Discover how the perception of events can shape your reality in this enlightening episode of Concepts of Faith. Through stories and biblical references, Charles Capps highlights the difference between formulas and principles in faith teachings, urging listeners to align their speech with God’s Word. Tune in to rethink how you approach everyday language and how it affects not just your spirit but your life’s outcome.
We’re glad you could join us today for the Concepts of Faith broadcast. This program is dedicated to teach you how to put the Word of God to work so that it will make a positive difference in the everyday circumstances of your life. And now, here’s Charles Capps.
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I want you to open your Bibles with me to Proverbs, the 17th chapter. I want to share some things with you today It may be a little bit humorous, some of the things. It’s not just to entertain you. But Brother Copeland said something in the morning service that sparked this within me because the Lord had already been dealing with me about it for some time. And that was the fact that laughter or a merry heart doeth good like a medicine. And I’ll tell you, laughter is much, much cheaper than medicine. Amen. And the Word of God has a lot to say about it. I want us to read from Proverbs chapter 17. And let’s read verse 22. A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit dryeth the bones. Now, you don’t want dry bones, do you? A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. Now, you know, that being true, we ought to take heed to the things that we say in life. Because words are important, and not only that, words are powerful. Jesus said they’re spirit, they’re life, and they’re giving life to the things that you speak. So if a merry heart doeth good like a medicine, then why would we say, tickle me to death? Now you hear people say that all the time, and they don’t realize what they’re saying. Some of them don’t. They just say it because it just seems like the thing to say, you know, in the situation. But you know, Proverbs also makes a statement that there is a way that seemeth right unto man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Now, I was in a little restaurant there in Arkansas. Actually, it’s just five bar stools in a little old town there where I live. And I was sitting there eating a hamburger one day, and the lady said to the lady that was sitting there on the stool eating a hamburger, said, Do you know, so-and-so says she got her foot operated on, and you know, she’s just tickled to death. And I’m sitting there listening to this, you know, and she said, Yeah, I know. I talked to her and said she don’t have any pain at all. She’s just tickled to death with her operation. And I’m sitting there thinking, you know, if I said, isn’t that a shame? She got her foot healed and now she’s dead. If I’d have said that, they wouldn’t have known what in the world are you talking about? Because you see, most people don’t even think about what they’ve said. But the devil has used the vocabulary to confuse situations and confuse things and to get us in a situation where we don’t really believe what we’re saying will come to pass. And see, that’s the thing that Jesus tried to get over to us in the Word of God. The thing that James, the brother of Jesus, tried to get over to us. That if you could control your words, you wouldn’t have any trouble with your body. He said it’s like bits in a horse’s mouth. You know what a bit does to a horse’s mouth? It puts pressure on his tongue. If you put pressure on your tongue, you can control your body. Somebody said, well, yeah, you know, I just love pie. I just can’t eat without pie. I guess I’ll get big as a barn. You probably will. We’ve trained ourselves that way, you see. So if a merry heart doeth good like a medicine, then we ought to say, thank God it tickled me to life. Anybody here taking medicine to die? What would you do if your doctor gave you a prescription, said take three of these a day until they kill you? I know what you’d do with it. You’d throw it as far as you could. But you see, some of the things we say are programmed to defeat us in life, not put us over, to bring the death law into motion. We need to realize that when God says something in his word, you know, he wasn’t just putting us in here to fill in pages in the Bible. There’s something else we need to realize. Is that the things that Jesus said, they’re not that way just because he said them. But he said them because they were that way. And if we can understand that, we can enter into some things. Now, you hear some people say, well, you know, that just blows my mind. Well, it don’t blow my mind. My mind’s put together better than that. You know, I just come unglued every time something like that happens, somebody says. Well, you’re not put together good enough if you come in unglued. You better try some super glue. God’s word will get you on the right track. And it’ll keep you from entering into some of these things that’ll get you in trouble. Now, there’s some other scriptures here in Proverbs. I want us to look at chapter 15, verse 13. A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance, but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken. Now look at verse 15 there in the same chapter. All the days of the afflicted are evil, but he that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast. Hath a continual feast. Now look at verse 23. A man hath joy by the answer of his mouth, or by the words of his mouth. And that’s the reason some people don’t have any joy. Have you ever noticed when you go to murmuring, complaining, how the negative just keeps adding to negative and it just gets worse? You have to continually work on that. So laughter doeth good like a medicine. We need to learn to think things through before we just enter into them. Things sometimes are easy to be misunderstood. And sometimes because people misunderstand things, there’s a different reaction to it. There’s a lady that’s one of our prayer partners with the ministry. She was in a service one time. She’s standing up in this full gospel church, you know, and they’ve been sitting there and the preacher’s been preaching. I don’t know what all was going on. Been there for quite some time. They had them all stand when she stood up, her leg had gone to sleep. She fell out in the aisle. And they had a Jericho march and started a revival in that church. Because of what they thought happened, see. They thought she fell out in the spirit. In all the world it was. She just had her leg go to sleep. So you see, it’s not so much as what happened. Sometimes it’s what you thought happened. Now, the things that happen to you in life do not defeat you or put you over in life. Many times it’s what you think about what happened to you. I want you to remember that because it’s important. A failure never did cause anybody to be a failure. Neither did prosperity ever make anyone successful. You see, just because you failed once doesn’t mean that you’re a failure. And just because that you prospered does not mean you’re a success. But many times it depends on what you think about what happened to you. The fellow that believes that, well, what happened to me must have been God’s will for me the side of negative our failure in life then he becomes defeated in life because of his own thinking wrong thinking misunderstanding situations and circumstances that you face in life and then if we would begin to think like God thinks study the Word of God and act on God’s Word the way God has told us to act on it you know some things are simple in life they really are But simple things are not always easy and easy things are not always simple. I remember a friend of mine that used to go fishing with me quite often and he was always a comic kind of cutting up. We was flying one day going down to the White River to go fishing and he’s sitting there and all of a sudden he started acting like he was afraid. He started looking out the window of that airplane. He started looking around. He said, listen, he said, what would happen if you was to have a heart attack while I’m flying in this plane with you? I said, well, that’s simple. You probably have one too. Some things are very simple, you know. But it’s also easy to misunderstand some things and misappropriate things and misjudge a situation, even the Word of God and things of the Bible, you see. Take a fellow out in California that said to a friend of mine, He said, you know, this faith stuff doesn’t work. It doesn’t work at all. He said, oh, is that right? He said, yeah, that’s right. Well, he said, why do you say that? Well, he said, I said 300 times one day I had a new car and I didn’t get it. Why don’t you take folks like that? You wonder when they get up in the morning how they find the floor. You think maybe they jump off on the wall and they slide down the wall or something, you know. See, he had misunderstood the whole thing. And certainly, sometimes maybe we’ve left some things unsaid. But he had a formula and he didn’t have the principle. It’s the principle that makes the formula work. It’s not the formula that makes the principle work. Can you see that? Now let’s talk about that for a minute. See, you can misjudge things from just a little understanding of it. It’s like the story I heard about the Cajun. He was sitting down on one of those bayous down in Louisiana, and you know, he’s fishing. And there’s a guy come by there, and he said, is there any way for me to get across this bayou? He said, yeah. I said, there’s no problem. The guy had on knee boots. He said, if you go right down there, right where that willow limb is hanging out over the water, he said, you can walk right across there with no problem at all. The guy goes down there, and he steps off of that bank, and he just went ka-chug. I mean, floated his hat off his head. He come out of there spitting and sputtering and come back up there and said, I thought you told me that was shallow down there. Well, he said, I don’t understand that. He said, there was a little duck a while ago that didn’t have legs but about four inches long. Walked right across that. Now, would you say that he misjudged the situation? He just didn’t think far enough, see. Now that’s a little humorous, but you laugh about that. If you’re not careful, you’ll do the same thing in some of the things the Bible says. God bless you. I do appreciate you joining us for the Concepts of Faith broadcast today. Now before I leave the broadcast, I want to remind you that all of this week we have CD offer number 7120. That’s CD offer number 7120. A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. A single CD for $8 plus $3 postage and handling, a total of $11. Now, when we talk about a merry heart doeth good, we’re talking about laughter doeth good like a medicine. And I know that you realize this, that laughter is much cheaper than medicine today. I saw a cartoon the other day where this guy said to the pharmacist, said, what are the side effects of this medicine? And he said, poverty. Well, that’s the way it is in some things today. But there’s something about laughter that releases the endorphins within your body and causes you to feel good, causes your body to work better. Laughter doeth good like a medicine. And you need to realize that God didn’t have these things put in the Bible just to fill up the pages of the Bible. These are truths that will actually affect your life. A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. Now in this, we talk about the fact that people many times speak things they don’t mean to just be facetious or funny or just to speak contrary speech. You know, people get the idea, well, I’m going to say it opposite from what it is, and that’s funny. Well, they call it a little bitty dog when it’s a great big dog, or a great big dog when it’s a little bitty chihuahua. Well, that’s crooked speech, and it has effect on you. Now, the Bible teaches us that we should release faith in our words. Whosoever shall say, believe, doubt not his heart, believe what he saith, and it will come to pass. The Scripture says he shall have whatsoever he saith. Well, we’ve got to say what the Word says if we’re going to believe in it and release faith in every word. That’s offer number 7120. for a total of $11. We have a toll-free order line, 1-877-396-9400. That’s 1-877-396-9400. Until tomorrow, this is Charles Capp reminding you, the enemy is defeated, God is exalted, and Jesus is coming soon.
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To order the product offered today, call 1-877-396-9400 or write Charles Capps, P.O. Box 69, England, Arkansas, 72046. A complete list of CDs, books, and DVDs are available online at charlescapps.com. Through the website, you can listen to this radio program again and subscribe to our podcast. This broadcast is sponsored by Charles Capps Ministries and our listeners in this area.
