Kenneth Copeland — God’s Wisdom Is His Word
Do you want to know the thoughts of
God? Do you want to know the wisdom of
God? Well, go get your Bible, open it up, and
read it!
If you’re holding a Bible, you have God’s
wisdom right there in your hand.
About 20 years ago I was driving down
the highway pleading with God. I had some
questions I wanted to ask Him. I had some
problems in my life I needed Him to address.
“Oh, God,” I said, “You spoke to Moses face
to face. You spoke to Elijah. You spoke to
Elisha. You spoke to Joshua. I want You to
talk to me so badly I can hardly stand it.”
Suddenly, right on the inside of me I
heard His voice. Why, Kenneth, He said, you
have a record of everything I said to Moses.
You have a record of everything I said to
Joshua. You have everything I said to Elijah
and Elisha. You have everything I said to Daniel
and Jesus. It’s lying right next to you on the
seat of your car.
I looked over and there was my Bible.
I’ll tell you, I shouted. “Praise God! Praise
God! Praise God!”
I pulled over to the side of the road and
shouted and wept with joy. I was driving an
old car that had more than 98,000 miles on
it (actually, it had 98,000 miles on it when
I got it!) and it was leaking at every joint.
At that moment, I realized that the new car
I so desperately needed was laying right there
on the seat next to me.
The wisdom of God—all it would take
for me to have that car—was right there. The
wisdom of the ages was at my fingertips and
I could read every word of it and stand on
every word of it.
You can, too. But first, you have to be
willing to forsake your old ways of thinking.
“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous
man his thoughts” (Isaiah 55:7). Do you
know what wicked means? It means “twisted.”
Twisted thoughts produce twisted results.
Poor thinking produces poverty. Sick thinking
produces sickness. You can’t hold onto those kinds
of thoughts and walk in the power of God.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord”
(Isaiah 55:8). Let’s face it. God is just plain
smarter than we are. He’s been around a lot
longer—and what He thinks is a whole lot
different than what we’ve been thinking.
So let the Word of God, the wisdom of
God, begin to influence your thinking. Soak
your mind in it. Don’t just scan it lightly. Dig
in it. Learn it. Take it seriously.
Then begin to pray in the spirit. Let the
Spirit of God start a process of spiritual insight
in your heart as you pray and worship in the
spirit. After a while, you’ll begin to understand
things in a new way. You’ll begin to have a
whole new interpretation of the problem.
You may suddenly have a realization, a
deep conviction, an inner knowing.
Someone may call you on the telephone
and say, “I just got a word from the Lord
this morning and I’m so excited about it....”
And what they say is exactly what you need
to hear.
However you get it, remember—wisdom
is the principal thing. God’s way of thinking
will save your life, pull you out of debt and
put you on the road to prosperity. It will
introduce you to possibilities you have never
seen before. They’re out there now...just
beyond your thinking.
So quit focusing on your seemingly hopeless
situation, get your Bible out, and say—just
like the leper—“Why sit we here till we die?”
Then get moving. God’s Word, full of
abundance, is just waiting for you!
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Kenneth Copeland — God’s Riches in Glory
Let me give you an example: You’ve
prayed for your son or daughter to be set
free from a drug habit. You can get such a
clear picture of what that child will be like
after he has been delivered, that he starts
looking great to you now—even though he
still may be giving you trouble!
You’ll actually get to the point where you
won’t see what a louse he or she is being
right now because you’ve seen him in Jesus
with the eyes of your spirit. People will say,
“I don’t know what she sees in that child.”
They won’t understand that you’re looking
at him through eyes filled with hope.
If you’ll continue to look at him that way
and not let the devil shake you, if you’ll
refuse to jump up in that child’s face and tell
him what a sorry thing he is, one of these
days that child of yours will look on the
outside just like you see him on the inside.
He’ll be delivered!
No doubt about it, that kind of hope is
strong spiritual stuff! Where do you go to
get it?
You go to the same place you go to get
faith—the Word of God. You bathe your
brain in that Word every day. You think
about it all the time, wherever you are and
whatever you are doing.
You keep your faith tapes going. You
keep someone preaching to you all the time.
Because as you keep feeding your spirit on
God’s Word, hope will begin to rise up. God’s
pictures will start to develop in your spirit.
You’ll begin to see them on the inside of you.
In fact, they’ll get bigger inside you than the
circumstances around you.
Then, when the devil comes and tries to
show you an image of some beaten-up, run-down
person wearing your name, you’ll just send
him packing. You’ll shake your head and say,
“No sir, that’s not a picture of me. This is a
picture of me...” and you’ll start talking the
Word of God!
As you meditate on those inner pictures
hope has painted with God’s Word, you’ll
begin to believe you are what the Word of
God says you are. You’ll begin to realize
you’re not what the world says you are.
You’re not what your parents or your friends
say you are. You’re not even what you think
you are. You are what GOD says you are!
You’re the righteousness of God in Christ
Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:21)!
When the devil comes at you with his
junk, you’ll reach in, get out that picture
hope has given you, and put it in front of
your eyes. You’ll say, “Devil, I’m not looking
at you. That sick, poverty-stricken, failure bound
person you’re describing isn’t me. This
is me. I’m the fellow with the healed body.
I’m the fellow with all my needs met according
to God’s riches in glory. I’m the fellow
who is more than a conqueror in Jesus!”
Power pictures. That’s what hope
produces. Inner pictures faith can build on.
But you need to understand, these are not
instant photos. The development of hope
takes time.
For instance, when I discovered healing,
I didn’t have any trouble with it. I could
easily see that if God made a body, He could
certainly fix it. That seemed obvious. But I
had a difficult time seeing how God could
ever fix my financial problems. I couldn’t see
the prosperity picture clearly at all.
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Kenneth Copeland — Get Another Load
The reason we haven’t seen more of that
kind of thing is that until recently, the Body
of Christ has put very little emphasis on joy.
There was even a time when we thought the
more grief-stricken you were during church,
the more spiritual you were.
There is nothing further from the truth.
God is full of joy. Jesus is a man of joy. So
if we’re going to follow after Him, we’ll have
to be full of joy too!
Joy used to be my weakest area, spiritually.
I spent so much time majoring on faith that
I didn’t pay much attention to it. But the
Lord eventually taught me that you can’t live
by faith without joy.
That’s because it takes strength to live by
faith. We’re surrounded by a world that is
flowing toward death. The natural pull of it
is always negative. When you leave things
alone and don’t work against that negative
flow, they always get worse—not better. If
you leave a garden unattended, it dies for
lack of water or gets taken over by weeds.
If you leave a house unattended, the paint
peels off and the boards begin to rot.
To move toward life you must constantly
swim upstream. If you ever get too weak
spiritually to do that, you’ll find yourself
being swept back toward sickness, lack or
some other form of defeat. So you can never
afford to run out of strength.
No wonder the Apostle Paul wrote,
“Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say,
Rejoice” (Philippians 4:4)! To rejoice means
to re-joy, to back up your spiritual truck and
get another load of it.
Paul understood the link between joy and
strength. That’s why he prayed for the
Colossians to be “strengthened with all might,
according to [God’s] glorious power, unto all
patience and longsuffering with joyfulness”
(Colossians 1:11). If you were to diagram that
sentence and take out the intervening phrases,
you would find it actually says we are strengthened
with all might with joyfulness!
Paul reaffirmed what was true in
Nehemiah’s day under the Old Covenant is
still true today under the New Covenant. The
joy of the Lord is our strength!
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Kenneth Copeland — From Galatians to the Garage
Religion might have tried to explain the
absence of those blessings in my life by telling
me God made those promises to the Israelite
nation, not to me. But I had already found
out from Galatians 3:29 that everything God
promised Abraham belongs to the gentiles
now through Christ Jesus. For “if ye be
Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs
according to the promise.”
No, there was no doubt in my mind that
these blessings were legally mine. The only
question I had was, “How can I get my hands
on them?”
As I dug into the Word, I found the
answer. To enjoy the blessings of Abraham,
I was going to have to walk in the same kind
of faith he did.
Now, as in Abraham’s day, faith opens
the door to God’s promises. To me, that was
good news.
Not everyone sees it that way, however.
Some people want the blessings without
having to walk by faith. But like it or not,
that’s just not the way things work.
“Well,” you say, “I wish they did!”
No, you really don’t. God didn’t set up
the system of faith and prayer in order to
make things difficult for you. He did it because
Satan and his crew are always trying to steal
our blessings. God’s system is designed to keep
them from pilfering our inheritance.
That’s not hard to understand. After all, we
protect things of value, even in the natural world.
Think about how your bank works, for example.
You have money deposited there. You know it
belongs to you. But if you want to receive it,
there are some things you have to do.
Why is that? It’s certainly not to keep
you from getting your own money—it’s to
keep other people from getting it. The pro-
cedures are for your benefit.
Of course, if you want to, you can ignore
the procedures. You can go into the bank and
squall and cry, beg, plead and jump up and
down, but if you don’t follow the established
procedures, you won’t get your money.
In that same way, God’s promises belong
to you. They’re locked up in the spiritual
treasure house of Almighty God. To access
them, you’ll have to take the time to learn
the procedures. You’ll have to study God’s
Word and discover His ways.
My willingness and even eagerness to do
that was about all I had going for me back
there in those early days, but it was enough.
I was so desperate to learn faith that I locked
myself in my garage with some tapes of
Kenneth E. Hagin’s messages about our
inheritance in Christ Jesus.
For a week, I didn’t talk to anyone else;
I didn’t listen to anyone else. I just went out
there with the garbage, my Bible and my tape
recorder. I told Gloria, “Don’t call me more
than once for a meal. If I don’t show up in
five minutes, go ahead and eat without me.
I’ll come in and sleep when I’m ready and
then I’m coming right back out here. If
anybody calls me, I’m not available.”
I stayed out there with those tapes hour
after hour. I couldn’t get enough of the Word
of God.
I’m the same way today. I can’t get enough
of it. I don’t care what else is going on in the
world, I’m going to stick with the Word. It
brought me out of debt. It healed me. It healed
my children. It has taken me through everything
that has ever come my way, and I’m not
about to turn loose of it now.
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Kenneth Copeland — Forward…or Back
What exactly did God instruct Joshua to do?
Be thou strong and very courageous,
that thou mayest observe to do
according to all the law, which Moses
my servant commanded thee: turn not
from it to the right hand or to the left,
that thou mayest prosper whithersoever
thou goest. This book of the law shall
not depart out of thy mouth; but thou
shalt meditate therein day and night,
that thou mayest observe to do
according to all that is written therein:
for then thou shalt make thy way
prosperous, and then thou shalt have
good success. Have not I commanded
thee? Be strong and of a good courage;
be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed:
for the Lord thy God is with thee
whithersoever thou goest (verses 7-9).
Just like Joshua, if you meditate on the
Word of God, if you believe it and obey it,
you’re a candidate for a miracle today. You may
feel like you’re in the desert, but you’re standing
on the boundary of the Promised Land.
The only question is: Will you go forward...
or will you turn back?
The devil is going to try to convince you
to turn back. He’s going to work to distract
you from the Word of God and scare you
into settling for a nice life in the desert.
But listen to me. You may build 100
churches in the desert. You may draw water
out of the Jordan, cultivate the dry land and
think you’ve found heaven. But you’ll be
mistaken. Don’t live in the desert in a church
with a cultivated yard! You’ll be outside of
the will of God. He wants you in the
Promised Land.
“But, Brother Jesse, it would take a
miracle to get me past all these problems I
have and into the Promised Land.”
No problem! You’re a candidate for a
miracle!
Well, then, you may wonder, why am I
having such a hard time receiving one? Because
you remember too well that fallen state you
were in before God saved you.
Most Christians have that problem. That’s
why they have difficulty believing God will
work a miracle for them. They believe, for
instance, that God will heal...but they’re not
sure He will heal them!
But it’s time we change that kind of
thinking. We need to quit dwelling on that
old, fallen state and focus instead on the fact
that God has made us His righteousness in
Christ Jesus! We are in Him!
Sometimes I speak so boldly, it makes
people mad. They say, “Who do you think
you are?!” I ask them, “How much time do
you have? It would take me a long time to
tell you who I am because I’d have to tell
you everything Jesus is. I’m in Him!”