If you’re a believer, you are called by God to do the works of Jesus. You’re not called just to sit on the sidelines watching while somebody else does them. You’re not supposed to just live an ordinary, natural life while God pours out His supernatural power through others He’s specially anointed.
No, God intends for you to be anointed! He intends for you to be one of those through whom He pours out His burden-removing, yoke-destroying power.
“But Brother Copeland,” you might say, “why would God anoint me? I’m not a preacher or anything. Doesn’t the Bible teach somewhere that it’s the preachers who are called and anointed to do the work of the ministry?”
No, it doesn’t.
Contrary to popular belief, that is not what the Bible teaches. In Ephesians 4:11, it says that God “gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.”
Notice, according to that verse it’s the saints (or believers) who are to do the work of the ministry. The job of the fivefold ministers is to help equip them for that work and to develop the Body of Christ. The Greek word Christ refers to the Anointed One and His Anointing. When used by itself in the Scriptures it indicates the emphasis is on the anointing.
That’s what Ephesians 4:11 is talking about.
It’s telling us that God’s plan is for believers to function on the earth as Jesus’ anointed body.
His Anointing is actually more for the general population of the Body of Christ than it is for the fivefold ministry.
Kenneth Copeland
The fivefold ministry is God’s anointing distribution system. God set it up for the purpose of bringing believers to the place where we all come together, as Ephesians 4:13-15 says: “…in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we henceforth be no more children…but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.”
Once again, the word Christ there puts the focus on the anointing. It indicates the Apostle Paul is talking in those verses about the Church maturing spiritually to the point where we’re all operating together in the anointing, just like our Anointed example, Jesus.
Every supernatural work He did during His earthly ministry was done by the power of the anointing. On His own He didn’t have the ability to heal people or do miracles any more than you and I do. (See John 5:19, 14:10.) When He came to earth, He laid aside His divine power as a member of the godhead. So, while He was here, He didn’t minister as God but as a man baptized with the Holy Spirit and power. That’s why we, as believers, can expect to follow in His footsteps. It’s why He could say in John 14:12: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do.”
That statement sounds a lot like what Paul said in Ephesians 4, doesn’t it? It was Jesus’ way of saying that all of us as believers are to grow up in His Anointing and do His supernatural works.
How is that going to happen?
I can tell you this; it’s not going to happen by us acting like lone rangers. It’s not going to happen by each of us doing our own thing all by ourselves. It’s going to happen as we come together in Christ. For as Ephesians 4:16 says: “From [Him] the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love” (New King James Version).
Joint Problems
That verse reveals a vital truth: The Body of Christ is joined together by Jesus, but it’s held together by what the joints supply. What’s a joint? It’s where body parts are joined to one another so that they can operate together.
One of the reasons the Body of Christ has been slow to fully grow up into the Anointing of Jesus is we’ve had joint problems! Too many believers have neglected to find out from God who they’re supposed to be joined to and gotten with the program. They’ve not come up alongside the ministers and ministries God has called them to be connected to, so they (and all the rest of us) are missing out on the anointing that joint is meant to supply.
I’ll be forever glad I didn’t miss out on the supply that has come from the connection between me and Jerry Savelle, for example. I still remember the day The LORD said to me, Jerry is going to come over and tell you he’s decided to go full time in the ministry. I thought, Well, that’s wonderful! I didn’t yet know all The LORD had in mind for us. But I knew there was something special in my heart about Jerry’s ministry.
Jerry and I have been a ministry team now for more than 50 years, and it’s been a BLESSING both to us and to the Body of Christ. When God put the two of us together, He joined the anointing that’s on Jerry with the anointing that’s on me and created something that in the realm of science is called synergy.
In the natural, when two oxen are yoked together to a plow it creates a synergy that enables those two oxen to pull with the power of three. I don’t know how that works, but it does. It’s been scientifically proven.
[In the spirit,] when God’s people come up alongside one another to do the work of the Kingdom, the synergy principle kicks in [even more powerfully].
Kenneth Copeland
As God put it in Leviticus 26:8, “Five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight.”
That’s the power of biblical partnership!
I first discovered this power back in 1966 when I was working for Brother Oral Roberts. As part of his ministry transportation team I was assigned to drive him to one of his partner meetings. There, I heard him preach from Philippians about the believers who partnered with the Apostle Paul. About how through their prayers and giving they’d entered into partnership with him in the gospel, and that he said to them, “Both in my bonds, and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace” (Philippians 1:7).
Wow! Grace is God’s supernatural empowerment and supply. It includes the anointing that’s on a person and THE BLESSING they walk in.
Paul’s partners in Philippi knew full well the power of the anointing and BLESSING that was on Paul. Their church was a result of it. It began when Paul and Silas were chained up in the local prison, and as they were praising God and praying, the anointing on them got so strong it caused an earthquake. All the prisoners’ chains fell off, the prison doors flew open, and the jailer started crying out asking how to be saved. Paul told him, and he got born again.
Historians believe that jailer became the pastor of the Philippian church. So, no doubt, the whole congregation there remembered that incident. They understood that when Paul referred to the grace that was on him for the defense and confirmation of the gospel he was talking about signs and wonders. Can you imagine how thrilled the Philippians must have been to hear that because they’d partnered with Paul in ministry, the anointing that was on him was now on them too?
I can, because I remember how excited I got in the meeting that day when I realized by partnering with Brother Roberts’ ministry, I could become a partaker of his grace. I wanted to become his partner so badly that day I could hardly stand it. But I didn’t have any financial seed to sow.
My first inclination was to pull a button off my shirt and give it. But then the ushers passed out offering envelopes with little pencils attached to them and I got a better idea. I’ll go ahead and commit to partner with Brother Roberts for $10 a month, I thought, and I’ll put this little pencil in the offering to represent my $10. Then, as soon as I get the $10, I’ll send it in.
After the service was over, as I headed out the door of the sanctuary a woman hollered at me. “Hey you! The Lord has been weary-warting me this whole service to give you $10.”
“Praise God, give it here!” I said. Then I chased down the usher, retrieved my offering envelope, and replaced the pencil with the $10. When I got home, I told Gloria the good news. “We’re partners with Oral Roberts for $10 a month!”
“Kenneth, where will we ever get $10 a month?” she said. Realizing she hadn’t heard the message I’d heard, I preached it to her. Then I said again, “Gloria, we can have Oral Roberts’ anointing for $10 a month!” By that time, she was excited. “Yes! Let’s do it!” she said.
Acting Like Oral Roberts
This is just a spiritual fact: You become like those you associate with. Good or bad, that’s just the way it works.
Kenneth Copeland
So, when I partnered with Brother Roberts in giving and receiving, I started acting like him. I wasn’t trying to imitate him, it’s just that he was my example. When I was in a situation where someone needed ministry, all I knew to do was act like him.
One time I was with him at a meeting in Detroit, in Cobo Hall. It was a huge building, and so many people had come needing prayer that Brother Roberts couldn’t minister to them all. So my boss, Bob DeWeese, said, “Kenneth, I’m going to set you up a prayer line.”
I was in the transportation department! I was there to serve as co-pilot on Brother Roberts’ airplane, not to pray for people. But I’d been watching Brother Roberts and learning about the anointing and the power of the Name of Jesus, so I was ready to go.
Once they got everybody lined up, there were about 500 people for me to minister to. The first one in line had a malignant cancer that spread from her hairline, to her forehead, and over her eye. It was a nasty looking thing. When I saw it the compassion of God rose up in me and made me furious. “In the Name of Jesus!” I said, and the moment I touched her, the cancer disappeared.
My parents were attending the meeting, and my mother was standing there beside me praying in the spirit and saw the cancer vanish. “Where did it go?” she said. “I don’t know!” I replied. (I learned later, it just dematerialized under the power of the Anointing and the authority of Jesus’ Name.)
Not long after, Brother Roberts’ wife, Evelyn, said to me, “Kenneth, it’s rather amazing. You and Oral don’t look anything alike, but when the anointing comes on you, you look strangely like him.” Of course! As Brother Roberts’ partner, I’d become a partaker of his grace. The same anointing that was on him had come on me.
“But Brother Copeland, I’m a ministry Partner and I don’t believe that’s ever happened to me.”
Then start believing for it to happen!
Partnership is like everything else in the kingdom of God, you walk in it by faith. And faith comes by hearing The WORD of God. So spend time meditating on scriptures about spiritual partnership. Open your Bible to Genesis 12, for instance, where God spoke to Abram about how spiritual partnership works, and said:
“I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (verses 2-3).
Rearrange the language in those verses a little and you’ll see they contain the same principle Paul wrote about in Philippians. You’ll see that God essentially said to Abram, “I’ve BLESSED you and called you to be a BLESSING to the world, and anyone who helps you in that ministry of BLESSING will be BLESSED with the same BLESSING that’s on you.”
In Matthew 10:41, Jesus put it this way: “He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward.” What’s the prophet’s reward? It’s the anointing and BLESSING he walks in. It’s the heavenly and earthly rewards he receives for doing the work of God.
When the Apostle Paul wrote his Philippian partners, he talked about all of those things. He told them they were partakers of his anointing. He told them the fruit of his ministry would be credited to their heavenly account (Philippians 4:17). And he said, “MY God shall supply all your need”—in other words He’ll supply yours just as He does mine, at the level of an apostle—“according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (verse 19, NKJV).
That’s the power of partnership.
Tap in to it by faith!
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