Gloria Copeland Standing with You for God’s Master Plan for Your Life
About Gloria Copeland
With a passion for Scripture and a determination, Gloria Copeland has been teaching about the life-changing power of God’s Word for more than 40 years. Read MoreLive Long, Finish Strong
Archives
Gloria Copeland — Keep God’s Words in the Midst of Your HeartPosted on July 29th, 2009
“Keep them in the midst of thine heart.” Keep the
Word of God alive in your heart. Keep the Word
working in your heart. Just as you feed your physical
man, you must feed your spiritual man. Your spirit
man cannot live and stay strong on the Word you
received last year. Don’t try to rely on what you
remember from the Word.
Keep God’s words in the midst of your heart by doing
the things we have already discussed: attending to
the Word, inclining your ear to the Word, not letting
the Word depart from your eyes and keeping the
Word in your heart. Keep your spirit strong with the
Word of God. Continually feed yourself with it in
order to keep the Word producing the force of faith.
For They Are Life Unto Those That Find
Them and Health to All Their Flesh
“For they are life unto those that find them, and
health to all their flesh.” God’s words are spirit and
they are life (John 6:63). They are made life and
health to those who find them. The Word of God is
medicine. If you will put it in your heart in abundance,
it will be as hard for you to get sick as it was at
one time for you to get healed. (The key to this
statement is in the word abundance!)
God’s prescription for life and health works constantly,
whether you are sick or well. The Word is continually
being made life and health to your body. Satan cannot
make you sick when you stay strong in the Word and
keep your spirit full of God’s Word. By keeping the Word
in the midst of your heart, the healing power of God
will continually work in your body. It is continually being
made health to your flesh.
When the doctor prescribes medication, he tells you
to take the medicine so many times a day and you
will recover. If the doctor says swallow one teaspoon
of this every day and you decide to rub it on your
chest, all of his knowledge and experience is of no
value. If you expect to be well, you follow his
instructions, don’t you? Well, this is God’s prescription.
His Word is His medicine. If you will do what He says
as diligently as you would obey a doctor, you will get
results. Diligence in the Word of God is a key.
When your doctor says you need surgery, you don’t
say, “Well, Doc, I don’t have time to have an operation.”
No, you make time, even if you lose your job. Be that
courageous, diligent and determined about the Word
of God. Make time to attend to God’s Word. It will bring
far better results!
Gloria Copeland
Kenneth Copeland — Determine your DestinyPosted on July 22nd, 2009
But the more I studied the Word and meditated on
it, the more my thinking changed. Hope began to
develop. I grabbed hold of 2 Corinthians 9:8 that
says, “God is able to make all grace abound toward
you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all
things, may abound to every good work.”
An inner image of all my needs being met with
plenty left over for every good work began to grow
by God’s Word. I began to see it on the inside. I
got a revelation of it. After that it wasn’t a matter
of how God would meet my financial needs. It was
a matter of fact that He’d already met them. All I
needed to do was get in line with Him. After a while,
that revelation was so real in my consciousness
that I began to think like a man without debt. I
began to talk like a man without debt.
It wasn’t long until Gloria and I were totally,
completely debt free. We didn’t owe anybody
anything and God was the One Who had done it.
We hadn’t asked anybody for a dollar.
I’ve never written an appeal letter in this ministry
and I never will because I don’t have to. My needs
aren’t met by your giving. My needs are met by my
giving because I’m standing on the Word that says,
“Give and it shall be given unto you” (Luke 6:38).
That’s why my needs are met. God is my source,
so I don’t have to put any pressure on you. Now,
God may use your giving to meet my need, but
that’s not where my earnest expectation is built.
My hope is built on the forever Word of God’s
promises.
I learned how to think that way by studying Jesus.
He never looked to people to meet His needs. It’s a
good thing, too. One time when He was preaching,
everyone in His congregation walked out. They just
got up and left. The only people who stayed were
the members of His own staff.
Did He get upset about it? No, He just went right
on to the next place and held another meeting. That
time He had a landslide. But the landslide didn’t
affect Him any more than the walkout because those
people weren’t His source. God was His source. He
was there to help them. He didn’t call them there
to help Him. They did help Him, but not because He
pressured them to.
Do you get the picture? I did. Thirty-plus years ago,
it came alive inside me. I took hold of it and it
changed my financial life forever.
I got a picture of prosperity from God’s Word, and
faith made that picture a reality. That’s how the
process always works. First you have to have the
hope, then faith goes into action. Hope is the inner
image. Faith becomes the substance of that image.
Hope is the blueprint. Faith is the material.
Faith can’t build on wishes. How many times have
you heard someone say, “I sure do wish God would
do something for me”? The rest of the statement
hangs unspoken in the air, “…but He probably won’t.”
That’s not faith. That’s unbelief. But it works the
same way faith does—only backward.
Fear is actually faith in the negative dimension. It’s
faith in failure, danger or harm. When someone is
meditating on negative thoughts or, “worrying,” as
we call it, he or she is developing inner pictures. Not
pictures of hope, but pictures of despair.
Just as fear is the flip side of faith, despair is the
flip side of hope. It’s an inner image of failure,
sickness, poverty or whatever else the devil wants
to inject into you. Despair is actually hope in the
negative and fear, like faith, brings it to pass.
Do you see how powerful this process is? This is
the process that controls the course of your life.
These inner images, whether they are of hope or
despair, become the blueprint for your faith or fear,
and ultimately control your destiny.
Once you understand that, you hold the key to your
future. You hold the key to becoming everything
God wants you to be. It doesn’t matter where you
are right now. You may be sick. You may be broke.
You may be defeated. It doesn’t matter!
What you must do is dig into the Word and begin
building your hope. Start developing God’s pictures
within you. As long as you have an image of your
own defeat on the inside of you, you’re destined to
be defeated on the outside as well. But change that
inner image with the Word of God and no demon
in hell will be able to hold you down. Jesus came to
change the inner man. “If ye continue in my word,”
He told us, “then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you
free” (John 8:31-32).
Get that truth working inside you. Put it in there until
hope begins to paint new pictures in your heart.
Then, hang onto those pictures relentlessly. Don’t
ever let them go. Eventually— inevitably—faith will
make those pictures as real on the outside as they
are on the inside.
“For as he [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he”
(Proverbs 23:7). It’s the pictures inside you that
determine your destiny. Get yourself some power
pictures. God’s Word is full of them. The question is,
are you?
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — Love The Secret to Your SuccessPosted on July 15th, 2009
Love. You hear a lot about it. But, the truth is, few
people really know what it is. For most, it’s an
emotional phantom that appears then vanishes
without warning. Illusive. Undefinable. Forever
sought, but rarely found.
Even believers seem to be confused about it at
times. But they don’t need to be. The Word of God
reveals clearly what love truly is.
Look at 2 John 6: “And what this love consists in is
this: that we live and walk in accordance with and
guided by His commandments (His orders, ordinances,
precepts, teaching.) This is the commandment, as
you have heard from the beginning, that you
continue to walk in love [guided by it and following
it]” (The Amplified Bible).
Quite simply, God says love is keeping His
commandments. That brings love out of the
indefinite into something explicit. But God has done
even more than define love for you.
He’s given you instructions so you can know how
to love as He loves. By giving you His Word, God
has given you His love manual in black and white!
All you have to do is follow it, and you’ll be walking
in love.
If you’ve made Jesus Christ the Lord of your life,
you’ve already taken the first step of obedience.
The love of God has been born within you. But,
unless you take action, that love will remain hidden
within you.
Love works in much the same way as the force of
faith. Faith is born into you when you are begotten
of God, but until you begin to act on God’s Word,
that powerful force lies dormant. The same is true
concerning the love of God. You can have the love
of God abiding within you and still be unable to
allow it to work through you to reach other people.
Like faith, love becomes active through knowledge
of the Word.
That’s why the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at
Philippi saying, “And this I pray, that your love may
abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all
judgment” (Philippians 1:9).
The love of God is released in your life by acting on
the knowledge of God’s Word. Without revelation
knowledge followed by action, love lies undeveloped
and selfishness continues to reign supreme in you
even though you are a new creature.
“But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the
love of God perfected: hereby know we that we
are in him. He that saith he abideth in him ought
himself also so to walk, even as he walked” (1 John
2:5-6).
As you act on God’s Word, the love of God will be
perfected in you. That’s when love will begin to
flow from you to others.
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — Living the Love LifePosted on July 8th, 2009
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, more important
than learning to love. In fact, how accurately you
perfect the love walk will determine how much of the
perfect will of God you accomplish. That’s because
every other spiritual force derives its action from
love. For example, the Bible teaches that faith works
by love. (See Galatians 5:6.) And answered prayer
is almost an impossibility when a believer steps
outside of love and refuses to forgive, or is in strife
with his brother.
First Corinthians 13, the love chapter, says tongues
are just noise if there is no love. If a person has the
gift of prophecy, understands all knowledge, has
enough faith to move mountains but is without love,
he is nothing. If he gives all that he has to the poor
and even sacrifices his life, without the love of God
he gains nothing.
Without love, your giving will not work, tongues and
prophecy will not work, faith fails and knowledge is
unfruitful. All the truths you’ve learned from God’s
Word work by love. They will profit you little unless
you live the love of God.
First Corinthians 13:4-8 paints a perfect picture of
how love behaves. Love endures long and is patient
and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with
jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not
display itself haughtily. It is not conceited (arrogant
and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly)
and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God’s love in
us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way,
for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful
or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to
it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong].
It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness,
but rejoices when right and truth prevail. Love bears
up under anything and everything that comes is
ever ready to believe the best of every person, its
hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it
endures everything [without weakening]. Loves never
fails [never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes
to an end] (The Amplified Bible).
That may sound like a tough set of requirements, but
you can meet them. You are a love creature. God
has re-created your spirit in the image of love. And
He has sent His love Spirit to live in you to teach you
how to love as He loves. You can live the love life!
Become love-conscious by confessing and acting on
God’s Word concerning this love. As you meditate
these scriptures, see yourself living the love life.
You are the one who has to make the decision to
perfect the love of God in your life. No one else can
do it for you. So, make the decision in faith and
commit yourself to obey God’s Word about love.
Let me warn you: There will be times when you
would rather do anything than allow love to rule.
(It will seem as though it is taking off a pound of
flesh!) There will be times when it would be much
easier to get angry, seek your own and retaliate.
Love is directly opposed to the senses. The senses
have been trained to put themselves and their
desires above anything else, selfishly seeking their
own way. But love, the Word says, does not seek
its own rights or its own way. And to walk in love,
you must demand that your senses (flesh) be subject
to the Word.
Without a definite decision, you will not continue in
the love of God. So, commit yourself to agape
—God’s love—now. And when temptation comes,
you’ll remember your decision and obey love.
Once you’ve made the decision, the most powerful
thing you can do in perfecting the love walk is to
continually confess you are the love of God. Base
your confession on l Corinthians 13:4-8. This God
kind of love will begin to influence all you say and do.
If someone says something unkind to you, love will
say, “That’s OK. I am not touchy, fretful or resentful.
I take no account of that.” And you go free! Learn
to believe in love. It’s the most powerful force in the
universe. Walk in love by faith in the Word. Walking
in love is walking in the spirit. It is walking as Jesus
walked. Love never fails. Nothing works without it,
and there can be no failure with it. When you live by
love, you cannot fail.
It takes faith to believe that love’s way will not fail.
The natural mind cannot understand that because
the natural man and his world are ruled by selfishness.
He believes if you don’t look out for No. 1 (himself),
no one else will. And, in a sense, he’s right.
No one else can look out for him. His selfishness
shuts the door to the love of God, and he winds up
on his own. But when you practice love by faith and
refuse to seek your own, you put the Father into
action on your behalf.
He will allow no man to do you wrong (l Chronicles
16:22). As long as you stay in love, God the Father
seeks your own. He sees to it that love never fails.
Walking in love is to your great advantage!
Agape love is a new kind of power. It makes you the
master of every situation. As long as you walk in love,
you cannot be hurt and you cannot fail. No weapon
formed against you will prosper. No one even has the
power to hurt your feelings, because you are not
ruled by feelings but by God’s love. You are loving as
He loves.
E.W. Kenyon accurately tagged this agape love “a
new kind of selfishness.” You no longer seek your
own success, yet your success is guaranteed! This
love is revolutionary. If we fully understood the great
return from living God’s love, we’d probably be
competing with each other, each trying to love the
other more. And without a doubt, everyone would
emerge from that competition a winner! For love is
truly the only sure secret to our success.
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — Living After the SpiritPosted on July 2nd, 2009
“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 8:13-14).
We have studied about suffering. The same
suffering Jesus endured when He was crucified,
we are to bear in our own bodies. We are to crucify
our flesh, to mortify the deeds of the body,
to be in command of our flesh as we follow after the Lord.
We have the power to overcome sin in the flesh
because of what Jesus did on the cross.
For God has done what the Law could not do,
[its power] being weakened by the flesh [the
entire nature of man without the Holy Spirit].
Sending His own Son in the guise of sinful
flesh and as an offering for sin, [God]
condemned sin in the flesh [subdued,
overcame, deprived it of its power over all who
accept that sacrifice] (Romans 8:3, amp).
Verse 18 says, “For I reckon that the sufferings of
this present time are not worthy to be compared with
the glory which shall be revealed in us.” This
suffering—crucifying of the flesh and mortifying its
deeds—is connected in the Scriptures with the glory
of God. Why? Because God cannot manifest Himself
in His people if they follow after the flesh instead of
after the Spirit of God.
God works in the spirit realm. As we follow after
the Spirit, He works in us. We must lay aside natural
things in the natural life, and take up the things of the
spiritual life. As we walk in the spirit, the glory of God
that’s in the face of Jesus Christ will begin to be
reflected in us. Crucifying the flesh and the glory of
God being revealed in us are connected, scripture
after scripture!
God wants us to come to a place where we walk
and live in this earth in the glorious liberty that has
been prepared for us from the foundation of the
world. Romans 8:21 says, “Because the creature itself
also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption
into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” God
made man to live in His glory. He crowned Adam
with glory and honor (Psalm 8:5). Adam had the
glory of God on him. He looked just like God. He
wore a garment of light and had the same power,
authority and appearance as God Himself. He was in
God’s image—His exact likeness.
That’s why he had no realization of being naked
until after he sinned. When he sinned against God,
spiritual life departed and spiritual death came. The
glory that was his covering disappeared. Notice, that
all God’s creatures, except man, have their own
covering. Birds are covered with feathers that are
produced from within. Animals are covered with fur,
produced from within.
Adam and Eve’s bodies were covered with an
enswathement of glory which was produced from
within their beings (Word Studies in the Greek New
Testament, Volume III). The life of God in Adam
radiated the glory of God through Adam’s flesh.
Sin brings man short of the glory of God. When
Adam disobeyed God, he lost the power from within
to produce and bring forth this glory. He had no life
within him to manifest this covering. Spiritual death
entered into him and only darkness could emanate.
There was no longer any glory in Adam to be revealed.
What a devastating blow to God’s man whom God
created in His own image. God told Moses, “As truly
as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of
the Lord” (Numbers 14:21). That is still God’s plan
today—for His glory to fill the earth. And His glory is
revealed in us, the Church of Jesus Christ.
God has glorious liberty for us. This liberty is in
walking after the spirit and not after the flesh. It’s in
the spirit realm. You and I are spirit beings, though we
live in flesh bodies. We are strange and peculiar
creatures—spirits in natural bodies. God is calling us
to be dominated by His Spirit and to bring our bodies
of flesh under His control.
The Church will come to a place where we’ll walk
with God. We’ll be like Enoch. The Bible says, “Enoch
walked with God and he was not….” And Hebrews
says Enoch was translated by faith because he had the
testimony that he pleased God. One day Enoch just
went so far in the spirit, he didn’t come back. The
Bible says he didn’t see death.
Isn’t that what is going to happen with the Church
that is looking for His appearance? We’re going to be
caught up with Him in the air. We’re not going to see
death. Paul said, “Behold, I show you a mystery; We
shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed”
(1 Corinthians 15:51).
I believe the day of His appearing is at hand. We
read in Ephesians what the Church will look like
when Jesus comes to receive us: “That he might
sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by
the word, that he might present it to himself a
glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any
such thing; but that it should be holy and without
blemish” (Ephesians 5:26-27).
A glorious Church! A Church full of the glory of
God! A Church with no spots or wrinkles, but a holy
Church without blemish. God wants us to learn how
to listen to His Spirit so He can lead us into all truth
and teach us how to remove the spots and wrinkles.
He wants to be able to reveal His glory in us.
The Russian believers (prior to more recent
changes in Eastern Europe) had to rely on the Spirit
more than we do now, because of adverse circumstances.
The underground church met in secret.
Church members met out in the woods and in
different places. (It had to be a secret or they would
be raided.) Someone who had been ministering in
the underground church told me about one instance
when it was realized that there was a spy in the camp
because everywhere they went the KGB (secret police)
would show up.
They decided, “Well, all right, if you’re going to
come to the meeting, you’ll have to get the information
from the Spirit of God.” They would have to pray and
listen to God to know where to meet. At the next
meeting, every person in that group showed up except
one. They knew who the guilty party was.
Walking in the spirit is real. Listening to the Holy
Spirit is a way of life we must develop in order to
fulfill what we are called to do in these last days.
We have the same ability to listen to our spirits,
but instead we rely on a newsletter we receive every
month that tells us where to meet. We have not had
to depend on the Holy Spirit’s direction the way our
Russian brothers and sisters had to. Nevertheless, it’s
just as available to us! Many of them didn’t have
Bibles. They had to be led by their spirits.
The people in the New Testament didn’t have
Bibles to read, either. They also had to be led by their
spirits. Paul told them to pray in the spirit so they
would get the mind of the Spirit. Those people in
Russia had to have the mind of the Spirit or they
couldn’t go to church!
Thank God, we live in a free land. But we must
learn to walk in obedience to the Spirit while we live
in liberty, not being forced into it, but rather, choosing
the things of the spirit over the things of the world.
God is raising up a people called the “Glorious
Church,” who can hear the voice of His Spirit and
obey Him in whatever we are told to do. How can you
know what the mind of the Spirit is? By renewing
your mind with the Word of God, praying in the
spirit, being sensitive to Him and by yielding your
life, thoughts and direction to Him.
If you don’t pull aside and take time to listen to
God, you’ll not know the direction of the Holy Spirit.
You’ll miss the great things God has for your life. The
time for being cold is over. The time for being
lukewarm is over. It’s time to rise up and become on
fire and stay that way!
Purpose in your heart that you will not be
lazy, that you will not draw back, hold back
or sit down. But purpose in your heart that
you will rise up and march forward and
become on fire.