Posts Tagged ‘faith’
Gloria Copeland — Receiving Faithfulness Part 2
Posted by admin | Filed under Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Joshua and Caleb held onto their confession of, “We can
take the land” for 40 years, until they were both 80 years
old. Then Caleb said to Joshua, who was their spiritual
leader, “Give me that mountain. I can take the land.” His
confession had remained unchanged.
Caleb knew of the faithfulness and mercy of God. It
motivated him to draw closer to God instead of running
from Him. He was convinced his God was able. When we
get a revelation of mercy and obtain it for ourselves we will
begin to speak it out in faith. That’s when mercy begins to
explode and manifest itself outwardly.
It all comes down to this: God’s original plan was for
man to live in close communion with Him. But after Adam
sinned, this was no longer possible. God could only deal
with man at arm’s length. Fellowship was impossible.
But, the Father had mercy on man and sent His only
Son to be our Savior and Redeemer. Through His death
and resurrection, Jesus restored us to our rightful place in
God’s original plan—a place of fellowship and communion
with the Father.
As joint heirs through Christ’s saving power, we have the
right to God’s mercy and all that goes with it. So, take
advantage of this gift from God. Ignite the power of mercy
in your life by spending time in prayer and fellowship with
the Father. Study His Word. Take hold of the promises found
in His Word, and by faith speak your needs into being. Confess
and believe in His power. If you do these things, God’s mercy
will continually be manifest in your life. For His mercy
endureth…forever!
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — Receiving Faithfulness Part 1
Posted by admin | Filed under Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
If we are having trouble keeping our confession of
faith, we need to take hold of mercy. Obtaining mercy
will enable us to be faithful to God. Paul illustrated this
in 1 Corinthians 7:25. In dealing with family affairs in
the Church, he said, “Now concerning virgins I have
no commandment of the Lord: yet I give my judgment,
as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful.”
It was the revelation of mercy that caused Paul to be
faithful to God. It was as if he said, “I’ve never received
a commandment of God in this, but I am faithful enough
to God and He is faithful enough to me that I know how
He thinks about it, and I will just go ahead and tell you.”
Paul knew that obtaining the mercy of God would keep
men from fainting and preserve their faith.
The Apostle Peter acknowledged the scriptural truth
of what Paul said and continued the same thought when
he wrote 2 Corinthians 4:1: “Therefore seeing we have this
ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; but have
renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking
in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully;
but by manifestation of the truth….”
Have you ever fainted in the middle of your confession
of faith and said, “Dear God, I just can’t hold on to this any
longer. I don’t think I can continue to stand up. I have been
confessing this thing for weeks and weeks. How long am
I going to have to do it?” If you have come to that place,
remember Ephesians 6:13 says, “Wherefore take unto you
the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand
in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand
therefore….” If you are ready to stand forever, you won’t be
there very long.
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — A Spiritual Force Part 2
Posted by admin | Filed under Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
If a boxer can work for months and months to get in
a ring for 15 rounds, what should a believer be able to do
for Jesus to gain a crown of glory? All Christians have
tremendous potential within them. The zoe life of God in
their spirits contains a unique substance the Bible calls
“the fruit of the spirit.” This fruit contains nine parts:
love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness and temperance.
The Bible considers these qualities a fruit because it
continually grows and produces. But it can also be compared
to an explosive, for it only releases its tremendous
power when ignited.
For example, the Bible says that faith will move mountains
and cast things into the sea. But we can carry faith
around with us forever and never move a mountain. To see
the power of faith, it must be ignited like a stick of dynamite.
The fuse that sets off this power is the spoken Word
of the living God.
This does not mean that we ignore the negative
circumstances when we speak His Word. It means we do
not live in them. We are deciding by what we say, the
kind of forces we release. We can either release the forces
of the kingdom of hell with all its demons or the forces
of the kingdom of God with all its angelic army. Both sides
are standing, waiting to see what we will say. In one sense,
we are like kings holding court.
Because we are made in the likeness of Jesus, our
words hold authority, as His do. Our words are the determining
factor. What we say is what we get.
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — Receiving Mercy
Posted by admin | Filed under Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Having mercy available and reaching out to accept it are
two different things. Salvation is here for us to take, but
we can reject it all day long if we want to. If we do that,
the mercy of God will not make any difference in our lives.
It doesn’t matter what you have done. Jesus Christ came to
save sinners. He did not come for the righteous. There
weren’t any. The Bible says Jesus died for the ungodly.
It is up to you to receive the mercy of God.
Paul wanted to encourage us to take hold of mercy. He was
writing to tell us that the great things he experienced did
not happen to him because he was an apostle. They
occurred because he was a believer. He said, “Howbeit for
this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ
might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them
which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting”
(1 Timothy 1:16). Paul became a pattern of the mercy of
God for us to follow. Most of us came to the Lord Jesus
Christ either directly or indirectly through His ministry
because he wrote two-thirds of the New Testament.
The Apostle Peter, like Paul, wanted to direct attention
away from himself and the fact that he had walked and
talked with Jesus for three and a half years. He wanted
people to realize the true basis for his ability to receive
mercy and the power to do miracles. When he healed a
lame man, he said to the people who were around, “Why
look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power
or holiness we had made this man to walk” (Acts 3:12). In
other words, he was saying, “It was neither our holiness
nor our calling, but faith in the Name of Jesus that made
this man strong.”
I once knew a quiet, elderly man who was head usher
in a church. His name was Brother Steel. One day he was
a few minutes late coming to church. I found out he had
been fishing that afternoon and had been bitten by a
water moccasin. He pulled up his pant leg and showed me
where the snake had bitten him. I asked him what he did.
He said, “I reached down there and got him and said, ‘I’ll
tell you one thing old boy, in the Name of Jesus the Bible
said if a snake bites you, he ain’t going to hurt you. There
ain’t no way you’re going to hurt me.’ And I just throwed
him away.” He said, “I didn’t feel too good. That’s kind of
the reason I was late to church.”
This man just believed the Bible. Like Paul, he obtained
mercy because without the mercy of God there is not
anyone who can reach down and get a cottonmouth water
moccasin by the hand, curse it in the Name of Jesus and
throw it away. This man did what the Bible commands us
to do, and that is to have faith in the Name of Jesus.
We must first obtain mercy before we can pattern ourselves
after Paul. When Paul was born again, the mercy of
God got down on the inside of him and brought forth a
revelation that I could see. His testimony is a witness to
God’s mercy. In the Bible, we see him first as a killer. Then
we see him as a preacher of the gospel. As a preacher, he
was beaten with rods, lashed with 40 stripes three times,
thrown into dungeons and shipwrecked twice. He experienced
perils from countrymen and fought wild beasts—all
to get the Word of God to people and set them free.
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — Mercy Replaces Judgment
Posted by admin | Filed under Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Once we have been made new on the inside, we have a
responsibility to learn and study and keep ourselves away
from the filth. Even when we fall down, if we repent of
our sin, God will cleanse us. When we deserve judgment,
God gives us mercy. And the Word says in 1 Corinthians
11:31 that if you will judge yourself, you will not be judged.
God will judge us in mercy and not with the world. He is
merciful to those who judge themselves.
Most of the time, I am harder on myself than He is. In
judging ourselves, we need to remember to forgive ourselves
and walk in the forgiveness God gives us. The Bible says
to love our neighbor as ourselves. If we go overboard in
judging ourselves, we are not going to be able to love our
neighbor because we will not be able to love ourselves.
God sent mercy and not judgment to us in the form of
Jesus. He was born into the world, died on the Cross and
was reborn from the dead by the mercy of God.
First Timothy 1:14-15 says: “And the grace of our Lord
was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in
Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners; of whom I am chief.”
The Apostle Paul was talking about himself as the
chief of sinners. He meant that salvation was extended
to every human being on the earth through the abundant
mercy of God. The message is true for everyone, and on
that basis it is worthy for them to accept it.
