The Apostle Paul refers to the spirit of
faith in 2 Corinthians 4:13 saying, “We having
the same spirit of faith, according as it is written,
I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also
believe, and therefore speak.”

The spirit of faith speaks! It calls things
that be not as though they were. It makes
faith confessions—not because it’s “supposed
to” or out of desperation, but because it’s so
full of eager anticipation and confident
expectation it can’t keep its mouth shut!

The spirit of faith says, “I don’t care what
God has to do, He’ll turn the world upside
down if He has to, but He will change this
situation for me.”

Every time I talk about the spirit of faith,
I think about my high school football team.
For years, the teams from that school had
been losing teams. But something happened
to the bunch on my team. A spirit of winning
got into them.

When we were sophomores, we were on the
B squad. We were the nothings. But somehow
we got the idea that we could win. Every year
the B squad would have to scrimmage the
varsity team, and usually the varsity just beat
the daylights out of the sophomores.

But the year our B squad played them,
that changed. We didn’t just beat them, we
had them down by several touchdowns, just
daring them to get the ball, when the coach
called off the game. He was so mad at the
varsity team, he didn’t even let us finish.
What happened to that little B squad?

We reached the point where we expected to
win. We had an inner image of ourselves as
winners, and it eventually took the best team
in the state to beat us.

The same thing happened to Gloria and
me in 1967 when we went into the ministry.
We began to have an inner image of preaching
the Word of God to thousands upon
thousands of people. It was 10 years before
we could gather up more than a handful of
them at a time for one service, but we didn’t
let that stop us.

We saw the thousands in our heart and
in our mind and we just kept our necks stuck
out—in more ways than one—expecting God
to bring the people. Sure enough, He did.

Of course, there were some hard times.
Times when people stayed away from our
meetings by the millions. Times when I
preached to 17 people with the same intensity
that I would preach to 6,000.

That’s what hope does. It keeps you
intensely focused on God’s promise. It keeps
you seeing that promise on the inside, even
when you can’t see it on the outside. It keeps
you operating by the spirit of faith.

When you have hope, the devil can’t beat
you down. He can’t tear you down. He can’t
stop your faith from working. Everyone
around you can just stop in their tracks, but
you’ll keep right on going.

When the devil knocks you down, you
just get up with a deeper resolve to hit him
harder the next time...and harder the next
time...and harder the next time.

You get to the point where you expect
God to move with such vigor that all the
distractions in the world can’t turn your
head. All the failures of the past drift into
nothingness. You can’t even remember them
anymore because you’re so absorbed with the
expectation of what God is about to do.

When that happens, you no longer sit
around wondering what went wrong. You
blast off into the glory of God, laying hold
of His promises and watching your dreams
come true. You live the kind of life that those
who give up hope will never know.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries