kcmblogsite, Author at KCM Blog

Will You Dare to Take Your Place?

Posted on February 2, 2016 - 6:01 pm by kcmblogsite

by Kenneth Copeland

I have a message for you today directly from the heart of God. It is a message that captures the very purpose of Calvary. And yet, it is one of the most difficult messages of all for Christian people to believe.

If you’ll dare to receive it, however, to meditate on it and to act on it, it will radically alter your life. It will take you from religion to reality.

What is this message God has given me? It is this:

Tell My people they are everything to Me that Jesus is.

Those are the exact words that the Lord used when He spoke to me. They are powerful words, words that will send a shiver of excitement up the spiritual spine of any Christian who’s bold enough to believe them. The message they convey is not new. It is as old as the gospel itself. In fact, once you begin to understand it, you’ll see that it’s actually the very centerpiece of the gospel!

The Apostle Paul preached this very message again and again throughout the New Testament. In 2 Corinthians 5:21, for example, he put it this way: “For [God] hath made [Jesus] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” And he drove the point home again in Romans 8:17 by calling us “joint-heirs” with Jesus!

Although most of us are familiar with those statements that Paul made, very few of us have let the truth of them sink in. Few of us have actually believed them. We’ve uplifted Jesus. We’ve exalted Him—and rightly so! But at the same time, we’ve unwittingly belittled what He did by not allowing Him to bring us alongside Him.

We’ve insisted that we’re nothing more than “just old sinners saved by grace.” We were taught cowardice in the name of humility so we’ve adopted an attitude of false humility that has kept us groveling around in the spiritual dirt. Yet according to Ephesians 2:6, God has “raised us up together with [Jesus] and made us sit down together [giving us joint seating with Him]…” (The Amplified Bible).

That was God’s purpose at Calvary: to bring us alongside Jesus. To make us what He already was.

You see, Jesus didn’t need exalting. He was exalted before He ever came to this earth. He was already one with the Father. He didn’t need to get authority over the devil—He never lost it!

What would He have needed with a physical body? Why would He want to take on something He’d have to feed and clothe and drag around everywhere He went? What did He need with all those limitations?

He didn’t need them! He took them on for us!

He put on a physical body so that He could come to earth as a man and gain authority over sin and sickness, demons, fear, poverty and all the other curses that came when the law of death moved into the earth—and He did it. He succeeded! He mastered everything in the spirit world, everything in the world of the intellect, everything in the physical world.

Before He ascended He said, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18, New King James Version). Then in Mark 16:15-18, He told His disciples:

Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

By giving us His mighty Name He gave us His authority. You and I are the reason Jesus came to earth, died and lived again. He didn’t do it for Himself. He did it so He could bring us alongside, so we could wear His Name and wield His authority on the earth. He did it so that we could stand before God and be everything to Him that Jesus is.

Now let me make a qualifying statement right here. Even though you’re everything to God that Jesus is, you need to remember that you’re not everything to the Church that Jesus is! He and He alone is Head of the Church. There are a number of folks who have tried to be head of the Church, but they’ve failed because that’s one thing we’ve not been given the authority to be.

Even so, there are two sides to that. Just as He can be the Head and we can’t, there’s something we can be that He can’t—and that’s the Body. According to 1 Corinthians 12:21, the head cannot say to the feet, I have no need of you. So although it’s true that we need Him (God only knows how much we need Him!), it’s also true that He needs us.

For most of us that’s a startling thought. In fact, it’s almost inconceivable because we’ve continually thought of ourselves as helpless nothings, unworthy, inept and, though possibly a tiny bit more righteous than unbelievers, certainly not much more.

Listen to me. When you were born again, you weren’t half-reborn. You weren’t made half-righteous or a quarter righteous. You were made the righteousness of God in Christ! You were made a “joint-heir with Him.”

Jesus went to the cross to give you what He already possessed. He rose again so you could be re-created in His image. You are the victory of Almighty God! You are more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus. You are everything to the Father that Jesus is. John 17:23 actually says God loves you as much as He loves Jesus.

“But Brother Copeland,” you may say, “how could He?”

I don’t know! You’ll have to ask Him. I just know that’s what He said, and I believe it. By faith it’s mine! His victory is my victory because He said it was. If I don’t believe it, then He wasted His time. If I don’t believe it, then Jesus went through hell to win a victory He already had. He didn’t need that victory. I did. He won it to give it to me. The moment I believe it, that victory is mine. Until I do believe it, I don’t have any victory at all.

Once you dare to accept that fact, your life will be forever changed. You’ll no longer be satisfied to just sit around whining and wishing things were different. You’ll want to step up to the position of authority that Jesus has given you, to take your rightful place beside Him and learn to operate the way He does.

As His people, we are everything to God that Jesus is. We are His love in action.

If we’ll receive that message, if we’ll dare to believe it, if we’ll dare to put it into action—the world will never be the same again!

You’re BLESSED to Change Your World

Posted on January 27, 2016 - 5:50 pm by kcmblogsite

by Kenneth Copeland

Have you ever been afraid of God’s will for your life?

For most believers, the honest answer to that question is yes. At one time or another, they’ve worried that God might ask them to spend their lives serving Him in some dark, barren place—as a missionary to a poverty-ridden village in Africa, for example, or preaching the gospel in some gang-infested inner city, or working in a sin-filled office surrounded by spiritual darkness.

I just don’t think I could take that kind of life! you might think. I love the Lord and desire to please Him, but I’m just not cut out to live in those kinds of conditions.

No, you’re not.

I’m not either.

Neither is any other born-again child of God.

“Oh, Brother Copeland, I just don’t know how you can say such a thing!” someone might argue. “God needs believers who are willing to go to places like that. He needs witnesses to take the light of the gospel into the darkest spots on earth.”

Sure He does. But when God sends a believer to such a place, He doesn’t expect him to live in those darkened conditions—He expects him to change them. He expects us to overcome the darkness with the light.

That’s what light is designed to do. It’s made to illuminate the area around it. That’s true of natural light and it’s true of the spiritual light of God. If we’ll walk in that light, it will fill the circumstances and conditions around us with the glory of God so we’re surrounded with blessing wherever we go.

No matter how dark the conditions around us, “The Light shines on in the darkness, for the darkness has never overpowered it” (John 1:5, The Amplified Bible).

Living Like the Early Apostles

The first few chapters of Acts reveal just how true that is. There we find the apostles pouring out of the upper room on the day of Pentecost, ablaze with the fire of God and facing folks so hardhearted that just a few weeks earlier they’d been in favor of crucifying Jesus. Talk about a tough mission field! The devil had been having great success with that bunch.

But when the light of God shined on them through that first group of Holy Spirit-baptized believers, things changed. Thousands were born again in a single day. Right in the middle of that spiritual darkness, a fellowship of believers sprang up—believers so in love with one another and so excited about giving they wiped out lack from their midst almost overnight (Acts 4:34). God’s healing power flowed among them at such a flood tide, the citizens of the region dragged sick people out into the streets “and they were healed every one” (Acts 5:16).

Within days, those first apostles turned one of the roughest mission fields in history into a veritable Garden of Eden. They brought THE BLESSING of God to that place in such measure it brought forth a church full of people totally in love with Jesus and one another. A church where there was no strife, no lack and no sickness.

“Yeah, but those first apostles had a special calling. They had walked and talked with Jesus.”

That’s true. But, according to 2 Peter 1:1, we can walk in the same measure of faith because we got our faith the same place they got theirs. We have “obtained like precious faith” with them through the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ.

We can also have the same kind of fellowship with Jesus those first apostles had. The Apostle John—a personal friend and disciple of Jesus—assured us of it. He wrote: “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full” (1 John 1:3-4).

I realize it goes crosswise with religious thinking, but in simple terms what John said was this, “If you’ll pay attention to the message I’m about to give you, you can walk in the same place with Jesus that we, as apostles, do. You can live the faith life the same way we live it.”

I don’t know about you but that statement puts me on the edge of my seat. What message could possibly propel us into the kind of power and fellowship with Jesus the first apostles enjoyed?

The next verse gives us the answer: “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (verse 5).

God’s Glory Light: The Ultimate Force

Look again at that last phrase. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

At first glance, you might wonder why John considered that simple statement so vital. What’s so earthshaking about the light of God?

Go back to Genesis 1 and you’ll see.

There, we find the greatest mass of darkness and confusion ever recorded in Scripture. We read about a time when “the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (verse 2). If there had ever been a place too dark and barren for God to bless, this surely would have been it. If God were ever going to throw His hands up and say, “I just can’t change this miserable place,” He would have done it in Genesis.

But He didn’t.

Instead, He said, “Let there be light: and there was light” (verse 3). Or, as the Hebrew text reads, “God said, Light be! And light was.”

People often assume the light referred to in that verse was the sun. But the rest of the chapter reveals God didn’t create the sun until the fourth day. So what kind of light did God speak into existence on the first day? What kind of light carried the power to transform that dark, formless void?

It was the light of God’s glory—the luminous force of His creative power, which is the source of all matter. It was the light that comes from God Himself. Until God released that glory light through His Word, it was on the inside of Him. But once He said, “Light be!” it shot forth from Him at a speed of 186,000 miles a second and began to bring into material manifestation the blueprint of the earth God had within Him.

Let this truth sink in for a moment: Every aspect of creation, every natural material substance that comprises this universe came from the glory light of God. In recent years, science has caught up with the Bible and declared light energy is the ultimate force and source of all material things. And according to John 1:9, that force is “the true Light, which lighteth every man.”

That’s right! When God said, “Let us make man in our image” and “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Genesis 1:26, 2:7), He spoke into mankind the same creative, illuminating glory that brought the earth into manifestation. He energized the spirit of man with the glory light that came from within Him. Then He crowned mankind with that same glory (Psalm 8:5) by blessing them and saying to them: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28).

The Hebrew phrase translated replenish the earth in that verse actually means fill it up. What did God expect mankind to fill the earth with?

With God’s glory. With His light.

God’s blessing empowered Adam and Eve to take the glory light throughout the whole earth. It equipped them to bring everything on the planet under the influence of God’s glory and turn the whole place into a Garden of Eden. But they never fulfilled that commission. They messed things up and fell into sin. As a result, the earth is still waiting for the manifestation of THE BLESSING. It is still begging to be filled with the glory light that is within and upon the sons and daughters of God.

That’s the reason God sends His born-again children—people like you and me—into every dark corner of the world. Not so we can suffer in the darkness for Jesus, but so we can light up the darkness with His glory. He sends us there to bring THE BLESSING and change the most barren places on this planet into little Gardens of Eden.

That’s what THE BLESSING does. It releases the glory light of God that exploded within us when we were born again and puts that light to work in our circumstances and surroundings. It changes them from the curse that came on this world through sin, back to the original plan of God. It empowers us to be fruitful, multiply and fill up the earth with divine glory everywhere we go.

That was, and always will be, the perfect will of God for His people.

God Ain’t About to Change

“But what about the Fall of Man?” you might ask. “Didn’t that change things?”

It changed mankind but it didn’t change God. He is still “the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). In Texas terms that means, He ain’t about to change! He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. What He said first is what He’ll say last. So His blessing is still in effect.

Satan tried to steal it in the Garden of Eden, but God kept it in the earth by making covenant with Abraham and his descendents. He said the same thing to them all—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Daniel and the rest. He said, “I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing” (Genesis 12:2).

Eventually, Jesus came and secured THE BLESSING for the rest of us by going to the cross to redeem “us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles (the rest of us) through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Galatians 3:13-14).

That’s why Jesus is called “the last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45). He got THE BLESSING back and made it available again to all mankind.

He started a whole new race of men and women—born-again believers whose spirits are compacted with enough of the light of God’s creative glory to produce more than any human being could ever need or desire for an eternity. Think about it! Everything that comes from heaven, every earthly substance, is a material manifestation of that glory light, and those of us who have made Jesus our Lord are filled with it. We’re born of it.

Ephesians 5:8 says it this way: “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light.” First Thessalonians 5:5 also calls us “the children of light.”

We haven’t just “seen the light.” We are light. The light of God’s glory is our spiritual DNA!

The first thing the glory light of THE BLESSING does is free us from the bondage of sin. It blasts the sin nature out of our inner man and replaces it with God’s own righteousness. Just as it can be said of God that He is light and in Him is no darkness, it can be said of us that we are light and in us (that is, in our reborn spirit) is no darkness at all.

That doesn’t mean we’ll never again commit a sin. Because we aren’t yet walking in the full revelation of who we are in Christ, sometimes we’ll fall prey to it. But 1 John 1:9 assures us: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

The second thing the glory light of THE BLESSING does is strengthen our bodies. When we release it by faith, it drives sickness out and heals us. There was no sickness in the Garden of Eden so healing is part of THE BLESSING.

THE BLESSING will also drive out poverty. It produced silver and gold in the life of Abraham and it will do the same for us. That’s the job of THE BLESSING.

“Well, I just don’t see how any gold could come to me.”

It’s not your job to see how. It’s your job to believe. It’s your job to walk in love and release the light of God by speaking words of faith just like God did. If you’ll do that, God will get finances to you, and He’ll come by them honestly, so there’s no need for you to worry about how He is going to do it. There was no poverty in the Garden, so prospering in God is part of THE BLESSING.

Put On the Armor of Light

Of course, if we don’t walk in love, we’ll mess up the whole process. We’ll shut down THE BLESSING and end up stumbling around in darkness because: “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:9-11).

When we get into strife and bitterness, when we stop acting in love, it’s like we put on a coat of darkness. We’re still light on the inside, but because that light is covered up, we find ourselves in the dark.

We don’t belong in the dark! We’re not designed to live there. We are light in the Lord.

It’s time we started being aware of that fact and walking “as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8). It’s time we “cast off the works of darkness, and…put on the armour of light” (Romans 13:12).

That’s what our heavenly Father does. Psalm 104:2 says He covers Himself with light as with a garment. He is light inside and out; and He made us to be the same way. He has energized us and made us alive with the light of His creative glory. He has crowned us with that glory by giving us THE BLESSING. He has commissioned us and equipped us to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth with the light force of His glory.

What a privilege! What an opportunity!

When we grasp the fullness of it, we won’t shrink back in fear when we think about God sending us into some dark, barren place. We’ll volunteer for the assignment. We’ll be eager for the chance to charge into it and set it ablaze with the light of God.

We’ll be saying, “Send me there, Lord! I can bring THE BLESSING to that place. I can bring the glory into it.

“Here am I. Send me!”

The True Judgment of God

Posted on January 21, 2016 - 3:50 pm by kcmblogsite

by Kenneth Copeland

There’s no question about it, we have entered the days of judgment.

Don’t let that frighten you, however, because according to the Bible, all judgment is not bad. Judgment can bring blessing and reward just like it can bring destruction and loss. It all depends which side you’re on when judgment comes. If you’re on the side of righteousness, judgment brings rejoicing.

Jesus proved that.

When He was raised from the dead and presented before the throne of God, He was judged righteous and God said to Him: “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows” (Hebrews 1:8-9).

The day Jesus was judged was a joyful day for Him. That was the day He was anointed with more gladness than anybody had ever experienced before!

“Yeah, but Brother Copeland, I’m not Jesus,” you may say. “I’m not perfect like He is. I make mistakes and I’m not too excited about being judged for them.”

I understand that. We’re all in that situation to some degree. But the Bible says if we make Jesus the Lord of our lives, we get in on His judgment. We end up on the side of righteousness—not because we’ve done everything perfectly and haven’t made any mistakes, but because “he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

The High Way or the Hard Way?

That’s what I call shoutin’ ground right there!

As believers, we ought to thank God every day that the most fearsome aspect of God’s judgment has already been settled in our lives. Because we’ve put our trust in Jesus and received His righteousness, our eternal destiny is settled. We’ll never experience the wrath of God. We’ll never know the darkness and torment of eternal separation from Him.

We’re headed for heaven. We’ll spend forever fellowshiping with our heavenly Father and letting Him lavish His grace and kindness on us!

“Well, if that’s the case,” somebody might say, “I guess it doesn’t really matter how I live. If I’ve already been judged righteous with Jesus I’ll get to heaven regardless of what I do on earth.”

You may get to heaven all right, but the question is: do you want to get there on the high way of blessing…or the hard way of disappointment? Do you want to bound joyfully into heaven’s gates having been blessed to be a blessing to multitudes during your lifetime? Or do you want to slip in with nothing but a lifetime of loss?

No doubt you want to get there on the high way of blessing. And you can do it if you’ll just pay attention to God’s Word.

You can do it if you’ll just obey instructions like those in Zechariah 7:9-10 which says: “Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Execute true judgment, and show mercy and compassions every man to his brother: And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart.”

Recently I was reading those verses and the Spirit of God spoke to me so strongly it almost shook me. He said, Obey today or sorrow tomorrow.

I immediately grabbed a pen and wrote that down. I knew it wasn’t just a little cliché. It wasn’t some T-shirt slogan. It was a word from the Lord.

God was telling me that our actions today are the seeds of tomorrow’s harvest. Tomorrow is just waiting to see what we say and do today.

A Speedy Harvest

There’s really nothing new about that fact. The spiritual and natural law of seed-time and harvest has been operating in the earth ever since creation. But right now it’s operating more quickly than it has before.

Why? Because as the Lord said to me at the beginning of this year, we’ve entered the time of overflow, which is also known as the time of harvest or the time of judgment. (Overflow, harvest and judgment are three different words but spiritually they are the same thing.)

Seeds are coming up big-time in 2005—both good and bad. We’re living in days like those Amos was prophesying about when he said: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt” (Amos 9:13).

We’re living in days of judgment when the spiritual seeds we plant come up so fast that the sower, the plowman and the reaper must all walk side by side. In the spirit realm, the ground is so hot right now that if you put a seed in it, the guy next to you is harvesting it as soon as you sow it.

That would be a speedy harvest even if you were planting wheat or corn. It would mean you received at once something that usually took a year to grow. But Amos 9:13 isn’t talking about wheat and corn—it’s referring to grapes. It usually takes at least seven years for a grapevine to produce decent grapes. So this is some supernatural vineyard! It’s producing in an instant the kind of harvest that usually comes only after seven or eight years!

A Time to Be Glad

Only God Himself can bring forth a harvest like that. As John 15:1 says, He is the husbandman or farmer. We can plant and we can water, but only God can give the increase (1 Corinthians 3:6).

What happens when God begins to give that kind of supernatural overflow or harvest of increase?

His people are freed from captivity (Amos 9:14) and the seeds they have planted “…shall be prosperous; the vine shall give her fruit, and the ground shall give her increase, and the heavens shall give their dew; and I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things. And it shall come to pass, that as ye were a curse among the heathen, O house of Judah, and house of Israel; so will I save you, and ye shall be a blessing: fear not, but let your hands be strong” (Zechariah 8:12-13).

Those who plant seeds of obedience in the time of overflow will receive the joyous judgment of God. They’ll be so blessed themselves and such a blessing to others that they’ll be saying what the psalmist said in Psalm 126:1-3: “When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, The Lord hath done great things for them. The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad.”

“But what if I haven’t planted seeds of obedience?” someone might ask. “What if I’ve planted seeds of disobedience?”

Then repent—quick! Ask forgiveness in the Name of Jesus and receive a rapid, supernatural crop failure. Let His blood wash your vineyard clean and start planting seeds of obedience right away. Then you can be like the man who “goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, [you] shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing [your] sheaves [or harvest] with [you]” (Psalm 126:6)!

No Overflow? Check Your Love Life.

On the other hand, if you have been planting seeds of obedience and you’re still not seeing the overflow of blessing that’s been prophesied, then check your love life.

That’s what the Lord told me to do as I was praying about overflow one day. I said, “Lord, I know You’re the God who causes my cup to run over. You’re not a God of just enough—You’ve always been the God of more than enough. You’re the God of too much. What’s more, we’re in the time of overflow. So why am I still struggling to fully receive it?”

In answer to my question, the Lord had me take a good look at Matthew 22:37-40:

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Receiving an overflow of blessing depends on whether or not I’m loving God and my neighbor. Not only that, the Lord corrected me about something I’ve thought for 38 years. Since I began in ministry, I’ve always believed I was called to preach the Word. To me, preaching the Word was primary. And though that’s true—it’s not complete. My first responsibility is keeping the commandment of love. If I don’t keep the commandment of love what I preach is worthless.

The same thing is true for you in whatever you’re called to do. Loving God and loving people is your No. 1 priority. No matter what other seeds of obedience you might plant, no matter what other good things you might do, if you don’t plant them in love they won’t produce a harvest.

After all, you can’t get an overflow harvest without faith, and faith works by love. Without faith it’s impossible to please God who is love! (Galatians 5:6; Hebrews 11:6; 1 John 4:8).

If you’re a born-again child of God, you already know that. But if you’re like the rest of us, you may forget it at times. You may sometimes neglect to make love your first priority. So today I’m doing for you what Peter did in the New Testament, I’m stirring up your pure minds by way of remembrance that you may be mindful! (2 Peter 3:1).

I’m challenging you to get up every morning and say by faith, “Oh, I love You, Father, with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind and all my strength! And I love my neighbor as myself today because that pleases You and I love You!”

Go throughout your day living out your love for Him. When you miss it, repent quickly and step right back into the life of love again. Before you know it, you’ll be reaping an overflow harvest that’s better than anything you’ve ever dreamed of…and 2005 will be a year of joy and gladness for you!

VICTORY™ network (formerly BVOVN) Roku Channel

Posted on January 7, 2016 - 3:57 pm by kcmblogsite

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What better way to watch the world’s most-trusted ministers? Watch what you want, when you want with the VICTORY Roku channel.

Don’t have a Roku Internet Streaming Device? Learn more about Roku and where to purchase here.

The High Price of Disobedience

Posted on January 7, 2016 - 3:47 pm by kcmblogsite

by Gloria Copeland

“God has great and mighty things planned for your life.”

“God has laid out His purpose for you since before you were born.”

We have heard statements like these since the day we were born again, and they are true. God’s Word backs them up. How wonderful it is to know God has a plan for each of us, a good plan to give us a good future (Jeremiah 29:11).

He will fulfill His plans for you and me. But how disappointing it would be to miss any of the details along the way.

Missing a Step

The plans He has for us work out step by step—obeying Him in the little things that lead us right up to the big things. Now, we may miss a step from time to time. We may disobey something He tells us, then look back later and say, “If only I had….”

Sometimes the result of missing a step or disobeying may seem insignificant. But I am convinced there is no insignificant disobedience. We must approach every moment in tune with His voice and obedient to His Word.

We sometimes go through life not paying attention. And then there are times when we miss those wonderful steps in His plan because we are out and out disobedient. When we do that, we are missing some of the precious moments of God’s glorious plan for us—moments we cannot afford to miss.

This side of heaven we will not know how different our lives might have been if we had obeyed. If we knew, we would see that the price of disobedience is much higher than we thought.

The Bible contains several accounts of people who disobeyed God and paid a dear price. Probably one of the most important stories is that of Moses—the lawgiver. He preached “Obey the Lord!” day after day, year after year to the children of Israel. Then we read in Numbers 20, the day came when they needed water. Moses disobeyed the direction God gave him for providing water, and paid a high price for that disobedience. God kept him from leading the children of Israel into the Land of Promise. Something he had been looking forward to for 40 years vanished in that one misstep.

More Than Rules

If we had God’s total plan for our lives laid out before us, we would see that any disobedience costs more than we can afford. Disobedience takes us off track, sometimes causing us to wander around and around when we really didn’t have to. Sometimes when we disobey, we miss a glorious part of His plan that could only occur at a particular place or time in our lives.

God has given us His written Word and placed His Spirit within us to provide moment-by-moment direction for our lives. And when we “wake up” and realize diligent obedience to our heavenly Father is “the way to go,” life becomes a blessed adventure. Even mundane, daily activity becomes a magnificent journey when we live guided by His Spirit and His Word.

As the Body of Christ, our lives are not to be guesswork. God has a purpose for each of us individually, and for the Body as a whole. All we have to do is obey. It couldn’t be any clearer than He spoke it to the children of Israel in Deuteronomy 30:11-14:

This command I am giving you today is not too difficult for you to understand or perform. It is not up in heaven, so distant that you must ask, ‘Who will go to heaven and bring it down so we can hear and obey it?’ It is not beyond the sea, so far away that you must ask, ‘Who will cross the sea to bring it to us so we can hear and obey it?’ The message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart so that you can obey it (New Living Translation).

And Paul reminds us in Romans 10:8 that faith is rooted in obedience: “The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach.”

That’s where faith is—in your mouth and in your heart. Faith is hearing God and obeying Him—it’s as simple as that. The only way any of you will be obedient is to put your faith in God. Obedience doesn’t work because you think God’s Word is a set of rules. Obedience works because you know in your heart and confess with your mouth that God’s Word is your very life. Then you do it!

Getting There—Step by Step

We obey whether it’s easy or hard, whether we like what we hear or not. I was sure I would never like to preach. I had no desire to preach. I didn’t think I could do it. And, I couldn’t have done it in my own strength. But, God gave me the job anyway! And He has been faithful to see me through the assignment.

His plan and purpose for your life is not dependent upon what you can or cannot do. It depends on your doing what He tells you to do when He tells you to do it. He anoints and enables you to do whatever He directs you to do.

Every day of my life is like a treasure hunt! Why? Because I am totally committed to being obedient to God’s voice to me—through the Bible and His Spirit. I stay close to Him. I listen! I hear! I can hardly wait to know what His next step is for me. Whether He says, Go to Tokyo, or Go to the grocery store, every step is significant in fulfilling His purpose for my life.

Your future is tucked away in your heart because God put it there. He gives you insight, and every day He desires to reveal direction to you. Arriving in your future according to the plan of God is totally dependent on hearing and obeying Him, moment by moment, step by step, every day.

When we think of obedience in these terms, it is clear to see that the price for any step of disobedience is more than any of us can afford. And the rewards of obedience—well, every step to His glorious plan for our lives depends on it.

Want 2016 to Be Different?

Posted on December 30, 2015 - 12:20 pm by kcmblogsite

Check Your Mouth!

by Kenneth Copeland

A lot of people in this world don’t know how to fly airplanes. I’m not one of them. I’ve been a pilot for more than 40 years. And quite frankly, I don’t know why anyone would want to sit in the back of an airplane when they could sit up front.

Yet, when you compare the number of people who know how to fly to those who don’t, there are not many of us.

There’s something else a lot of people in this world don’t know how to do, and that is…control their mouth.

Getting control of your mouth is like flying an airplane. Anyone can do it. It’s just a matter of learning how. But I dare say the vast majority of people—and I’m talking about believers—don’t know how to control the words that come out of their mouths. They just let them fly.

“Oh but, Brother Copeland, I don’t have the time it takes to study the Bible in order to get control over my mouth.”

I see. You don’t have that kind of time for the Word, but you do have time to be sick six months out of the year, or broke most or all of your life, or beaten down by the devil day in and day out, right? With flying, it’s pretty obvious the pilot is the one who has the power to crash or land the plane.

Controlling your tongue is no different. Your mouth determines your success or failure in life—but only you can be the pilot. No one else can do your talking for you. It’s up to you whether you crash or land. If you want 2016 to be the year something changes, you should put your mouth in check.

Life Doesn’t “Just” Happen

Some time ago, the Spirit of God made a statement to me that just burned into my consciousness. This is what He said:

Most people go along day after day hoping nothing bad happens that they cannot handle. Then, when something does happen, they try to change things in a few moments of prayers and tears, not realizing that they actually caused what happened by putting certain spiritual laws into motion.

Years of exercising the law of sin and death will produce the curse in one’s life. Meditating continually on the lies of the devil, which is worry, will build doubt and unbelief in one’s spirit until it overflows in abundance into the mouth. Then it is released in words of fear. Those words are then acted upon. And acting on words of fear brings worry to pass.

So, don’t wait. Start now. Build a new future by exercising the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus with words of faith, love, joy and hope, thereby producing acts of faith, acts of love, acts of joy and a continual hope, expecting God’s favor and His very best all the time.

Notice the Spirit of God said that we—you and I—cause what happens to us in life by putting spiritual laws into motion.

How do we put those laws into motion?

Through our mouths. Through the words we speak day after day.

Jesus, in explaining the power of our words to His disciples said, “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” (Mark 11:23).

Jesus was telling them—You have what you say.

And it’s no different for us today.

Hebrews 3:1 says it like this: “Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.”

The word apostle literally means “one sent” or “sent one.” And the word profession also can be translated as “confession.”

Jesus was sent by God—anointed and appointed—to be the High Priest of our confession. In other words, it’s His job to see to it when we speak the Word of God out our mouths that it comes to pass.

But notice what Jesus said in Matthew 12:34-37:

Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. 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. But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.

Each one of us will stand judgment for every idle word we speak. We will be condemned by our words, and we will be justified—or made righteous—by our words. And that covers just about everything.

So it does matter what we say.

A New Law to Live By

To go a step further in understanding just exactly how our mouths direct the course of our lives, we need to examine the “spiritual laws” we put into motion through the words we speak daily.

In Romans 8:1-3, the Apostle Paul tells us this:

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.

Here Paul describes two spiritual laws: the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus and the law of sin and death.

If you have received Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then as a born-again believer you have been made free from the law of sin and death by the law of the Spirit of life in the Anointed Jesus.

But notice that first verse says there is no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus “who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”

In 1967, when I was studying this passage of scripture, the Spirit of God said this to me: The word “flesh” there is talking about the five physical-sense gates.

Obviously He was referring to the means through which we gather information from the natural world around us—the eye gate, ear gate, touch gate, smell gate and taste gate.

But then He went on to say this: When you see the word “Spirit” in these verses, replace it with the phrase “Word of God” or “the Word.”

Well when I did as He instructed, here’s what I came up with:

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the five physical senses, but after the Word of God. For the law of the Word of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the physical senses, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful senses, and for sin, condemned sin in the five-physical-sense realm.

Our confessions, spoken in faith, are the foundation from which God operates in our lives. But to put an end to worry, to fear-based words, to fear-based results in our lives, we must control the flesh. We must control the five physical-sense gates of our being.

When I saw that revelation for the first time 36 years ago, it changed the way I saw everything in life. It literally opened up the rest of the New Testament to me.

Faith-Based Living

When we walk in the laws of the Spirit—and we operate in them according to the Word of God, by faith—those laws will control our circumstances in our favor every time.

What most believers fail to understand, however, is that unless we stay in the Word and walk in the laws of the Spirit on a continual basis, we will fall back into all that is going on around us. We will fall back into the laws of sin and death. We will get caught in the current of the world’s negative flow, which is the death flow.

You see, in the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, there is faith, courage and prayer. In the law of sin and death there is fear, confusion and pressure.

Faith, courage and prayer are all based on the living Word of God.

We know that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). But having courage is also a commandment found in the Word.

To be courageous simply means we do what we know is right, according to the Word, not the world.

After Moses died, God commanded Joshua:

Only 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 withersoever 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 (Joshua 1:7-9).

What was God saying?

Don’t say anything that My Word does not say. Don’t think anything other than what My Word says!

Why?

Because anything other than faith is fear. And without fear, the devil has nothing to work with.

Now to understand the way prayer figures into this faith equation, we need to go back to Mark 11 where Jesus told His disciples, You will have what you say (verse 23).

But notice what He goes on to tell them in verses 24-25: “Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any….”

Prayer requires that we believe we receive when we pray—not believe we receive after our answer shows up. What’s more, prayer requires that we have an open line of communication with God, which means there can be no unforgiveness clogging it up.

This is all part of the law of faith—faith, courage and prayer. And we cannot leave out any part of that law without causing it either to weaken, or to stop functioning altogether.

Fear-Based Living

Fear, like faith, is a spiritual force. It works under the same rules as faith. Consequently, if faith “cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” then fear “cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word [or lies] of the devil.”

Fear is actually twisted faith. It is faith in the ability of something to harm you. Ultimately fear is faith in death.

So, tying this back to what the Spirit of God said earlier about not living according to the “flesh”—or the five physical senses—we see that fear comes from false evidence based on what we can see, feel, hear and so forth.

Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

If you only judge situations around you by what you see and what you feel, then you will always end up in a ditch because you will be judging after the facts—instead of judging after the truth. And eventually that will lead you down the path to death.

Once you get ahold of God’s Word, however, you will know the truth and the truth will make you free (John 8:32). Suddenly, fear will have no hold on you and the devil will have nothing to work with in your life.

Before He went to the cross, Jesus prayed that the Father would show us that He loves us as much as He loves Jesus (John 17:23).

Why did Jesus pray for us to know that?

Because “there is no fear in love; but perfect [developed] love casteth out fear” (1 John 4:18).

There is no room for fear when Love, Himself, begins to move and tells you: All your needs are supplied according to My riches in glory by Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19). Jesus bore all your sins in His own body on the tree, that you, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness, and by His stripes you were healed (1 Peter 2:24).

When we find ourselves in a “pressure situation,” that’s the time to separate the real problem from the pressure, which is trying to drive us to act out of fear—fear of failure, fear of being embarrassed, fear of going broke, fear of not getting the deal, fear of dying.

Remember Jesus said, “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). He has overcome every problem we could possibly face. So stop dwelling on “how things look.” Turn your flesh away from what it looks like, what it feels like, what it sounds like, what it smells like, what it tastes like. Because that’s the source of your pressure.

The pressure you feel in the heat of a problem comes from looking, feeling, seeing, acknowledging everything this world is telling you, then thinking and worrying about it. In the end, that’s what will get you to move in the world’s direction, instead of God’s.

Head Upstream

Faith, courage and prayer are all faith-based and depend on one another.

Likewise fear, confusion and pressure are all fear-based and they depend on one another.

That leaves you in the middle…with a choice to make:

Do I just coast downstream in the world’s flow of fear—which eventually ends with death? Or, do I turn and head upstream in faith, God’s way—which leads to life?

Because, know this: If you take the way of faith, courage and prayer—that is, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus—you will be going crosswise to the world. And you will face a lot of resistance in doing that.

Confessing what God says about you and your life instead of what the world thinks is not always easy. But it’s worth it!

Under the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus comes healing, all forms of prosperity, peace, goodness and so forth. And under the law of sin and death comes fear, doubt, unbelief, death, sickness, disease, poverty and every evil work.

The point is, healing and prosperity are not a reward for “being good.” “Good” people get sick, go broke and die.

No. Healing and prosperity come from exercising the healing laws and prosperity laws, and then receiving from God.

Like everyone else on this earth, you live under the spiritual law of words. You cannot change that. But you can change the words under which you live.

Your mouth can either be a faith instrument, or a fear instrument—faith leading you in the flow of life, fear leading you in the flow of death.

Either way, the choice is yours.

Remember, the devil can do nothing to you apart from fear, the same as God does nothing for you apart from faith.

The next time you start feeling symptoms of sickness coming against your flesh, resist them. Deny their right to exist in your body.

How? By basing your words on God’s Word, instead of on how you feel. Set your course of healing by confessing: I am not moved by what I see. I am not moved by what I feel. How I feel about a situation does not change a thing. I am only moved by what I believe—and I believe the Word of God. I believe God’s Word over and above everything else. And He says that by Jesus’ stripes I was healed.

How you feel may be a fact. But God’s Word is truth. And truth changes fact.

Declare the Word and attack your “feelings” with the higher authority, and get control of your mouth—and your future—today!

Live 2016 Deficit Free

Posted on December 21, 2015 - 11:45 am by kcmblogsite

Adopt this principle and watch your deficits disappear!

by Jesse Duplantis

Deficits.

Just reading that word probably makes you cringe. Deficits aren’t fun. They mean lack and struggle, which usually lead to fear and worry. No one likes deficits, yet it seems like everyone has them.
But, everyone doesn’t have to.

In my 28 years of full-time ministry, I’ve never had a deficit. That’s almost unheard of today, but it’s the truth.

People have asked me for years, “Brother Jesse, how do you live deficit free?” To be honest, I wasn’t really sure. I figured I was deficit free because I lived by faith, but the Lord revealed to me there was more to it than that.

I was praying one afternoon and the Lord asked me, Jesse, do you know why you’ve never had a deficit?

I thought about it for a moment, and then I said, “Well, Lord, I live by faith and not by sight and I’ve obeyed You to the best of my ability. I guess it’s because of my faith.”

No. That’s not it.

“It’s not?”

Then the Lord said something to me that I’ll never forget. He said: It’s because you’ve adopted the David Principle.

“The David Principle? Lord, what is the David Principle?”

Then He showed me what I’m about to show you. And if you’ll also adopt the David Principle, your deficits will start to disappear.

The David Principle

The David Principle is simply this: Never offer God something that didn’t cost you something. We see an example of this principle in action in 2 Samuel 24 when Gad told David to build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.

David did as the Lord had commanded through Gad and went to see Araunah. When King David arrived on the scene, Araunah bowed down and asked, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” David told him he wanted to buy his threshing floor to build an altar to the Lord so that the plague on the people would end. But Araunah didn’t want to sell those things to David. He wanted to give King David the oxen, the threshing sledges and oxen yokes, but David wouldn’t take them for free. He said, “No, I insist on paying you. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”
So, David paid 50 shekels of silver for the threshing floor and the oxen. Then he built an altar to the Lord and sacrificed burnt offerings, and the Lord answered his prayer—stopping the plague on Israel (2 Samuel 24:18-25).

That’s the David Principle the Lord was talking about. Whatever you do for the Lord, let it cost you something.

That’s why I pay my own expenses when I travel to various places to preach. That’s why I always add more money to the offerings we take up when guest ministers speak at our church. I want it to cost me something. And because I’ve adopted that principle in my life, I’ve never had to worry about expenses.

Just Say No to Cheapness

To walk in the David Principle, you may have to change some adverse attitudes that have taken root in your spirit.

For example, you should never ask how little you can do. Instead, ask, “How much can I do?”

Why? Because if a man’s feelings are of God, he will rebuke all thoughts of cheapness.

When was the last time you left a really good tip? I’m not talking about leaving one or two dollars on the table for that person who waited on you throughout your entire meal. I’m talking about leaving a 20 percent tip. As a born-again, spirit-filled believer, you ought to give a better tip than anyone else who walks into that restaurant because the glory of God is on you.

When you go out to dinner with friends, you ought to be fighting over who gets the opportunity to pay the bill—just because you want to be a blessing.

Not long ago, my wife, Cathy, and I took a minister and his wife out to eat at a really nice restaurant, and the pastor’s wife sheepishly asked me, “Can I order the lobster?” I said, “Sure, you can have the lobster.”

“Are you sure, Brother Jesse?” she asked nervously. “It’s so expensive.”

I said, “Absolutely. Order anything you want.”

I didn’t say, “Well, I don’t know, Sister. We’d better see if they are having any kind of lobster specials today.”

You see, I’d already paid for that lobster a long time ago when I blessed the Lord.

Don’t be cheap because you don’t want to reap cheap.

You Can’t Outgive God

Now, don’t misunderstand me. You shouldn’t bless people or give unto the Lord with the wrong motives. Your attitude should be, “I just want to be a blessing. I’m not giving to get.” The Word says God knows your heart, which means He knows your motivation for giving. You can’t fool God.

I don’t negotiate with God and say, “Now, Lord, I am going to give this man my favorite watch, but I expect You to give me the top-of-the-line Rolex in return.” Instead, I give to delight God and do you know what happens? He gives me the desires of my heart. When you delight in God, desire comes. You can never outgive God. He is the ultimate giver. God could have sent the angel Gabriel or Michael the archangel to die on the Cross for you and me, and I’m sure Gabriel or Michael would have happily volunteered. But God sent His only Son, Jesus, to die for us. You might say it this way: God gave something that cost Him something. He gave His very best.

We should do the same.

To give God the best is necessary for every believer. You should want to honor God with your best. That’s why our church and ministry headquarters in Louisiana look so good inside and outside, because as long as I have anything to say about it, God’s house will be a place of excellence. We don’t keep our buildings and grounds looking beautiful to show off, we do it to honor God and give Him our best.

Give It Up for God

What is your best?

The value of a gift greatly depends on the self denial for which it finds

expression. In other words, when you go without something you really love, to give something to God, it pleases Him.

When Cathy and I first started giving money to God, the devil would always make me feel bad about the small amount we gave. We didn’t have much money in those days, so we gave what would have been our McDonald’s money. It might have only been $8, but I loved those Big Macs. I had to go without Big Macs and french fries for a whole week. Now that’s self-denial, and it pleases God.

Keep an open mind when honoring God with your gifts. The gift you give might not come in the form of money; it might be something else that’s precious to you—like time.

Not long ago, my pilot and I went to a health club while we were on one of our travels. I was in town to minister all week and needed to find time to squeeze in some workouts. Just as I got on a treadmill and was beginning my workout, two women approached me. One said, “Hello, are you who we think you are?”

I smiled and said, “Yes, I am Tom Selleck.”

We all laughed, and then they hopped on the treadmills right next to me. Even though I really wanted to work out, I sensed that these women needed to talk. So, I ended up ministering to them as I walked.

That cost me something. It cost me precious time, but I was happy to give that time to them because it honored the Lord.

Your Gift Matters to God

Beware of thinking what you do for the Lord is insignificant.

Everything matters.

I’ve met many wonderful people over the course of my ministry, but few have affected me as profoundly as this precious sister from Poland. She lived in a house that had cracks in the walls so big you could see outside. She was in her 80s and had been a faithful partner to my ministry for many years.

One day, she placed a $20 bill in my hand and whispered in her Polish accent, “I want to be a blessing to the Lord and to your ministry…it’s not much.”

But, it was much—it was all she had.

I didn’t want to take that $20 because I knew how much she needed it, but God said, Don’t rob her of her blessing.

I smiled at her with tears in my eyes and said, “It’s the greatest gift I’ve ever received in my ministry.”

Her gift made a difference in my life, and it greatly honored God.

What made her do it?

She had a devotedness of spirit and life, and that’s what you must have to walk in the David Principle and live a life free from deficits.

When you are devoted to God, He will honor you.

The Lord said to me recently, Jesse, you’re always thinking of what you can give Me.

That blessed me, because that’s how I want to live my life. I want to be a giver, and I want to give God gifts that cost me something. If you’ll do the same, God will honor your young days, your middle-aged days and your old days. Take hold of this today and watch your deficits begin to dwindle.

Jesse Duplantis is the president and founder of Jesse Duplantis Ministries, with international headquarters in Louisiana and additional offices in the UK and Australia. He is a best-selling author and hosts a weekly television program. For ministry materials and information, write to Jesse Duplantis Ministries, P.O. Box 20149, New Orleans, LA 70141-0149, call 985-764-2000 or visit www.jdm.org.

Supernatural Forgetfulness

Posted on December 16, 2015 - 11:15 am by kcmblogsite

Yes, you really can Get Over Your Past …and move on.

By Kenneth Copeland

One afternoon several years ago, I was in a hotel room preparing to preach a message. As I was studying, I stopped for a moment to pray in the spirit. When I did, I had a vision.

I saw a 6-inch pipe suspended about 18 inches away from my face and angled up at about 45 degrees. It was like looking up through a telescope. I could see into one end of the pipe, but it was clogged and dark.

Behind this pipe was another pipe, also at a 45-degree angle. The two were end-to-end but not connected. And there was some sort of substance gushing out of the second pipe down toward the one closest to me.

Because of the clog in the first pipe, however, only a trickle of the substance managed to make its way through and come out the end that was facing me. There was just enough of it getting past the clog to squirt me in the face.

When I saw all this, I yelled, “What is this?”

Then I heard the Lord say, That’s My glory being poured out toward your spirit…but that pipe is your spirit and it’s so clogged that there’s only a tiny spew getting through it.

When I asked the Lord what I needed to do to fix it, He said, Purge the pipe.

He then went on to explain that the pipe—my spirit—had become clogged over the years with spiritual filth that comes from unconfessed sin. He gave me specific examples of the kinds of sin He was talking about. As it turned out, it wasn’t the “BIG” sins in life that were stopping up my spirit. I had been diligent to repent of those.

Rather, it was the small, day-to-day sins that were clogging my spirit. Harsh words to my wife, complaints about bad service in restaurants, fussing over traffic—those were the sins I had failed to confess. Those were the sins that were keeping me from receiving the full force of God’s mighty outpouring in my life.

Declogging Your Spirit

As believers we have the assurance that “If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

We are also encouraged in 1 John 2:1 that “if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” When it comes to any mess-ups we make in life, the blood of Jesus has us covered.

But what about all those haunting “sins from the past”…you know the kind?

You’re Cadillac-ing along in life and everything is going smoothly. Then one night you lay down to go to sleep…and suddenly, a terrible “flash from the past” crosses your mind. You see pictured in your mind’s eye a sin you committed years ago.

What’s happening?

Fear is trying to move in on you. The devil is trying to terrorize you with thoughts that what you did years ago might “come out” in the open. Oh, God, what would I do if people found out?

Well I’m here to tell you that there’s a supernatural way to “purge the pipe.” There is a way you can supernaturally forget the sins of your past once you confess them to God and repent. You can forget them once and for all, the way God does when He forgives us.

The challenge for us, however, is that we are made up of three parts. We are a spirit. We have a soul—our mind, will and emotions. And we live in a body.

So not only do we need our spirits purged of all our old hidden, secret sins from the past, but we also need our souls cleansed as well. We need our memories free of those past sins that the devil uses to try and create fear in us.

God has already purged His memory of all the sins we have confessed to Him—those sins have been washed by the blood of the Lamb.

God has given us everything we need to cleanse our spirits—His Name, His Word and His blood. And He has also given us the ability—and responsibility—to cleanse our minds of past sins as well. As new creations in Christ Jesus, we have been given the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). We have been given the mind of the Anointed One, Jesus, and His Anointing.

Once we purge our minds of the memory of old sins, we then open ourselves up to the full force of God’s supernatural outpouring—that powerful substance I saw gushing out of the pipe in my vision. And that’s exactly what the devil does not want to happen.

You Be the Judge

Over the years, a lack of knowledge about spiritual laws and truth has kept countless Christians entrapped in meaningless, religious activity that is directed at trying to purge and cleanse themselves of past sins.

Yet those religious activities never come close to the real root of the problem or offer any true solution.

Ask me how I know.

After years of crying, repenting and rededicating myself…crying, repenting and rededicating myself…I finally gave up and walked away from the Church because I could never get rid of the guilt and condemnation of my sins as a young man.

In the first place, I wasn’t even born again. And no one ever seemed to realize that was a major part of my problem. But even if I had been saved, it still would have been a challenge to be genuinely free from guilt and shame because as a child in church I failed to hear anything except repent and rededicate…repent and rededicate. They had a stack of “rededication” cards on me. All that time I never received Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

What we all needed back then was a revelation of 1 Corinthians 11:31-32, which says, “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.”

To be totally free from the sins of our past we first need to step boldly into the light and judge ourselves. I say step boldly into the light because 1 John 1:7 tells us, “If we walk in the light, as [God] is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”

If we purpose to “walk in the light,” then we will not walk in sin. But when we do miss it and sin, we simply need to confess our sin—call it what it is—repent and receive our cleansing from all unrighteousness, which purges our spirits from that sin. It’s when we commit a sin and say, “I have no sin,” that we deceive ourselves (1 John 1:8). We must step out into the light and judge ourselves. To judge ourselves simply means to take an honest look at ourselves and ask, What’s wrong, here? What am I not doing right? By seeking the truth we’re in a position to hear from God about what we did wrong and the adjustments we need to make in a particular area of our lives.

The point I really want to make, however, is that when the Spirit of God convicts you of a sin—and you know it, you know what you did wrong, or what you’re doing wrong—don’t mess around with it. Call it what it is—sin—and get rid of it.

For example, men, if you’re easily tempted with pornography (on television, the Internet or in magazines) and you allow your eyes to linger on something you have no business looking at, don’t try to con God, yourself or anyone else, by saying you have a problem…or a weakness. No, it’s lust. And it’s sin.

And don’t bother trying to blame it on your hormones, either.

Just confess the lust, repent and purge your spirit of it. Don’t give the devil one moment of opportunity to tempt you to keep it “in the dark.” Instead, step out into the light of God’s presence and see it for what it is…and you be the judge.

No More Sin Symptoms

As I said earlier, once we go through the process of judging ourselves and repenting of sin, it’s important that we also purge our conscience of those sins. We can do that under the New Covenant by the blood of Jesus.

In contrast, under the Old Covenant it was not possible for the Hebrew people to cleanse their conscience of sin. Hebrews 10:1-2, explains: “For the law [Old Covenant] having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins.”

In the days of the Old Covenant, there was a set time each year when the people would make a special sacrificial offering of animals. It was the time of atonement and the blood of the animals was offered for all the sins of the people. As the Hebrew people gave their offerings they were required to recount in their minds all the sins they had committed that year. They were to remember their wickedness and be consciously sorrowful for it.

That’s why Hebrews 10:3 tells us, “But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.” Under the Old Covenant, the people of God focused on remembering their sins, not forgetting them. The sacrificial animals were killed and their death represented the death of each person—death being the end result of their sins. The life, or blood of the animals was offered as atonement for the lives of the worshippers. Their sins were cleansed, but not the memory of them.

Now when we step over into the New Covenant, we see throughout the Bible how the Savior of mankind, Jesus, was represented as a Lamb. The reason being that out of all the animals, the lamb represents total and complete innocence. It’s also an animal that cannot possibly hurt anyone or anything.

Jesus became that Lamb, that innocent, harmless sacrifice for man’s wickedness. But notice the difference in His blood sacrifice for our sins, as seen in Hebrews 1:1-3:

God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.

Jesus purged our sins. He purged them by His blood, which takes us back to Hebrews 10:2, “…the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins.”

We need to get the “thoughts and intent of our heart” to become one with our soul by the Word of God (Hebrews 4:12). With our spirits reborn and purged of sin, we need our minds renewed and purged of the memory of past sin. The Name of Jesus and the blood of Jesus have removed the sin—if we’ve been diligent to confess it. All that remains is the memory of it.

Bury the “Old You”

The Apostle Paul, back in his earlier days before he actually got born again, had a widespread reputation for persecuting and even killing Christians.

Still he was the same man who wrote, “Receive us; we have wronged no man…” (2 Corinthians 7:2). How could a one-time ruthless killer say, “I have wronged no man”?

How could he say that with a clear conscience?

To begin with, we know that God directed Paul to stop what he was doing and go off into the desert of Arabia. While it’s not known how many years Paul actually stayed out there, we do know he stayed there until he was totally purged of all the sin—all that persecution against Christians—he had committed in his earlier life.

How did he get rid of all those old memories?

The same way we can today—by meditating on the promises of God. Paul meditated on the blood of Jesus and the Name of Jesus until his spirit was purged, until his mind was purged, until his whole memory process was purged of his past sins.

After all, it was Paul who also wrote in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26:

For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.

Notice Paul’s account of the instructions Jesus gave to His disciples—and us—concerning the covenant bread and cup: “This do ye…in remembrance of me.”

Remembrance is the key.

Jesus was telling us to replace all the ungodly junk from our past—whether it was 20 years ago or 20 minutes ago—with remembering Him. He was telling us to remember Him and what He did for us…His body broken for us…His blood shed for us.

Once we sit in judgment over ourselves, judging sin in our lives, confessing it and receiving forgiveness and cleansing from it, any image of that sin that comes up from that moment on is only a symptom of that sin. It is not the sin itself.

Again, Paul said, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Add to that, verse 21, which says, “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in [Jesus].” Then it becomes clear how Paul could boldly and publicly declare, “I have wronged no man.”

Saul, murderous sinner that he was, died on the road to Damascus when he cried out to Jesus, “Lord!” At that moment he became a new creation—in Christ Jesus. He became the righteousness of God—in Christ Jesus. And when anything rose up contrary to this great revelation Paul had received from God, he set his focus on the spotless, sinless, innocent Lamb of God sacrificed for him—Christ Jesus.

Today when something from your “past” raises its ugly head and starts speaking contrary to what the Word of God says about you, run to the communion table. Set the covenant cup and the bread before you…and just remember. Fix your memory on Him and not on yourself.

When you eat the bread and drink of the cup, force yourself to behold the Lamb of God. Force yourself to think on Him.

Hebrews 12:2-3 says, “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.”

Looking unto Jesus…consider Him.

When the devil starts trying to get you to remember the “old you” and weigh you down with sins from the past, just go to the communion table and fix your mind on Jesus. Put yourself in remembrance of Him and purge your soul of the past.

Supernatural forgetfulness will keep you wide open to the flow of God’s glory.

What Does Confidence Have to Do With Faith?

Posted on December 3, 2015 - 6:23 pm by kcmblogsite

by Kenneth Copeland

Have faith in God!

There’s no question about it, that’s one of the greatest keys to victory in every situation. When sickness attacks our bodies, faith in God opens the door for us to receive healing. When we face financial lack, faith in God paves the way for Him to meet all our needs according to His riches in glory.

But did you know we must have more than just faith in God to receive the fullness of His blessings?

We must also have confidence, or faith, toward God.

Faith in God and faith toward God are two different things. Faith in God involves trusting who He is, what He says and what He can do. Faith toward God includes another divine element: an unwavering confidence in our relationship with Him. When we have faith toward God, we are confident that He is not only able but willing—even eager—to do what we ask of Him because of the special place we have in His heart.

When we have faith toward God, we are so assured of His love for us we can walk into His throne room and relax in His presence. We can draw near to Him without the least bit of condemnation and without one iota of self-consciousness. We can bounce into His presence with a smile on our face, full of joy, and say, “Abba! Father! Let’s have a good time together, just You and me!”

Many believers can hardly imagine having that kind of fellowship with God. Even though they love Him, and know He loves them, somewhere lurking in their hearts is a fear that He is still a little bit mad at them. Lingering in the back of their minds is a sense of shame that makes them feel condemned in His presence. Because of their past sins and failures, they assume such an attitude is normal. They figure God expects, and perhaps even prefers, for them to feel that way.

But the truth is, that kind of spiritual insecurity hurts God’s heart!

He paid an awesome price to set us free from it. He sent Jesus to the cross to shed His blood so we can walk into the holy of holies with no sin-consciousness at all, and fellowship with Him. He laid down His own life to purchase forgiveness and cleansing for us so instead of groveling like sinners, we can sit beside our heavenly Father as the righteousness of God in Christ.

God gave His all to deliver us from guilt and shame because, as 1 John 3:21-22 says: “Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.”

Stop Arguing and Agree With God!

If you’re like most believers, however, when you read the two verses above, your heart sinks. Oh, no! you think. I can’t have confidence toward God because I don’t always do what’s pleasing in His sight. Sometimes I stumble and mess things up.

But before you go too far down that track, I want you to notice something. In those scriptures, an uncondemned, confident heart precedes (rather than follows) the keeping of God’s commandments.

That’s because confidence toward God must always come first. It’s what gives us the ability to do the things that please the Lord. It’s understanding His love for us and being free from condemnation that enables us to obey His commandments by loving others.

“But Brother Copeland, how can I be confident toward God when I’ve done so many bad things in my life?” you may ask.

Here’s the secret. Stop viewing yourself in light of past failures, and start seeing yourself like God does. Instead of focusing on the sins you’ve committed in your life, He sees you the way you were created to be in the beginning: as perfect as Jesus Himself!

In God’s eyes, you are exactly as Ephesians 1 describes you: “blessed…with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:…chosen…in him before the foundation of the world…holy and without blame before him in love.”

“There’s no way anyone could call me holy and without blame—especially God!” you might say.

That would be true if He called you that because of your perfect behavior. But He didn’t. He declared you holy before you ever did anything, either good or bad. He called you blameless before the foundation of the world.

To understand how that’s possible you must realize you existed in the mind and heart of God before you were ever created. He knew you before the devil ever got a chance to mess you up. Before time began, He saw you as the pure, perfect child of God He planned for you to be.

He also knew the devil would use sin to try to mess up His plan for you. So before the earth was even created…before Adam and Eve took their first breath…and before the devil ever hatched his demonic plot against them…God put His plan of redemption in place. He established Jesus as the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). He redeemed you…and me…and all who would ever receive Jesus as Lord “with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:19).

God didn’t wait until after you sinned to redeem you. He did it before you were even born. He put His redemption plan in place and declared you righteous, holy and blameless before time began. All of that came rushing into your innermost being when you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

So stop arguing with Him and start agreeing with Him! Instead of seeing yourself in the light of your old, sinful past, start seeing yourself like God does—with old things passed away and all things become new (2 Corinthians 5:17). That’s the secret to developing a confident heart.

No More Mr. Mistake

“But what if my past isn’t my only problem?” you might ask. “What if I still have sin in my life today?”

Don’t beat yourself up about it. Instead, repent and get rid of it by doing what 1 John 1:9 tells you to do. Confess your sin and believe God is faithful and just to forgive you of it and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.

I learned how to do that years ago when I was working for my spiritual father, Brother Oral Roberts. He has a confidence toward God that keeps him untroubled by the kind of condemnation that plagues so many believers. One day I found out why. He looked at me, smiled real big and said, “Do you know that I’ve never made a mistake?”

I had no idea what he was driving at, but I wasn’t about to contradict him. “Uh…is that right, sir?” I said. “You never made a mistake?”

He grinned at me again, his Cherokee eyes dancing. “I did a lot of things that turned out to be mistakes, but I never got up in the morning and said, ‘You know, I think I’ll make myself a mistake today.’”

Then he got right in my face and made his point. “Kenneth, once you’ve made Jesus Christ the Lord of your life, committed yourself to Him, and you are doing your best to obey His Word and follow Him, you may make mistakes, you may slip, but that doesn’t change the fact that you have been redeemed.”

That was shouting ground for me because up to that point I’d always seen myself as Mr. Mistake. But from then on, I decided I am Mr. Redeemed!

Entering the Rest

As I’ve discovered since then, that kind of attitude irritates some people. They think we should have to work hard to please God and be confident toward Him—that we must struggle to win His blessings.

But that’s not what the Bible says.

It tells us to enter God’s rest.

What is “God’s rest”?

It’s the rest of redemption! It’s the rest that comes when we put our faith not in our own efforts but in the finished work of Christ. It is the rest we enjoy once we dare to believe THE BLESSING God spoke over Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is operating in our lives today simply because we are in Christ.

Have you ever thought about the fact that once God spoke that blessing on the sixth day of creation, He considered His work done? It’s true! When God said in Genesis 1:28, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion,” He released all the power necessary for His perfect will for mankind to be accomplished for all time. Through that blessing He put His plan in motion—the plan that would culminate in our redemption and restoration, bring forth His eternal family, and expand the Garden of Eden through THE BLESSING on that family until it filled the whole earth.

Once that blessing was released, “…God did rest the seventh day from all his works” (Hebrews 4:4). He didn’t intend to rest alone, either. He planned for us to enter into that rest with Him. That’s why Hebrews 4:9-11 says: “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.”

It’s entering God’s rest that gives us confidence toward Him. It’s daring to believe we are holy and blameless before Him, not because of anything we’ve done but because of what He did for us before the world began, that gives us the confidence to bound into the throne room of grace, and say, “Good morning, Heavenly Father! I’ve come to sit here and visit with You awhile. I’d like to just watch You run the universe and learn a little about how You do it!”

A Lesson From Einstein

If you think we shouldn’t say that kind of thing to God, think again. That’s exactly the kind of fellowship He wants with us. One person who discovered that was a little, silver-haired gentleman named Albert Einstein.

When he started coming up with his “theories,” the scientific community got so mad at him they totally ostracized him. They couldn’t understand how he was getting his information. After all, they’d been to the best schools. They were supposed to be the smartest people around, but somehow Einstein was outsmarting them.

When they asked him how he came up with his theories (which, of course, turned out to be true) he told them he would just sit for long periods of time with a tablet in his lap (and a Bible, as people learned later). He’d say, “God, let me come up there with You and look down on this universe so You can show me how You made it.”

Most people consider that kind of thinking sacrilege, but God doesn’t. That’s what He has wanted all along. He always planned for us to come up there with Him and see things through His eyes. He “hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6) for that very purpose!

But we can’t fulfill that purpose as long as we’re hanging back from God, hiding behind the throne-room door feeling unrighteous and ashamed. No, we must be able to relax in God’s presence and enjoy His company. We must have the confidence that comes from entering His rest.

I don’t mind telling you, I haven’t always had that confidence because I grew up hearing religious folks tell me I wasn’t good enough for God’s company. For years, they told me I would never amount to anything, and I believed it.

Even after I got saved, I still thought that way because of my sinful past. I’d been born again several years before someone told me I was a new creature in Christ Jesus and those old things had passed away. When I finally found it out, I got so excited I could hardly stand it.

Oh dear heavens! I thought. I’m a joint heir with Christ Jesus! When I come to God, I come in His righteousness, His Name, His blood, His Word, His life, His Spirit, His past and His future. My past is gone! God doesn’t hold it against me anymore because it doesn’t exist!

Get With God’s Program

Even after I got that revelation, I still found myself stumbling at times over the old, religious mind-set I grew up with. It takes awhile to renew our minds and get totally with God’s program. I was reminded of that a few years ago when I got irritated with a bunch of folks who were just too rowdy and happy to suit me. I wanted to be spiritual and they were bothering me by whooping, dancing and hollering all over the place.

That’s enough of that! I thought. Why can’t they just calm down and be quiet?

About that time, I heard the voice of the Lord in my spirit. Kenneth, did you know if it hadn’t been for sin, I would never have had a serious thought?

Huh? I thought, certain I hadn’t heard Him right.

It’s the truth! He said. If it weren’t for sin, there’d be nothing to be serious about. We would have just had a party every weekend. If you doubt it, look at the feasts I prepared in the Old Covenant. I commanded My people back then to have fun, shout and make a lot of noise!

It was unbelieving, heathen Christians who didn’t know anything about My Word, about the Old Covenant and about Me, who decided to be sad about this whole thing. They’re the ones who thought it was spiritual to cry and wear a long face at church.

Of course, I don’t mind you being sorry when you sin, but don’t stay that way. Repent for your sin, get rid of it and get right back in fellowship with Me!

That revelation changed my attitude. I began to realize that if I keep repentance at hand, God and I can have a big time together. If I quit majoring on my failures and shortcomings and focus instead on the love God has for me, I can spend the rest of my life—and all eternity—enjoying the kind of relationship the Apostle John wrote about in 1 John 1:3-4, where he said: “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.”

You can have that kind of relationship, too. If you’ll enter God’s redemption rest, you can have more than just faith in Him, you can have faith toward Him. You can have the kind of unshakeable confidence that sends you bouncing into His throne room, grinning from ear to ear, and shouting, “Abba! Father!”

And when it comes to living in His Blessing, that confidence makes all the difference.

400 Families Receive Thanksgiving Meals in Summerville, S.C.

Posted on November 24, 2015 - 4:21 pm by kcmblogsite

In early Oct. 2015, much of South Carolina flooded following rain from a tropical storm. Even after the rain ceased rivers continued to flood due to breaches in dams across the state. In the weeks following, the Kenneth Copeland Ministries Disaster Relief team arrived in the area to check on Partners, but they returned last week to help people in the area with Thanksgiving. KCM partnered with Feed the Children and Covenant Life Church in Summerville, S.C., to host THE REACH, providing 400 families with a free Thanksgiving turkey, a week’s worth of groceries, personal care and household items

THE REACH is an outreach of Kenneth Copeland Ministries with Riley Stephenson, KCM’s minister of evangelism. The mission of this outreach is to provide for the physical needs of families still recovering from disaster, along with meeting them where they are spiritually with encouragement, love and most importantly, JESUS!

Watch the video above to see the lives TOUCHED by Jesus this Thanksgiving:

Four hundred families received THREE boxes of food and household necessities to fill their pantries along with a Thanksgiving turkey. BUT most importantly, over 110 received Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior! Praise God!

Natural disaster can be devastating to people—even if they already know the Lord—but our desire is to leave everyone we meet with the love of the Father, a new hope for the future, the assurance that they are not forgotten and that “JESUS IS LORD!” over any circumstance they face.

Together, we’re changing lives and making a REAL difference!

Increasing His Kingdom,

The KCM Disaster Relief Team

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