Learn to think on the things of God—what His Word says about you and your situation. Refuse to allow thoughts of sin or defeat of any kind in your life. Live alive unto God listening to and responding to the Word of God and the Spirit of God. When you replace the devil’s words with God’s Word, you can continually live in the blessing and favor of God.

Look at what Proverbs says wisdom (His Word) will do in our lives:

1. Life, healing and health. “For they are life to those who find them, healing and health to all their flesh” (Proverbs 4:22, The Amplified Bible).

2. Length of days and years of life worth living. “For length of days, and years of a life [worth living], and tranquility [inward and outward and continuing through old age till death], these shall they add to you” (Proverbs 3:2, The Amplified Bible).

3. Favor and understanding. “So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man” (Proverbs 3:4).

4. Guidance. “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:6).

5. Abundance. “Honour the Lord with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase: So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine” (Proverbs 3:9-10).

6. Riches and honor. “Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour” (Proverbs 3:16).

7. Happiness. “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding” (Proverbs 3:13).

8. Peace. “For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee” (Proverbs 3:2).

9. Security—you shall not be afraid. “Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. For the Lord shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken” (Proverbs 3:25-26).

10. Gracefulness, beauty and glory. “She shall give to your head a wreath of gracefulness; a crown of beauty and glory will she deliver to you” (Proverbs 4:9, The Amplified Bible).

Then these benefits will belong to us according to God’s Word. God doesn’t intend for us to live like the world and then pray to receive a miracle when we get into trouble. Thank God, He will deliver us when we get into trouble, but we are called to live so much higher than that—as high as the heavens are above the earth. If we’ll place our lives in God’s hands, obey Him and begin to live that holy life, most problems will be avoided. For example, it’s wonderful to receive a miracle when you’re sick, but it’s better to walk with God and live in divine health and stay well (Proverbs 4:20-22).

By choosing to live as a born-again believer, and by spending time fellowshiping with God in His Word and in prayer, you are choosing to open up your spirit to Him so that you can walk responsive to His Spirit—that you stay ALIVE unto God.

As you walk alive unto God, the Holy Spirit will tell you what adjustments are necessary to make you pure and holy like your heavenly Father.

So, choose life. Choose the Word—and watch the blessings overtake you.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

When Jesus Christ walked the earth, He demonstrated the creative power of speaking God’s words. The disciples were at sea with Him once when a fierce storm arose. Panic struck. In their terror, the disciples were thrust into a world charged with fear. They were living at the moment in anxiety, tension, stress and impending tragedy. When they woke Jesus—Who was sleeping peacefully—to tell Him of
the peril, He stepped onto the bow of the boat and spoke a creative word to the storm: “Peace, be still” (Mark 4:39). When Jesus spoke it, the Holy Spirit accomplished it, and there was peace.

Jesus went to a house where a young woman lay dead. He told all the mourners to leave, and He said to the young lady, “Arise” (Mark 5:41). At that moment, life arose where there had been lifelessness. Where there had been the pallor of death, the radiant face of a living soul emerged. His word created life.

To another person Jesus said, “Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole” (Luke 17:19). Jesus spoke, and the Spirit brought each of these things into existence.

Jesus had the Spirit of God without measure (John 3:34). We have God’s Spirit with measure. When we “die to the flesh” and allow more of the Spirit to indwell us, we have a greater measure of God’s Spirit, but none of us experiences God’s Spirit without measure as Jesus did. When Jesus spoke, He spoke by the power of the limitless Holy Spirit within Him. He said and did everything God wanted Him to say and do, and it was always by the power of the Holy Spirit. He lived in total dependence upon the Spirit.

But Jesus said a peculiar thing. He said, “Greater works than these shall he [you] do; because I go unto my Father” (John 14:12).

Peter understood this delegation of power rather quickly. Days after Jesus had ascended into heaven, Peter went to the temple at the hour of prayer. There he saw a lame man begging, expecting to receive something. Peter said, “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6).

Using the Name of Jesus, Peter reached out his hand to the beggar and helped him to his feet. And as the Spirit of God confirmed the word which Peter spoke using Jesus’ authority, the man leapt to his feet and began walking and jumping. His legs, lame since birth, were suddenly filled with strength and life.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

With the power of patience at work, the experience of faith’s result is inevitable.

This is how faith and patience work together to produce victory. For example, your body has symptoms of sickness and is screaming with pain. You must get your faith into operation. The first thing you must do is to go to the will of God—the Word. Open your Bible to Matthew 8:17 which says, “Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.” Then go to 1 Peter 2:24 which says, “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” God’s Word does not say that by His stripes you may be healed, but by His stripes you were healed. You were healed!

Now you are beginning to look at healing through the eye of faith. Your faith is looking beyond the symptoms in your body. Then say, “Father, 1 Peter 2:24 says that by the stripes of Jesus, I was healed. I apply this Word to my body, and I command it to be healed, in the Name of Jesus. The Word says I am healed. I say I am healed. Sickness, I speak to you in the Name of Jesus, and I command you to leave my body.”

That did it. You believed you received when you prayed. Jesus said, “Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (Mark 11:24). You have His Word.

Many times all symptoms leave immediately, but not always. There are times when the power of patience must be put into operation to undergird your act of faith on God’s Word. You did the will of God when you did what the Word says. Now, you have need of patience so that you will be entire and wanting nothing. The experience of that healing is inevitable. It is not a “maybe it will and maybe it won’t” situation. The Word says you were healed. Now through patience, you must hold fast to this Word concerning healing, regardless of symptoms or pain, knowing that patience will produce the experience of healing. Working the power of patience is the difference between success and failure in the faith walk.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

In fact, The Amplified Bible translates Proverbs 4:20 this way: “My son, attend to my words; consent and submit to my sayings.” Submitting to the Word means making adjustments in your life. Say, for example, you hear the Word in Philippians 4:4 that you are to “rejoice in the Lord always.” If you’ve been doing a lot of griping and complaining, you’ll have to change in order to submit to that Word. You’ll have to repent and alter your behavior.

In addition to inclining your ear to the Word of God, the Proverbs 4 prescription also says you must keep it before your eyes and not let it depart from your sight. In Matthew 6 6:22-23, Jesus reveals why this is so important. He says: “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”

Your eyes are the gateway to your body. If your eye (or your attention) is on the darkness, or the sickness that is in your body, there will be no light to expel it. If, however, the eyes of your heart are trained strictly on the Word, your whole body will eventually be filled with light, and healing will be the result.

I can tell you from experience how important it is to keep the Word constantly before your eyes and in your ears. Several times since I have been walking by faith, I’ve let myself get too busy to do it. And, almost before I realized it, I became too sick to stay on my feet.

On those occasions, I would immediately get my Bible and begin meditating on the healing scriptures. I would even go to sleep listening to tapes of the Word. Usually, within a few hours, I was completely healed.

There were a few times when I had to stand in faith longer. But whether my healing came instantly or over time, the wonderful truth is—it always came. God’s medicine has never failed to bring a healing and a cure in my body.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

“But, Kenneth,” you may say, “I’ve met people who know the Bible from cover to cover and still can’t get healed!”

No doubt you do. But if you’ll look back at God’s prescription, you’ll find it doesn’t say anything about “knowing” the Bible. It says attend to the Word.

When you attend to something, you give your attention to it. You make it top priority, setting aside other things so you can focus on it. When a nurse is attending to a patient, she looks after him constantly. She doesn’t just leave him lying alone in his hospital room while she goes shopping. If someone asks her about her patient, she doesn’t feel it’s sufficient to say, “Oh, yes. I know him.”

In the same way, if you’re attending to the Word, you won’t leave it lying unopened on the coffee table all day. You won’t spend your day focusing your attention on other things.

On the contrary, you’ll do what Proverbs 4 says to do. You’ll continually incline your ear to God’s Word.

Inclining your ear includes more than just putting your physical ears in a position to hear the Word being preached (although that, in itself, is very important). It also means opening the ears of your understanding by meditating on and pondering that Word. To truly hear, you must listen with the ears of your spirit to what the Holy Spirit is saying to you through the written Word. Mark 4:23-24 puts it this way: “If any man has ears to hear, let him be listening, and let him perceive and comprehend…. Be careful what you are hearing. The measure [of thought and study] you give [to the truth you hear] will be the measure of [virtue and knowledge] that comes back to you—and more [besides] will be given to you who hear” (The Amplified Bible).

The hearing referred to in these verses is not a passive activity. It requires actively engaging with God’s Word, believing and obeying it.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

To understand how this prescription works, you must realize that the Word of God is more than just good information. It actually has life in it. As Jesus said in John 6:63, “It is the spirit that quickeneth [or makes alive]; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”

Every time you take the Word into your heart, believe it and act on it, that life of which Jesus spoke, the very life of God Himself, is released in you. You may have read the healing scriptures over and over again. You may know them as well as you know your own name. Yet every time you read them or hear them preached, they bring you a fresh dose of God’s healing power. Each time, they bring life to you and deliver God’s medicine to your flesh.

That’s because the Word is like a seed. Hebrews 4:12 says it is “alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]” (The Amplified Bible). It actually carries within it the power to fulfill itself.

When you planted the Word about the new birth in your heart, then believed and acted on it, that Word released in you the power to be born again. By the same token, when you plant the Word about healing in your heart, believe and act on it, that Word will release God’s healing power in you.

In Isaiah 55:10-11, the Lord describes the process this way:

For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

Add to that the promise in Jeremiah 1:12 where God says, “…I am alert and active, watching over My word to perform it” (The Amplified Bible), and you can be certain God’s Word is powerful medicine you can count on to produce results every time.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

There is a medicine so powerful it can cure every sickness and disease known to man. It has no dangerous side effects. It is safe even in massive doses. And when taken daily according to directions, it can prevent illness altogether and keep you in vibrant health.

Does that sound too good to be true? It’s not. I can testify to you by the Word of God and by my own experience that such a supernatural medicine exists. Even more important, it is available to you every moment of every day.

You don’t have to call your doctor to get it. You don’t even have to drive to the pharmacy. All you must do is reach for your Bible, open to Proverbs 4:20-24 and follow the instructions you find there:

My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health [Hebrew: medicine] to all their flesh. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. Put away from thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee.

As simple as they might sound, those four verses contain the supernatural prescription for divine health. It’s a powerful prescription that will work for anyone who will put it to work.

If you have received healing by the laying on of hands, following this prescription will help you maintain that healing. If you have believed for healing, but are experiencing lingering symptoms, it will help you stand strong until you are completely symptom-free. And, if you are healthy now, it will
help you stay that way—not just for a day or a week, but for the rest of your life!

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

To live a prosperous life, your soul must prosper in all the
truth of the Word. God’s power is in direct relationship with
His Word. He has used His Word to release His power. He has
sent His Word to us so that we may be in contact with His great
power. Isaiah was quoting God Himself when he wrote, “So
shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not
return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please,
and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11).
His power covers the entire spectrum of human existence—so
also then does His Word. We can see it in scriptures such as
Hebrews 1:3 that says He is upholding ALL things by the Word
of His power and Hebrews 4:12-13 that the Word is a living
thing which covers spirit, soul, body and thought life. It even
goes so far as to say that nothing in the earth is hidden from the
Word of God.

Your faith is in direct relation to the level of the Word in
you. Get your Word level up so that you can believe spiritually,
mentally, physically, financially and socially. Thus you will be in
the position to handle any problem that comes your way
according to the Word of God. You may not have the answer,
but God has! Getting through to you is His only difficulty! God
always knows the answer, but we are not always in a position to
hear what He is saying.

If you know how to use God’s ability to receive healing and
never use it to help anyone but yourself, then it won’t work for
you very long. If you can believe God for healing, help someone
else get healed. Spread it around! If you know how to
believe God financially, start helping the people around you.
You will begin to grow as you reach out to others.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

God has a highly organized system to meet the needs of
every facet of your life. The world’s system of meeting our
needs works exactly opposite from God’s system. God’s system is
totally adequate. The world’s idea of anything is very limited at
best and stands a 99.9 percent chance of being totally wrong.
As believers, we must be careful not to limit God in our individual
lives to what the world says is so. The problem with the
world and its system of operations is that there is a spiritual
mad dog loose in it and his name is Satan.

The world has a system of healing that is a miserable
failure! We thank God for what good has been done with it, but
we are forced to admit it falls far short of being adequate to
meet the needs of the sick around us. Some men are dedicated
to it as if it were a god. The world’s system of healing makes a
god of the hospital and a god of medicine. Actually, for the
most part, it leaves God out entirely, and without God, it will
not work! There is no way to get healing except through the
power of God, either directly by His power or by the power He
built into the human body. No man on earth can heal apart
from God.

There are two choices before you—the world’s system of
healing or God’s system of healing. God’s system and its laws
are contradictory to the world’s system. The world cannot
understand God’s system of caring for the human body. The
Bible says the things of God are foolishness to the world (see
1 Corinthians 2:14). God made the human body. He definitely
should be able to repair it. Ford Motor Company has that much
sense! If they can build the whole car, surely they can build
parts for it.

We haven’t known much about the law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus and a lack of understanding has caused problems in
making this law function for our benefit. The Apostle Paul wrote,
“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the
renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). In order to be successful
at God’s business, we must understand how His system works.
Don’t expect God’s best to come from the world’s system. He will
work around and through it in order to reach you, but it is
always far below His best.

The absolute priority in studying prosperity is that you
should never think of it from a carnal viewpoint, from the
world’s attitude. You must train yourself to think in line with
God’s Word. If you’re not careful, when you think of the laws of
prosperity, all you will see is money—only a very small part of
prosperity. True prosperity is God manifesting Himself to us in His
Word. If He is manifesting Himself through His Word, He is
always within easy contact because you can handle the Word.
The only way you can have God with you on a continual daily
basis is through His Word. We should not judge by our feelings
or by our emotions, but by what God has said in His Word.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

You will never be healthier or more prosperous than your
soul. You can be born again, even filled with the Holy Spirit,
and still not be prosperous in your soul. For instance, an old
saint of God, living in poverty, can pray revival down on a
church, get everybody in town saved, and be lying in bed sick
the whole time—if she does not believe the Word of God for her
health! She can do these things, never knowing the fullness of
the infilling of the Holy Spirit and speaking with other tongues,
even though healing and prosperity belong to her all the time.
You see, her soul was not prosperous in these areas; her mind
had not grasped the full meaning of the Word of God; her mental
computer had never been fed on God’s Word concerning
healing, the Holy Spirit and prosperity. She knew the Word
enough to seek salvation and revival and used this knowledge
to pray down the power of God. Her soul was prosperous in
this area.

The world’s definition of physical prosperity (prosperity of
the senses) includes gold, silver, financial favor or power, political
favor or power and social favor or power. The world’s definition
of mental prosperity (prosperity of the soul) is “knowing
it all.” Put these two ideas together and you have a person who
can use his mind to get financial and political power. This is
the world’s total concept of prosperity. You can easily see its
drawbacks! Wealth and power cannot answer every problem.
Money makes a lousy god! It can’t buy good health or prevent
sickness and disease from taking over the human body. Yes, it
can go toward buying it, but the world’s system of healing just
isn’t good enough. In the mental realm, a person can have all
the facts in his head and not have the ability to use that knowledge
to obtain the money or the health that he needs.

What produces spiritual, mental and physical prosperity?
What brings all these areas together? The Word of God. The
Bible says in Hebrews 4:12 that the Word is alive, powerful and
sharper than a two-edged sword. It says that it divides the soul
and the spirit, the joints and the marrow, and that it is a discerner
of the thoughts and intents of the heart. When you are
walking in the Word of God, you will prosper and be in health.

We cannot settle for prosperity in the physical or the mental
realm only. It would be easy just to settle for spiritual prosperity,
but we can’t afford to be lazy and to discount physical
and mental prosperity simply because we are saved and filled
with the Holy Spirit. It is the will of God for us to be made
whole—spirit, soul and body—and to be kept that way until
the return of our Lord Jesus Christ (see 1 Thessalonians 5:23).
As you walk in the light of God’s Word, you will become prosperous
in every area of your life.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries