Isaiah 55:11 says the Word of God
prospers (or succeeds) in the thing for
which it is sent. That means His Word
about healing will produce healing. It
may not produce it right away, but the
more you let the Word work in you, the
greater your results will be.

In other words, the size of your
harvest will depend on how much
seed you plant. How much time and
attention you give to the Word of God
will determine how much crop you
will yield.

You see, your heart is actually your
spirit. Its capacity is unlimited. You can
plant as much seed in your heart as
you have hours in a day.

If you’ll build your life around the
Word, you can have a full return.
Jesus called it a hundredfold return
(Mark 4:20).

Now some people will argue about
that. They’ll say, “Well, it didn’t work for
me! I put God’s Word about healing into
my heart and I’m still sick!”

But these people give themselves away
the minute they say such things. Jesus
taught, “…of the abundance of the heart
his mouth speaketh” (Luke 6:45). If those
people had actually planted God’s Word
in their hearts in abundance, they’d
be talking about healing, not sickness!
They would be saying, “By His stripes I
am healed!”

The same is true for you. The more
you put God’s Word in your heart, the
stronger you’ll become. Eventually
that Word inside you will begin to
come out of your mouth in power
and deliverance.

Don’t wait until you have a need to
start speaking the Word. Start speaking
it now.

I’ll never forget the first time I realized
the importance of speaking
God’s Word. It was years ago when
Ken had just started preaching
and I was staying at home with our
children. We were in a desperate
situation financially and I was eager
for answers.

One day as I was sitting at my typewriter,
typing notes and listening to tapes,
I read Mark 11:23. “For verily I say unto
you, That whosoever shall say unto this
mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou
cast into the sea; and shall not doubt
in his heart, but shall believe that those
things which he saith shall come to pass;
he shall have whatsoever he saith.”

Suddenly, the truth of that last
phrase just jumped out at me. And the
Lord spoke to my heart and said, In
consistency lies the power.

He was telling me it’s not just the
words you speak when you pray that
change things, it’s the words you
speak all the time!

If you want to see your desire come
to pass, you need to make your words
match your prayers. Don’t try to pray
in faith and then get up and talk in
unbelief. Talk faith all the time!

Romans 4:17 says God “…calleth those
things which be not as though they
were.” So if you want to receive something
from God, follow His example.
Speak it. That’s the way faith works. You
speak the Word of God concerning what
you want to happen.

If what you’re looking for is health,
then go to the Word that tells you,
“By His stripes you were healed,” and
put that in your mouth. Don’t talk
sickness. Talk health. Don’t talk the
problem. Talk the answer.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Do you want to know the thoughts of
God? Do you want to know the wisdom of
God? Well, go get your Bible, open it up, and
read it!

If you’re holding a Bible, you have God’s
wisdom right there in your hand.

About 20 years ago I was driving down
the highway pleading with God. I had some
questions I wanted to ask Him. I had some
problems in my life I needed Him to address.

“Oh, God,” I said, “You spoke to Moses face
to face. You spoke to Elijah. You spoke to
Elisha. You spoke to Joshua. I want You to
talk to me so badly I can hardly stand it.”

Suddenly, right on the inside of me I
heard His voice. Why, Kenneth, He said, you
have a record of everything I said to Moses.
You have a record of everything I said to
Joshua. You have everything I said to Elijah
and Elisha. You have everything I said to Daniel
and Jesus. It’s lying right next to you on the
seat of your car.

I looked over and there was my Bible.
I’ll tell you, I shouted. “Praise God! Praise
God! Praise God!”

I pulled over to the side of the road and
shouted and wept with joy. I was driving an
old car that had more than 98,000 miles on
it (actually, it had 98,000 miles on it when
I got it!) and it was leaking at every joint.

At that moment, I realized that the new car
I so desperately needed was laying right there
on the seat next to me.

The wisdom of God—all it would take
for me to have that car—was right there. The
wisdom of the ages was at my fingertips and
I could read every word of it and stand on
every word of it.

You can, too. But first, you have to be
willing to forsake your old ways of thinking.

“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous
man his thoughts” (Isaiah 55:7). Do you
know what wicked means? It means “twisted.”
Twisted thoughts produce twisted results.

Poor thinking produces poverty. Sick thinking
produces sickness. You can’t hold onto those kinds
of thoughts and walk in the power of God.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord”
(Isaiah 55:8). Let’s face it. God is just plain
smarter than we are. He’s been around a lot
longer—and what He thinks is a whole lot
different than what we’ve been thinking.

So let the Word of God, the wisdom of
God, begin to influence your thinking. Soak
your mind in it. Don’t just scan it lightly. Dig
in it. Learn it. Take it seriously.

Then begin to pray in the spirit. Let the
Spirit of God start a process of spiritual insight
in your heart as you pray and worship in the
spirit. After a while, you’ll begin to understand
things in a new way. You’ll begin to have a
whole new interpretation of the problem.
You may suddenly have a realization, a
deep conviction, an inner knowing.

Someone may call you on the telephone
and say, “I just got a word from the Lord
this morning and I’m so excited about it....”
And what they say is exactly what you need
to hear.

However you get it, remember—wisdom
is the principal thing. God’s way of thinking
will save your life, pull you out of debt and
put you on the road to prosperity. It will
introduce you to possibilities you have never
seen before. They’re out there now...just
beyond your thinking.

So quit focusing on your seemingly hopeless
situation, get your Bible out, and say—just
like the leper—“Why sit we here till we die?”
Then get moving. God’s Word, full of
abundance, is just waiting for you!

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Have you ever been in the midst of a
faith stand when suddenly it seemed like your
faith just quit working?

Maybe you were believing God for healing
or financial deliverance or the salvation of
your family. Spiritually, everything was in
place. You found the scriptures that promised
you what you needed. You were firing off
confessions of faith like a machine gun.

But as time went by, your spiritual battery
began to weaken. The power you had when
you first took your stand began to wane, and
you developed a gnawing suspicion that
nothing would happen.

In desperation, you tried to shove those
doubts away by confessing louder and longer.
You frantically tried to force your faith to
work. But to no avail.

You wound up still sick, still broke, still
surrounded by unsaved relatives...and
wondering what went wrong.

In the end, you probably just chalked it
up as a faith failure.

But I’m about to tell you something that
will change your life if you’ll pay attention
to it. It certainly changed mine. It’s this: What
you experienced was not the failure of your
faith...it was a breakdown of your hope.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

We’ve already learned from that scripture

that hope must be present for faith to

produce. But the reverse is also true. Hope

can’t produce anything without faith! Faith

is the substance.

I remember years ago when I first started

studying the subject of faith, I discovered that

many people were trying to get by on hope

alone, and it wasn’t working. They’d say,

“We’re just hoping and praying,” and I’d know

right then they wouldn’t get anything, because

without faith their hope had no substance.

Hope is only the blueprint. You can’t take

a blueprint all by itself and make a house

out of it. You won’t be able to live in the

thing because it’s paper. But if you’ll take

some substance—lumber and steel and

stone—you can follow the blueprint and

build a place fit to live in. Faith and hope.

Blueprint and building materials. You must

have them both.

Remember though, as I said before, the

only truly workable blueprint comes from

the Word of God. All other blueprints will

let you down.

That’s why you often hear people say,

“Don’t get your hopes up.” They’ve had

experience with natural hope (hope based on

circumstances and human knowledge instead

of on the Word of God), and they know that

kind of hope will leave you disappointed

more often than not.

In Colossians 1:23, Paul warns us not to

be moved away from the “hope of the gospel.”

That’s because any other hope besides “gospel

hope” can be spiritually dangerous.

Say, for example, you were dealing with

a physical disease and your doctor told you

that you only had a small chance of recovering.

He’d say that because, based on the

natural information he’d have, that might be

all he could medically expect—and he

wouldn’t want to offer you a false hope that

might leave you disappointed.

But the Bible says when we operate in

the hope of the gospel, we’ll not be ashamed.

So, instead of clinging to that flimsy thread

of limited hope which man has offered you,

you’d be much safer going to the Word of

God that says, “By [his] stripes ye were

healed!” Because those words aren’t based on

fragmented human information. They’re

based on the knowledge of God Himself.

Instead of holding on to natural hope, if

you built up supernatural hope by meditating

on that truth and looking at it night and day,

you’d soon have some inner images of strength

you could wrap your faith around. You’d even

be able to use that supernatural hope to

combat the natural evidence around you. Then,

instead of having a small hope for recovery,

you could have a sure hope for recovery!

Look at Romans 4:18 and you can see

what happened when, in the midst of a naturally

hopeless situation, Abraham chose to

build his life on that kind of supernatural

hope. He had received a promise from God

that he would become the father of many

nations. The problem was, he was already

old. So when he turned around and looked

at his 90-year-old wife and then looked in

the mirror and saw a 100-year-old man, he

had no natural hope.

Natural knowledge told him there was

no way he could ever have a child. Don’t

you know that negative knowledge

bombarded his thinking? So what did he do?

He took the promise of God, and the hope

of that promise, and combated the negative

hope coming against him which said, “No

way, you can’t do it. It’s hopeless.”

The Bible says, “He hoped against hope.”

In other words, he used supernatural hope

to overcome natural hope. He locked his

mind onto what God said and drove out

everything else.

Verse 19 says, “Being not weak in faith,

he considered not his own body now dead...

neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb.”

Now, how did he do that? How can you

consider not your own body when you’re 100

years old and thinking about having a baby?

It would be tough, but Abraham was able to

do it because “he staggered not...through unbelief;

but was strong in faith, giving glory to God;

and being fully persuaded that, what [God] had

promised, he was able also to perform” (verses

20-21). God’s promise was at the center of his

hope, his faith and his persuasion.

Abraham was fully persuaded. You can

be fully persuaded, too. But you can’t get

that way by sitting around watching television

or by spending all your time messing

around with the world. You get fully

persuaded by purposely meditating on the

promise of God until it gets inside you so

deeply that no one can get it out.

Another thing that caused Abraham to be

fully persuaded was the fact that God changed

Abraham’s name. God stopped calling him

Abram and started calling him Abraham, which

means “father of a multitude.”

If you’ll pay attention to this principle,

you’ll find you can use it in your own life.

For example, I learned a long time ago to

stop calling myself “poor boy.” It didn’t

matter that on the outside I looked broke. I

decided—based on the Word of God—if

anyone hollered, “Poor boy!” I wouldn’t

answer, ever again.

Now, if they were to start hollering for

someone who has all his needs met according

to God’s riches in Christ Jesus, I’d come

running. But I decided I wouldn’t go by what

things looked like anymore. I wouldn’t go by

what I felt. I had based my life on something

bigger than feelings. I had gotten the hope of

the gospel inside me.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Abraham called himself “father of a
multitude.” That was his new name. He
wouldn’t let anyone call him anything else.
People probably thought he’d flipped out.
But Abraham knew what he knew. He was
the father of a multitude. He’d seen the
blueprint.

Let me give you another example. If I
said to you, “Come over here and see my
dream house. Man, is it something!” You
might say to me, “Where is it?”
I’d answer, “Right here on this piece of
paper!”
Then, you might tell me, “You don’t have
a house.”
“I certainly do,” I’d say. “I just got back
from the architect, and you ought to see it.
Sit down and I’ll show you my house.”

Now, that house is real. It started as an
image in my mind. Then I described it to the
architect and he translated it into symbols
and lines. If it hadn’t been a picture in my
mind and on paper, if I hadn’t called it my
house, then it would never have been built.

Hope works just like that. People of faith
look into the Word of God and begin to see
things. They see things like, “By [his] stripes
ye were healed.”

I remember the first time I ever saw that
particular part of God’s blueprint. My mind
just wouldn’t accept it. If it hadn’t been right
there in the Bible, I never would have believed
it because it was obvious to me I wasn’t
healed. But the Bible said, “Ye were healed.”

And if “ye were,” then I knew I must be.
Once I received that, I started meditating
on it. I started building it up on the inside of
me. Eventually I was able to see myself
healed.

Soon, every time some symptom suggested
to me that I wasn’t healed, I’d begin to resist
it and reject it. You couldn’t tell me healing
didn’t belong to me any more than you could
tell me that blueprint wasn’t my house. I
knew it did. I had a picture of it on the inside
of me.

Now, I realize there’s been some controversy
in Christian circles about the right and wrong
of visualization. But I can put that argument to
rest by assuring you, you are always visualizing
something—whether you want to or not. Our
minds have been divinely programmed to do
that. You have an imagination.

We can either use that programming the
way God designed it to be used and live, or
we can use it the perverted way Satan has
trained us to use it, and die. But we’re going
to use it, one way or the other.

Look at the way we talk. Words are
simply inner-image transferring devices. When
I say, “Dog,” I transfer an image from the
inside of me to you. You don’t sit there thinking,
“D-O-G.” You see an inner image of a
dog. If I say, “Big, black, barking dog,” I can
modify that image. So when we speak, we’re
actually exchanging pictures.

As you speak out those inner images, if
they are based on the Word of God, faith
comes alongside to give them substance.
Hope is the blueprint. Faith is the substance.
It’s a powerful process. How you use it will
literally determine your destiny.

There is, however, one thing you need
to know: Destiny is not built overnight. It’s
not what you thought once or twice that
got you where you are today. It’s what
you’ve thought over and over again. Those
inner images are created by repetition, and
repetition takes time.

I remember how long it took me to start
seeing myself with my needs met according to
God’s riches in glory by Christ Jesus. The outside
of me kept saying I was broke. It said, “You
will live in this shack all your life, boy. There’s
no way you can ever get out of here.”

But I started meditating on the Word of
God. I practiced thinking about myself God’s
way. It wasn’t easy at first. It felt awkward
and unnatural. But that’s how you feel when
you do something new.

That’s how I felt the first time I tried to
fly an airplane. During those first few hours,
that thing was a monster. When I tried to
land it, I hit the nose gear on the ground first
and bounced the thing like it was a basketball.

Then the next time I landed it, I kept the
nose too high and fell several feet, slamming
into the ground. I couldn’t find the ground.
But now, after more than 10,000 hours and
more than 40 years of flying, I don’t feel
awkward anymore.

That’s exactly how you learn to operate in
the things of God. You practice. You get into
the Word and you meditate on it until the Word
begins to change your inner image of yourself
and you begin to see yourself with your needs
met instead of without. You begin to see yourself
in Christ Jesus. You think about it. You talk
about it. You start believing in God’s promises
and acting on them.

“But what if I fail?”
So what if you do? Don’t call it a failure.
Just get up and go after it again. Learn some
more, and learn some more. Work at it.
Determine to develop inside you the hope of
the gospel.

Just remember, this isn’t something that
happens in a day or two. It takes time. Before
I came to Jesus in 1962, I was one of the
most efficient sinners you ever saw. I could
sin without even thinking about it. When I
got into the things of God and started trying
to turn that around, it wasn’t easy to do. It
didn’t take much of anything for Satan to
knock me off course.

But over the last 46 years you might say
I’ve had a lot of Holy Ghost flying lessons.
I’ve done a lot of spiritual bouncing and slamming,
but I’ve learned a lot, too. Some of the
things Satan used years ago to knock me off
balance won’t even get to first base with me
now. So be diligent. Stay with it. It will pay
off if you don’t give up.

The Bible solemnly says, “Where there is
no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18).
That’s how important it is for you to get a
grip on God’s blueprint for your life.

It’s not an option. It’s an absolute necessity,
because like it or not, your hope, your vision,
that inner image inside you, is determining
your destiny—for better, for worse...forever.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries