One effective way to begin developing faith in God’s love for you is by reading through the Bible and substituting the word Love for the word God. That’s a perfectly scriptural thing to do because the Bible doesn’t just say that God has love. It says He is Love.

So you can say when you read Psalm 23, for instance, “Love is my Shepherd. I shall not want….Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil because Love is with me. Love prepares a table for me in the presence of my enemies….”
If you’ll meditate the Word that way for a while, you’ll come to the point where you can’t think of God without thinking of love. The two will absolutely become so united in your mind that the very thought that God might not love you will seem preposterous. How could God not love you? He is Love!
With that fact settled, you can develop your faith further by acknowledging just how great God’s love for you truly is. You can spend time meditating on the fact that God loves you just as much as He loves Jesus.
“Whoa…I’m not sure I can believe that,” you might say.
You can if you believe the words of Jesus because He’s the One who said it. When He was praying for us as His disciples in John 17:23, He said to the Father, “…thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.”
What’s more, three verses later Jesus told us that same love has been put in our hearts. That’s right! He said, “I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them” (verse 26). That’s powerful!

Now, a big question in the minds of many Christians is does
Satan bless people financially? Many times it looks as though the
ungodly men have all the money, but this is not true. There is
more wealth hidden away than they will ever possess. The Bible
says plainly that God will cause us to have the hidden wealth of
the world, the hidden riches of the secret places (see Isaiah
45:3). The Word tells us that “…the wealth of the sinner is laid
up for the just” (Proverbs 13:22). Why then does the sinner
have it? Because there are certain facts of financial law that will
work when put to work. Israel has proven this. God taught
Abraham certain things that the Jews are using today, and they
are still working. You won’t find a Jew who believes in poverty
because poverty is not in the Old Covenant. It is in religion, not
in the Bible. It was put into Christianity as a religion during the
Dark Ages when the Word was taken from the people and put
away in monasteries. Poverty oaths were fed into Christianity
when the religious hierarchy took over. The men operating it
were not born-again men.

You can look at the world’s system of finance and see a perfect
picture of Satan’s whole pattern. It can be stated in just a
few words—“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and
to destroy” (John 10:10).

How do you kill a body of water? Stop it from flowing.

How do you kill a physical body? Stop it from functioning.

How do you kill the Body of Christ financially? Pile up all
the money in reservoirs and stop it from moving. Satan is a
deceiver. Absolutely nothing he does is a blessing. Proverbs
1:32 confirms this, “The prosperity of fools shall destroy them.” It
may look as if he is blessing, but he always destroys. He always
presents a dead end, no way out. In fact, if you want to discern
between the work of God and the work of Satan, remember:
Satan always tells you there is no way out, but Jesus says, “I am
the way” (John 14:6). If it is doubt, defeat or discouragement, it
is from Satan—ALWAYS.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

You know, the Bible says in Philippians 4:19 that God will
meet your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus,
not according to your need. I have heard it preached that if you
ask God for $100 but need only $20, you’ll probably just get
$10. You won’t find that in the Bible, but God does say:

If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of
the land (Isaiah 1:19).

What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that
ye receive them, and ye shall have them (Mark 11:24).

…ye have not, because ye ask not (James 4:2).

When you act on the Word of God, the desires of your heart
will begin to grow and line up with God. Then He can cause all
grace to abound toward you (see 2 Corinthians 9:8). The first
step is to get your mind off yourself. Begin to take up the needs
of the Body of Christ as if they were your own. The Word states
very plainly that if a man comes to you needing food and
clothes, don’t just pray for him and send him away cold and
hungry. Feed him and clothe him!

Another thing, God will not just meet your needs according
to your job. Businessmen have come to me and said that these
things work for me only because I am a preacher, but this is
foolishness! I know preachers everywhere it’s not working for.
Some men say, “But I don’t have the opportunity for people to
give to me. I’m not out preaching. They don’t think of me when
they give. I have to work for mine.” Well, if you have more faith
in your job and your own ability to work than you have in the
Word of God, then it definitely won’t work for you. God will
certainly use what is available in your job to bless you or even
get you a better one, but He is not limited to your job unless you
limit Him to it. If you will stop and think for a moment, God
did not make His covenant with a preacher; He made it with a
farmer, a working man named Abram. The Scriptures show that
Abram turned to the Sodomite king and said, “I don’t even want
the string from your sandal because you could say a man made
Abram rich” (see Genesis 14:23). No man made Abraham rich.
God made him rich. Can you see this?

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

God used His Word to set the standards by which we would
operate. It had to be by faith or not at all. We made commitments
that seemed so hard. We declared that we would never
ask any man for anything including money and places to minister.
We pledged ourselves and this ministry to Romans 13:8,
that we would never borrow one cent. We would tell our needs
only to God and expect what He was teaching us to produce.
Little did we know then what a blessing these standards would
be. We learned, many times the hard way. We prayed. We confessed
our faith. We stood on God’s Word when every circumstance
spelled absolute doom. God’s Word worked! Things
began to happen for us instead of to us. We began to grow. In
11 months, we were free from debt. Unless you have experienced
the freedom of being debt-free, you cannot imagine how great it
is not to have any man putting pressure on you. We know what
Hebrews 4:11 means when it says, “…labour therefore to enter
into that rest.” There is peace and rest when you know how to
operate in God’s laws instead of being forced to seek help from
men’s sources.

God always has more than enough. The rise in interest rates
has not affected our ministry. The rise in medical costs has not
affected us. We have learned to receive our healing from God.

The world’s shortages have no effect on someone who has
already gone to heaven. Therefore, they should have no effect
on us here who have made Jesus the Lord of our lives.
Philippians 4:19 says that our needs are to be met according to
His riches in glory, not our shortages in earth. Our problem has
been in not knowing heaven’s ways of doing things. We have
tried to live in God’s blessings with the world’s laws. It won’t
work. We receive from God by using His laws and ways.

In the book you are about to read, I have shared these laws
of prosperity the way they were given to me from God’s Word.
They are not theories; they are facts. We have tried and proven
each one in our lives! We live this way. My invitation
to you is from Malachi 3:10. God Himself says, “Prove me now
herewith…if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour
you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive
it.” Determine now to act on God’s Word and start looking for
more room!

Kenneth Copeland Ministries