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.”
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Gloria Copeland — How Does God Correct?
We have seen that the word chastisement
means “punishment by inflicting pain” and
that Jesus bore our chastisement, or our punishment,
with pain on the cross.
The Greek word translated chastise in the
New Testament actually means “to instruct or
to train.” The question often arises, “How does
God chastise His own?”
How does God instruct and train us? Does
He unleash His bad dog to bite us on the leg,
so we will learn to wear our boots? No, He
does not!
For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,
and scourgeth every son whom
he receiveth. If ye endure chastening,
God dealeth with you as with sons; for
what son is he whom the father chasteneth
not? But if ye be without chastisement,
whereof all are partakers, then are
ye bastards, and not sons.
Furthermore we have had fathers of
our flesh which corrected us, and we
gave them reverence: shall we not much
rather be in subjection unto the Father
of spirits, and live? (Hebrews 12:6-9)
Jesus said, “That which is born of the flesh is
flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”
(John 3:6). Our fleshly fathers correct us in the
flesh, but God is a spirit and He uses spiritual
tools, not carnal tools. He uses spiritual
weapons, not carnal weapons. Jesus said, “My
words are spirit.” He chastises with His words.
“For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.”
A loving God doesn’t send tornadoes or cancer
to His children. God never told me not to pray
for someone’s healing because He had put sickness
on them. Jesus said, “If you’ve seen Me,
you’ve seen the Father” (John 14:9). He never
told a leper that he would have to keep leprosy
so God could teach him something. The Word
says in Acts 10:38, “God anointed Jesus of
Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power:
who went about doing good, and healing all that
were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.”
God did these things through Jesus. God is not
double-minded—He is single-minded.
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Kenneth Copeland — Who Is Your Enemy? Part 1
Trouble seems to be as much of a part of life as
breathing. Everyone has trouble at some point in
his or her life. And human nature always wants
to place the blame for its trouble on someone
else. That started in the Garden of Eden. As soon
as Adam had to explain his disobedience to God,
he pointed the finger to his wife! When God
said, “Adam, have you eaten from the forbidden
tree?” Adam replied, “The woman that You gave
me, she gave me of the tree and I ate! It wasn’t
my idea!” (The paraphrasing is mine.)
When trouble arises, the most natural thing
to do is to place the blame for it on someone or
something. Sadly, for the most part, many
Christians have been falsely accusing God of
being the cause of their troubles. This is the
number one deception sown in the Church
today—that our problems, our trials and our
temptations are sent by God to teach us. This
lie says that trials and tribulations are God’s
tools of developing and strengthening our character.
The very extreme end of this deception is
that God Himself is the author of our troubles
or that God is the One Who makes us sick in order to
teach us something.
This is absolutely against the Word of God. Why?
Because the very basic principle of the Christian
life is to know that God put our sin,
sickness, disease, sorrow, grief
and poverty on Jesus at Calvary. For God to put
any of this on us now to teach us or to strengthen
our faith would be a miscarriage of justice. To
believe that God has a purpose for your sickness
would mean that Jesus bore your sicknesses
in vain. What an insult to His love and care and
compassion toward you!
In order to place blame where blame is due,
believers need a fresh revelation of who is our
true source of trouble. The only way we will
receive this revelation is by rightly dividing the
Word of Truth. James 1:8 says that a doubleminded
man is unstable in all his ways. Jesus
said in Luke 11:17 that a house divided against
itself will fall. Therefore, if a man thinks, imagines,
assumes or in any way has the idea that
God is behind his trouble—either by permission
or commission—he will never resist it.
And if he does not resist it, then he will certainly
fail, because his hesitation will give Satan
just the edge he needs to defeat him.
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Gloria Copeland — What Did You Say?
Isaiah 55:11 says the Word of God
prospers (or succeeds) in the thing for
which it is sent. That means His Word
about healing will produce healing. It
may not produce it right away, but the
more you let the Word work in you, the
greater your results will be.
In other words, the size of your
harvest will depend on how much
seed you plant. How much time and
attention you give to the Word of God
will determine how much crop you
will yield.
You see, your heart is actually your
spirit. Its capacity is unlimited. You can
plant as much seed in your heart as
you have hours in a day.
If you’ll build your life around the
Word, you can have a full return.
Jesus called it a hundredfold return
(Mark 4:20).
Now some people will argue about
that. They’ll say, “Well, it didn’t work for
me! I put God’s Word about healing into
my heart and I’m still sick!”
But these people give themselves away
the minute they say such things. Jesus
taught, “…of the abundance of the heart
his mouth speaketh” (Luke 6:45). If those
people had actually planted God’s Word
in their hearts in abundance, they’d
be talking about healing, not sickness!
They would be saying, “By His stripes I
am healed!”
The same is true for you. The more
you put God’s Word in your heart, the
stronger you’ll become. Eventually
that Word inside you will begin to
come out of your mouth in power
and deliverance.
Don’t wait until you have a need to
start speaking the Word. Start speaking
it now.
I’ll never forget the first time I realized
the importance of speaking
God’s Word. It was years ago when
Ken had just started preaching
and I was staying at home with our
children. We were in a desperate
situation financially and I was eager
for answers.
One day as I was sitting at my typewriter,
typing notes and listening to tapes,
I read Mark 11:23. “For verily I say unto
you, That whosoever shall say unto this
mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou
cast into the sea; and shall not doubt
in his heart, but shall believe that those
things which he saith shall come to pass;
he shall have whatsoever he saith.”
Suddenly, the truth of that last
phrase just jumped out at me. And the
Lord spoke to my heart and said, In
consistency lies the power.
He was telling me it’s not just the
words you speak when you pray that
change things, it’s the words you
speak all the time!
If you want to see your desire come
to pass, you need to make your words
match your prayers. Don’t try to pray
in faith and then get up and talk in
unbelief. Talk faith all the time!
Romans 4:17 says God “…calleth those
things which be not as though they
were.” So if you want to receive something
from God, follow His example.
Speak it. That’s the way faith works. You
speak the Word of God concerning what
you want to happen.
If what you’re looking for is health,
then go to the Word that tells you,
“By His stripes you were healed,” and
put that in your mouth. Don’t talk
sickness. Talk health. Don’t talk the
problem. Talk the answer.
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Kenneth Copeland — No Third Story on a Vacant Lot Part 1
Once you understand God’s will
really is for you to live in divine health,
you can’t help but question why so
many believers live sick. It seems puzzling
at first. But the answer is very
simple. Many of them just aren’t
willing to do what it takes to be well.
People want to be well. No one wants
to be sick. But to be well, you have to
make choices. How often have you seen
someone with a hacking cough still
smoking a cigarette? Or an overweight
person eating an ice cream cone?
Our fleshly nature likes to take the
easy way. And it’s much easier to give in
to habits than to break them. It’s easier
to give in to your flesh and watch television
every night like the rest of the
world, than to spend your time putting
God’s healing Word into your heart.
I recently heard Charles Capps say
that some people try to build the third
story of a building on a vacant lot. That
sounds funny, but spiritually speaking
it’s true. A lot of people want to enjoy
the benefits of healing without building
the foundation for it from the Word
of God.
It can’t be done. To construct a building,
you have to start below ground
level. If you want a harvest, you’re
going to have to plant something first.
Everything in the natural world works
that way. I call it the law of genesis.
This law of planting and reaping works
in the spirit realm too. It governs health
and prosperity—in fact, everything in
God’s kingdom is governed by the law
of planting and reaping.