Strife will cause the grace of God to fail in our lives. Strife, unforgiveness, being critical—these things restrain the Holy Spirit from moving on our behalf. He will be hindered in blessing
and favoring us, because the Spirit of God ministers grace through our obedience.

“This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12). We are to love as Jesus loved. If we don’t walk in love, we won’t be able to walk in the manifested grace of God on a day-to-day basis. If we fail to keep this commandment, the work of God’s Spirit is greatly hindered in our lives.

If you have been praying for some specific needs, but have not been getting results, check your love life. Are you loving the people with whom you come into contact? If not, the power of God is restrained in your life because you are walking in disobedience. Until the love of God begins to operate in your life, the Holy Spirit will be unable to minister unhindered to you to accomplish in your life the good that God desires.

The Bible says when man subverts his ways, his heart frets against the Lord (Proverbs 19:3, The Amplified Bible). Many times we go about living the way we want and simply expect God to fill in the gaps when we get into trouble.

When trouble comes, we say, “God, why did You let this happen to me?”

God did not let it happen to you. You let it happen to you by being disobedient.

You might say, “Well, I didn’t know any better.” Then you need to become more knowledgeable. You cannot stay in ignorance and stay in blessing at the same time. Satan will cram defeat down your throat as long as you will stand there and take it.

The word grace means “free, undeserved favor.” The Greek word for grace is charis. When Christians believe in the gifts of the Spirit, they are called charismatics. What are the gifts of the Spirit? They are simply gifts of God’s grace shed abroad in our midst. We don’t deserve them. We can’t earn them. They come at God’s will. They are a manifestation of His grace. Many times a person who receives a gift will not even be standing in faith. (In this situation, someone’s faith is active, but not necessarily the one who receives.) God just comes down by His grace and distributes the gifts of the Spirit as He wills. Why? Because God is good. The gifts of the Spirit are gifts of grace. God lavishes them upon us because of His goodness and His mercy.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Hard times demand that you take time to be with faith up.

Once you have determined to know God—to become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him—your second step is to spend time with Him. That’s always the bottom line, isn’t it? Whenever we
start pressing in, desiring to win more victories in the Spirit, desiring more power, we’re always directed back to that precious time with Him.

Look again at what Paul said, “[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him...And that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection...” (Philippians 3:10, The Amplified Bible).

Think about it. If you spend an hour with God every day, that’s 365 hours a year. Don’t you think coming into His presence for an hour every day will do something for your life? Even if you just spent 15 minutes a day, that would be 90 hours a year of prayer and time with Him. An hour is just what the Lord led me to do. Follow your own heart. But see to it that you give the Father time to impart His strength into you.

Do you want Jesus’ resurrection power to flow in your life? Then get to know Him! The more you fellowship with Him, the more you’re going to look like Him, act like Him and talk like Him.

That’s not surprising, really. It’s a fact of life. When you spend time around strong people, you begin to take on their way of talking, thinking and even their mannerisms. When you spend time with Jesus, you’ll do exactly the same thing.

So, if you spend your time watching secular television and filling your mind with the world’s news, what do you think will happen? You’ll end up being like the world and living in fear instead of faith.

What you give your attention to is what’s going to be on the inside of you. And what’s inside you will determine the outcome of your situation. Your future is stored up in your heart. (See Matthew 12:34-35, New International Version.)

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

How do you get the kind of spiritual aggressiveness, the urgency it takes to lay hold of that opportunity?

First, you must determine your focus and spend time with God. The Apostle Paul said, “[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him...” (Philippians 3:10, The Amplified Bible).

Notice Paul didn’t say, “One of my purposes is....” He said very specifically, “My determined purpose is....” I can promise you this: You won’t be spiritually aggressive unless you determine to be. You’ll let “...the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things” get in your way (Mark 4:19).

I need to warn you, that determination to spend time with God will run headlong into a busy life. To stay on course, you will have to bring your flesh under the rule of your spirit and be willing to simplify your life.

I discovered this as I was honoring a prophecy the Lord gave through Kenneth E. Hagin on the importance of communing with the Father:

Don’t take up all your time with natural things...give your spirit opportunity to feed upon the Word of God...to commune with the Father above and build yourself up on your most holy faith. It doesn’t take a lot of time, just an hour or two out of 24. Just pay a tithe of your time unto Me, saith the Lord, and all will be well. Your life will be changed. It will be empowered and you will be a mighty force for God.

I never was a great person of prayer. I’m really still not like some people I know. But some years ago I decided I’d pray at least an hour a day.

Can I tell you what you probably already know? When my alarm went off, I’d get up...sometimes. Other times, I’d think—and I know it was the devil—Look how dark it is outside. It’s so cold this morning. You don’t want to get up.

Sometimes in those first few weeks, I’d agree with the devil: “That’s right, I don’t,” and I’d go back to sleep. But I kept at it, and kept at it and kept at it. Eventually it became a habit with me. Now I don’t turn over and go back to sleep anymore.

You see, your body must be trained by your spirit. It will get up. My body never says to me anymore, “It’s so cold outside. It’s so dark....” My body is so used to getting up in the dark, it doesn’t even think about it.

The tithe of my time to the Lord changed my life because I purposed in my heart to not be lazy, draw back, hold back or sit down. I purposed not to spend my life wasting time on natural things. I set goals that I was going to do every day.

It wasn’t easy. When I started I could hardly pray for even five minutes—that was a long time for me. But I stayed with it. Seizing the kingdom isn’t easy. God doesn’t say it will be easy, but He does say it will be worth it.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

“But, Brother Copeland,” you may say, “aren’t grief and sorrow just natural emotions?”

Yes, they are. That’s what makes them so dangerous. We’ve seen them as such a natural part of life that we haven’t even questioned them. As believers, we’ve just opened the church door and let them come right in.

Most people don’t realize it, but those sorrowful old hymns we’ve sung on Sundays aren’t much different from the secular blues songs I used to sing years ago. It was a shock to me when I first came out of the beer joints and into the Body of Christ to hear church folks singing songs written by guys I’d known in my earlier days.

By their own admission, they didn’t know Jesus and didn’t plan to know Him. But they sure knew how to write sorrowful, gut-wrenching music. So they threw in a few Bible phrases, called it gospel music, and started peddling it among believers.

We bought it, too! We swallowed it hook, line and sinker. We didn’t even question the source. It just seemed natural.

Some believers will even fight you for the right to be sad. When I was teaching a series of meetings on prayer in Oklahoma, a woman was there who was grieving over the death of one of her children. Although it had been several years since the child had died, she was still deep in sorrow and grief when I met her.

After one of the sessions, she came up to me to tell me how she’d prayed and prayed over that child and it hadn’t done any good. She was crying as she spoke. Again and again, she sobbed, “My baby died...my baby died....”

When I opened my mouth to reply, the Spirit of God came on me and I said to her, “God didn’t take your child. You let the devil beat you at the game of life, and he’s still whipping you today.”

Suddenly, she was furious. She wasn’t about to let me or anyone else take her grief away from her. Her husband had to take her out, she was so mad.

The next night, however, she came back with a smile on her face. Something had obviously changed. “Brother Copeland,” she said, “please forgive me. How can I ever thank you? For all these years I’ve been so caught up in grief that I’ve failed my family. I haven’t been a wife to my husband or a mother to my children.

“When I got to thinking about what you’ve been teaching on prayer, I remembered all the unbelief we cried and prayed over that baby. We thought it was prayer, but there wasn’t any real prayer to it. We just all agreed she was dying and kept hollering about it. We didn’t release any faith to keep it from happening.

“I did let the devil beat me, back then, and he’s been beating me ever since. But I’m telling you this: I will never let him do it again.”

If you’ve ever been seduced by grief, like this woman was, you’ve experienced an addictive kind of agony. You’ve found that even though the sorrow hurts, there’s something in it that makes you reluctant to let it go.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

“I’d have no problem at all believing God’s Word would heal me if He’d spoken to me out loud like He spoke out loud in Genesis,” you might say. “But He hasn’t!”

No, and He probably won’t either. God no longer has to thunder His Word down at us from heaven. These days He lives in the hearts of believers, so He speaks to us from the inside instead of the outside. What’s more, when it comes to covenant issues like healing, we don’t even have to wait on Him to speak.

He has already spoken!

He has already said, “By [Jesus’] stripes ye were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). He has already said, “I am the Lord that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26). He has already said, “the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up” (James 5:15).

God has already done His part. So we must do ours. We must take the Word He has spoken, put it inside us and let it change us from the inside out.

You see, everything (including healing) starts inside you. Your future is literally stored up in your heart. As Jesus said, “A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things” (Matthew 12:35).

That means if you want external conditions to be better tomorrow, you’d better start changing your internal condition today. You’d better start depositing the Word of God in your heart just like you deposit money in the bank. Then you can make withdrawals on it whenever you need it. When sickness attacks your body, you can tap into the healing Word you’ve put inside you and run that sickness off!

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

The Word tells us to “count it all joy when
we fall into divers temptations” (James 1:2) or,
as the Greek text says, “into different trials
and tribulations.” What does the Word say
about joy? There is a difference between joy and
happiness. Happiness is controlled by the
condition or the comfort of the five physical
senses. Joy is not. The Bible says that joy is a
fruit of the spirit. It is a spiritual force—it is
born inside the human heart. We read in
Nehemiah 8:10 that the joy of the Lord is
our strength, so we can count it strength
when these trials and tribulations come our
way. Don’t count it defeat—count it strength!
Don’t count it negative—count it affirmative!
Jesus said, “Ask, and ye shall receive, that your
joy may be full” (John 16:24). Count it
answered prayer.

To count it all joy does not mean that you
are to thank God because your child is sick.
Let’s look at a portion of the Scripture here
that is often misunderstood.

Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing.
In every thing give thanks: for this
is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning
you. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)
Some of us have read this verse and
thought, “The will of God is for me to give
thanks for everything.” That is not true. That
thing or circumstance
is not the will of God for you—giving
thanks is the will of God. When
you praise God and give Him thanks in the
midst of your situation, you step under the
protective umbrella of the will of God. You
may not know what the Word says about
your particular situation, but the Word does
say to give thanks. Then, while you are under
that protective umbrella, Satan can’t touch you.

You may ask, “How do you count it all joy, Sister
Copeland?” I had a good opportunity to do this one
night when my little daughter had a high
fever. I went into her room, laid hands on
her and prayed, “Father, in the Name of
Jesus, I count it all joy to prove once again
that the Word is real and filled with power.
I’m a faith man, and I’m not moved by what
I see. I’m turning her over to You, and I
believe that You will take care of her in Jesus’
Name. Now, I just praise You and thank You
for her healing.” I didn’t praise God for her
fever because it wasn’t hers and God didn’t
give it to her. Jesus bore her sickness and
disease. If it belonged to anyone, it belonged
to Satan, who was trying to put it on her.

I have accepted Calvary as the sacrifice
that paid the price for my total redemption—
from sin, sickness, poverty, and death. I
believe that and I stand on it. I have certain
rights, called righteousness, in the kingdom
of God and one of these is the right to a
healthy body. Jesus has provided it for me,
and I take hold of it with my faith.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

There is one particular area in which the
Body of Christ has been trouble-minded for a
long time. We have taken one verse of
Scripture, lifted it out of context, and misused
it terribly. In Romans 8:28 the Apostle Paul
wrote this, “And we know that all things work
together for good to them that love God, to them
who are the called according to his purpose.” You
have probably heard this quoted over and
over again in the light of trouble.

All the way through Romans 8, Paul is
talking about the difference between the law
of death and the law of life—that these are
two different laws. He tells us that we are not
governed by the law of death, we have been
delivered from it. “The law of the Spirit of life
in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law
of sin and death” (Romans 8:2). He shows us
the difference between being carnally minded
(or flesh-minded) and being spiritually
minded (or Word-minded). He says, “For to
be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually
minded is life and peace” (Romans 8:6). There
is the division between the two. You can’t be
trouble-minded and spiritually minded at the
same time. Trouble isn’t born by the Spirit of
God—it is born by Satan.

Now, look at Romans 8:26, “Likewise the
Spirit also helpeth our infirmities:
for we know not what we should
pray for as we ought: but the Spirit
itself maketh intercession for us.”
The Spirit of God is not interceding
for us—He is helping us to intercede.
That’s His ministry. The Holy Spirit leads us and
takes up where we fall short of spiritual knowledge.
The word translated helpeth actually is
three Greek words combined. It literally says
“takes hold together with us against.” This verse
literally reads, “The Spirit takes hold together
with us against our infirmities.”

For we know not what we should
pray for as we ought: but the Spirit
itself maketh intercession for us with
groanings which cannot be uttered.
And he that searcheth the hearts
knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit,
because he maketh intercession for the
saints according to the will of God. And
we know that all things work together
for good to them that love God, to them
who are the called according to his purpose.
For whom he did foreknow, he
also did predestinate to be conformed
to the image of his Son, that he might
be the firstborn among many brethren.
(Romans 8:26-29)

The Apostle Paul is talking here about
intercessory prayer—how it works, how it
operates. By being trouble-minded, we have
subconsciously read verse 28 like this: “For
we know that all bad things work together
for the good of those that love God.” But it
doesn’t say that at all! It wasn’t talking about
bad things—it was talking about good
things—about intercessory prayer.

He says in verse 29, “he also did predestinate
to be conformed to the image of his Son.”
What tools does the Holy Spirit use to conform
us to the image of His Son? The nine
gifts of the Spirit, the Name of Jesus, the
blood of the Lamb, the Word of God, and
everything that the New Testament guarantees
the believer in this life and in the world
to come. When the believer begins to move
into intercession, when he begins to intercede
for the Body of Christ as he should,
then these tools come together and operate
against our infirmities, so we pray accurately
and powerfully by the anointing of the Holy
Spirit. In this way, all these things work
together for the good of those that love God.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

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

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

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