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- [00:01]
Nancy Dufresne
Thank you to Kenneth Copeland Ministries for sowing the airtime for this broadcast.
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Kenneth Copeland
There's enough power in every sick room and in every hospital room to raise up that sick one that may be describing you. You may be in a sick room, you may be in a hospital room. And I want to remind you, power is present. That power is there to do a work, believe in what's not. Try to get something, but notice that he's already made it yours. It's present right where you're at. Say, I receive that power. I receive that power. I receive it right now. I receive it right now from the top of my head. From the top of my head. The soles of my feet. The soles of my feet. We're so glad you've been able to be with us today for Jesus the Healer. We have been having a wonderful time studying the Word on what the Word has to say to us about the mind. And listen. Right thinking cooperates with God. Wrong thinking will argue against God's word. And so we want to run out wrong thinking because we always want to keep the door open to God and close to the enemy, closed to opposition, closed to the adversary. Amen. We've been taking as our golden text what Paul wrote to Timothy in two Timothy chapter one and verse seven in the King James translation. Paul told Timothy, he said, for God has not given us the spirit of fear. Aren't you thankful? Can I tell you this? Freedom from fear is yours for the rest of your life. Freedom from fear as you take your place. And what do I mean? Take your place in freedom. That you use your authority and anytime fear crops up, you say, no, you don't. You talk to it. You run it out. Don't just learn to manage fear. Don't just learn to cope with fear. Root it up and run it out. Amen. For God has not given us a spirit of fear. He intends for us to live a fear free life. You can know this. That doesn't mean that because that's what he planned for us, that the devil's going to leave us alone. Fear will try to trouble, but gain your skill in the freedom that's yours and become skillful in the face of that fear. Resist it, reject it, talk to it. I, you know, in my younger days as a Christian, the thing is, is that when troubling thoughts would try to come, I would try to outthink them, try to get rid of them, try to keep them from bothering my mind. And the more I tried to outthink them, the more entrenched I became in them. Why? Because trying to outthink it means you're in the mental arena. And your help is not in the mental arena. Your help is in the faith arena, which is the arena of your spirit. And so the devil wants to draw us into the mental arena so that we're drawn away from the faith that's in our heart. See, the faith of God is not in your mind, it's in your spirit. But a renewed mind and a sound mind cooperates with that faith that's in your spirit. The devil wants you separated from your faith. He does not want you responding in faith. So he tries to draw you up into the mental arena to hold you bound captive there so that you don't access the faith in your heart. He wants to keep all this commotion going up here. And so that's what was happening to me as a young Christian. I would notice all these thoughts and I would try to outthink them. Then me trying to outthink them was me trying to deal with the devil in the mental arena. You cannot deal with him in the mental arena. You deal with him in the faith arena, which is the arena of your spirit. So your mind was not made for it to take the lead in your life. God intends for your spirit to lead you and your mind to serve you and not lead you. And so the devil wants to draw us up into this mental arena, and so we try to out think wrong thoughts. You cannot out think wrong thoughts. It only in. It only gets you further entrenched in those wrong thoughts because you're handling them mentally, trying to get rid of them. Don't try to get rid of them. Answer them. And let the word you answer drive them out. Amen. You deal with wrong thoughts with words, not with other thoughts. And so when thoughts of fear come, you answer them. Amen. Don't allow any degree of fear in you over your body, over a sickness, a condition, over anything that the enemy may threaten. Don't allow any fear to remain in your life. Root it up. Root it up. And I tell you what, as you feed on the word, it helps you identify where fear has been cooperated with. Sometimes people have had a way of thinking that is colored by fear, that they don't even recognize it because they've had it that way so long that to them it's normal. But I want you to know, any thought of fear, any troubling thought, is not normal in what God authored for our minds. Amen. Don't become fearful over disease. Become fearful over what may be happening in someone else's life. We know this, that that's how Job ended up going through that season of testing he went through, because in fear, he was offering sacrifices to God. See, he was doing a spiritual act, but it was from a place of fear, not faith. And so because it was from a place of fear, he was cooperating with the thoughts of fear that was troubling him. And so the Bible tells us that what he feared came upon him. Why? Because fear opens the door. Fear opens the door to wrong things happening. Fear opens the door to wrong situations. Circumstances drive every trace of fear out. Have absolutely no tolerance for fear. Fear is expressed through worry, depression, anxiety, panic. All of these are the outgrowth or an expression of fear. But fear is behind all of it. So I'm reminded of something, a testimony that happened years ago. There was a staff member that while they were at work, they began not feeling well, and so they decided to go home. So they went up to another staff member and they said to that staff member, said, I don't feel well. I'm going to go home. So that staff member who heard that thought, oh, they're getting sick. And immediately the thought came, well, maybe I'm going to get sick. So that second staff member recognized, no, that's not a right thought, and started confessing and binding sickness. Sickness. You take your hand off me. Started rebuking sickness. And the next day they got sick. And you go, how come they got sick if they bound it? Because sickness wasn't threatening them. Fear was. They should have bound fear. It was fear that suggested they might get sick. Sick. And so when they started rebuking sickness, they cooperated with what fear suggested, and the door was open. See, they think in resisting that they were doing something spiritual, which they were, but they were doing. They were. They resisted based on believing what fear suggested. How subtle, right? How cunning the devil is. He held out a threat to her in the physical arena. But really the problem was that fear was talking. Bind. Fear, fear, I resist you. That's not my thought. No, that's not going to happen. I resist you. You see? And so this is what Job did. Is that a thought of fear? That his children were not serving God, not living for God, and he kept offering up sacrifices for them in fear that they would be lost. And so by doing that, he was acting on fear, although it was a spiritual act. And I can say this. You can pray in fear and open the door to fear, and you're not opening the door to God, even though you're Praying, even though you're expressing fear in a spiritual setting, a spiritual setting of praying, you're talking to God. But the devil recognizes fear words. So when he hears fear words, he responds. When God recognizes faith words, he responds. So faith sets God in motion. Fear sets the enemy in motion. And so you can pray based on fear, not based on the Word. And open the door to what fear suggests. I was listening to the testimony of somebody that they were diagnosed with terminal cancer years and years and years ago. They're still alive today. And they had one of the quickest working forms of cancer. The doctor gave them three weeks to live at the diagnosis when they were diagnosed, he said, you've got about three weeks. They're still alive today. And that was over 40 years ago. That's the all conquering word, right? But they said, and I was listening to their testimony, and in their testimony they said, I still don't know where the open door was to that cancer because I prayed against cancer every day for 10 years. There's the open door. You don't have to pray against it. Make your confession for something. I'm kept by the power of God. See, you don't have to target something, something and pray against it, because many times it's fear that gets you against something. Look, the word puts you for something. Stay on the positive side. And they said before they even received their healing, they said fear was what they had to really stand against more than anything else. Well, I recognized that they had said that they had been praying for 10 years against that condition. Well, see, it was fear that suggested it. So when they were receiving, when they were taking their stand against the sickness, they first had to take their stand against the fear, which they did. But they didn't recognize that it was fear that opened the door. You know, why single out something and pray against it? Now see, if God says something to you, that's one thing. But the devil tries to pass himself off as the, as the voice of the spirit. He tries to pass himself off as the leading of the spirit. And so no doubt the enemy would have suggested that condition to her. And so she thought she was really standing on the word, but she was really cooperating with fear. Things we have to understand because the Word will make us keen to these things. And if we're not feeding on the word, the enemy is able to trick us into thinking wrong. So it's right to talk to God, but we don't pray fear prayers. Amen. She prayed against cancer, but why did she single that out? She didn't single out tuberculosis or diabetes or anything else. That's why, don't single out something. Because if the fear of that sickness, deal with the fear. Suggesting your parents had this, you're going to get this. Or you know, people around you have this, you're going to get that. Deal with the fear. It's fear that suggests these things. Because her body was not even sick with cancer when she started praying against it, you see, and so fear was dictating and she thought she was in faith because she was praying. Just because you're. Just because you're praying doesn't mean you're saying faith words or words that sprang from faith. We need to learn these things. I said we need to learn these things. In thinking about that, I'm reminded of dad Hagin's testimony. Brother Kenneth Hagin was our. He was the spiritual father to my husband and I for decades before he went home to be with the lord. As a 16, 17 year old, he was raised up off of his deathbed of a heart condition, incurable heart condition, incurable blood condition. In fact, the doctors told him he was deformed throughout his entire chest cavity, that organs were in wrong places. Things were. He was completely deformed inside his chest cavity. So when God healed him, he got, on his deathbed, he got hold of the healing word and he meditated on it and he fed on it. Why he was interested in being healed. What you're interested in, you give time to. So he fed on the healing word and he just fed on it and fed on it and fed on it. And at the end of 16 months, he received, in a moment his healing. You say, well, it took 16 months for him to be healed. No, in fact, it was only moments after he prayed that day he was raised up before healing manifested. It took 16 months to bring his thinking in line with the Word. That's what takes time. People will say, how come it takes God so long? It's not going to take God long. It takes us long to get our thinking in line with what he says so that he can perform what he says. That's where the time passage is. So if something is taking long, good for us. Now we have more opportunity to renew our minds. That's what that means. God is giving us more time to renew our minds, to think like God thinks, to bring our thoughts in line with the word. So dad Hagin, after 16 long months, got to the point to where his mind was renewed, to the point where he could receive, where he could cooperate with healing power. Right Miracle power. And he was instantly raised up off that deathbed. Of course, everything God's blessed you with, the devil's busy trying to steal it from you. That's why we're told to hold fast. Not because we've lost it, but because there's an enemy who wants to steal it from us. You are not the sick trying to get healed. You are not the broke trying to get prosperous. You are the healed. And symptoms try to steal your health. You are the prosperous. And lack tries to steal your increase. You see, you are these things already. You are a new creature. You are the healed at the new birth, not when the body lines up at the new birth. You are the prosperous. You are those things. So the enemy wants you to try to think that because anything's opposing that flow, that you've got to get those things. It's not about getting. It's knowing who we are in Christ so that we think right. Because the Devil cannot work when we think right. He can only enter through wrong thinking. So he's got to dupe us in our thought life so that he can affect us in our faith life. So dad Hagin was raised up off that deathbed. And throughout the years, at different times, he said the devil would try to challenge him, to try to bring that back, but he would just stand his ground. And of course, he'd keep the door closed to the Devil. And that did not ever come back on him to stay. But there was one time in particular he said he had had for several days lingering heart conditions. And he recognized them because, see, he'd been on his deathbed for 16 long months with a heart condition. He recognized the symptoms of it, and the doctors had told him, there's nothing we can do about it. But even after he was raised up off of his deathbed and healed, even the doctors said, there's been a miracle. It's undeniable. Things are as they're supposed to be. And so he was. Years later, he was out preaching and he was staying at a pastor's house. In the middle of the night, he said at nighttime, for the couple of nights in a row, he kept having these recurring heart symptoms. And he said he was awakened one night with them. And he pulled his head. He pulled the covers up over his head so that he wouldn't disturb anyone in the house. He didn't want to wake up other people. And he started laughing. Ha, ha ha. He says, I wasn't laughing, like somebody might see something funny, start laughing. He says, I was putting on a laugh. Just like the ha ha ha ha ha ha. Well you say, why would he laugh? Well, the Bible says that God sits up in heaven and he laughs at the devil. He laughs at his strategies, he laughs at his plans and his devices. Why? Because God knows that they'll come to nothing. So he laughs. Why do we laugh in the face of opposition? Because of what we know. Not because of what we feel, not because of what we're facing, but because of what we know. So brother Hagin pulled those covers up over his head and sat there in that bed and laughed. Not because he felt like laughing, because he knew something. Amen. So he's sitting there, ha ha ha. And in him telling it, he says, it sounds just that inspired. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. And he said he did that for. And the devil spoke to his mind. How do you know if it's the devil? It comes from outside against the mind. When God speaks to you, it comes up from your spirit and will float up and enlighten your mind. But it did not originate in the mind. The devil speaks from out here and it comes against the mind. And you have to learn to discern when something comes to your thought life, what direction did it come from? Did it float up from your spirit and enlighten you? Or did it come out from outside against the mind? So after about 10 minutes, the devil says to him, against his mind from out here, says, what are you laughing at? He said, I'm laughing at you. And he said, why are you laughing at me? And he said, because you said to me I'm not going to get my healing. And the devil said, that's right. This is one time you're not going to get your healing. And brother Hagin said, I just started laughing, just took off laughing again. After a few moments the devil said, what you laughing at? He said, I told you already, I'm laughing at you. He said, why are you laughing at me? Now listen to brother Hagin's answer. He said, because you said, this is one time I'm not going to get my healing. He said, devil, I'm not trying to get my healing. I already have it. See, he was laughing because he knew he already had it no matter what he felt. And he says, now gather up your symptoms and leave. And he said, and the devil scurried around there and he said he gathered them up and he said they were gone. Severe heart symptoms. Life threatening heart symptoms. Why? Because the devil was trying to get him off of right sound thinking. What was right sound thinking. We're not trying to get healed. At the new birth, you were born into health. At the new birth, you were born into prosperity. At the new birth, you were born into soundness of mind. It belongs to you now. Run the devil off of your health. Run him off of your prosperity. Run him off of your sound mind. Worry is just something coming to try to interrupt your sound mind. Run it off. The thing is, is that when you're sitting in church or when you're sitting and listening to a program like this, you can feel pretty, you know, sound. But when an attack comes, it can so addle you for a moment. It's like a fiery dart that people don't even recognize. This is what I'm teaching about. Resist that. Don't wait for the devil to show up holding a pitchfork and his tail sticking out. That's not the way he looks. Anyway, don't wait for something dramatic before you start resisting any fear thought. Resist it. Sometimes people are afraid to say something because they're afraid the devil might hear them. See, that's an act of fear. You know, I'm afraid that, you know, I've heard them, they've said it to me. The devil said this. I go, why are you whispering? Because there's a fear that they're handling that differently. And I knew fear is troubling them, not the condition they're afraid of, the fear is troubling them. Many times before you close the door to sickness, you got to get that door to fear closed first. Close the door to worry, close the door to doubt. When dad Hagin was on his DeathBed as a 16 year old, he started at 15, he was there for 16 months. And he was raised in a church that he'd never heard about healing, he'd never heard it taught. So when he got born again on that deathbed, he said, bring me my Bible. And he got over there to Matthew chapter 6 and started reading where Jesus said, take no thought for your life. In other words, what's he saying? Don't worry about your life. Don't worry about any aspect of your life. Brother Hagin said, I was a worrier. He said I lived with world champion worriers. My mother and my grandmother that I lived with were world champion worriers. What was that? That was their flow, that was their lifestyle. And he said, God started dealing with me to get rid of the sin of worry. You go, is worry a sin? Well, if Jesus says, take no thought for your life and you take a thought for your life, disobedience is sin. So he said, I had to get rid of that sin of worry. God did not even start talking to him to see he was on a deathbed because of a physical condition. But God didn't start talking to him about healing. He started talking to him about worry. Why? Because worry is the flow of fear. It's an open door to fear. God started dealing with him first about getting dealing with that worry. He said, God, if I can't worry, I can't live a Christian life. I don't know if I can live a Christian life if I can't worry. Because he was so entrenched in it. But he started feeding on the Word and the precious Holy Spirit, started being his tutor. He's our teacher. He's our guide. He'll guide us into all truth. He'll guide you. Where is truth needed in your situation? And so he guided him and started directing him how to walk free from and live free from that worry. And when he dealt with that worry and said, okay, God, I commit to you. I'll never worry again. As long a day as I live, I'll never worry again. And he said, I haven't. He said, now don't misunderstand me. The opportunity to worry has come many times. But I've decided and purposed I'll never worry. How do you know if you're worrying, if you're thinking about it? If you're thinking about it. So he said, after I got rid of that worry, and he says, I refused and I put it out of my life. He said, then God started teaching me about healing, and then I received my healing. Why did God start dealing with him about worry instead of healing first? Because you'd have thought, well, he needs healing. Get him his healing. Because if he had received healing but continued with the sin of worry, the devil would have stolen his health. You understand it? He'd have stolen his healing from him. Fear steals from us. Worry steals from us. So this is why we want to deal with fear, deal with worry. These thieves of our faith that rob from us the blessings of God, learn to recognize fear. We have a book we've been teaching out of a sound, disciplined mind. We want you to get hold of it because I tell you, you don't just learn these things in a moment. You have to renew your mind to it. You can go to defrainministries.org and get your copy of it and it'll be a blessing to your life and feed on it. It'll change you. And we want you to remember that Jesus is the Healer. God bless you.
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Nancy Dufresne
To watch or listen to today's message and other messages by Nancy Dufresne, visit dufresneministries.org Please join us for our Defresne Ministries Miracle Crusade in Fredonia, NY at Family Church, Fredonia, August 14th through the 18th. Come expecting your miracle. For more information, visit our website@DefrainMinistries.com.
- [27:49]
Kenneth Copeland
Please.
- [27:49]
Nancy Dufresne
Join us for our annual ladies conference at World Harvest Church in Marietta, California, October 4th through the 6th. Everyone is welcome to attend. For more information, visit our website@dufresneministries.org.
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Kenneth Copeland
We.
- [28:07]
Nancy Dufresne
Trust you've enjoyed this message. Visit us at defrainministries.org to learn of our upcoming meetings, share your testimony, submit a prayer request, or visit our online store. Thank you to the friends and partners of defrain Ministries for making this production possible.