Faith or Desperation by Kenneth Copeland
Most believers don’t pay much attention
to hope. They don’t think of it as being very
important. They certainly don’t consider it as
important as faith. But the fact is, faith won’t
function without hope.
That’s because “Faith is the substance of
things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1). Sometimes
I say it this way, “Hope is the blueprint of
discovering the power in supernatural expectancy
faith.” When hope is lost, faith loses its aim.
It no longer has a mission to accomplish. It
just scatters uselessly in every direction.
I remember one time, some years ago,
when that happened to me. At God’s instruction,
I had given my airplane to another
preacher and then ordered another to replace
it. During the weeks while the new plane
was being manufactured, I began to believe
God for the full amount I needed to pay
for it.
I hooked up my faith to the promises of
God and I was going along fine for a while.
But just a few days before the plane was
scheduled to be delivered, I realized I was
$20,000 short.
As the delivery date grew closer, I became
more and more alarmed. I started making
faith confessions as fast as I could. I’d say,
“Thank God, I have that $20,000. In Jesus’
Name, I-have-it-I-have-it-I-have-it-I-have-it.”
But the problem was, I was no longer
confessing in faith, I was confessing out of
desperation.
I knew something had to change, so I
gathered up my Bible and my tapes, got in
my boat, and went out to the middle of the
lake to spend some time with the Lord. But
when I got out there, I was still saying,
“Thank God, I have that $20,000. In Jesus’
Name, I-have-it-I-have-it-I-have-it-I-have-it.”
Suddenly, the Lord spoke up on the inside
of me: KENNETH, BE QUIET! He said, I’m
tired of hearing that. Just hush and let Me show
you what I can do.
When He said that, something happened
inside me. My hope came alive again.
Suddenly I was expectant instead of desperate.
I started eagerly anticipating what God
was about to do, instead of fearing what
would happen if He didn’t come through in
this situation.
Sure enough, the $20,000 I needed for
that airplane came in and the pilot who
delivered it to me ended up getting saved
and filled with the Holy Spirit in the
process. But none of that would have
happened if I hadn’t pulled aside, locked
myself away with the Word for several
hours, and let the Spirit of God rebuild
and rekindle the hope inside me.
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Discovering the Power in Supernatural Expectancy by Kenneth Copeland
Have you ever been in the midst of a
faith stand when suddenly it seemed like your
faith just quit working?
Maybe you were believing God for healing
or financial deliverance or the salvation of
your family. Spiritually, everything was in
place. You found the scriptures that promised
you what you needed. You were firing off
confessions of faith like a machine gun.
But as time went by, your spiritual battery
began to weaken. The power you had when
you first took your stand began to wane, and
you developed a gnawing suspicion that
nothing would happen.
In desperation, you tried to shove those
doubts away by confessing louder and longer.
You frantically tried to force your faith to
work. But to no avail.
You wound up still sick, still broke, still
surrounded by unsaved relatives...and
wondering what went wrong.
In the end, you probably just chalked it
up as a faith failure.
But I’m about to tell you something that
will change your life if you’ll pay attention
to it. It certainly changed mine. It’s this: What
you experienced was not the failure of your
faith...it was a breakdown of your hope.
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Faith and Hope by Kenneth Copeland
We’ve already learned from that scripture
that hope must be present for faith to
produce. But the reverse is also true. Hope
can’t produce anything without faith! Faith
is the substance.
I remember years ago when I first started
studying the subject of faith, I discovered that
many people were trying to get by on hope
alone, and it wasn’t working. They’d say,
“We’re just hoping and praying,” and I’d know
right then they wouldn’t get anything, because
without faith their hope had no substance.
Hope is only the blueprint. You can’t take
a blueprint all by itself and make a house
out of it. You won’t be able to live in the
thing because it’s paper. But if you’ll take
some substance—lumber and steel and
stone—you can follow the blueprint and
build a place fit to live in. Faith and hope.
Blueprint and building materials. You must
have them both.
Remember though, as I said before, the
only truly workable blueprint comes from
the Word of God. All other blueprints will
let you down.
That’s why you often hear people say,
“Don’t get your hopes up.” They’ve had
experience with natural hope (hope based on
circumstances and human knowledge instead
of on the Word of God), and they know that
kind of hope will leave you disappointed
more often than not.
In Colossians 1:23, Paul warns us not to
be moved away from the “hope of the gospel.”
That’s because any other hope besides “gospel
hope” can be spiritually dangerous.
Say, for example, you were dealing with
a physical disease and your doctor told you
that you only had a small chance of recovering.
He’d say that because, based on the
natural information he’d have, that might be
all he could medically expect—and he
wouldn’t want to offer you a false hope that
might leave you disappointed.
But the Bible says when we operate in
the hope of the gospel, we’ll not be ashamed.
So, instead of clinging to that flimsy thread
of limited hope which man has offered you,
you’d be much safer going to the Word of
God that says, “By [his] stripes ye were
healed!” Because those words aren’t based on
fragmented human information. They’re
based on the knowledge of God Himself.
Instead of holding on to natural hope, if
you built up supernatural hope by meditating
on that truth and looking at it night and day,
you’d soon have some inner images of strength
you could wrap your faith around. You’d even
be able to use that supernatural hope to
combat the natural evidence around you. Then,
instead of having a small hope for recovery,
you could have a sure hope for recovery!
Look at Romans 4:18 and you can see
what happened when, in the midst of a naturally
hopeless situation, Abraham chose to
build his life on that kind of supernatural
hope. He had received a promise from God
that he would become the father of many
nations. The problem was, he was already
old. So when he turned around and looked
at his 90-year-old wife and then looked in
the mirror and saw a 100-year-old man, he
had no natural hope.
Natural knowledge told him there was
no way he could ever have a child. Don’t
you know that negative knowledge
bombarded his thinking? So what did he do?
He took the promise of God, and the hope
of that promise, and combated the negative
hope coming against him which said, “No
way, you can’t do it. It’s hopeless.”
The Bible says, “He hoped against hope.”
In other words, he used supernatural hope
to overcome natural hope. He locked his
mind onto what God said and drove out
everything else.
Verse 19 says, “Being not weak in faith,
he considered not his own body now dead...
neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb.”
Now, how did he do that? How can you
consider not your own body when you’re 100
years old and thinking about having a baby?
It would be tough, but Abraham was able to
do it because “he staggered not...through unbelief;
but was strong in faith, giving glory to God;
and being fully persuaded that, what [God] had
promised, he was able also to perform” (verses
20-21). God’s promise was at the center of his
hope, his faith and his persuasion.
Abraham was fully persuaded. You can
be fully persuaded, too. But you can’t get
that way by sitting around watching television
or by spending all your time messing
around with the world. You get fully
persuaded by purposely meditating on the
promise of God until it gets inside you so
deeply that no one can get it out.
Another thing that caused Abraham to be
fully persuaded was the fact that God changed
Abraham’s name. God stopped calling him
Abram and started calling him Abraham, which
means “father of a multitude.”
If you’ll pay attention to this principle,
you’ll find you can use it in your own life.
For example, I learned a long time ago to
stop calling myself “poor boy.” It didn’t
matter that on the outside I looked broke. I
decided—based on the Word of God—if
anyone hollered, “Poor boy!” I wouldn’t
answer, ever again.
Now, if they were to start hollering for
someone who has all his needs met according
to God’s riches in Christ Jesus, I’d come
running. But I decided I wouldn’t go by what
things looked like anymore. I wouldn’t go by
what I felt. I had based my life on something
bigger than feelings. I had gotten the hope of
the gospel inside me.
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Part of God’s Blueprint by Kenneth Copeland
Abraham called himself “father of a
multitude.” That was his new name. He
wouldn’t let anyone call him anything else.
People probably thought he’d flipped out.
But Abraham knew what he knew. He was
the father of a multitude. He’d seen the
blueprint.
Let me give you another example. If I
said to you, “Come over here and see my
dream house. Man, is it something!” You
might say to me, “Where is it?”
I’d answer, “Right here on this piece of
paper!”
Then, you might tell me, “You don’t have
a house.”
“I certainly do,” I’d say. “I just got back
from the architect, and you ought to see it.
Sit down and I’ll show you my house.”
Now, that house is real. It started as an
image in my mind. Then I described it to the
architect and he translated it into symbols
and lines. If it hadn’t been a picture in my
mind and on paper, if I hadn’t called it my
house, then it would never have been built.
Hope works just like that. People of faith
look into the Word of God and begin to see
things. They see things like, “By [his] stripes
ye were healed.”
I remember the first time I ever saw that
particular part of God’s blueprint. My mind
just wouldn’t accept it. If it hadn’t been right
there in the Bible, I never would have believed
it because it was obvious to me I wasn’t
healed. But the Bible said, “Ye were healed.”
And if “ye were,” then I knew I must be.
Once I received that, I started meditating
on it. I started building it up on the inside of
me. Eventually I was able to see myself
healed.
Soon, every time some symptom suggested
to me that I wasn’t healed, I’d begin to resist
it and reject it. You couldn’t tell me healing
didn’t belong to me any more than you could
tell me that blueprint wasn’t my house. I
knew it did. I had a picture of it on the inside
of me.
Now, I realize there’s been some controversy
in Christian circles about the right and wrong
of visualization. But I can put that argument to
rest by assuring you, you are always visualizing
something—whether you want to or not. Our
minds have been divinely programmed to do
that. You have an imagination.
We can either use that programming the
way God designed it to be used and live, or
we can use it the perverted way Satan has
trained us to use it, and die. But we’re going
to use it, one way or the other.
Look at the way we talk. Words are
simply inner-image transferring devices. When
I say, “Dog,” I transfer an image from the
inside of me to you. You don’t sit there thinking,
“D-O-G.” You see an inner image of a
dog. If I say, “Big, black, barking dog,” I can
modify that image. So when we speak, we’re
actually exchanging pictures.
As you speak out those inner images, if
they are based on the Word of God, faith
comes alongside to give them substance.
Hope is the blueprint. Faith is the substance.
It’s a powerful process. How you use it will
literally determine your destiny.
There is, however, one thing you need
to know: Destiny is not built overnight. It’s
not what you thought once or twice that
got you where you are today. It’s what
you’ve thought over and over again. Those
inner images are created by repetition, and
repetition takes time.
I remember how long it took me to start
seeing myself with my needs met according to
God’s riches in glory by Christ Jesus. The outside
of me kept saying I was broke. It said, “You
will live in this shack all your life, boy. There’s
no way you can ever get out of here.”
But I started meditating on the Word of
God. I practiced thinking about myself God’s
way. It wasn’t easy at first. It felt awkward
and unnatural. But that’s how you feel when
you do something new.
That’s how I felt the first time I tried to
fly an airplane. During those first few hours,
that thing was a monster. When I tried to
land it, I hit the nose gear on the ground first
and bounced the thing like it was a basketball.
Then the next time I landed it, I kept the
nose too high and fell several feet, slamming
into the ground. I couldn’t find the ground.
But now, after more than 10,000 hours and
more than 40 years of flying, I don’t feel
awkward anymore.
That’s exactly how you learn to operate in
the things of God. You practice. You get into
the Word and you meditate on it until the Word
begins to change your inner image of yourself
and you begin to see yourself with your needs
met instead of without. You begin to see yourself
in Christ Jesus. You think about it. You talk
about it. You start believing in God’s promises
and acting on them.
“But what if I fail?”
So what if you do? Don’t call it a failure.
Just get up and go after it again. Learn some
more, and learn some more. Work at it.
Determine to develop inside you the hope of
the gospel.
Just remember, this isn’t something that
happens in a day or two. It takes time. Before
I came to Jesus in 1962, I was one of the
most efficient sinners you ever saw. I could
sin without even thinking about it. When I
got into the things of God and started trying
to turn that around, it wasn’t easy to do. It
didn’t take much of anything for Satan to
knock me off course.
But over the last 46 years you might say
I’ve had a lot of Holy Ghost flying lessons.
I’ve done a lot of spiritual bouncing and slamming,
but I’ve learned a lot, too. Some of the
things Satan used years ago to knock me off
balance won’t even get to first base with me
now. So be diligent. Stay with it. It will pay
off if you don’t give up.
The Bible solemnly says, “Where there is
no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18).
That’s how important it is for you to get a
grip on God’s blueprint for your life.
It’s not an option. It’s an absolute necessity,
because like it or not, your hope, your vision,
that inner image inside you, is determining
your destiny—for better, for worse...forever.