A (0:00)

Hi, I'm Nancy Dufresne. Welcome to our podcast channel. We know you'll be blessed by today's message. Before we begin, I left a story untold last night about protection. Traveling with my dad. We were in Fort Stockton, Texas. Notice how I said that? Texas. Well, that's the way you talk out Fort Stockton. We were in Fort Stockton, Texas, and. And we walked into the hotel, and I was, oh, you know, 11, 12. It was right after the close of World War II. There's two things I'll tell you about. Anyway, so my dad was checking into the hotel, and there was a little game room just off the lobby. Well, I'm not bashful, and I wanted. I just wandered in there to see what was going on. Well, they had a shuffleboard, you know, with rosin on the top of it and with those, you know, chrome pucks. I never had seen one. And so I could just see up over the top of that. And I didn't. That white powder, I didn't know what it was. Then I just drugged my hand through it, and that guy hollered at me, and what he said wasn't all that nice. My dad heard him and he walked in there and I'll tell you something else about my dad in a minute. And he just took me and put me around behind his back. I mean, he brussled. You have something to say to this boy, you say it to me. Well, I didn't really mean anything. Well, they said, just shut up then. And I thought, like, that goes for your cat, too, you know. He didn't say anything else. We got up to the hotel room and he said, boy, keep your dad burned hands out to yourself. Okay, another time. Oh, Lord. I was about 14, And I don't even remember now what was going on. And so I thought I was awful smart, you know, And I just did this. And he just kind of looked at me. Bam. He hit me right there. Knocked me complete. Knocked me back into the closet and stunned me so. And I couldn't see. And I thought that old man blinded me. But then I could feel the clothes. I knew I was in his closet, and I could. I mean, it was so fast, I didn't even see it coming. I mean, it was right on the point. My mother said, kenneth, what were you thinking about? Well, I didn't have an answer for that. She said, don't you know that your dad and Uncle Carl. Well, actually, he was a cousin of my dad, but I'd called him Uncle Carl all the time. Then, you know, that your dad and Uncle Carl fought their way all the way from Texas to California. Now, back in those days, you come through a small town and almost, you know, there's no television and there's nothing out there in those country towns. And they'd have prize fights and they had a town fighter, or some of them called them the town bully. But they were just somebody that their towns would support. And so they'd go into town, they didn't have any money, and so they'd check around to see who it was and challenge. And this town, my dad would fight and Uncle Carl would be the second. The next town Uncle Carl would fight, my dad would be the second. They fought their way all the way to California and back and didn't lose. I said, brother, why didn't you tell me that, for goodness sake? Oh, I got discipled really strong. Anyway, now you can understand why I'm the way I am about my dad now. Well, let me get Leroy out here, Okay, and do that right there. It worked. All right. We will look at some things. This morning I woke up with some directions from the Lord, like I told Bruce, and let's go back now we're talking about correction and direction. And I wanted to point out something about what I told you last night. I had direction, But I was so full of fear about not wanting to go to school. I thought it was just because I was such a failure. And I was just a failure going somewhere to happen. It was years and years later, I mean, after I was in this ministry, before I finally questioned the Lord why that worked like it did. And he just told me why he just wouldn't let me stay in those classes, that he had something else for me. And it started with Oral Roberts University, a new ministry and a new university. So. And that's where I learned about partnership. That's where I learned about being in covenant together with people to do a job that none of us by ourselves could do. And a prayer covenant and oh my, a healing covenant. It's amazing. So the. Look, turn with me to Proverbs 3:11 as we rehearse some of these things. My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, Neither be weary of his correction. For whom the Lord loves, he corrects, even as a father, the Son in whom he delights. Isn't that good? Amen. And. Oh, just so many good scriptures. Proverbs in direction. Proverbs 6:20. My son, keep thy father's commandments. Forsake not the law of thy mother. Bind them Continually upon thine heart and tie them about your neck. When you go, it shall lead thee. When you sleep, it shall keep thee. And when you awake, it shall talk with thee. He's talking about the word Amen. Then there's just another scripture came up in me in the Psalms that. Keep my commandments with your heart. Keep my commandments with your heart. Not just because they're commandments. And then you come to the new commandment. I give you a new commandment. That you love one another as I have loved you. By this, the way you love one another. All people will know my disciples. Now, these 12 men fussed and fought that whole three years. They came when Jesus, Peter, James and John came down from the mount of Transfiguration. And there was a man with an epileptic son. And he said, I came to your disciples. And they couldn't cast him out. Now, they had been given the authority to do that. It wasn't that they couldn't. Then why didn't it work? Well, just check it all out. And the bottom line is, because of your strife. Because of your strife, you're fussing with one another all the time. The Lord gave me a message. Strife, the killer of dreams. And let's talk about another area of judging people. Now, let's look. Oh, there's so much here. Go to Colossians, chapter one. Now, those of you that are partners, you'll find this on the prayer list that I pray for you. Colossians, chapter 1, 9, 10, and 11. Well, let's back up a little bit. Verse 7. As you also learned of Ephroditus, our dear fellow servant, who is for you a faithful minister of Christ, who also declared unto us your love in the spirit for this cause. We also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. Why? So that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. Spiritual with all dunamis, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and long suffering with joyfulness, giving thanks unto the Father, which has made us able to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sin, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. Glory to God, The wisdom in all spiritual understanding. That's direction, is it not? That is direction now. Glory to God. Romans, chapter 8. We're just going to bounce around through here this morning. What is it Brother Hagin used to say? We're going to look under every rock and over every leaf. He probably still says it. He's just in a different place. There was a guy that told me this one time, he said, this fellow, everywhere he went, he preached on the great Jamestown flood. That that was part of his message. I mean, he'd preach on other things, but he'd wind up on the great Jamestown flood. Well, and then, of course, he went to heaven and. And it came his time to preach. And so there was an angel slipped over there beside him. He said, I want you to know Brother Noah's in the congregation today. You don't know anything about a flood. I like that. If that isn't true, it ought to be. Glory to God. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Oh, this eighth chapter of Romans. This is. This is one of those that is almost all yellow in my Bible. I was on the broadcast, David Barton and I were doing broadcast together. Believers voice victory. And I had my Bible open to the book of Hebrews. And you know, David's. He's quick and very subtle, just, you know, without a smile. He said, where do you get a white highlighter? I said, what? He said, where do you get a white highlighter? And you would know that it is in. The 11th chapter of the book of Hebrews. Anyway, the eighth chapter of Romans is almost that. Well, it is now. Boy, the whole eighth chapter of Romans is just powerful. We'll start with the 11th verse, verse 10. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life. Because of righteousness. The Spirit is life. I said, the Spirit is life. Jesus said, my words are spirit, and they are life. John 6:63. But if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwells in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh to live after the flesh. And for if you live after the flesh, you shall die. But if you, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For you have not received the spirit of bondage again unto fear, but the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, abba, Father. That was the verse of Scripture that stirred my Granddaughter Jenny to start that orphanage in Greece. She didn't. She knew she had met two of Elias cousins and she introduced them to me as first and Second Thessalonians. And she wound up going there, she wound up marrying into that great family. And one of the members of that family, Elias aunt, she learned English by getting a Greek English dictionary and reading my books on faith. So now that's a word of faith. Church connected to the orphanage, connected to Elias, connected to me. And now I have a little Thessalonian as a great grandson. I've always wanted to grow to Greece. Now I need to go visit the family and go firsthand and see things. Cause Elias had been to all of them. And of course, when he came to the United States, first thing he did is go get his green card. And because he lives with an American citizen on foreign soil. And so the first thing he did is go get his green card when he got here. And they were showing him things about questions about the United States. And he said, 245 years, That's all this old, this nation is. I told him that's right. But it's the oldest unchanged constitution in the history of the world. The average is. The average is. 17 nations a year change their constitution. This one has never been changed. And the reason why, it's based on the Bible. It's an anointed document and it has stood the test of time and will continue to do so. And men and women try to foul it up. But it's a very short document. For a long time I just carried one around in my Bible case just to look at it, read it. Amen. But what is that? That's national direction. It's national correction. It's national protection. Because it'll keep you from just going into war just because you want to. Amen. All right, so now then, let's go to Proverbs 20. I want to look at. There's so much I want to do here. The 18th. Proverbs 20. 27. The Spirit of man is the candle. The cross reference says, the lamp of the Lord searching all the inward parts, the belly. And. Okay, This is in the classic Amplified. The spirit of man, that factor in human personality which proceeds immediately from God is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts. That is the way God leads and guides. And when you. When you put his word, final authority in your life where you don't argue with it anymore. Finally I came to the place, I just fell on my knees and I said, oh, God, I am Yours to command. Your will is my will and my will is your will. I have no other will. My will is strong. I'm a strong willed man. But God didn't want you to be weak willed in the first place. Now we guard against strongholds that are of the devil, but we have strongholds of faith. Strongholds built in the word of God concerning miracles and healings, concerning obedience to his word. In a seminar that Brother Hagin was teaching. And he said, all present who would make the word of God first place in their lives and final authority. Please stand, boy. Gloria and I jump to our feet. Yes, we'll do that. We did it. And then later I was preaching back in Fort Worth again and I was student there at Oru and had come back to preach. I was back in my bedroom when I was in high school and I just had my Bible in my hand. And I had already promised God that whatever he said in his word, I agree with it. I set myself in agreement with it. I learned that in the 17th chapter of John. I didn't realize at the time that, that the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th chapters of John were all right there in that, in that marvelous time. And when you go back and read that, particularly in the 14th chapter, the words that I speak unto you are not my own. It's the Father within me that does the works. And he kept. He kept talking about these things. And then he told Judas, whatever you're going to do, do it quickly. He gave Judas every opportunity to repent right there, right even right there in the Garden of Gethsemane. He called him friend, Covenant friend. And he just got through saying, you're now my friends, referring to Covenant. It would have worked. Now the moment he took that sop, Satan entered him. So Jesus got him out of that room where he could go on into the deeper things that he had to tell these other men. He had to get him out of there. The next thing he said is something like, the Father is going to glorify the Son. And that's when he began talking to them about love. Those words work. Here's the thing. Judas didn't pay any attention much to what he preached. Every time before, he had just walked out from among them, thought surely they would do this, this time and they would set up the kingdom and he'd be the treasurer. When he saw what had happened, it grieved him so much. Instead of repenting, he killed himself. He killed himself in that state. Now there are people, there are those that consider suicide the unpardonable sin. No, it isn't. No, it isn't calling itself murder, no. There are people that know the Lord, but get under such pressure and like Brother Hagin used to say, his mother was in that condition, but her mind was. She had a complete total nervous breakdown and her mind was in such. His grandmother would say, now you watch her. Don't let her get a butcher knife or something. She'll try to kill herself. And then when he told her that, she said, why, son, I wouldn't have never. I would never have done that. She didn't even remember it. But had she done it, she wasn't responsible for it. The devil's responsible for it. You see that Now a man, that dear man. J.C. son of Sullivan, old bank robber, and I, back in the early days, and I flew him to a few places, and so we went over the north side of Fort Worth, and he said, pull into the bank here, Kenneth. I want to get. And he came out and sat down in the car and began to cry. I said, what is it, sir? And he hit a. A big voice, very kind. He said, kenneth, in the old days, he said, I had my eye on a banker. And he said, I got a job washing dishes across from the bank, got my eye on him because I was going to kidnap him and the ransom would be 50, $50,000. But he said, this morning my banker loaned me $50,000 on my name because of Jesus. Isn't that something? And he was running. The gang he was with had robbed a bank, and he was running away from it, and he ran around the corner, and there was a deputy sheriff that ran around the corner. JC Stuck his pistol in his stomach and pulled the trigger. And it misfired. It scared them both so bad, he ran one way and the deputy sheriff ran the other. And he ran out to the railroad yard and jumped a freighter getting out of town. This is what made me think of all this. And he stood there and he said, just going to drop down under those rails and end it all. And he said. A voice came up on the inside of me and said, that's not the end. That'll start something you don't want to get into. Praise God. But the prayers of his family worked. Amen. That's good teaching. That's good information to know, because people worry about that. And I remember I said this first time, I said, it was over on the radio. I just stopped and I said, don't take your life. Give it away. Give it to Jesus. I just went on about what I was doing. And I heard from him there was another one. Now this goes along with direction, correction, direction. On the radio broadcast, I stopped and I just simply said, you're not sick and you're not going to die. And I thought, when I said it, I thought, well, that had hair all over it. I don't know. I don't know what. I don't know where that came from either. But anyway, I mean, that's what I thought. Not long after that, we got a letter. This woman said, I was sitting on the side of my hospital bed. The doctors had just left my room and told me there's no hope. I had to die. She said, my arm just turned on the radio next to the bed, just as you said, you're not sick and you're not going to die. She said. I said, I'm not. I'm not. So she said, I sent somebody downstairs to the shop to buy me a Bible. I began. She said, then I started listening to you every day on the radio. Every day I left the hospital. And she said, in just a short time I was perfectly well. My faith started growing. And she said, then I began to. My husband began to listen to the radio and he got saved. And then my young boy got saved and he owed a bunch of money on his pickup. And so we got to believe in God. And God supernaturally paid the pickup off and paid the house off. And we're in the ministry full time. Direction. It's a precious thing. Thank youk, Lord Jesus. Praise you Lord. Now, 2027, we read that. Did I read Proverbs 6:20? Let's take a look at that. Anyway. Yeah, we did. There was something else I wanted to tell you about that. Proverbs 6:20. Let's see. Let's go once again to that. I read this. When you go, they the words of your parents. God shall lead you. When you sleep, they will keep you. When you waken, they shall talk with you. For the commandment is a lamp. And the whole teaching of the law is light. Reproofs of discipline are the way of life. That's the way of life. It's not a way of life. There are ways of life. Well, you could say. Death of the physical body is a way of life. But there are some decisions that need to be made. I heard Gloria say in healing school one time, she said, now dying is the easiest thing you ever did in your life. And if Jesus is your Lord, then to be absent from the body will be present with the Lord. If he is not your place will Be decided for you. Decision is a very important way of life. I had direction, but I made a bad decision. Why do bad things happen to good people? Good people make bad decisions, And that is a way of life. The decision is yours. You can make New Year's resolutions, or you can make life changes. New Year's resolutions usually contain a diet, and dieting doesn't work. Somebody asked me one time, said, how much weight have you lost? I said, oh, somewhere around £25,000, I imagine, or more. Because I. I really didn't know what I was doing. The day we left for Oral Roberts University, there were two things that happened that day. Whew. You talk about direction now. I went into the Army 14 January, 1957. At that same time, I recorded a record called Pledge of Love, and then got drafted into the Army. So I really didn't know it had been released yet. I was in basic training in Fort Bliss, Texas, and, you know, no contact with the outside world, except somebody came in. We had just come in from the field, and somebody came in there and said, copeland, somebody wants you on the phone. Well, I thought maybe it's family or somebody, you know. I mean, who else knows I'm here? I went in there and answered the telephone. Now, the man, that very, very close friend of mine, Hunter Ennis, he was my quarterback, I was a fullback, but his older brother was a disc jockey at Kelp El Paso. I knew he was in that business, but I didn't know he was in. And I answered the phone, he said, kenneth, this is Bill Ennis. I said, what? I thought, what, is he calling me? He said, can you come do an interview with me? I said, for what? He said, what do you mean, for what? Your record's on the charts. I didn't know it had been released. Lost as a goose in a hailstorm, you know. I mean, I didn't know what I'd do it. Well, anyway, I was at Fort Gordon, Georgia, which is a. Now, for those of you that don't know the military terms, a camp so and so is temporary, but a fort is a permanent installation. Fort Bliss, Fort Gordon. And I was there in communications expert school. And I went to the dispensary, had not many people in there. All of a sudden one morning, there were 500 soldiers out in the hall, and one of them died with the flu. They didn't shut the whole post down. They didn't call the government, shut the nation down. So now, my mother, being a chiropractor and naturopathic physician, and I would help her in her clinic. It was right across the street from the house there in Abilene. And she taught me how to read a thermometer and how to keep a chart and so forth. Well, I'm still talking about direction now. And so the colonel came in there and said, is there anybody in here that can help me, that can keep a chart or take temperatures? I said, yes, sir, I can. And I told him my background. He said, come on, Copeland, you're going to help me. Now let me tell you what the treatment was. Every chief cook at Fort Gordon, Georgia, thousands of men on that post. Every chief cook on that post was squeezing fresh orange juice to get that vitamin C. Vitamin C and aspirin. Vitamin C and aspirin. Vitamin C to kill that virus and aspirin and stop the fever. And that was the only man that died. That's what happens when you go into action and you don't put it on television every day and talk about. Got to the point I could give the newscast. I don't watch that stuff. Gloria says you got to learn to talk back to the tv. But anyway, so after it was over with, he called me in. He said, copeland, how do you feel about military service? I said, colonel, I like it, I do. I like the whole idea of it. I was in the air Force reserves when I was in high school. But I said, I got a hit record on the charts out there and I'm going to be a has been before I get out and do anything about it. So he just reached over the course. He had all my records with him. He just did this. He said, I have reviewed your military service. He said, now take this and take this and this and this and take this down to building 125 and this right, and go home. I said, sir. He said, copeland, get out of here. Go home. I did. And now we're at 1967, December 1966. I turned 30. I didn't know that that was the levitical age to go into ministry. I never heard about any of that. I didn't. Joseph, when the guy Forgot about him two years because he was only 28 when he was 30, he became the most powerful man in Egypt. And records will prove particularly the male brain is not completely, totally mature until he's 25 to 30 years old. Mostly 30. That's how old Jesus was when he was baptized in the Jordan, stepped into his ministry. Now that's not to be disparaging, talk ugly about you 14 year olds. I mean, just keep growing. I Thought I was grown when I was 14. Dear Lord, it's amazing what my dad learned between the time I was 14 and 21. That lick on the chin didn't hurt anything. Now I'm talking about direction. We had everything ready. We had a little house there in Fort Worth. We had a little equity in. This is back in the days when somebody could just take up your payments. No real estate people at all. And so we just ran an ad in the paper. We had $800 worth of equity in it. And so we ran the ad and two guys showed up. And so I was at my mother's house. And so Gloria called me. She said, well, what am I going to do? I said, what? She said, what am I going to do? I said, about what? She said, I'm in the kitchen. I've got two of them in the living room. One of them has cash, one of them has a check. I said, which one came first? She said, the guy with the check. I said, well, first come. She said, okay. She went out there and said, my husband said, the first one, and you're the one with the check. He said, if his check bounces, I've got cash. You think things were moving. Now, I'm about to be directed. I got in the car. Now, I had a very worn out car that I traded for this thing. Oh, lord, it had 90,000 miles on it when we got it. But we just destroyed the good car. I destroyed the good car. The devil in me got that done. So now we're driving her car. Now, you remember I told you. Oh, I told Nancy. I called Brother Hagin. I said, I brought the title of my car to get his tapes and stuff. I said, I didn't know who Buddy Harrison was. I said, I have to have these tapes. I have to have them. And I brought the title of my car. You can hold it until I get the money to pay for it. Your tapes. And I said, but I do have some places to preach. And I'll send you the money to pay for these tapes. And this little Martell tape player, battery operated. Great big old fat carbon batteries. They'd last about long enough for two sides. Nah, nah. Took a grocery sack full of batteries to get anything done. Anyway, Buddy Harrison laughed. Now, that old car didn't look too bad, but it leaked everywhere. Transmission slip, He said. Brother Hagin came in and he told Brother Hagin. He said, no, no, no, no, no. He said, we don't want that thing parked out. Well, we preach prosperity. He said, get that thing out. But I had to have some tapes anyway, and so I went downtown and. And I closed the electric account, I closed the telephone account, I closed the gas account. And I got everything done. And we're about to leave town. So I got in my, well used car and I started out to the house to get Gloria and the two children. We're headed to Tulsa. And I heard this. Go to the Selective Service Bureau, the draft board. What? And I just kept driving and it got bigger. Go to the Selective Service Bureau. Now. Well, now being drafted. I had a two year old time of duty, but he just sent me home. So I went in there. I said, my Name's Kenneth Copeland, US 1847-6975. And I'm going back to school. And I believe the Lord sent me here. Would you check my records, please? Sure. She was gone for a few minutes. Came out, she came out back. She came out there with my 201 file. And she set it there and she looked through it. She said, Your classification is 1Y. I said, yes, ma'. Am. She said, you know what that means? I said, no, I don't have any idea. She said, that means incomplete service. She said, they can call you anytime they want you or need you indefinitely. 1967, Southeast Asia. It was really heated up in 1967. I kind of got cold chills on me. She said, but you say you're going back to school. I said, yes, ma'. Am. I'm going to Oral Roberts University. She said, are you going into the ministry full time? I said, yes, ma'. Am. She said, brother Copeland, I can fix this. God had me a believer right there waiting on me to just come down there. She didn't stamp my file. She slugged it, Every page. Boom4F. Boom4F. Unavailable for military service. I was unavailable because I was going in full time Ministry. And she said I was unavailable. She said, they'll never touch you again. I walked out of there with a huge smile on my face. And the Lord. Lord said, at the time I weighed about 230. There was a time I weighed 100 pounds more than I do now. Not for very long. I made a terrible mistake. I got my draft notice. Well, Mama wanted to feed me real good before I left home. And El Paso, Texas. And sure enough, they got mixed up on it. Was the last training unit that ever went through there. They made a Nike base out of it after that. And they couldn't figure out where we were supposed to be. And a sandstorm hit and I'm stuck out here. In this sand, this dirt. Well, orientation lasted too long. And, you know, in the army, you hurry up and wait. And so we hurried over here and waited and waited, waited. And we hurried back over there and waited and waited and waited. And finally got to where we were supposed to be, and the weather cleared up, and we fell out for review the next morning. Well, I'd had reserve time, so I knew how to march. In fact, I was a cadence caller. You know, you got a big voice. You got to do something. And we fell in out there, and of course, I like this, you know. And here came old top. Sergeant major. I don't remember his name, but he just looked like a soldier. I mean, he walked up there like this. I'd say he's probably 6 4. Probably weighed 250 pounds, with a waist about that big. One of the blackest men I've ever seen in my life. And he. He walked up in front of me, and I thought, ooh. And he laughed. And he poked me in the belly. He said, we gonna let the wind out of you. Ooh. And they did. It hurt, dear heart. It hurt. Oh, terrible. But I was directed. I left there, the Lord said. That day we Left for Tulsa, December 1966. I just turned 30 to enroll, and the university had. I had talked to several people. I had a vision while I was in that seminar with Mother and Dad. That just tore my heart out. And. I couldn't leave. I cried uncontrollably. As Brother Robert, I learned later, his way of doing things. You had the seminar all week. Saturday was the last service. So that morning, he laid hands on anybody, and you could either leave or the cafeteria was right across the hall. Well, he'd already laid hands on my mother and my dad and Gloria. And I stayed back to watch him. He was laying hands on people, and suddenly the people disappeared. He didn't. But I could see a little blue outline, but they looked like glass. And I could see the spirit being. And the only way I've been able to describe it, they looked like Holocaust victims. Starved, emaciated. Just little stick people with great big heads. And I began to weep. I began to weep and cry. I couldn't control it. It just poured out of me. And I just could hardly talk. And I said, gloria, I can't leave this place. I have to stay here. And. But here, the Lord said. I've called you to do something about this, he said. And he said, what you're seeing is the cream of the crop. He said, their spirits are starved at the expense of their heads, because their heads are full of religion and their spirits have very little. Well, I ran into them and began to realize as. As I began to listen. Brother Hagin, most of them didn't have much teaching on faith, good people, but they were starved spiritually. And that started it right there. And so I talked to different ones and told them I didn't want to go home. And finally they told me, you can't do anything here. Go on home, take care of your business. We'll find you a place to live. And that little old house, little old project house that was built for World War II. And it was a mess. It's just a little shotgun house. And I. Gloria didn't unpack for a couple of weeks. She wasn't going to live in it. But I went to my landlord and I said, would it be all right if we got some paint to paint those walls in there? The paper's cracked up looking awful. Yeah. He said, kenneth, he was a Mormon and a lawyer. And he said to me, he said, kenneth, a lot of people don't know that there's a lot of us Mormons born again. He said, jesus Christ is my Lord and savior, brother. And he said, I'm excited about you going to school. Yeah. So he. Somebody brought us some cans and paint. And Gloria said, can you imagine Kenneth Copeland painting a wall? Well, yeah, you can imagine if you see that place. So we're learning. You have what you say. And Gloria was my faith buddy. She didn't talk much. I got in trouble. Every other word seemed like. And so. And I, you know, those little paint brushes weren't worth much. And so I'm dipping in this paint. She's painting in the other room, kind of a muggly looking brown stuff, so. And I'm painting. And there was a bristle came out of that brush. I said, gloria, this brush is coming all to pieces. She didn't say anything. So I dipped it in there again and I made one more stroke. Every bristle in there came out, just stuck on the wall. I said, gloria, get in here and look at this. She said, you have what you say, Kenneth? I said, O Lord, I better shut my mouth. Glory to God. Hallelujah, correction and direction. Praise God and the wonderful things of God. And there's so much, so many things that before we close, I want to do this. Thank you, lord. We will go to, of course, Hebrews, chapter 11, but. I'm going to read it to you from the classic Amplified. Now, faith is the assurance, the confirmation of the title Deed of the things we hope for being the proof of things we do not see and the conviction of their reality. Faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses. That's what faith is. 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 the things which are visible. I heard, I've heard more than one say God created this universe out of nothing. No, he didn't. It was out of something you can't see. And he did it with his mouth, he designed it and he spoke it. Actually, if you watch it carefully and read the Scriptures carefully, he actually spoke those words to Jesus. And Jesus was the one that said them. For all things were created through and by and for him because he was destined to live here as a man. Did you get anything out of that? Amen now. Exceeding great and precious promises. When that exceeding great and precious promise meditated upon, stood upon, thought about and said and spoken and read out loud over and over and over and over and over and over until it gets down on the inside of you, Brother Hagin said, if you say something long enough, it'll get down into your spirit and control your life, good or bad. I did not like exercise. I was too heavy. Here again, I paid the price for not. For being disobedient to God. He just said, simply said, start walking and don't quit. And I did that for a while and I got busy doing other things. 2004, on a Sunday morning, right after Southwest. Extremely trying and just a hard convention. It was great, the convention was, but I really. It just seemed like I just fought every devil to hell. Came home that Sunday morning, just left a hot shower. Now my shower, the shower head is here. You step through it here. There's a bench over here and a window that appear about like this that looks out outside Portage Eagle Mountain Lake. Oh, and I just got under that shower, just letting it run over me. Oh, and I took my watchcloth, I pitched it at the bench, I missed it and it went over in the corner. I'm already. In fact, during that meeting when David would work on my back, he said, your muscles are like steel cables, just all tensioned up and tight. I didn't do this. I did this. Oh, knocked me flat in the floor. A disc ruptured in my back and it didn't rupture, it expanded, exploded. And I learned later, you know, from Dr. Weeder and the other that was treating on me. A piece of that disc got down in the. And got on that nerve on the inside. It knocked me in the floor. I couldn't get up. I crawled out of the shower, and I screamed at Gloria as loud as I could at the time. Leroy is here. Don't you know people listening to this? Who's this Leroy he keeps talking about? Well, those that know, no one knows. It don't. You can find out sometime. It just means I've preached long enough. And of course, the first thing Gloria did was called David and Lynn Weider, both of them chiropractors. And here they came, started working on me. I crawled out of that shower, but I made a decision. I knew what I'd done. First thing I did was repent. I. I knew I was supposed to be doing it, but I made a bad decision. Another disobedient decision. I was too busy. Well, this. You know, this slowed me down considerably. And now don't you go call him out and say God knocked him in the floor to slow him down. That's a lie from hell. My disobedience did it. I don't even give the devil any credit for. He didn't have anything to do. He took advantage of it. He didn't have anything to do with it. It was my disobedience that got me in that mess. I crawled out of there, and one of my first decisions was, I'm not going to have surgery on my back. Now, I'm not against that, but I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do this thing. The only meeting in all of these years that I've ever turned down was a trip that I had scheduled. An army chaplain who's a very good friend of mine had been moved to Korea, and he wanted me to come to Korea and speak to the soldiers there. And then from there, I was going to Australia. And So I called Dr. Donald Colbert about it. He said. I said, doc, I'm coming to you with this thing after I get back. He said, well, go on if you want to wind up in a wheelchair. That's the only meeting I've ever canceled because of something physical. But I obeyed. So we went down Florida to Doc's place, and he worked on me. I mean, the two of them. I mean, between Dr. Colbert and Dr. Weider, I mean, they went to work on me with lasers and hot towels and I don't know what all, man. I mean, they were working on me, and I was laying and grown. But another thing. Jesus Said, why take ye thought, saying, now the Holy Spirit gave me some direction. I knew it was the spirit of God when I heard it in my heart. Pain is in the mind. They put you to sleep and operate on you. So I began to say, I don't take the pain. Saying, boy, sometimes I'd grunt, but I just refuse to say I hurt. No, thank God he's taken sickness from the midst of me. Well, this is pretty. Well, the midst of me wasn't sickness, but it was a wound. So I just kept confessing that I came back from Florida and, you know, of course, summertime is August when we had that meeting. So I got out in the backyard, I got two heating pads and put them on that left leg and took some old bathrobe sashes and tied them on there and turned the heat up so the heat on the pad counteracted that pain in the leg. And I sat out there in the backyard. I want to thank God that I'm healed. I want to thank. I thank God for the grass. I thank God for the lake. I thank God for the birds. I thank God my other leg doesn't hurt. I thank God my hands don't hurt. I thank God my head doesn't hurt. I thank all. Glory to God. Oh, oh, glory to God. Oh, glory to God. Oh, glory to God. And I think, well, glory to God. And when I'd stopped praising that loud, here he'd come again. So I found out that praise was a kick in answer to them. Now, David's wife, Lynn, you know, chiropractors, doctors, like pilots, have to go to recurrent training. That's what they call it in aviation. Well, Lynn had gone to recurrent for recertification, and she found out about a doctor by the name of Cox. And the way I understand it, he's the first chiropractor to ever get a government grant. Isn't that right, to ever get a government grant? He just kept pestering them and pestering them. They gave him $500 pretty well just to shut him up. But then they figured out that he really was onto something. And his specialty was lower back. And he had developed a machine to decompress that spine without causing muscle spasm. So immediately, David checked in and talked to his daughter. Was that right on that machine? She said, well, something like this, well, we're just so back ordered. But then she started calling me Brother Copeland. And come to find out, Dr. Cox is a strong, strong, strong Christian man. And he began to develop this machine for the people of God that had Low back trouble and neck trouble. So I wanted one right there at the house. I went over and took a treatment from one chiropractor there in town and it helped me. So. She called. There's one sitting here crated up and it doesn't have anybody's name on it. You think Brother Copeland would like to have this? I don't know. David said something like, ship it. With this man's help, the help of that machine. But mostly the confession of my mouth just kept saying it and kept saying it and kept saying it and kept saying it and kept saying it and kept saying it. And I am completely, totally painful. I do not have any pain in my back. None. Now my body began to go the way of the DNA of my mother's people. I didn't look anything like my dad, but I looked so much like my mother's brother. When I was a little boy, they thought I was his son and the whole family had heart problems. And here it came, and I was preaching in a prison over close to Dallas and I got so short winded that I thought I went ahead and finished my message. Never did have a pain, but I could feel it. I didn't know what it was. And so we got back in the airplane that night and Duane was flying and our chief pilot, David and I were just in the back seat there. We'd flown over close to that. Flew over to Lancaster, Texas, close as we could get to that prison and then drove over there. Just a few minutes in the car, it was raining, and I was just sitting there in the back seat and all of a sudden, to me, the airplane was just filled with his glory. 8:42 in the evening, October 12th. What year? 2017, I think, or 2018. And I heard, bless you, sweetheart. I heard the Lord say this, I've given you a new heart. I said, I receive it. I take that, it's mine. And I began to say it, and I began to say it and I began to say it and I began to say it. Well, then I was examined and they said I needed a pacemaker. I said, lord, I'm going to take it by faith. And he used an aviation term. To me, he said, no, you're too far behind the power curve. Now what does that mean? Well, the same thing would be true with a truck. But you get an airplane in a place where it's about to stall. If you catch it on front of the power curve, you can pull up full power and pull out of it. If you're behind the power curve, it's just going to start falling, falling anyway. So then you have to really slam the nose over and get some flying speed again. If you're too close to the ground, it'll kill you. He said, you're too far behind the power curve. Receive the pacemaker. By faith, I'll do it. So I did well. Now, during the COVID time, the aircraft, the pilot's physical certificate, I hadn't taken one. It came due, but they were putting them off. I hadn't flunked a physical. But then I found out that if you've had any situation of the heart, you have to pass what's called the Bruce protocol on a treadmill. It just so happened before that, Keith and Phyllis Moore, I liked her treadmill that she had at their place there in Tallahassee. So they just bought Gloria and me one and shipped it to us. This thing is a professional treadmill. Most of them won't go up to over about a 10 degree incline. This one will. And that Bruce protocol goes all the way up to 14 degrees. And you just keep increasing the speed. So I had the promise. Now it needs corresponding action. So I got on the treadmill. Now, I had always said I just hate exercise. I was always fat and all that and I didn't like it. You wondered how I got into this, but now I'm about to tell you. I had said that until it got down into my heart. I walked into that exercise. I have an exercise room there in my home. I walked in there that morning. I'm telling you, I am so eager. I'm so after this thing, man. I got on my workout shoes and everything. I walked up to that a frame to warm up here and I grabbed hold of this thing and I said, God, I hate this. I just hollered out, no, God, no. I love this. Forgive me, please. I physically felt that evil thing leave my body. And all of a sudden I fell in love with that exercise room. So I started saying it. I love this place. I love treadmill, I love those weights. I love everything in this room. Couldn't wait to get up and get on that treadmill. So a little bit by little, bit by little bit by little bit, I was working out at that Bruce protocol. Now this pacemaker, the later models, I didn't even know this. When they put the thing in there, it had a defibrillator in it. The paddles built in. Well, the FAA had had a lot of experience with pacemakers. They knew about those. But that defibrillator, they're afraid that Thing would go off about the time you're about to land. And I set it off a couple of times. It kind of crossed your eyes there for a minute, but just stayed with it. I had my promise. I have a new heart. So I just stayed with it and stayed with it and stayed with it and stayed with it. I'm going to keep going here. You can't get any lunch. I'm going to stay with it. But direction and correction. I had my promise. I had the direction, corresponding action. So when it came time to go to the doctor's office to get on a treadmill, I had to do. They laid me down on my back. Of course, I'm wired up all over and took my heart rate, got up and did some jumping jacks, took my heart rate, stepped on the treadmill. Of course, their treadmill's not as nice as mine. It's kind of jerky. But anyway, I got on there and it's three, six, nine. At my age, I wasn't required to do but six minutes. But they never could figure out how to time that. I didn't want to do that. Anyway. I'm going to do the whole nine minutes. The defibrillator is still intact. Got on there. Took me all the way up to, wasn't it 12 degrees? I believe, 14 degrees. Never did breathe hard. My training and obedience to corresponding action. I had to make a choice. I could just go sit down with this pacemaker and not do anything and just sit there and rot and die like everybody else and get up, you know, 85, 86, 87, and just slip on out. I don't have time for that. Besides that, I'm on a mandate from God and I'm not done till 2056. So I had that in front of me, and I had that flight physical in front of me. I was bound, determined. If I never fly again, then I'm not going to quit because I don't have a physical past that. Bruce. Protocol, what I understand, just textbook. So then I had to go to a local heart guy there in the Fort Worth area. And so I had to do six more minutes on his trip. Me. So I went over there and got on their treadmill. And she said, Mr. Copeland, forgive me. Could we do another minute or two? We can't get your heart rate up enough to do what we need to do. My heart's too good a condition. They did it. After all that, the tech rep for this thing came out connected to it and disabled the defibrillator with a card for me to carry and a note to the faa. So I sat down with this cardiologist, and he looked at this thing and he said, well, I think you're in better shape than I am. Praise God. And Now I weigh 160 pounds. Because of a proper diet, good diet, instead of that morning I left for Tulsa instead of eating nine boiled eggs. That's all I knew to do. Get on so much protein, I couldn't remember my name. Remember my name. And it's time for lunch. It's past time for lunch. Forgive me. I should have listened to Leroy, but I didn't. Stand and let's give the Lord praise, please. Thank you, Lord Jesus. So it's your choice. It's my choice. You can decide because no one can make your decision for you. We trust you've enjoyed this message. Visit us at defrainministries.org to learn of our upcoming meetings, share your testimony, become a partner, or visit our online store. This program has been made possible by the friends and partners of Dufresne Ministries.