Kenneth Copeland — What’s in Your Heart? Part 2
The great thing about your heart account is that, unlike your bank account, there’s no limit to the amount you can put into it. You might run out of money to deposit, but you’ll never run out of Word. You can put in as much as you want.
Of course, it takes time to make those deposits, but you’re the one who decides how much time you’re going to spend in the Word. It’s entirely up to you!
Some people are hesitant to spend great amounts of time putting the Word about healing in their hearts because they think their investment might not pay off. They think they might make sacrifices to attend to the Word and end up sick anyway. But Galatians 6:7-9 puts such concerns to rest:
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in welldoing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
This is the unchangeable law of God. Whatever you sow is what you will reap. If you sow cotton, you won’t reap peanuts. If you sow peanuts, you won’t reap doughnuts. If you steadfastly sow the Word of Life into the soil of your heart, you won’t end up with sickness and death. You’ll end up with a harvest of divine health. The New Testament in Modern English by J.B. Phillips says, “A man’s harvest in life will depend entirely on what he sows” (Galatians 6:7).
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Kenneth Copeland — What’s in Your Heart? Part 1
“I’d have no problem at all believing God’s Word would heal me if He’d spoken to me out loud like He spoke out loud in Genesis,” you might say. “But He hasn’t!”
No, and He probably won’t either. God no longer has to thunder His Word down at us from heaven. These days He lives in the hearts of believers, so He speaks to us from the inside instead of the outside. What’s more, when it comes to covenant issues like healing, we don’t even have to wait on Him to speak.
He has already spoken!
He has already said, “By [Jesus’] stripes ye were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). He has already said, “I am the Lord that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26). He has already said, “the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up” (James 5:15).
God has already done His part. So we must do ours. We must take the Word He has spoken, put it inside us and let it change us from the inside out.
You see, everything (including healing) starts inside you. Your future is literally stored up in your heart. As Jesus said, “A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things” (Matthew 12:35).
That means if you want external conditions to be better tomorrow, you’d better start changing your internal condition today. You’d better start depositing the Word of God in your heart just like you deposit money in the bank. Then you can make withdrawals on it whenever you need it. When sickness attacks your body, you can tap into the healing Word you’ve put inside you and run that sickness off!
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Gloria Copeland — Count It All Joy
The Word tells us to “count it all joy when
we fall into divers temptations” (James 1:2) or,
as the Greek text says, “into different trials
and tribulations.” What does the Word say
about joy? There is a difference between joy and
happiness. Happiness is controlled by the
condition or the comfort of the five physical
senses. Joy is not. The Bible says that joy is a
fruit of the spirit. It is a spiritual force—it is
born inside the human heart. We read in
Nehemiah 8:10 that the joy of the Lord is
our strength, so we can count it strength
when these trials and tribulations come our
way. Don’t count it defeat—count it strength!
Don’t count it negative—count it affirmative!
Jesus said, “Ask, and ye shall receive, that your
joy may be full” (John 16:24). Count it
answered prayer.
To count it all joy does not mean that you
are to thank God because your child is sick.
Let’s look at a portion of the Scripture here
that is often misunderstood.
Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing.
In every thing give thanks: for this
is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning
you. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)
Some of us have read this verse and
thought, “The will of God is for me to give
thanks for everything.” That is not true. That
thing or circumstance
is not the will of God for you—giving
thanks is the will of God. When
you praise God and give Him thanks in the
midst of your situation, you step under the
protective umbrella of the will of God. You
may not know what the Word says about
your particular situation, but the Word does
say to give thanks. Then, while you are under
that protective umbrella, Satan can’t touch you.
You may ask, “How do you count it all joy, Sister
Copeland?” I had a good opportunity to do this one
night when my little daughter had a high
fever. I went into her room, laid hands on
her and prayed, “Father, in the Name of
Jesus, I count it all joy to prove once again
that the Word is real and filled with power.
I’m a faith man, and I’m not moved by what
I see. I’m turning her over to You, and I
believe that You will take care of her in Jesus’
Name. Now, I just praise You and thank You
for her healing.” I didn’t praise God for her
fever because it wasn’t hers and God didn’t
give it to her. Jesus bore her sickness and
disease. If it belonged to anyone, it belonged
to Satan, who was trying to put it on her.
I have accepted Calvary as the sacrifice
that paid the price for my total redemption—
from sin, sickness, poverty, and death. I
believe that and I stand on it. I have certain
rights, called righteousness, in the kingdom
of God and one of these is the right to a
healthy body. Jesus has provided it for me,
and I take hold of it with my faith.
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Kenneth Copeland — Religion Doesn’t Help You, Faith Does
I’ve heard people say, “Well, look what God
did to Job!” What did God do to Job? He built a
hedge around him and blessed him with abundance.
At the end of the book of James, the
Word says that God was full of pity and mercy
in His dealings with Job.
For years now, we’ve read about Job and
have blamed God for Job’s situation, thinking
that God commissioned Satan to attack Job.
That’s not true! In Job 1, Satan came to God
and said, “Put your hand against Job, and he
will curse you.” He tried to get God to do it,
but God would not. He said, “Behold [look and
see], he is in your power.” Job was already in
Satan’s power by letting that hedge fall from
around him. He quit acting in faith, began
operating in fear, and that protective hedge fell.
Then he was vulnerable to Satan’s attack. The
sacrifices he made were not made in faith. The
Word says he made the same ones continually
(Job 1:5). He lost everything he had. Job didn’t
have the written Word of God to act on like you
and I do today. He said, “That which I have so
greatly feared has come upon me” (Job 3:25).
Then he began by trial and error to figure a
way to get back his faith again. He tried crying
about it, he tried cutting and hurting himself,
he sat down in the ashes—none of this did him
any good at all. Satan sent him some very religious
men, and they certainly didn’t help him!
They were the ones that said God had done it.
God Himself told these men, however, that
they had not spoken of Him rightly.
But the very moment Job moved back in
faith by praying for those men, he moved
back on the Word of God and God replaced
double everything he had lost. When Job
began operating in faith once again, his
deliverance was instantaneous.
We need to preach this instead of identifying
with Job’s sickness and failure. People say,
“Well, I’m just like poor old Job.” We’ll, if
you’re going to be like Job, then you will have
to get healed and delivered. Job wasn’t poor
either—he was the richest man in the East
when this began and then God doubled that!
All God has ever done and all He has ever said
has been deliverance, freedom and power for
His people.
I refuse to believe that my heavenly Father
would hurt me, even though I may not know
all the circumstances. It may look as
though He is behind it, but I refuse to fall for
that. I know He sent His Son to die for me, so
I’m not going to hesitate for one moment and
give Satan the opportunity to move in on me.
Trouble-preaching—being trouble-centered
and trouble-minded instead of being victoryminded—
will give Satan just the moment’s hesitation
he needs to defeat you.
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Gloria Copeland — The Word Is Our Correction
Now there are times when a situation looks
as if God is behind it. It may have all the
symptoms pointing to that. But Satan is a
deceiver; he wants you to think God did it.
If he can get you to go against God, he’ll
run rampant over you. The religious idea
that God chastises His own with sickness
and disease and poverty is the very thing
that has caused the Church to go 1,500 years
without the knowledge of the Holy Spirit or
the gifts of the Spirit.
We just became so passive, and double-minded
that the whole Church was schizophrenic,
except for a few men here and there who
refused to believe it—and most of them were
kicked out of their churches.
Now let’s look at this a little closer. “For
whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and
scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”
The word scourge means “to beat on.” God
is the Father of spirits. He doesn’t scourge the flesh, He
scourges the inner man. How does He do this? With His Word.
Every Scripture is God-breathed
(given by His inspiration) and profitable
for instruction, for reproof and conviction
of sin, for correction of error and discipline
in obedience, and for training in
righteousness, So that the man of God
may be complete and proficient, well-fitted
and thoroughly equipped for every
good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17, AMP)
The Lord chastises His own with the
Scriptures. Put yourself in subjection to the
Word. The Sword of the Spirit is two-edged—
one side is for Satan and the other side is for
you. It trims away the flesh and the lusts, and it
sanctifies us.
I’ll show you some examples of this. The
Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 7:8-9:
For though I made you sorry with a
letter, I do not repent, though I did
repent: for I perceive that the same epistle
hath made you sorry, though it were
but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that
ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed
to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a
godly manner.
This is the way in which God convicts, brings
repentance, chastens, and scourges us—with
His Word! He sent His Word to the church at
Corinth, and it hurt so badly that they would
have preferred being beaten with a stick!
They knew how to handle sickness and
disease, but when God reprimanded them with
His Word, it cut deep into their spirits and they
were sorry. Proverbs 17:10, The Amplified Bible,
says, “A reproof enters deeper into a man of understanding
than a hundred lashes into a [selfconfident]
fool.”