The Pursuit

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the transcript below — the preacher’s words follow in full.

Preached at the Apostolic Pentecostal Church of Panama City on Monday night, October 12, 2026 — a service Copeland himself had not expected to be in; the pastor had called him the day before, and he flew in from Indiana. He opens by refusing casual church: in a day when congregations are closing, this one is thriving, and the danger for a thriving church is professionalism — people who know how to have good church, go through the motions, and go home unchanged. Church, he argues, was never entertainment; it exists to confront a life with the Word until something changes.

The sermon's nerve is Jeremiah 48:10, the curse on doing the Lord's work deceitfully — which he reads in a plainer rendering as doing it without all your heart. Singing, playing, preaching, attending: all of it is the work of the Lord, and all of it can be done with slack hands. Against that he sets Deuteronomy 4:29, the promise that God is found by those who seek him with all their heart and soul, and the Shema's demand to love the one Lord not merely as knowledge in the head but with heart, soul, and mind. Belief that never becomes love shows no fruit; a man can praise his wife in words and contradict the claim by his conduct at home.

Two stories carry the middle. As a teenager on a missions trip to Honduras, he misplaced his passport and tore his luggage apart in rising panic until he found it in a forgotten compartment — and heard the Lord ask when he had last sought God with that kind of desperation. And from his courtship, he tells how his wife's early indifference only intensified his pursuit, drawing the parallel that God tests whether his people will keep knocking when the door did not open last time. Esau stands as the warning: not wicked or immoral at first, just a man who did not care, who traded an eternal inheritance for a temporary appetite — while Jacob is loved for his hunger. God, he concludes, loves to be pursued, and the dynamic pairing is a God who loves pursuit and a church that loves pursuing; David's answer to "seek ye my face" is the model response.

The close is an altar call built on participation: he asks everyone willing to step out of the pew as a sign that their heart, energy, and effort are involved, to pair up and pray with someone nearby. The host pastor then takes the service up where the sermon left it, urging the church to stay in the pursuit through the week and to fill the house on Sunday.

Scripture index: Jeremiah 48:10; Deuteronomy 4:29; Deuteronomy 6:4-5.