I’m a relational person. I’m a loyal person. I value faithfulness and honor. Respect. When I began to see the relationship between Brother Jerry and Kenneth Copeland – their bond, their walk together, the way that they were respectful, honorable, faithful – I want to use the word, loyal. They will eternally have a covenant relationship that is beyond human material things. It is beyond even their natural lifetime because their covenant will live on in their families.
I have been around Brother Copeland and Brother Jerry enough to know that if God had not spoken to Brother Jerry when he was still new in the ministry with Brother Copeland and said, “It’s not what you do with the anointing that is going to make the difference, and whether you are able to stay in relationship with Kenneth Copeland. It’s going to be about what you see in the familiar, human man. And how you manage that, that will cause you to be able to walk with him.”
I am grateful that I have witnessed a living testimony of covenant and honor that Brother Jerry exercised with Brother Copeland. I have watched his decision making and the way that he’s gone about it. There was not a thing that he would do that would dishonor Brother Copeland. Because he would not dishonor his Heavenly Father. Brother Jerry always had in his mind, “Does this decision bear witness with the will of the Father and is it good with God? Is it good for the body of Christ and the integrity that I walk within the body of Christ? Is this going to uphold the covenant that I have with Brother Copeland?”
In 2014 I sat in a boardroom with Brother Jerry and I said, “Brother Jerry, these people are my strength. Everything that is my strength, I make my strength available to you.” He got quite serious saying, “Promise me one thing, John, that you will never stop preaching faith.” So, I promised. A promise I made then, it’s a promise I keep now. It’s a promise I will keep until I cross over. I want to make it public today that my honor for Brother Jerry will be forever. It’s not something that stops because he’s no longer here. It will continue forever.
So, when the Lord said to me, “Why don’t you give Brother Jerry an irrational honor seed?” The reason He used the word irrational to me is because it’s not rational to give someone a seed for something he didn’t do.
1 Tim 5:17 God recognizes people who are spiritual authorities in the church as worthy of honor. That doesn’t mean everything they do is right. The Bible is not talking about whether you think I’m doing right or wrong. This is about honor that supersedes right or wrong. I have this value in my life. So, God has blessed me with this honor that I now can stand in front of you as a father.
My walk amongst you and with you and around you has been open. I don’t hide stuff from you. I have this recognition about accountability; if I’m accountable truly, then it will keep me safe. I think there’s harm in hiding. The minute you start hiding, you start compromising – relationship, honor, respect, dignity, intimacy.
When I get back (from America), I want to reset. Then once the memorial is over and the celebration of Brother Jerry is over, there’ll be a new set of orders that will start coming. New differences are going to start coming. I don’t want to live in the past. I want to go forward.
2 Timothy 3:10 Brother Jerry’s whole thing is, don’t quit? Hey, don’t quit.
When you saw Jerry Savelle, you saw Kenneth Copeland. I trust that when you see me, you will see Brother Jerry. The legacy of Brother Jerry is not in the organization and in the products that he sells. The legacy is in me. His legacy is in you. It’s in all of us. The greatest honor we can give Brother Jerry and any of the men that have gone before us is that what they imparted to us, we lived that truth too, and what they were hungry for, we are still hungry for.
I’m standing here today and I can say that even though I’m sad that Brother Jerry’s gone, I have this great joy and this great peace in my life, that when God has spoken to me about things in my relationship with Brother Jerry, I’ve responded to them.
One of the things that Brother Jerry was well known for is that he wrote a book about The Benefits of Favour: and favor produces supernatural increase and provision; it produces restoration of everything that the enemy has stolen from you; produces honor in the midst of your adversaries; produces increased assets, especially in the area of real estate; produces great victories in the midst of great impossibilities; produces recognition, even when you seem the least likely to receive it; produces prominence and preferential treatment; it produces petitions granted by ungodly civil authorities. Would you like to have these things in your life permanently? Why don’t you start to take these 10 things and speak them out loud over your life every day? And why don’t you do it more than once a day?
How much more promotion and increase do you think you can get? Why don’t you take what you’ve got and say, “Lord, this is just the beginning point. Let’s make sure that we have the supernatural.” Don’t say, “Well, I’ve experienced lots of favor and increase and I’ve been promoted many times in my life and so, I don’t need more promotion.” Says who?
I want to take you through a significant moment in our ministry that I believe has created this launching point for where we are now and where we are going. 2 Kings 4 and 5, The account of the Shunammite woman who built a room for the prophet Elisha. She was a notable woman. She saw him as a holy man. Every time he came into the house, he brought holiness into the house. Holiness is a state of being with God. She recognised, “If I make a place for him in my house, his state of being with God comes into my house.”
How did this all start? Because she said, “Let’s give him some food. Let’s make a place for him to stay.” That kicked the whole order of life into their world that they couldn’t have even begun to think of. They chose, they didn’t wait for God to come and knock them on the head and say, “Do something.” They chose it.
This is a short version of what I preached the Sunday before I left to take our irrational honor seed to Brother Jerry. We placed our seed in front of him, and he proceeded to read this passage of scripture to me. And he said to me, “Now, John, because of this honor seed that you have given me, you go back and you tell your people that because they have participated in the seed, that God is going to cause things to be birthed in their life that they couldn’t even have asked for, that they have been unwilling to ask for.” And then he said, “And wherever there have been dreams and whenever there have been things that have died in their lives that seem impossible to be resurrected, God is going to resurrect those dreams and resurrect those things in their lives. And when I come back to you next time, I will bring the same ministry to your people.”
Two things happened there; he received our honor seed. That honor seed is the seed that recognises there’s holiness, there’s a calling, there’s a gifting, there’s a life of integrity in this man. God’s called us to this man, we are going to walk with this man. We are going to create a place of honor for this man. I want to tell you that that honor seed, that word that he spoke is still working. It will never stop working, even though he has crossed over.
Brother Jerry may have crossed over out of his body, but we, me, I am the legacy. The message that has been preached will continue and live inside of me forever. There is no place for dishonor in my life for him and for the message of faith that brought us.
Dishonour will lead to deception and deception will lead to dishonor. I’ll tell you what, people think they can get away with deception and dishonor. You can’t. It’s a thing that lives in a Continuous Perfect State of Being. It’s who God is. The Father honored the Son and the Son honors the Father. Honor is a thing that is in God and He wants it to be among men.
The Shunammite woman perceived that Elisha was a holy man. She doesn’t need anything. What does she want? She would like to have a child. Elisha prophesied she would have a son. The enemy comes to steal the dream when it was already manifesting. God has to intervene through the same divine connection to speak a word to bring her son back to life. Your seed and your walk with God and your recognition of who God called you to will work for a long time.
Then Elisha shared with her privately what God was going to do publicly. He said, “God’s about to do something and you have honored me. You have recognised holiness in me.” He could tell her about the famine because she already knew who he was.
2 Kings 8:3-6, The Shunammite woman returns and she gains favor from the king to restore her land and her proceeds from it. We don’t serve a God that’s just doing partial restoration things here. We don’t serve a God that is just doing partial lifetime assignments or partial covenant agreements or partial favors. When God does something, He does it over and over again. He won’t stop until He’s satisfied that in your life you have everything that you will ever have need of. He restores everything. He helps you with even the things that you desire that you won’t speak of as in her life. Because she recognized what happened in that man, who he was, what he needed. God supplied not only a future for her through a son, but when the famine came, He provided a way of escape through the famine. And when that was over, He provided everything as a restoration for her and her son that her husband had paid for.
Let me say today that that honor seed that we sowed into Brother Jerry’s life has spoken and spoken and spoken.
I said to Brother Jerry, “If there’s any question at any given time ever that there will be any reason for anybody to say at any level that I benefited out of my relationship with Brother Jerry, I’d rather not have it.” In terms of networking, in terms of creating opportunities, in terms of doing all the things that human people do when they have somebody that’s got influence, status. He said to me, “John, I know who you are. You will never have to worry about that. I know who you are. That will never be the case with anybody who would say anything about you that would get to my ears that that can be said of you. I know your heart, I know your life, that will never happen.” The next thing he said to me, “But John, you must do what God is telling you to do. You must obey Him.” I said, “Yes, sir.” And now the time has come for all of us to go together because we have waited patiently for this time.
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