Kenneth Copeland — Religion Doesn’t Help You, Faith Does
I’ve heard people say, “Well, look what God
did to Job!” What did God do to Job? He built a
hedge around him and blessed him with abundance.
At the end of the book of James, the
Word says that God was full of pity and mercy
in His dealings with Job.
For years now, we’ve read about Job and
have blamed God for Job’s situation, thinking
that God commissioned Satan to attack Job.
That’s not true! In Job 1, Satan came to God
and said, “Put your hand against Job, and he
will curse you.” He tried to get God to do it,
but God would not. He said, “Behold [look and
see], he is in your power.” Job was already in
Satan’s power by letting that hedge fall from
around him. He quit acting in faith, began
operating in fear, and that protective hedge fell.
Then he was vulnerable to Satan’s attack. The
sacrifices he made were not made in faith. The
Word says he made the same ones continually
(Job 1:5). He lost everything he had. Job didn’t
have the written Word of God to act on like you
and I do today. He said, “That which I have so
greatly feared has come upon me” (Job 3:25).
Then he began by trial and error to figure a
way to get back his faith again. He tried crying
about it, he tried cutting and hurting himself,
he sat down in the ashes—none of this did him
any good at all. Satan sent him some very religious
men, and they certainly didn’t help him!
They were the ones that said God had done it.
God Himself told these men, however, that
they had not spoken of Him rightly.
But the very moment Job moved back in
faith by praying for those men, he moved
back on the Word of God and God replaced
double everything he had lost. When Job
began operating in faith once again, his
deliverance was instantaneous.
We need to preach this instead of identifying
with Job’s sickness and failure. People say,
“Well, I’m just like poor old Job.” We’ll, if
you’re going to be like Job, then you will have
to get healed and delivered. Job wasn’t poor
either—he was the richest man in the East
when this began and then God doubled that!
All God has ever done and all He has ever said
has been deliverance, freedom and power for
His people.
I refuse to believe that my heavenly Father
would hurt me, even though I may not know
all the circumstances. It may look as
though He is behind it, but I refuse to fall for
that. I know He sent His Son to die for me, so
I’m not going to hesitate for one moment and
give Satan the opportunity to move in on me.
Trouble-preaching—being trouble-centered
and trouble-minded instead of being victoryminded—
will give Satan just the moment’s hesitation
he needs to defeat you.
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Gloria Copeland — The Word Is Our Correction
Now there are times when a situation looks
as if God is behind it. It may have all the
symptoms pointing to that. But Satan is a
deceiver; he wants you to think God did it.
If he can get you to go against God, he’ll
run rampant over you. The religious idea
that God chastises His own with sickness
and disease and poverty is the very thing
that has caused the Church to go 1,500 years
without the knowledge of the Holy Spirit or
the gifts of the Spirit.
We just became so passive, and double-minded
that the whole Church was schizophrenic,
except for a few men here and there who
refused to believe it—and most of them were
kicked out of their churches.
Now let’s look at this a little closer. “For
whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and
scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”
The word scourge means “to beat on.” God
is the Father of spirits. He doesn’t scourge the flesh, He
scourges the inner man. How does He do this? With His Word.
Every Scripture is God-breathed
(given by His inspiration) and profitable
for instruction, for reproof and conviction
of sin, for correction of error and discipline
in obedience, and for training in
righteousness, So that the man of God
may be complete and proficient, well-fitted
and thoroughly equipped for every
good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17, AMP)
The Lord chastises His own with the
Scriptures. Put yourself in subjection to the
Word. The Sword of the Spirit is two-edged—
one side is for Satan and the other side is for
you. It trims away the flesh and the lusts, and it
sanctifies us.
I’ll show you some examples of this. The
Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 7:8-9:
For though I made you sorry with a
letter, I do not repent, though I did
repent: for I perceive that the same epistle
hath made you sorry, though it were
but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that
ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed
to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a
godly manner.
This is the way in which God convicts, brings
repentance, chastens, and scourges us—with
His Word! He sent His Word to the church at
Corinth, and it hurt so badly that they would
have preferred being beaten with a stick!
They knew how to handle sickness and
disease, but when God reprimanded them with
His Word, it cut deep into their spirits and they
were sorry. Proverbs 17:10, The Amplified Bible,
says, “A reproof enters deeper into a man of understanding
than a hundred lashes into a [selfconfident]
fool.”
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Gloria Copeland — How Does God Correct?
We have seen that the word chastisement
means “punishment by inflicting pain” and
that Jesus bore our chastisement, or our punishment,
with pain on the cross.
The Greek word translated chastise in the
New Testament actually means “to instruct or
to train.” The question often arises, “How does
God chastise His own?”
How does God instruct and train us? Does
He unleash His bad dog to bite us on the leg,
so we will learn to wear our boots? No, He
does not!
For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,
and scourgeth every son whom
he receiveth. If ye endure chastening,
God dealeth with you as with sons; for
what son is he whom the father chasteneth
not? But if ye be without chastisement,
whereof all are partakers, then are
ye bastards, and not sons.
Furthermore we have had fathers of
our flesh which corrected us, and we
gave them reverence: shall we not much
rather be in subjection unto the Father
of spirits, and live? (Hebrews 12:6-9)
Jesus said, “That which is born of the flesh is
flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”
(John 3:6). Our fleshly fathers correct us in the
flesh, but God is a spirit and He uses spiritual
tools, not carnal tools. He uses spiritual
weapons, not carnal weapons. Jesus said, “My
words are spirit.” He chastises with His words.
“For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.”
A loving God doesn’t send tornadoes or cancer
to His children. God never told me not to pray
for someone’s healing because He had put sickness
on them. Jesus said, “If you’ve seen Me,
you’ve seen the Father” (John 14:9). He never
told a leper that he would have to keep leprosy
so God could teach him something. The Word
says in Acts 10:38, “God anointed Jesus of
Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power:
who went about doing good, and healing all that
were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.”
God did these things through Jesus. God is not
double-minded—He is single-minded.
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Gloria Copeland — What You Plant Always Grows
“But, Gloria,” you say, “all that sounds
so simple!”
It is simple! Sometimes I think that’s
why God chose me to teach it. Because
I’m simple. When I read the Word of
God, I just believe it is speaking to me
personally. I don’t worry and fuss and
say, “Well, I wish that would work for
me, but I don’t think it will because of
this or that….” I just expect God to do
what He says.
You can do the same thing. You can
come to the Word like a little child
and say, “Lord, I receive this. I believe
Your Word above all and I trust You
with my life.” If you will, you’ll never
be disappointed.
How can you get that simple, childlike
faith? By hearing the Word of God.
Romans 10:17 says, “Faith cometh
by hearing, and hearing by the word
of God.” But you need to know something
else: Doubt comes by hearing
also. That’s why Jesus said, “Be careful
what you are hearing…” (Mark 4:24,
The Amplified Bible).
What you’re hearing can be a matter
of life and death when you’re dealing
with healing. If you’re going to a church,
for example, that teaches healing has
passed away or that God uses sickness
to teach you something—and you keep
hearing that Sunday after Sunday—what
do you think will grow in your heart?
Doubt, not faith.
What you plant in your heart grows—
always. Doubt will grow and keep you
bound. Truth will grow and make you
free. So be careful what you’re hearing.
Listen to the Word of God. As Proverbs
4:21 says, “Let them [God’s words] not
depart from thine eyes; keep them in
the midst of thine heart.”
Read the Word every day. Make
notecards for yourself using the
healing scriptures and tape them to
your mirror.
Play audio teaching resources. Listen
to them in your car. Listen to them
while you dress in the morning. If you’ll
listen to the Word while you’re driving
back and forth to work every day, you’ll
be surprised how fruitful that time will
become. It will change your life. I challenge
you to try it!
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Gloria Copeland — What Did You Say?
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
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