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

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

Let’s look for a moment at the world of finance, the biggest
problem area on earth. Sickness is not our main concern. There
are many healthy people who are head over heels in debt, and
God’s people have no business being in debt! Here again, we find
that the world has a system of finance which is complex and
very poor in operation. It continually rocks back and forth
between the two extremes of depression and inflation.

However, when you are functioning in God’s system of
finance, life can be very simple. Don’t borrow from anyone—
get it from God. The problem with borrowing is that it is controlled
by the world’s system. In order to borrow, you must subordinate
yourself to another person. Proverbs 22:7 says the borrower
is the servant to the lender. By borrowing, you subordinate
your name to another person. This is very important because of
the spiritual significance of your name. Your name is the same
as your nature. If your name is good, then you are good—your
reputation is good. You can do whatever your name can do.
However, when you borrow and go into debt to someone else,
you bow your knee to that person and look to him as your
source of supply. This creates a spiritual problem that can be
very serious, particularly if the other person is ungodly.

Look to God, He will give to you, not loan to you! Believers
need to learn how to operate in God’s system. It isn’t easy to
learn; but as you search the Word, you will have the desire to
know God’s system. When you begin to operate by it and live
by faith in every area of your life, God will step in and make up
what you don’t know. He will put you over! The deeper you get
into the Word and the more you learn, the more you will
expand; the more you expand, the more Satan will fight; the
more he fights, the bigger the victory; the bigger your victory,
the more glory to God; the more glory to God, the more you
will expand! It is constant growth!

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