Keep an Honorable Attitude by Kenneth Copeland

June 3rd, 2009

kenneth-and-gloria-copeland_3

Christian people can be snobs, though. Some can
even be so upright and uptight that they don’t live
honorably, even when they think they are. I’ll give
you an example.

I knew a woman in Pensacola, Fla., which is the
home of a U.S. naval base with hundreds and hundreds
of sailors. When one aircraft carrier docks
there, 3,000 people or more may disembark and head
to town. Most of the people there know when a carrier
or some other large warship has docked.

This dear lady would take tracts with her name
and phone number on them and go to every newsstand,
pornography shop and tattoo parlor she could
find. The first thing she would do would be to open
the centerfolds in those girlie magazines and put
tracts in them.

Soon after, some sailor would open one of those
magazines. He probably had sounded big and tough
the night before, but he knew he was just a 19-year-old
boy who was a long way from home. No money. No one
to call. Nothing to do but look at that magazine.

Then he would find that tract right next to the main attraction
and call the person whose name was printed on
the tract. That is when things would start happening!
This is just the way it happened, time and time again.
That woman rescued those young sailors out of sin.

She took them home, prayed for them, fed them, took
them to church, cleaned them up and sent them back
to the Navy as different young men—by the hundreds.
Was she honored for her work? God honored her.

But her church kicked her out because somebody saw
her coming out of one of those ugly places where she
had left her tracts one night.

“Don’t you know you’re liable to get demon-possessed
if you go in there?” she was asked.

“No, I’m not going to get demon-possessed,” she
answered. “Some little puny demon is not going to
run me off—and it ought not run you off either.”

Still she was kicked out of the church, so she started
her own church. I preached in it. She didn’t want to
start her own church, but she had to have a place of
worship—and she needed a place to bring the sailors.

She was a mother to many servicemen. Some of
them would call her and say “I don’t have any business
looking at those dirty old magazines. I know better
than that. I wish you would pray for me. I haven’t been
acting like I should since I joined the service.”
The woman honored God by doing what she
was expected to do, instead of acting like a silly,
sissy, wimpy, no-faith, dishonorable “Christian.”

Those sailors were not coming in to the church, so
she went out to take the gospel to them and bring
them to the Lord. She was kicked out by those who
were too upright and uptight to recognize real
honor when they saw it.

Through it all, she kept an honorable attitude. She
held faith and a good conscience.