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In every generation, there have been revivals.

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Massive moves of the spirit

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that changed the course of history.

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In every revival, there were believers like you

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who chose to answer the call,

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to become the one in their generation.

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Discover your call to be the one in your generation.

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Welcome to Revival Radio TV, I'm your host, Gene Bailey, glad you're with me today.

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Today I have very special guests on the show today.

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Today, Kenneth Copeland and Jerry Savelle

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join me as we talk about how their ministry started,

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independently and then together. You're gonna really enjoy what you hear today

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because when these guys get together,

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these great men of faith start sharing stuff

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that you've never heard before. So let's get right into it

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and listen as we talk today about prayer.

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(uplifting music) The Lord has instructed me to give Jerry Savelle

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an opportunity to share some of the things

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that he's learned in this with you today.

1:18

Jerry. Praise the Lord.

1:21

I might start with when I first got turned onto Jesus.

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I began to realize immediately that, in order to fellowship with God

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and to develop a Christian life,

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a spiritual life with Christ,

1:34

that I was gonna have to learn how to pray, you know?

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I'd already made up my mind that I was gonna live by faith.

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I didn't know too many people doing that, but I'd made up my mind, that's the way I was gonna live.

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The Word said, "The just shall live by faith," and I decided that's the way I'm gonna live.

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Well, I'm excited today because I have founder of this ministry with us,

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Brother Copeland thank you for joining.

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Oh, it's my pleasure, sir. And Pastor, Brother, Dr. Savelle,

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thank you for joining us as well.

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As you know, we talk about being the one.

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What's your take, being the one, and what all that means.

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And sharing the gospel and sharing the Word

2:16

and being sensitive to the Holy Spirit to share the Word.

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And some of the meetings that you did.

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Tell me about revival and what happened.

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The thing that must be understood, Gene,

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before we even get started talking about the different experiences and so forth,

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revival doesn't come from good preaching.

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Good preaching comes from prayer. That's right.

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And, well, the revival that started the Church at Pentecost,

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"these all continued with one accord

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"in prayer and supplication, with the women,

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"and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren."

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Started in prayer in an upper room.

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And then it broke out into the streets.

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That's the Bible pattern and that's been the pattern

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as you've so ably done on this program,

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brought out all of these different ones,

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the ones that went before them and interceded,

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and Brother Nash interceding for Charles Finney,

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and the anointing of God would come on Finney.

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One story that I read, where he came into this machine shop,

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I believe it was in Albany, New York, and he just walked in there.

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He didn't say a word. And the glory of God came on that place,

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these men were all working,

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and they'd began to just stop what they were doing

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and just fell on their knees in the presence of God.

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Now he didn't say anything yet, he hadn't preached yet.

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And the foreman came around and said something like,

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"Will you please get done what you gotta get done,

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"'cause these guys need to go back to work."

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And there was such an outpouring in Syracuse, New York,

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people were out pouring liquor in the streets, man.

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And it's time for that again. And my spiritual father, Oral Roberts.

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The first building on the campus

4:39

was the prayer tower. And I learned it from him in the beginning.

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The first employee of Kenneth Copeland Ministries

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was a little woman named Billie Adams

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and Billie was a prayer and I'm telling you,

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the first person we hired was a prayer

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and her job was to pray all day. And that's what she did.

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And that's where it all started was right there.

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You know, you talked about Father Nash and Charles Finney,

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in research, when we read, we find out that

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Finney understood so much about prayer

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that he refused to preach unless Father Nash

5:23

had gone before him. That's right, yeah.

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And, in fact, there's a story of,

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he'd gone to a village and

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Father Nash would get there days ahead.

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Not just an hour before, he'd get there days ahead

5:36

with an assistant and they'd rent a room and it was in the dank basement

5:40

and they would say, "This is perfect,

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"there were no windows." And so he prayed and he interceded

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to the point that he was making such a ruckus

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people said, "What's going on in there? "Is he okay?"

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and they asked Finney when he came to town and so he goes, "Oh yeah.

5:54

"No, they're just interceding, "they're praying for the meeting."

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And so, that's what he's said. So prayer went before

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and as you pointed out, Brother Roberts,

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and we know even A.A. Allen would spend,

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not just fast for thirty days at a time,

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he would pray all night long.

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And Jerry, jump in here, because you know

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as much history as I do on a lot of these guys, but he would go after the meeting

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when I'm thinking, "Time to go take a nap and go to sleep,"

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he would go pray all night. After the meeting.

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That's amazing. Well you said, like Brother Copeland said,

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the pattern has always been it starts with prayer.

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Two things, and I've studied revivals

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for years and years and years. I've gone to places where they began

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just to ask people about what happened here.

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Why did this happen? Right.

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And two things I've discovered

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is a pattern for every major outpouring

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of the Spirit of God, revival, whatever you wanna call it.

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Number one, prayer. Number two, hunger.

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Prayer and hunger.

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When people start hungering for the move of God again,

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that's when they begin praying again.

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And God always responds to hunger and prayer.

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And so you can trace that back to every major outpouring,

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revival, move of God, all the way back through history.

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I know, years ago, when I first went to the nation of Wales,

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they picked me up at the airport and they said, "Brother Savelle, is there anything

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"you wanna do before you go to your hotel?"

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I said, "Take me to where Rees Howells' Bible School was"

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because he was known for intercessory prayer.

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First book I read, after I came to the Lord

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was Rees Howells' "Intercessor." And it so touched my life,

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I became an intercessor immediately. I'd spend every morning just interceding in prayer.

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That's the reason I loved working with Billie back in those days, 'cause Billie and I

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would pray together and, of course,

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when I was traveling with you in those early days,

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one of my jobs, after setting up the auditorium and all,

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was pray. And, lot of times, when I'd go into the meeting

8:12

with Brother Copeland, he was constantly

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catching me off guard doing things.

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You know, obeying the Holy Spirit and I wouldn't know what he's gonna do next.

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I said, "That is not gonna happen anymore." So I'd started praying and the Lord

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would cause me to be in tune with you.

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Like what? What would happen that you weren't ..

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Well (laughs), sometimes, and these were rare,

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but sometimes, somebody would come up,

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you know, a cancer victim, cancer in their stomach or something.

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And, this is back when I would stand behind them,

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you know, when people would start falling or something--

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Yeah, like this picture, right? Yeah, and I'm standing behind them, you kn..

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in case they fell, and all of a sudden,

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this first time this happened, and I believe it was in Greensboro, North Carolina,

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or either Omaha, Nebraska, but this person came up and had stomach cancer

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and I'm just standing behind the person in case they fall,

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and Brother Copeland prayed a short prayer

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and then he hit them right in the stomach.

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And the person hollered. I hollered.

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You ought to. You're going to jail! He just hit the guy!

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And the guy falls out on the floor and I'm thinking,

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"Dear God, he's killed him!" And so, the guy gets up screaming, "I'm healed, ...

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And the next morning, he came to the meeting, testifying that he went out that night

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and had a Mexican meal. Something that he hadn't eaten in a long time.

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And I thought I'm not gonna let that happen to me again,

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catch me off guard, 'cause it really, you know,

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I was young in faith and I didn't know a whole lot

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about what was going on, and so I said, "I'm not gonna let that

10:00

"catch me off guard again." So, that, as soon as I got everything set up,

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then I spent the entire afternoon in prayer

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so when we would be in those meetings,

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I'd be in tune with him so it didn't catch me off guard.

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Well, now (laughs). And he didn't hit everybody.

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Let me tell you the other end of that story. (Jerry laughing)

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I didn't know what was the matter w.. And I think he was normal (laughs).

10:29

He was still in the prayer line there,

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and the Lord, "See that man in the procession?"

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He said, "when he comes up I want you to hit him

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"in the stomach as hard as you can." Uh...

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And I'm thinking to myself, "I don't believe I wanna do that."

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(everyone laughing) Yeah, He said, I said, "Okay."

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I didn't know the man had cancer.

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And he just walked up and man, oh man, I let him have it.

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(laughs) And I thought, "Oh, Lord, I hope th..

11:06

(everyone laughing)

11:08

So Jerry wasn't getting caught off guard,

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I was getting caught off guard.

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But you have to, and the prayer time

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is where you get sensitive enough to hear that.

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'Cause you won't ever hear it, you just walk out there and start laying hands on people.

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You won't hear it at first. And even if you did, you wouldn't do it.

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'Cause it's scary. Is that because you're getting in tune

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with the Holy Spirit? Is that what-- Oh, yeah.

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And that's the reason for praying in tongu..

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And that's the reason the Devil fights tongues

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with everything he's got.

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Well he's lost that battle. But that's one of the reasons,

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when you're praying in tongues in the Spirit.

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It's the rest and the refreshing of your spirit

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and I, every morning I get up and pray.

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At least an hour in the Spirit, before I do anything.

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And that's...

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And the longer you do it, and the more you do it,

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the more sensitive you are to what you hear.

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Because you're not going to hear the audible voice of God.

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And even if you did, it'd, the most important and the most powerful

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is that inward witness.

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The inward voice of God, that every born again believer has it.

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Every one. But where you really develop that

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is in the prayer room. Praise God.

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And I learned this from him and Oral Roberts.

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I never go into a service without having spent

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at least an hour, two hours, praying in the Spirit.

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So that when I go in there, 'cause I remember him telling me

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back when I first went to work with him, and I'm driving him to all these places,

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and he didn't talk. He didn't say anything while we're driving.

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I respected that because I saw the results in the service.

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And he would say, "The last voice I wanna hear

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"before I go into that service is the voice of God."

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So if any conversation went on in that car,

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while we're going, he'd have to start it.

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I wouldn't say anything because I saw the results,

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and I wanted the results, so when I launched into my own ministry, I knew what to do.

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And you'd pray in the Spirit much

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and then let that be the last voice you hear

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before you go in that service. I wasn't smart enough to come up with that.

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I learned that from Oral Roberts

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'cause I was his driver.

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And I was in two of the last three tent meetings that he had

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and he wouldn't talk to anyone. He wouldn't talk to Evelyn.

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They would sit at two different tables

13:56

to get away from the temptation of talking to her

14:02

before the evening service.

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And I learned that from him, and a few times

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the Lord would say something to him

14:17

while I was driving. And he'd say, "Kenneth!"

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Oh, you know, you jump about that high 'cause he just didn't talk, right, at all.

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But there would be a direct word from Him.

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And one time in Oklahoma City,

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I'm learning this from him and from Bob DeWeese.

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Bob, of course, was his associate evangelist and...

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Bob was captain of the airplane, I was co-pilot.

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And Bob spent a lot of time praying in the spirit.

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A lot of time. So...

14:58

We were on the way to the venue there in Oklahoma City

15:03

and Oral Roberts said, "Kenneth!"

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He said, "People will always tell you you can't do it."

15:14

He said, "Do these three things.

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"Number one, find out the will of God."

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Or, in other words, that's when you ask questions and pray.

15:25

"Number two, confer no longer with flesh and blood.

15:27

"Don't ask anymore about it once you know "what the will of God is.

15:31

"And number three, get your job done at all costs."

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Now, when we were in the car, he read.

15:39

He just had his Bible up front of him. And I, of course, I'm sitting there in that car going

15:47

one, two, three, 'cause I couldn't afford

15:50

to forget this and I'm driving and just wrote it down.

15:55

And Gloria and I put that in our prayer lives

16:01

and we still practice it. Once we knew

16:07

that we were supposed to go on the radio

16:12

on every available voice, once we knew that,

16:17

we didn't ask anybody whether you could or whether you couldn't, and get it done at any cost.

16:21

People try to talk you outta of it. They'll talk you out of it, or try to.

16:26

And if you're not grounded in the Word on it, you don't know what you've heard,

16:29

they'll pretty well get it done 'cause they'll tell you all the hard parts of it.

16:34

And then we began to know it was time to go on television.

16:38

We started praying about that. We went through this and--

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we didn't know a thing about television, hadn't have a clue how to get it started or anything.

16:46

We went to our prayer cabin on the weekend

16:49

and we were praying about something else.

16:53

And, of course, we brought television into it

16:56

'cause we knew we were gonna do it,

17:01

and we stopped in Denny's restaurant.

17:04

Now, Denny's didn't have anything to do with it (laughs)

17:08

in Texarkana.

17:12

Now, we spent a lot of time praying in the spirit about this,

17:18

what I wanna get to. We had already prayed it out in tongues.

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We didn't know at the time,

17:27

but the Scripture says in the 14th chapter of 1 Corinthians,

17:31

pray also that you interpret

17:33

that your mind would be fruitful.

17:40

We just sat down there, I looked across the table at her,

17:45

she looked across the table at me, all of a sudden going on television

17:48

looked like the easiest thing we ever did in our lives.

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I said, "Gloria," and this is Sunday morning,

17:57

I said, "Let's just go on television." She said, "Let's just do it."

18:02

And she said later, she said, "It just looked so easy."

18:06

We prayed it out in the Spirit before we ever touched it.

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And this is what needs to be--

18:16

Explain what you mean by before you ever touched it.

18:18

Before we ever touched any planning,

18:20

before we ever did anything about it.

18:23

Get the mind the Lord first. Yeah. And you can't do it any other way.

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By praying it out in your spirit, spending time doing it.

18:32

You can't pray just a little prayer, just a little knee-jerk prayer, to..

18:36

It takes time to pray in the spirit.

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We spent a lot of time doing that.

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Until it got easy.

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'Cause we were there. It was time to do it, the timing wa..

18:49

And she... We didn't know any more about television

18:55

other than it just cost a whole lot of money (laughs),

18:58

which we didn't have. And you didn't have any money the moment you said,

19:01

"Let's go on television," more than you had yesterday

19:04

before you did. No, no (laughs).

19:06

No. But it looked easy. But the time you prayed it out, in the s..

19:11

it was time to do it and your own God's timetable then.

19:15

And when you get the victory...

19:19

Listen to me people, get this,

19:22

you pray in the Spirit until something really looks good.

19:29

You start it out just grinding at this thing and grinding,

19:33

you may pray an hour and a half, two hours,

19:35

you may pray two weeks, you may pray a month,

19:38

about this thing, just every waking moment in the Spirit,

19:42

laying that before the Lord.

19:44

You will hit a moment of victory. You'll start singing in the Spirit

19:50

and all of a sudden, whatever seemed like a burden

19:56

just lifts, you can intercede for your family

20:00

in some danger, something, don't give up, don't quit,

20:04

just stay on your faith, just stay there, pray in the Spirit until it lifts.

20:09

And when it does, you got it. Praise God.

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Now it may take six months, six years,

20:15

don't ever touch it, in your thought life again,

20:17

'cause you got it in the Spirit. Once you nail it down in the Spirit,

20:21

it's going to get born down the road here somewhere.

20:25

Gonna give birth to it. Yeah, and that is so important.

20:31

Where outpourings, revivals,

20:37

it's not gonna do you any good if you don't have any people.

20:42

Back in the very early days,

20:46

of this ministry, long before I met Jerry,

20:54

and we had just moved back to Fort Worth from Tulsa,

21:00

and a friend of my dad's had a large,

21:07

was foreman of a large ranch here in Texas,

21:13

is a beautiful place, I called him and ask him if I could just

21:20

come out and spend a few days.

21:23

I spent, something like ten weeks, ten days out there,

21:28

just setup my little tent and just

21:31

fasted a couple meals a day and just prayed in the Spirit

21:35

and oh, the Lord started talking to me about intercession.

21:41

He said, "You can take a city,

21:47

"your family, hometown, your nation,"

21:55

and He said, "you begin to intercede for that city,

22:01

"and you begin to cry out," Romans 8:26 and 27,

22:06

where the Spirit of God makes intercession for us,

22:12

with groanings, takes hold together, against our infirmity,

22:16

groanings cannot be a... And you just stay before there, stay before there,

22:22

and stay before the throne, just stay,

22:25

praying in the Spirit, praying in the Spirit.

22:29

He said, "As you do that, He said, "My Spirit will begin to move in that city."

22:41

And he said, "People in that city "will begin to get agitated.

22:46

"Christian people gonna get, they don't know what's

22:49

"disturbing them in their spirit.

22:52

"And other people will get stirred up

22:54

"and they don't know why, what's going on here with this?"

23:01

And he said, "Then, when I tell you to go,

23:05

"when they hear about that meeting,

23:08

"they'll have a desire to go.

23:10

"And then they get in that meeting, "and what they were wondering and disturbed about

23:16

"becomes satisfied."

23:18

Well that was back before I knew anything

23:21

about these revivals, or anything. I hadn't gotten that far yet.

23:25

Except what I learned from Brother Roberts, of course,

23:28

and Billie was with us then,

23:31

but the inner workings of it,

23:36

and how that, how the Spirit system in the Kingdom of God worked,

23:47

in the intercessory and supplication ministry

23:53

of praying people.

23:56

'Cause I knew from what Brother Roberts said,

23:59

I knew that happened, but I didn't know.

24:02

I didn't know the mechanics of it.

24:06

But then, after Lord said that, yeah, I could see it.

24:09

And so the commitment to pray,

24:16

when you first start doing that,

24:20

oh, it is not easy.

24:24

I mean, your mind wanders all over the place

24:27

and the Devil says, "See you're there now, "it ain't doing you any good.

24:30

"Even though you are praying in tongues, "you'll wander in mind and ain't gonna,"

24:33

well, that's a lie. I'm not praying out of my mind.

24:37

It helps better if you do get a hold of it,

24:40

but I'm not praying out of my mind, I'm praying out of my spirit.

24:43

My spirit, by the Holy Spirit, prays.

24:46

And so, the struggle with it is a spiritual mental war.

25:00

That must be the first commitment to prayer.

25:06

I'm not gonna be interrupted.

25:08

I don't care what my feelings do,

25:13

and I bet I can share (laughs) Jerry,

25:18

he said he could get up and pray and he kept falling asleep.

25:22

(everyone laughs)

25:24

I don't care what he did.

25:26

When I first came to the Lord (laughs). You don't care what he did,

25:29

ain't nobody but Savelle woulda thought of this,

25:32

he goes in the bathroom and stood on the edge of the bathtub.

25:37

He said, "Boy, if I fall here, I'll break my neck."

25:39

(everyone laughing)

25:42

You wanna share that story? I get up every morning at 6:00 so I c..

25:46

But our guest bedroom, our spare bedroom,

25:49

was where I had setup this desk and study and praying on.

25:54

Well I'd go in there and I'd get my Bible, and I'd lay down on that bed

25:57

and put the Bible in front of me, but an hour later I'd wake up.

26:01

And I'd get mad at myself, I thought, "All I did was change beds."

26:05

And so, one morning, I said, "Lord, help me with this.

26:08

"I wanna get discipline."

26:10

I said, "Show me the least comfortable place

26:13

in this house I can pray." And I walk by our bathroom in the hallway.

26:19

I said, "There it is." I stood on the edge of the tub,

26:21

with my Bible and prayed, and I said--

26:24

Keeping your balance. Yeah, I said, "If I fall asleep now, it's gonna be big trouble."

26:28

But it disciplined me, but several mornings,

26:33

I would hear my mind say, "You can handle the bedroom now."

26:36

I said, "Now, you lying mind." No, you ain't going that way.

26:39

(everyone laughs) Sucker me into getting into that bed again.

26:42

And I knew, that I knew, the day I beat it.

26:46

And then I could go in that bedroom and I'd pray,

26:48

and I'd spend hours in there. Not laying in bed, but I'd spend hours praying.

26:53

Well you finally come to the place where your mind begins to be renewed

26:56

and you transcend your flesh.

26:58

And you get out in there, into that area,

27:00

where there is no time. Oh--

27:03

Wow, what an awesome time hearing from Kenneth Copeland and Jerry Savelle today.

27:08

You know, through their ministries, millions have accepted Christ.

27:11

What a privilege to hear about their early start.

27:14

I know you enjoyed it as much as I did.

27:17

And speaking of that, do you know God meets us right where we're at?

27:21

Think about it, Jerry Savelle had trouble

27:23

staying awake long enough to read the bible

27:26

and take that time with the Lord. Does that sound familiar?

27:29

It did to me. It doesn't get anymore basic or any more real than..

27:34

Yet his daughters, Terri and Jerriann Anne say,

27:36

"When dad was too undisciplined to read his Bible and pray,"

27:40

do you ever hear that? No, you don't.

27:42

He's always in the Word and he's always praying.

27:45

Getting 500 people saved takes discipline,

27:48

and it takes hearing God, and of course, it takes faith.

27:52

Nothing is too hard for God.

27:54

It inspires me, and I know it inspires you,

27:56

that we can take it. It's ours.

27:59

This is life changing stuff.

28:01

You know, if you wanna hear more of their messages,

28:03

there's a plethora out there. Just go to kcm.org or jerrysavelle.org

28:08

and you can get a hold of all kinds of messages

28:11

from throughout the years from these men.

28:13

Until next time, we'll see you right here

28:15

on Revival Radio TV.