Kenneth Copeland - Overcoming the Temptation to Compromise
— Hello, everybody happy New Year. And this is Kellie, our daughter, and this is Gloria, my lovely gorgeous wife that in let's see, January, February, March, April, we will have been married 60 years. Praise God. Amen. And as most of you know, by now I asked her to marry me on our first date. And she said, okay. And just went in the house. And she said later, she said, what have I done? I don't even know this guy. Oh, well, I'll get out of it later, 60 years. And she's not out of it yet.
— First time Ken said that, I said well what? Did you want a trophy?
— She just said, okay and walked in the house. I just, I stood there standing on the porch, anyway it's 60 years. Amen. Praise God. Thank you, Lord. And I'm very glad.
— Me too.
— And it needs to be said here that all the days of our married life, we got married six months later, we got born again. And all of that time, neither one of us compromised our love for one another. And because of her just unconditional love, it just really brought me around to the Lord. And all of those years, we've never compromised our marriage by having fusses. And we just didn't and it's mainly cause of her. I tried to fuss, but it is no fun if somebody just doesn't fuss back. And so all of these years, it has just been absolutely wonderful.
— Praise god,
— Praise God and happy anniversary, darling,
— Is it our anniversary? Happy...
— It will be here in three months or two and a half months.
— How many years?
— 60.
— 60?
— Yes.
— We're doing good. Didn't we. Yeah, we did.
— Okay. We're talking about from the book of Daniel and I made a note in here, 12 chapters of a man that refused to compromise, and the Lord said this to Gloria and me years and years ago, I'm coming so soon. I want this non compromised Word of Faith on every available voice. And it began with radio and then it just began to grow. Because we promised God that we would never compromise this ministry, that we would keep it pure on the Word that we would keep it pure financially. And that we would keep it pure sexually.
— Yes.
— And then when we refused to compromise that. And it steadily began to grow. Now, there were a lot of times there that we didn't know what we were going to do, but we have stayed faithful. I wrote in this Bible on the very front page, stay always stay on the God side of everything. It is never his fault. He is never wrong. And there's not anything in this book that's wrong. Amen. He's and it's two major covenant of promise and fact.
— Yeah.
— So.
— Think of what we've got in that very fact, we've got it in writing.
— Yes.
— What will not change?
— Yes.
— And what we have and what belongs to us.
— It's in writing.
— It's that's proof.
— And he's placed his name above his Word.
— Yeah. That's right.
— Well doesn't everybody else. I mean his Word above his name, I said it backwards. So you put the Word and then he puts his name to it.
— Official.
— So the Word is above the name.
— It's official.
— Yes, it is in blood.
— Yeah. Praise God.
— So let's go over here in the second chapter of Daniel verse 48. Oh that no. Now Gloria mentioned this. So let's look at this in the 44th verse of the second chapter, And in the days of these kings, shall the God of heaven set up a Kingdom, which shall never be destroyed. And the Kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms. And it shall stand forever.
— That's a, forever thing. Kellie, you had something you wanted to say about that.
— Yes, sir. You know, we talked about compromise and yesterday you talked about your diet, don't compromise your diet and the things that the Lord had told you. And you talked about when the Lord told you to go on every available voice.
— Mm-hmm.
— We, I hope, as we go along this next two weeks, that the thought that I want to add to this is about the promise. Because if we understand the promise, it removes the temptation to compromise, but you can't, not compromise without the promise. And you got, you didn't just get that about your diet. You went to the Lord for help.
— I did.
— You were spending time with the Lord over your ministry and your future when he told you that about every available voice.
— Yes.
— So that's the piece that I think that makes it so hard for people to not compromise is they haven't heard a word from him because every word he gives us, Hebrew says that if he gave us a promise, but it also has an oath with it. And that oath means so much. He cannot lie.
— That's right.
— He can't, the only impossible thing you can find in the Word of God is that he would lie. So when he tells you those things and he might tell you don't eat this certain kind of food, that's not even written in the Bible...
— Mm-hmm.
— But he's giving you something that works in your life. And he's so specific for us. And when we have that, it removes the temptation to compromise on our own. When we take his Word to us, not just read it, but really spend time with him to talk to us with a Rhema because there's no Rhema word is without the power to bring itself to pass.
— That's true.
— And so with this verse 44, it just hit me because it looks so bad out there, but this is a promise that actually, if you look in the context of what he was saying, the king had a dream. Daniel came to interpret it and it's funny that the Lord told the king what was coming in the future. And it wasn't good news for where we are right now for the devil, what was coming.
— That's right.
— And it wasn't good news that, that, I mean, this is about Jesus coming.
— Yes.
— And about Jesus bringing the win to us. And so Daniel interpreted this, this dream that the king had. And the thing I love about God is, and what we, how we have to read the Bible and even into the context of today, is he already did all this? He's did it, planned it? It's done. Set in stone. And then he does it. He says he plans it and does it, and then he brings it to pass.
— Here's another thought, nothing is ever a surprise to God.
— No...
— That's right.
— Nothing takes him by surprise.
— You can't.
— He's ready.
— That's right.
— And so when he says here, this verse for, can I read this out.
— Please do.
— During the reigns of those kings talking about from the dream.
— And what translation is that Kellie.
— New Living?
— Oh yeah good.
— The God of heaven will set up a Kingdom that will never be destroyed or conquered. That happened when that's already happened. He said he will. But that happened when Jesus came, it was set. There's so much about the Kingdom of heaven in the New Testament. It will crush all these kingdoms into nothingness and it will stand forever. And the Kingdom and the New Testament says it's ever increasing. He never goes backwards.
— That's right.
— That is a promise for us. And when he said it, he, God himself and Jesus in the Hebrews, it said, it's good for all of us. There's an oath. He can not lie. So why would we compromise?
— What was that reference? David.
— We've already won unless we compromise. Because he's won.
— That was in the...
— So that promise is so much a part of our, in our... most especially to our emotions.
— Well, when Jesus was raised from the dead, that became a fact. It was a promise up until then.
— Mm-hmm.
— The moment he was raised from the dead, that became a forever fact.
— It was done then.
— It was done then. So that Kingdom was established. And the promise is there, when we get them, I think you can see this with the children of Israel when God spoke the commandment to them, that thou shall have no other God before me, the Jews have kept that all along. But when they were afraid and they ran and Moses just read it to them, it didn't have the same impact to their heart. And when we get a Rhema word, it affects our mind. It affects our will and it affects our emotions. And that's where we compromise, is because of what's coming out of those places. I just want to encourage.
— Yeah. Pressure. Pressure comes. Pressure comes from the soul, from the emotions and particularly emotions. And most particularly when you don't understand what's going on and that non compromised word of faith. So we don't compromise the word of faith and we never quit just because we don't understand what's happening. Now I've been in that position because we know so little and the more I learn, the more I find out how almost spiritually stupid I am at this,
— Don't worry about it. You got eternity.
— But that's true. We have, we have, we have to have something right now, even he's faithful to what he says,
— When you don't understand what's happening, you don't quit.
— Yeah. Yeah. That's good.
— Because there is an answer to it.
— Amen.
— There is an answer to it. I was in a situation where I just didn't to understand, Lord, I don't understand why this doesn't manifest. This has gone on for years, but I go through the scriptures. I'm standing on these scriptures and I'm going through that and I don't understand it, but I know because of the Word it has to come to pass.
— That's right.
— And I was,
— And you know the result because it has to come,
— It has to come to pass.
— That's right. That's good.
— And then don't you think it's a good idea for me to practice what I preach. Have you ever heard me and other men and women of faith say name the seed. All that time. I never named my seed. Well, I changed. Now it will come to pass because every is seed I sowed glory to God. It's corresponding action. I have named that seed. It's coming to pass. It can, now it cannot not come to pass. But what if I'd quit?
— Think of this. If you had 10 acres and you sowed seed and you didn't go back for 10 years, you wouldn't even know what crop came up.
— No. And they, that man of course my illustration is during World War II. Oh. To go to the grocery store and just buy produce. A lot of times, it just wasn't there, particularly in Abilene, Texas. Because at that time there were about 20,000 people there in Abilene. When I was, I was born in Lubbock, but six weeks later, we moved to Abilene. There were about 20,000 people there. Then Pearl Harbor came. I was five. So then they built Camp Barkley. Now in the army, a camp is not a permanent installation. It's temporary. A fort like, like Fort Gordon, Georgia or Fort Bliss is permanent. But this was Camp Barkley. The first, there were 23,000 men came in there to be trained. There were more people out there than there were in town. Well, all the produce went to them. They came, they took one, three day pass, came into town, bought up everything in town. So what I'm saying is then they, then you, but the government would give you seeds to plant a victory garden. You could plant vegetables and out there in that sandy soil, they would grow papaya and peach trees just grow. We had one big old peach tree. That thing had so many peaches on it... One time it split. So you go get the seed and it would have pictures on there. Now these are carrots, these are tomatoes and these are cucumbers and so forth, who cared about that. But I didn't, as a little boy but I do now like them. And all of the vegetable crops, but you had a little picture there to show you what seed was in that row. I can just see that in my mind now the seed sack came with a little stick. So you put those with the carrot seeds in this row, I was always interested in the carrots. Mother would say, don't pull those before they're right ready to be pulled. And I'd pull them up out and just jerk the dirt off of them and eat them right out of the ground. I still like them like that, but anyway, each row the seed was named. So you name the seed, you're sowing a seed. You're sowing into a ministry. You're sowing a seed. And I learned that Gloria and I did, and our family learned it from Oral Roberts. And the Lord taught that to him before he went into the miracle ministry, because he took up an offering one night for a parsonage in that church, they were living with a deacon and they took up an offering for a parsonage and he sold everything he had in it. He gave his whole paycheck for the month. Then he came home and told Evelyn about it. She said, Oral you didn't do that, he said, it was a cold January night outside. He said, it's colder than that in that room. And he said there was a knock on the door at four o'clock that morning. And the biggest farmer in the county knocked on the door. He said, Oral, I'm ashamed of myself. I didn't put anything in that offering tonight. But he said, I'm a farmer. And I know to get a harvest, you have to plant something.
— That was it.
— I bet you, one thing, Oral never quit believing he didn't care what he sow.
— No. And that man brought four crisp, new $100 bills.
— Probably never had seen that.
— And no, he'd never seen a hundred dollar bill. And so he said, I took those hundred dollar bills and I went in the bedroom and I said, Evelyn...
— You know, the way miss Evelyn responded, that's a good example of why people begin to... like that's a good place for him to have compromised because of how she felt. He could have said, oh, okay, I'll go back and get it. You're mad at me. I didn't do the right thing. But sowing is sowing a seed, but it's sowing the Word, but it's sowing an action because he had a word from God. And so he sowed the action behind, with the seed, but it was based on a word that God gave him. And when we compromised, we let go of the facts, so when he grabbed that word, he did it. He had the, God had a,
— Yeah. Now that, that was on a Wednesday night service and it was winter and it was cold there. Not very many people there. And the lord just dropped it in his heart because he had been petitioning the deacons of the church to have a parsonage. And they said, no, we can't afford that. We can't do that. So he said, well, and Evelyn had already told him, if you don't get me a house to live in, I'm taking these kids and go home.
— He was already under pressure.
— He said, you wouldn't do that. She said, you just try me. So, yeah. So he learned that night and that farmer came back and he said, Oral I'm a farmer and I know to get a harvest, you have to plant a seed. And this is my seed for that harvest. He said, he said, I've been playing the stock market and I'm about to lose my farm and I need a miracle.
— So he had a word and a promise to move on.
— Yes, he did.
— Okay. Now... And the bottom line is this. He did get a miracle and it just, stuff started paying off. And that farmer became very wealthy, even more wealthy than he was, which pointed. And then Brother Roberts said to me, he said, now he's like Abraham. And God said something for him to do. He'd just do it. Whether he had any money or not. And he said, if God speaks to you to build a building, sow a seed and dig a hole, and he said, don't ever start into any project in your ministry that you don't sow the seed first. And so we did that all the way through. Why? That is an act of never compromising the Word that says my God shall meet all of your needs, according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. So Christ Jesus is the source. He uses different channels, but he is the source, glory to God. Hallelujah because we got our faith from him. We got everything from him. He's the baptizer in the Holy Ghost.
— He's the one with the plan.
— Yeah, and it's an old plan. And it's a good plan. And it's a working plan, glory to God. Now this work that's reason...
— That's yours mama
— In that 49th verse, then Daniel requested of the king. And he said, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego over the affairs of the province of Babylon. But Daniel sat in the gate of the king, Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold... let me read this out of the Classic Amplified. Nebuchadnezzar, the king caused to be made an image of gold, whose height was 60 cubits or 90 feet. This thing's 90 feet tall and it's breadth, six cubits or nine feet. He set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. The Nebuchadnezzar, this king sent to gather together. the satraps, the deputies, governors, judges, chief stargazers, treasurers, counselors, sheriffs, and lawyers, and all the chief officials of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image, which king Nebuchadnezzar had caused to be set up. Then the satraps... I don't know what a satrap is.
— I had, but anyway, what said herald?
— Okay.
— Herald, someone to speak the news.
— Yeah. He's a reporter.
— Okay. Shouted out.
— The deputies, the governors judges and chief stargazers, treasury council, so on and so on, they stood before the image of Nebuchadnezzar set up. Then the herald cried out, You are commanded O peoples... So, that's the satrap. The herald cried out, you're commanded O peoples, nation, language. When you hear the sound of the horn, the pipe, the lyre, the trigon, the harp, dulcimer, or bagpipe, the lyre is a triangle stringed instrument. And they're very popular in Russia and different places like that. Then they're still around today. Now you were commanded to fall down before that thing and worship it. And verse 11, whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace. Now we're out of time for it for today. We'll take it up here tomorrow. But let me say this.
— You got to get them out of that furnace.
— Let me say this. You hear people say, well, these are just myths so that we can study principle. No, they are not. This happened. And it happened just this way.
— That's right.
— Amen. Praise God. And we'll take it up here tomorrow. Come on, Jeremy. Get us out of the fiery pit.