't. He's given us all things richly to enjoy.
— There you go.
— That's what the apostle Paul wrote to his son, Timothy. He's given us all things richly to enjoy. I learned a lot of this and became very aware of it through Keith Moore's ministry.
— Yes, sir.
— If we don't have the kind of respect for that word, love, that we should have, then when it comes down to the real thing, what's the difference? One guys loves pizza. Another one loves his new clothes. But no, He gives us all things richly to enjoy. I enjoy my new clothes, but I'm not in love with them. Now, I am very much in love with my wife and it's the last thing that we say to each other at night and it's the first thing we say to each other in the morning. Then I tell my wife goodnight and then as I roll over to go to sleep, I just say it, "I love the Lord, my God, with all of my heart, all of my soul, all of my mind, and all of my strength. I love my neighbor as myself and I love the brethren even as He loves the brethren". By that time, I'm about gone.
— To renewing your mind.
— To renew my mind.
— To that love.
— Yes.
— That is because God is love. You can't say a pizza is equal to God.
— No, and that's the point.
— Right.
— So God is love. He has faith.
— Yes.
— He's a faith God.
— Yes.
— He's a covenant God. Now, let me remind you love created this book.
— Love said it.
— He said it and He did it in order to bless. That is the point of both covenants, to bless. It was the first thing the human ear ever heard.
— That's right.
— Be blessed. That's love.
— Yes, sir.
— That was his whole idea. The Garden of Eden was his idea.
— Yes.
— Not Adam's. I mean he woke up there.
— Right.
— That was his idea. It was love's idea to build this place. It was love's idea to spread it all over the earth. Of course, we know that Adam messed it up, but that's the reason love sent His only begotten Son...
— Begotten Son.
— ...who now is not the only begotten Son, but He's the firstborn of many brethren.
— That's right. He did that in faith. He sowed His Son...
— Yes, He did.
— ...in faith not to reap servants, but to reap sons.
— Yes.
— For whatever you sow is what you reap. He sowed a Son to reap sons and daughters, not servants. So we serve God out of love, but that's not who we are. Read the prodigal son. He wanted to go back and be a servant to his father. He goes, "You're not a servant. You're my son," and put the robe on him, put the ring on him. That's love. That's a picture of our Father.
— And you know, Greg, I noticed now he had his speech made out.
— Yeah.
— And he's going to say this whole thing. "I'm going to go through all this". Now, Jesus said this is like the Father. This is a parable of the Father, but actually it's not a parable. That boy and that family actually lived. So he's pointing to this. He cut him off.
— He did.
— He wouldn't let him...
— Even finish.
— No, he wouldn't let him finish. You notice he kissed him? Can you imagine how he smelled? Now, those ... You city people that have never been around hogs...
— It's not good.
— ...they stink. Ain't no telling how long since before he had a bath.
— Right.
— But he came home.
— Matter of fact, the father was running toward him.
— Yes, he was.
— And threw himself on him.
— Yes, he did.
— That's a picture of love. That's how He feels about you. That's how He feels about me.
— Isn't that good?
— He's never disappointed in me. He's always loving toward me because He can't be anything but that. That's who He is.
— What does it mean to say I like you? It literally means I want to be like you. I don't like you. I don't want to be like that. Way back in the very early days of this ministry, Greg, it isn't like but that much being audible. I heard it. He corrected me sternly. He said, "Kenneth, I love you, but I don't like you very much". Why? "Because you're too high-tempered". He said, "Somebody criticizes you or criticize what you say, it makes you mad. If you want my perfect will for you from now on, don't read anything in print about yourself. Don't read anything in a newspaper about yourself. You tell your staff not to bring you anything about you in print, nothing. It's too hard to get the bad stuff out and you don't want to be believing the good stuff either because you get to thinking more highly of yourself than you should".
— That's the apostle Paul forgetting those things which are behind, the good and the bad, and press toward...
— Press toward tomorrow.
— Yeah, that's what he was doing. That's wonderful. I like what the psalmist said in Psalm 143:8. It's one of my favorites. "Let me hear of your unfailing love for me". In other words, he was reminding himself. "I hear all the bad things all the time. I can look in the mirror and see the bad things. Let me hear of your unfailing, of your loving kindness, your unfailing love toward me". That's one that I've always kept in my spirit to renew my mind too. I know what they're saying. I know what I'm even saying about myself. Let me hear what you're saying about me.
— Now, another thing too, Greg. I haven't read a newspaper since.
— Isn't that something?
— In fact, I fasted my newspaper for seven days and I've never picked one up since.
— My, my.
— There were a lot of things I missed, particularly what the local paper had to say about me and this ministry. I missed all those wonderful things.
— Yes.
— So I just love those guys and I just love them. I don't know what they said, but I love them.
— That's the right way to be. I think we all need to do that more even nowadays with the news. That's why I'm so thankful for Victory News because we take everything, we take the facts and the truth. The facts are this. This is what happened in that place. Here's what the truth is. The truth is right here.
— Yes, it is.
— And we're going to base everything off of this. That's how you attack. That's how you renew your mind to what's happening in the world around you. That's how you don't lose your peace. This is how you don't lose your love. You realize that love has this. He's got me. He's never lost one yet. The parable of when He lost one, He went to find the one that He's not going to lose me either.
— No.
— Let me hear of your unfailing love.
— Praise God.
— Amen.
— Get us on into this.
— Okay. Well I have to define terms. I always do that. So you talked about love being success. I looked up in the 1828 Webster's Dictionary success, the Latin word. The favorable termination of anything attempted, a termination which answers the purpose intended. So success is answering the purpose that was intended and that is different than prosperity.
— Yes, it is. I told you earlier.
— Yeah.
— My dad's oldest brother, Uncle Dale, born in 1900, he wanted to have a service station, not a filling station, a service station. So he did. It wasn't a little thing where you go up and pump the gas yourself. I wonder what would happen is somebody were to open a service station again.
— I remember it.
— Oh, I do too because I worked in them, but my Uncle Dale, I mean he had a fine service station and it grew into a service business. It was a full service station, mechanics, the whole thing. Man, that was success for him. Well it was prosperous.
— Yeah.
— It was... He's a very loving man. Now, he learned that from my grandmother and she was a very loving woman and she was a very small woman. Now, he was in the Navy in World War I. He made a drastic mistake. He came home. Oh, he said damn in her kitchen.
— Oh, yeah. Yeah.
— Now, he's the tallest of... There were five boys and two girls. He was the tallest of all of them. Granny was a little short woman and she never did talk very loud at all. She called Pawpaw, Mr. Copeland and she reached over and picked up the skillet off the stove and hit him right there, knocked him flat of his back and sat down on him and said, "You are not going to talk that way in mother's kitchen anymore, are you"? He said, "No, ma'am". That ended that.
— Yeah.
— It was over.
— Yeah, right. That's one of those skillets...
— That was a love tap.
— Well yes, sir. That was one of their skillets that was a real skillet back then too.
— It was a skillet. Oh, she hit him with that skillet. Well that ended his profanity life.
— Sure. He had something to remind him.
— Yeah, that knot right there.
— I was looking at this verse in 1 Corinthians 13. We call that the love chapter.
— Yes, we do.
— Paul said something very interesting, for the longest time troubled me. It only troubled me because I didn't have an understanding of what he's trying to say here. In 1 Corinthians 13:13, the end of this love chapter, "And now abideth faith, hope, and charity or love, these three, but the greatest of these is love". I wrote this down. Faith and hope can't produce love, but love alone can produce faith and hope.
— Yes. Oh, that's good.
— And that's why it's the greatest. Love can produce faith and hope, not the other way around because God is love. How does faith work? By...
— Love.
— ...love.
— Galatians 5.
— Galatians 5. So understanding the relationship of this love, that when I'm walking in love, my faith works. It absolutely works. I have a hope before me. I'm not in despair. So this is why this is the greatest. I'm going to say this again so you can get it. Faith and hope cannot produce love, but love alone produces faith and hope. This is why Paul said this is the greatest of the three, is love, because we could sit here for 1000 years and talk about love because we're talking about God and still not scratch the surface.
— That's right.
— They're still saying new things about him in heaven. The angels fall to their face every time they say something new about him.
— Oh, yeah.
— We'll never plumb the depth of his love for us and fully understand it...
— Oh, glory to God.
— ...until I guess we get there, but that's the thing that we're operating in and when you learn to tap into this, I'm going to say this. Even a natural man not born again in the Spirit learns how to tap into this success principle of love. They're going to be successful when they treat their customers the right way. They're doing what the Bible says. There are a lot of people that aren't born again that are operating off these principles.
— Well Luke 6:27-31, let's look at that.
— Okay.
— This sixth chapter of Luke is all about love because it's about blessing. "Bless them that curse you and pray for them that despitefully use you". Then you come starting with the 36th verse, "Be you therefore merciful as your Father's merciful," but in the... "I say unto you which hear: love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them which despitefully use you, and unto them that smiteth thee on one cheek, offer also the other, and to him that taketh away your cloak, forbid not to take your coat also. Give to every man that ask of thee and of them that taketh away your goods, ask them not again. As you would that men should do to you, do you also to them likewise".
— That's right. Yes, sir. You'll be successful if you do that.
— Yes. The golden rule, do unto others as you would have others do unto you. I had the Lord say this to me. I was teaching on this and He said, "What you do unto others is what they'll do unto you". The way you conduct yourself publicly, what you do to people, not the front you put on but the way you act in the restaurant, the way you act around your children, that's what other people are going to do to you. You draw that kind of thing.
— Well that's the law of seed time and harvest.
— Yes, it is.
— That's sowing and reaping. We were at a place the other day, a little steakhouse, Michelle and I, the chef, well they messed it up. They just messed the order up. Well now, they're working low staff right now. Everybody...
— Everybody is.
— They're fighting to get help and the little girl that came out, she just looked so despondent when we mentioned that we ordered this and this isn't right. We're sitting there and you could tell she just looked dejected. Just mention it and the manager comes out and wants to replace it. "No, no, no, no, no. We've already eaten this. That's fine. Just wanted to let you know. That's all. Just letting you know". Went ahead, I heard the Spirit of the Lord say, "Tip her double"...
— Yes. Yes, sir.
— ...because she's thinking she's not going to get a tip, we're upset. I wanted to make sure that they knew we're not upset, just letting you know this is not what she ordered, but we went ahead and we tipped her double. She came running out to grab us before we ran out the door, just almost tears welling up in her eyes, but that's just that act of kindness. That's that act of love.
— That small thing...
— Yes.
— ...now what did it do to you?
— I felt better.
— Oh, you feel good.
— I did.
— You leave there thinking, "Yeah, this worked out".
— Yes.
— It's so good.
— And she knew then we weren't mad, we weren't angry, we weren't angry at her, we weren't angry at the guy cooking it. They were doing the best they could, but it's that me being able to go extra. I called it a God bump. He wants me to just bump people every now and then.
— Yes.
— Just a little love tap so that they know that somebody today acted out of his...
— I've noticed this on all of the times particularly when we were on motorcycle trips and so forth and we didn't look like preachers. We had on our leathers and all that. We had run into... I have something right down that same line. I don't have time for it today, but we'll talk about it tomorrow. Just because our whole group responded in love, it changed this woman's life, changed her life because we were able to pray with her, we were able to lead her to the Lord, and over water glasses and iced tea.
— It's the little things.
— Yeah.
— I know we got to go. Paul said this. In the last days, perilous or hard times shall come. So you can open the door to hard times or you can close the door to hard times. The number one thing he said, men will be lovers of themself. They'll be selfish.
— Yes.
— I can open the door to hard times by being selfish, by withholding what I have the power to give. For God so loved the world that He gave. If I will act like my Father and give, I close the door to hard times in my life.
— Praise God.
— Amen.
— Greg, that's good. You close the door to hard times because when you close that door in love, then good times are looking for you.
— That's right.
— We're out of time. Praise God. Come on, Jeremy. Help us here, son.