Archive for October, 2009
Kenneth Copeland — Real Bible Hope
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Now when I say you need to have hope, I’m not saying you just need to start thinking optimistically. Positive thinking is fine and it certainly is better than negative thinking. But just thinking optimistically will never cause you to burn with confident expectancy like the Apostle Paul did. Positive thinking will never give you Bible hope.
Real Bible hope has to be based on God’s Word. Otherwise, there is no foundation under it.
For instance, someone who has liver cancer might say to me, “I fully expect to be healed of this liver condition.” I might say to them,
“What makes you believe that when the doctor just declared your condition incurable?”
Now, that person can respond in one of two ways. He can tell me he believes he’ll be healed just because he wants it to be true. If he does, he has no foundation beneath him. He’s just wishing. That’s the world’s kind of hope, but it definitely isn’t the Bible kind.
If he has Bible hope, he’ll say, “I will be delivered from this liver condition because God’s Word says every sickness and every disease is under the curse of the law, and Galatians 3:13 says Jesus has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. In other words, Jesus has already redeemed me from the curse of this liver condition. That’s why I fully expect to be delivered from it.”
When you have that clear, Word-based image inside you, you have real Bible hope and it’s an absolute must for anyone who wants to live by faith. Without that kind of hope, your faith has nothing to grab onto and you’ll let the devil talk you out of your healing (or whatever else you need to receive from God). He’ll look you right in the face and say, “Well now, I don’t see any healing taking place in your body. It looks to me like you’re as sick as you’ve ever been. Obviously, this healing business just isn’t working for you.”
The devil will feed those kinds of words into your mind and try to get you to think about them. If you do, you’ll be in trouble. But if you’ll dwell on the Word of God until the hope of the gospel rises up on the inside of you…if you’ll meditate on God’s promises until you begin to have an inner image of yourself healed and strong…if you’ll speak those promises day after day…you’ll be able to look at the devil and say, “Oh, shut up! I know what I know and I know God’s Word is working for me. That Word says I’m healed and that’s what I’m looking at and nothing else.”
I don’t mind telling you, it’s rarely easy to do that. (If it were easy, everybody would be doing it!) Sometimes you have to get rough on yourself to make yourself stand on the Word of God when you’re in great physical pain. Your emotions will want to take over. They’ll push you to start crying and feeling sorry for yourself.
But don’t do it. Instead, take charge of those emotions by the Spirit of God within you. Don’t ever let your emotions cause you to back away from hope. If you do, you’ll kill it.
Yes, I said you’ll kill it. You see, hope is a living thing. Paul says hope “abides.” To abide means “to live.” Only living things abide, so hope is a living thing and you have to guard it and nourish and feed it with the Word of God so it can grow. If you’ll do that, hope will paint a picture on the inside of you, a picture of God’s promise fulfilled in your life. It will give you an inner image of yourself healed and prosperous, with your loved ones saved, your marriage restored or whatever else you’ve been hoping for. Hope will paint that picture so clearly inside you and make it so real, you’ll begin to be blind to what you see on the outside.
Gloria Copeland
Kenneth Copeland — More Than You can Dream
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These days, when I say the Word of God can heal your body, pay off your debts and bring you victory in every area of your life, not everyone believes me. Most wouldn’t admit it outright, but it’s true, nonetheless.
They don’t intentionally doubt the Word, of course. They’re just so overwhelmed by the problems in their own lives, they’re not sure anything (natural or supernatural) can help.
When they see Gloria and me so blessed and prosperous, they think, Sure, it’s easy for you to live by faith. You have a great life. But what can God do with a life as messed up as mine?
If you ever struggle with that question, let me tell you. God can do for you exceeding After more than 25 years of ministry, I can say that, not only because it’s the Word of God, but also because it’s a living reality for me.
You see, I wasn’t always blessed. When I first learned about faith, I was a failure looking for somewhere to happen. I wasn’t just scraping the bottom of the barrel, I was underneath with the barrel on top of me! Then one day I was reading Deuteronomy 28 and I saw all the blessings God’s people are supposed to have in their lives.
I got mad. Where are all these blessings that are supposed to belong to me? I thought. As far as I could see, I didn’t have even one of them. Yet the Bible clearly said:
All these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt
hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. (I wasn’t blessed anyplace!)
Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body…. (My children kept getting sick so they weren’t very blessed, either.)
Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out. (I wasn’t.)
The Lord shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face: they shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways.
The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee (Deuteronomy 28:2-4, 6-8).
I didn’t have any land. I didn’t have any storehouse. In fact, I’d heard that God wouldn’t bless you with a storehouse at all because He didn’t want you to have anything.
And the Lord shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the Lord swore unto thy fathers to give thee. The Lord shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow (verses 11-12).
I don’t mind telling you, that looked good to me. All I’d ever known how to do was borrow. I had depended on borrowed money all my adult life.
Gloria Copeland
Kenneth Copeland — More Than Wishful Thinking
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Understand this, though. When I say hope, I’m not talking about the weak, wishful thinking kind of attitude most people call hope. Real, Bible hope isn’t a wish. Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for….” There’s no room for faith in wishing! For example, take the statement, “I sure do wish God would bless me financially.” There’s no place in that statement for faith. It just won’t plug in anywhere.
The Apostle Paul said in Philippians 1:20, “According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed….” If you’ll look up the two Greek words translated earnest expectation and hope, you’ll find they’re two different words that both mean the same thing. So hope is earnest expectation.
There’s plenty of room for faith in earnest expectation. Say, for instance, “I earnestly expect to receive financial blessings. I earnestly expect to be free from poverty.” Faith can plug right into that statement. It just follows naturally. Faith becomes the substance of that statement.
Someone might ask, “How can you so intensely expect to prosper when the unemployment rate is up and the economy is down?” You can answer, “What I’m earnestly expecting isn’t dependent on the world’s economy. It’s based on what God has promised in His covenant. Because He said it, I earnestly expect it!”
Can you hear the faith in those words? Certainly! Real, Bible hope just opens the door so faith can walk right in!
Why don’t we see more of that kind of hope in the Body of Christ? Because it is born out of the promises of God’s covenant. And most Christians are using their believing faculties to believe in some sort of religious system that men have designed instead of believing the Word of God. Despite the fact that they’re born again with the seed of hope inside them, baptized in the Holy Spirit and walking around with a Bible tucked under their arm, they’ve become strangers to the covenants of promise.
You can tell those folks that 2 Corinthians 8:9 says Jesus became poor so we might be rich and they’ll answer, “Oh, yes, amen. I know it says that, brother. But I just don’t know whether to take the Bible literally or not.”
The reason they don’t know whether or not to take the Bible literally is because they’re not spending any time in the Word as a covenant. That’s what the word testament means. Did you know that? The New Testament is the new covenant! It’s not some kind of religious book. It’s God’s will and testament written down. It’s a covenant of promise God’s blood-sworn oath.
I want you to imagine for a moment that you made a blood covenant with someone. You both cut your wrists, bound your hands together, mixed your blood and swore an oath to each other in your own blood. That would be serious, wouldn’t it?
You know it would! But you have a covenant even more serious than that with Almighty God. It’s a covenant ratified not by the tainted blood of a sinful man, but by the sinless blood of Jesus.
I’ve meditated on that fact until it’s real to me. So when I pick up the New Testament, I’m not just reading a history book. I’m reading a copy of God’s will and testament and in my mind, I have Jesus by the hand and His blood is flowing down my wrist. Once you get a revelation like that, hope is no problem!
Gloria Copeland
Kenneth Copeland — More Than a Holy Ghost Giggle
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Now let me show you how that information relates to the laughter and the outpouring of God’s glory we’ve begun to experience. The word glory as used throughout the Old Testament literally means “to be heavy laden with everything that is good,” and it relates directly to the presence of God’s Spirit.
Some years ago, I learned from Billye Brim, who has studied Hebrew extensively, that the word grief is the exact opposite. It means to be heavy laden with everything that is bad. Grief is the satanic reciprocal of glory.
So, when the glory of God comes on you, grief doesn’t stand a chance. It has to flee! When it does, the joy of the Lord that’s in you just starts bubbling out. There’s nothing to hold it back.
Of course, that’s a lot of fun. We all enjoy it. But actually, the Lord is not just out to give us a good time and a Holy Ghost giggle. He has a greater purpose. He wants us to be full of joy because it’s the force that will make us strong enough to carry out His plan in this final hour. It will give us the spiritual, mental and physical fortitude to rise up in the fullness of God’s glory fully healed, fully delivered, fully prosperous so we can reap the final harvest and march out of here into the Rapture.
Listen to me. The Church will not slip out of this earth in defeat and disgrace. We will not leave here like some whipped pup. No, God will take us out in glorious victory. He will do for us even more than He did for the Israelites when they left Egypt. Psalm 105 says:
He brought them forth also with silver and gold: and there was not one feeble person among their tribes. Egypt was glad when they departed: for the fear of them fell upon them. He spread a cloud for a covering; and fire to give light in the night. The people asked, and he brought quails, and satisfied them with the bread of heaven. He opened the rock, and the waters gushed out; they ran in the dry places like a river. For he remembered his holy promise, and Abraham his servant. And he brought forth his people with joy, and his chosen with gladness (verses 37-43).
Look at that last verse again. It says God “brought forth his people with joy.” No wonder none of them was sick or feeble! Joy made them strong from the inside out. “Brother Copeland, are you saying joy heals?”
Yes, I am. Proverbs 17:22 plainly says, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” Even modern research has proven that joy and healing are connected. There are documented reports of people who’ve been healed watching old Laurel and Hardy movies. They just released a small measure of joy and their bodies responded.
