Have you ever been praying about some persistent need in your life and found yourself wanting to ask The LORD, “Aren’t You ever going to do something about this?”
If so, I want you to pay close attention because I’m going to give you the answer to that question. I’m going to tell you something that will set you free from ever having to ask it again.
God has already done all He’s ever going to do about meeting your needs.
“Oh, no, Brother Copeland! You mean God isn’t going to heal me of this sickness I’ve been battling? You mean He’s not going to provide the money I need to pay these bills?”
That’s not what I said. I said He’s already done it.
When He sent Jesus to the cross and raised Him from the dead, God provided everything you’ll ever need to live a victorious, abundant life. The only thing that remains is for you to receive it.
How?
By doing the same thing you did when you received the new birth. You remember how you did that. You simply heard the gospel, believed that through Jesus salvation had already been provided, and you confessed Him as LORD. You took God at His WORD and got born again by faith.
Faith doesn’t ask God questions, like “When are You going to do something for me?” It says just the opposite. As Romans 10 says:
The righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) But what saith it? The WORD is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth The LORD Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation…. So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by The WORD of God (verses 6-10, 17, KJV).
This is the way we receive everything Jesus has provided—from healing, to prosperity, to any other aspect of THE BLESSING of God. We hear what The WORD has to say about it; and as we hear The WORD, faith comes. It rises up in our heart until it overflows through the words of our mouth and produces the desired result.
You can see an example of how the process works in Matthew 9. It tells the story about the woman who was healed of the issue of blood. You’ve probably read about her. She was sick for 12 years, spent all her money on doctors, and just kept getting worse.
Then, one day she heard the good news about Jesus. She heard The WORD He was preaching about how He was Anointed by God to heal the sick, and she started meditating on it. She started saying within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole (verse 21, KJV).
The more she said it, the more faith came. Eventually her faith got so strong she got up and acted on it. She pushed her way through the crowd where Jesus was preaching, touched His clothes, and was immediately made whole.
“Yeah, but that woman’s situation was unique,” someone might say. “She was healed because Jesus was standing there.”
No, she wasn’t. She was healed because she had faith in The WORD. Jesus said so Himself. He said to her, “Daughter…thy faith hath made thee whole” (verse 22, KJV).
Your faith will do the same thing. It will enable you to receive from God whatever it takes for you to be whole in any area of your life. You don’t need Jesus to be standing there with you to get it, either. You just need your Bible and some good faith preaching—because that’s how faith comes. It comes by hearing and hearing The WORD of God.
Words Are the Starter Button
As Brother Kenneth E. Hagin used to say, “You can school yourself right into faith by confessing and meditating on the Scriptures.” You can fill your heart so full of The WORD that when you’re faced with a need, the first words that come out of your mouth are words of faith.
That’s important because words are the starter button when it comes to receiving from God. They put spiritual laws in motion and, depending on whether you’re speaking words of faith or words of fear and unbelief, those laws will either work for you or against you.
I remember one particular experience I had with this years ago. It was back when we were first getting started in ministry. We’d just gotten back from preaching out of town for three weeks, and I’d stayed up late just enjoying being at home. When I finally decided to go to bed, I switched off the light and walked through the living room in the dark. I’d forgotten about the big green ottoman that was positioned in my pathway, and I kicked the thing full force.
Talk about pain! I heard a pop and knew instantly I’d broken my toe. Aware of the power of my words at a moment like that, I shouted “Jesus, I praise You! Glory to God! Hallelujah!”
I went on for a while declaring The WORD of God over my toe, and then went to bed. I was able to go to sleep by faith, but the next morning when I woke up the devil was right there waiting for me. As soon as I opened my eyes he said, “You’d better look at that toe! It’s black and blue!”
Given how it was throbbing, I knew that was probably correct, but I refused to look and see. I even kept my eyes closed while I was putting on my socks. I headed into the kitchen where Gloria was fixing breakfast and, of course, the first thing I wanted to say was, “Gloria, my toe is broken and it’s hurting something awful!”
I knew, however, if she agreed with that I’d be in trouble, because spiritual laws were still functioning. So, I just said, “Gloria, I kicked the ottoman in the dark last night, and in the Name of The LORD Jesus Christ of Nazareth, I believe I receive my healing.”
She said, “I agree with that,” and turned around and laid hands on me.
I had an appointment that morning to go see about a little single-engine airplane I was interested in buying for the ministry, so after breakfast I drove to the airport. All the way there, my toe was talking to me about what bad shape it was in. So, I talked back. I told it that by the stripes of Jesus I am healed.
When I arrived at the airport and went into the office, the receptionist noticed I was limping and asked me what happened. “I kicked an ottoman last night and broke my toe,” I told her. “But Jesus said when He was on earth, ‘Whatsoever thing you desire when you pray, believe you receive them, and you shall have them.’ So, I believe my toe is healed.”
She hurried away as quickly as she could, and I went on down to where the plane was parked. It wasn’t very far but I certainly wasn’t going to walk, so I drove, saying to myself the whole time, “Glory to God! I believe I receive my healing. I have a good toe. Amen.”
Why am I telling you all this? Because this is what it looks like to live by faith.
When I stepped out of the car to have a look at the plane, the moment my foot hit the ground I realized all the pain had gone. My healing had manifested, and my toe was perfectly fine.
Keep Turning Up the Heat
This is the reason you need to be constantly meditating in the Scriptures! You want to be spiritually prepared for such situations. Even if you’re too smart to kick an ottoman in the dark and break your toe, you’re going to run into trouble of some kind in this world; and when you do, you want to be ready to respond in faith.
Faith is a connector. It connects you to what God has already provided for you; and it comes by constant, diligent, prayerful study and feeding on God’s WORD.
“But Brother Copeland, I have spent time in The WORD, and so far, faith hasn’t come.”
Yes, it has. You just need to stick with the program. Keep reading your Bible, listening to CDs and watching DVDs of The WORD being preached. Keep meditating on what God says and calling things that be not as though they were. Keep calling yourself well instead of sick, prosperous instead of broke, victorious rather than defeated. As you keep doing that, faith will keep coming. It will keep bubbling up in your spirit, rising higher and higher until it eventually overflows.
Gloria refers to this as the point where “faith boils over.” I like that! It’s a good way to say it because in the natural, there’s no such thing as water that won’t boil. You heat it up to 212 degrees Fahrenheit or 100 degrees Celsius, at sea level, and it’s going to boil every time. It’s predictable because it’s a law, a law of physics.
The same is true about faith. There’s no such thing as faith that doesn’t come. It works by spiritual law. If you keep heating it up with The WORD, it’s going to boil over and you’ll receive whatever you’ve been believing for.
Once you receive it, though, if you’re going to have the spiritual strength to hang on to it, you have to keep feeding your faith. You can’t just go back to spending all your free time watching cop shows and cable news. If you do that, the devil and the contrary evidences of your senses will get the best of you. You’ll lose your grip on The WORD, and God’s provision will slip away from you. Why? Because you’ve starved your faith. You haven’t given it enough to eat, so it can’t keep doing its job.
Spiritual starvation is a serious thing. I saw that for myself through a vision God gave me back in 1967, when Gloria and I were at Oral Roberts University attending a partner meeting with my parents. During the meeting, Brother Roberts was laying hands on people, and after he laid hands on me, I stepped to the side and just watched as people came up for prayer.
All of a sudden, right before my eyes, the physical bodies of the people disappeared. It’s like they became transparent and I could see their spirits on the inside of them. It was a heart-wrenching sight! Their spirits were horribly emaciated. They looked like the pictures you’ve seen of Holocaust victims in concentration camps. They were so malnourished, weak and sickly, they appeared to be almost dead. They had great big heads and frail, shriveled-up spirits.
Weeping with what I later realized was the compassion of God, I said, “LORD, what is this?”
These are My people, He said. Their spirits have been starved. Their heads are full of religious knowledge at the expense of their spirit man.
“Oh, God!” I cried. “Why did You show this to me?”
I’ve called you and anointed you to do something about it, He answered.
I saw right then I had to obey God and fulfill that assignment—and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. I’ve been teaching people how to develop their faith. I’ve been feeding them The WORD of God and helping them keep it in front of their eyes, in their ears and in their mouths until it fills their spirits to the point of overflow.
Brother Roberts used to talk about the point of overflow as the moment when faith comes to a climax. He used to give the example of the woman with the issue of blood and said that the moment her faith climaxed, she touched the hem of Jesus’ garment and—boom!—she received her healing.
How do you know in your own life when that moment has come?
The best way I can answer that is by telling you what my mama told me when I was a youngster and I asked her, “How will I know when I fall in love?”
“You’ll know,” she said.
That’s the way it is with faith. You just keep putting The WORD in your heart and, although for a while nothing may appear to be happening, one day you sense a stirring in your spirit. Like water starting to boil in a pot, little faith bubbles start to erupt, and suddenly you know that you know that you know that what The WORD says is yours.
You can see yourself with it.
You’ve got a grip on it in your spirit.
You’re not wondering anymore if God is ever going to do anything about meeting your need, you’re fully persuaded He’s already done it, and you can declare it with confidence.
“It’s mine! I take it now!” V
