God first began dealing with me about the laws that govern
prosperity in 1967. I was conducting a series of meetings in a
very small church in a very small town in the Texas panhandle.
For years I had entertained the idea that success was not an
accident, that luck has nothing to do with it. I had read books
of different kinds on this idea but had not found any answers
that satisfied me. It didn’t occur to me that the Bible was written
by the most successful individual alive—God!

In those early days of following the Lord’s teaching, it
seemed that He was very hard on me. I could see no reason for
Him to be so strict. Of course, I had no idea then that, in less
than 10 years, prime interest rates would soar to heights as
never before. Who could dream that the fuel shortage, food
shortage, paper shortage, etc., would come storming their way
into our lives.

When Gloria and I first began to put the things we were
learning into practice, we had nothing around us but problems.
I had returned to college at the age of 30 and from there God
called us into a full-time ministry in His service. We were deeply
in debt and lived in surroundings that were very poor. The job
God called me to do required that I travel extensively preaching
and teaching His Word, but our car was completely worn out.
We had no clothes. I had lost 75 pounds and, obviously, none
of my clothes fit. The trousers on some of my suits had been
altered so many times that, instead of two back pockets, it
looked like one big pocket! I could go on and on about our
situation, but it’s easy to see that we had less than nothing. We
were thousands of dollars in debt.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries