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!

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 temptation (solicitation to evil) comes, you have the power, authority and privilege to say, “No! I’m crucified to that. I rebuke that thought in Jesus’ Name.” You are resisting the devil (James 4:7). This scripture says to submit yourselves to God and resist the devil. When you’re being obedient, you are submitting to God. Satan will flee. Peter says to resist the devil steadfast in the faith (1 Peter 5:9). He describes the devil as our adversary going around (masquerading) as a roaring lion looking for someone who will let him have place in their lives. Well, keep moving devil, I’m not the one! The Bible says give the devil no place (Ephesians 4:27). Take action immediately against temptation.

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; and having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled (2 Corinthians 10:3-6).

Don’t allow disobedient, immoral or wrong thoughts to linger in your mind. Immediately replace thoughts of disobedience, immorality, doubt, defeat, discouragement or fear with the Word of God.

Control your thought life with the Word of God and let Philippians 4:4-8 be fulfilled continually in your life.

Rejoice in the Lord always—delight, gladden yourselves in Him; again I say, Rejoice! Let all men know and perceive and recognize your unselfishness—your considerateness, your forbearing spirit. The Lord is near—He is coming soon. Do not fret or have any anxiety about anything, but in every circumstance and in everything by prayer and petition [definite requests] with thanksgiving continue to make your wants known to God. And God’s peace [be yours, that tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and content with its earthly lot of whatever sort that is, that peace] which transcends all understanding, shall garrison and mount guard over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. For the rest, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of reverence and is honorable and seemly, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely and lovable, whatever is kind and winsome and gracious, if there is any virtue and excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on and weigh and take account of these things—fix your minds on them (Philippians 4:4-8, The Amplified Bible).

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Ephesians 5:25-27 tells us that Jesus the Anointed gave Himself to sanctify (set apart) and cleanse the Church with the washing of water by the Word. (The Holy Spirit washes us with His Word.) He does this to present to Himself a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle, holy and without blemish. Ephesians 1:4 adds that He chose us before the foundation of the world to stand before Him holy and without blame in love. First Thessalonians 3:13 says our hearts are to be established in this holiness. First Thessalonians 4:7 says we are called unto holiness.

First Peter 1:15-16 says, “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy’” (New International Version). Ephesians 5:1 says, “Therefore be imitators of God—copy Him and follow His example—as well-beloved children [imitate their father]” (The Amplified Bible).

The Bible ties the manifestation of God with our walking in holiness. Hebrews 12:14 says we are to follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). Romans 3:23 lets us know that sin brings us short of the glory—which is His manifested presence.

God wants His people to live a holy life because holiness is the only thing that will enjoy victory in the earth. God wants His people to live like He lives, being a total success. Holiness will bring life and peace to us.

We do as God says because His ways are our only deliverance while we live in the earth. The earth is not dominated by God’s will unless the Church walks in its authority to proclaim what God says. (Do you wonder about that? Let me ask you this. Were the Dark Ages God’s will? No, the earth experienced that time of darkness because the Church became, for the most part, inactive and ruled by religious tradition instead of the Word of God.)

We resist sin by the power of the Holy Spirit Who lives in us. If we do not resist, we will be swept into misery right along with the world. We will be victims of Satan’s attempts to kill, steal and destroy.

Learn to speak Galatians 2:20-21 to keep your body obedient: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God….” I do not frustrate the grace (divine favor and blessings) of God. Sin frustrates God’s grace because it hinders His favor from working in your life.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

You let not sin reign in your body. Your body is to be ruled by you—the new creation spirit that comes from God. If your spirit were not able to handle this job, God wouldn’t have given you this assignment. When God gives an assignment He always gives the ability! Your spirit, empowered by the Holy Spirit, has the power to control your body. Sin shall not have dominion! Yield not to unrighteousness but yield yourselves to God. You are alive to Him!

But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God (Romans 8:11-14).

The only way Satan has any inroad into your life is by ignorance or disobedience. If you are born again, he has no right to any power or authority over you. You have authority and power over him. But unless you choose to live according to the Word of God and the leading of God, you will be defeated. The degree of your victory depends on the degree of your obedience.

According to Romans 8:13, the Spirit of God will teach and train us to mortify (put to death or crucify) the deeds of the body. In other words, the Holy Spirit will lead us to control our bodies to please the Lord. The Holy Spirit reveals the Word to us.

You see, God does not expect us to walk pleasing unto Him and to be a glorious Church in this present world without the power of the Holy Spirit living within us. The Holy Spirit is the Great Enabler. His living within us is God’s great hope for the glorious Church. His living in us is what enables us to not live like the world lives but to live with hearts open to Him. With His power enabling us we are to walk in newness of life. We are to walk in the glory—in His presence. Through Him we can…

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Alive unto God. What does this phrase mean? To be alive unto God means to be responsive to His Spirit. If you are alive unto God, you will spend time in the Word of God and in prayer. You will maintain continual fellowship and communion with Him. When He speaks, you will hear and obey.

Proverbs 4:20-22 tells us that the Word of God is life and health to our flesh. So the Spirit of God will make alive our bodies. It says that the issues or forces of life come out of our hearts: “Keep [and guard] your heart [spirit] with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23, The Amplified Bible). The King James Version says it this way: “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 to all their flesh. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”

God says, “Consider yourself dead to sin.” If you obey the Word and consider yourself dead to sin, when sin calls your name, you won’t answer. You’ll say, “No, I reckon myself dead to that.” (In Arkansas where I was raised, you would say, “No! I reckon I’m dead to that.”)

The word temptation means “solicitation to evil.” There will be temptations, but those temptations will not get your attention when you are dead to sin. But you cannot walk that walk without being alive to God. It is not a matter of law, but of the life of God working in you.

It is your life with God, your fellowship and responsiveness to Him, that causes sin and the things of this world to fall away from you. As you walk after the hidden man of the heart, you walk free from the sin and bondage of the world, the flesh and the devil.

The Bible says, “When men say, ‘Lo, there is the kingdom of God,’ don’t go after them. For the kingdom of God isn’t here or there. Behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21, author’s paraphrase). By the indwelling of the Spirit of God, the kingdom of God is within you, and the very Word of God becomes your thought life. The Spirit of God becomes the anointing—the life of God in you.

I was in a situation some years ago where I was terribly hurt by others. God took that hurt and changed it into a new thrust of ministry, making something beautiful out of the ashes of my life, according to His Word (Isaiah 61:3). But when I returned a year later to the town where the offense had occurred, I started saying things, making remarks about people who hadn’t come to mind since God purged me from the hurt months before. I was losing my peace and joy. Then I realized that I was resurrecting the pain of the situation. I had to control my tongue or else I’d end up speaking words that would revive the entire situation. I knelt down and repented of my words and attitudes. Then I began to confess what God had done for me—how He had purified me from that failure—and my perception of my life began to change.

I was creating an atmosphere absent from God by saying what I wanted to say according to emotions, feelings, ego, jealousies, hurt and old attitudes. Speaking in obedience to God’s thoughts, instead of my own thoughts, changed the situation and restored me to my position of victory.

When God says in His Word that He inhabits the praises of His people (Psalm 22:3), He means that literally. When our hearts overflow with gratitude and thanks to God, we praise Him and fill the air with words and songs, thereby creating an atmosphere in which God’s presence is experienced.

Get your heart changed; then let the new words of life flow from you. Negative people will shun you, and positive people will begin to be your friends. They’ll bring more positives into your life.

If everyone in the world today repented, received the Spirit of Christ and began to speak only Spirit-inspired words, our world would change. We would have heaven right here on earth. That’s what heaven will be like.

Do you have a need, or does someone you know have a problem? Then pray about what to say, and then say it with the authority of Jesus. Let the Holy Spirit bring healing into your life through speaking the words of Jesus. Jesus gave you the authority to speak His words. You are His mouth, His eyes, His hands, His ears. You are the Body of Christ here on earth. Regardless of who is in need, if the Lord
gives you a healing word to speak, then speak it in Christ’s stead.

Speak words of faith, not fear, and see what God will do!

Live victoriously by being purified from failure, confessing Christ and speaking God’s Word. Invest in the study of God’s Word and prayer to prepare yourself for your next change or crisis. When you change your heart and change your words, you will change your world.

You may fail from time to time, but if you’ll take these principles to heart and never quit, you will become a winner!

God is the author of your success. Trust Him. Be free in Him. Live free.

Winners are not those who never fail, but those who never quit.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Every word we speak is actually a creative word. We create frivolity. We create sobriety. We create strife. We create ease. Our world is constructed by our words, as we saw in Proverbs. Words are potent. They create hurt or health. They create blessing or cursing.

We can speak words of our own and create problems, or speak God’s words and create solutions.

We can speak our words and create a hell, or speak God’s words and create a heaven.

Jesus said, “It is the thoughtlife that pollutes. For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts of lust, theft, murder, adultery, wanting what belongs to others [covetousness], wickedness, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, pride, and all other folly. All these vile things come from within; they are what pollute [people] and make [them] unfit for God” (Mark 7:20-23, TLB).

As men speak words of lewdness, deceit, war and animosity, they create the world in which these things exist. The secular world as it exists today was re-created by men whose hearts were apart from the Spirit of God. These men were subject to satanic influence, so when they spoke what was in their hearts, Satan’s influence permeated the world. Look at the newspaper. What we see around us is not the
world as God created it but the result of man’s influence by the words he speaks.

Your words come from your heart.

Whatever is in a person’s heart, whatever is in the thought life, will come out in words. No wonder God says He will call every person to account for every “idle word” spoken (Matthew 12:36).

When the Spirit of Christ is in us, God gives us His thought life through His Word. Reading God’s Word is not a contest for time or length. It is taking in the very life of God through His Word. God gives us the “mind of Christ” in and through the Word of God.

As we begin to think God’s thoughts, we will begin to speak God’s words. As we speak God’s words, our world is re-created. It is heavenly! The ingredients of heaven are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance. These are also known as the “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-23). These “fruit” within you come out through your words and are reflected in your world.

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