Just as Paul ran his race—his life’s course—there’s also a race marked out for you. God has charted that course and only you can run it. Only by pressing in to win your race will you see the fullness of God’s provision in your life.

And let me add: God didn’t choose you for that race based on your ability, intellect, or anything you could do in the natural. He planned to empower you with His ability to do the job that He prepared for you. It’s in the weakness of your natural ability that He can show Himself strong. Don’t be deceived into thinking someone else can run your race. No one can run another person’s race.

If we knew the races marked out for everyone ahead of time, we’d probably choose other people to run them. We would think, Not that person—they’ll never make it!

Let me tell you how God picks people for their tasks: He looks at the heart. He doesn’t always choose from the greatest universities. It’s difficult for Him to use those who think they can handle situations in their own wisdom and strength. “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him” (2 Chronicles 16:9). In this verse, perfect means “devoted, consecrated, dedicated, loyal, faithful.”

I want to tell you something that will take a lot of pressure off you and will release faith action: The race you have been chosen to run is impossible to finish on your own. Everything we’re chosen to do is impossible because God wants it done by faith.

It took a lot of pressure off me when I realized God never intended for us to know how to do what He tells us to do. He never intended for me or Ken to know how to go on television. He intended to do it through us. He knows how! We just have to do what we’re told.

Our part is to maintain our fellowship with Him. His part is to do the work through us. When you’re in God, you’re in over your head all the time. Get used to it and keep on pressing in.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

What happens when your heart gets so full it starts to overflow? Look at Matthew 12:34 and you’ll see. It says, “...out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.”

So the last step of God’s divine prescription is to speak, not words of sickness and disease, discouragement and despair, but words of healing and life, faith and hope.

You are to “Put away from thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee” (Proverbs 4:24). In short, you are to speak the words of God.

Initially, that may not be easy for you to do. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably spent years talking about how bad things are. At the first sniffle or sneeze, you may be likely to say, “I must be catching a cold. I get one every year!” You may not even mean it. But you’ve spoken like that for so long, it’s become habit.

What’s more, people are comfortable with that kind of talk. They’ll jump right in and say, “Yeah, the same thing happens to me.” But when you start speaking the Word, you’ll sneeze and say, “I resist you, cold! I call myself healed, in Jesus’ Name! I believe I’m taking healing!”

That will sound so different to other people. That’s OK. Talk the Word anyway because for faith to work it must be in two places—in your heart and in your mouth. “For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:10).

Some people say that faith will move mountains. But, the scriptural truth is, faith won’t even move a molehill for you unless you release it with the words of your mouth.

The Lord Jesus told us 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). Notice the word say appears three times in that verse while the word believe appears only once. Obviously, Jesus wanted us to know that our words are crucial.

It’s also important to note that He did not instruct us to talk about the mountain, but to talk to it! If we’re going to obey Him, we must talk to the mountain of sickness and cast it out of our lives. The Lord told Charles Capps, I have told My people, they can have what they say, but they are saying what they have! Instead of saying, “I’m healed,” most Christians say, “I’m sick” and reinforce the sickness or disease.

I know one minister who went to visit a young man in the hospital years ago. The fellow was unconscious and had been given up to die by the doctors. As the minister was leaving the hospital room, the Lord spoke to him to let the young man’s wife know that her husband would be healed if she would obey Mark 11:23.

So, she did! Day after day, she sat next to her unconscious husband and said, “My husband will live and not die in Jesus’ Name...My husband will live and not die in Jesus’ Name.” As a result, that young man was fully healed.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Actually, the Life of God in your heart will not only heal you when you get sick, if that Life abides in you fully, it will continually keep you in divine health. The Proverbs 4 prescription for healing says it this way: “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (verse 23).

What are the issues or forces of life that flow out of your heart when you’re feeding on the Word and fellowshiping with God? They are things like “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance” (Galatians 5:22-23). The Bible calls theses forces the fruit of the spirit. They are the life of God flowing from your heart in abundance. You’ll find it is as hard for you to get sick as it used to be for you to get healed. The devil might try to bring sickness on you, but he won’t be able to make it stick.

Years ago, the Lord showed me an illustration of that principle I’ll never forget. I was in the Philippines, preparing to preach in a meeting at the time and I’d been studying the fruit of the spirit. As I looked out the window of my hotel room, the Lord brought to my attention a fountain in the courtyard below. He pointed out to me that as long as water was flowing from that fountain, no trash could remain in the mouth of it. Someone might toss some trash in, but the force of the water would just push it right back out again.

I realized then that our hearts are like that fountain. As long as the forces of God’s Spirit are flowing out of it, we’ll be free from the devil’s junk!

How can we make sure those forces keep flowing from our hearts? We must watch over them with all diligence. When we’re tempted to get into bitterness or unforgiveness, we must refuse that temptation and instead yield to the fruit of the spirit: Then we must turn the water of Life up higher by (you guessed it!) turning our attention back to the Word.

Remember this: The forces of life and power coming out of your heart will be in direct proportion to the amount of Word that goes into you.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

The great thing about your heart account is that, unlike your bank account, there’s no limit to the amount you can put into it. You might run out of money to deposit, but you’ll never run out of Word. You can put in as much as you want.

Of course, it takes time to make those deposits, but you’re the one who decides how much time you’re going to spend in the Word. It’s entirely up to you!

Some people are hesitant to spend great amounts of time putting the Word about healing in their hearts because they think their investment might not pay off. They think they might make sacrifices to attend to the Word and end up sick anyway. But Galatians 6:7-9 puts such concerns to rest:

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in welldoing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

This is the unchangeable law of God. Whatever you sow is what you will reap. If you sow cotton, you won’t reap peanuts. If you sow peanuts, you won’t reap doughnuts. If you steadfastly sow the Word of Life into the soil of your heart, you won’t end up with sickness and death. You’ll end up with a harvest of divine health. The New Testament in Modern English by J.B. Phillips says, “A man’s harvest in life will depend entirely on what he sows” (Galatians 6:7).

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

“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

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