Archive for the ‘Gloria Copeland’ Category
Gloria Copeland — Lessons in Obedience – Enoch
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And Enoch walked [in habitual fellowship] with God; and he was not, for God took him [home with Him] (Genesis 5:24, The Amplified Bible).
Enoch diligently heeded the voice of the Lord. In the New Testament book of Hebrews, he is described clearly:
By faith Enoch was conveyed to another place [namely, heaven], with the result that he did not see death, and he was not found because God had conveyed him to another place [heaven]. For before his removal [from earth to heaven] he had witness borne [to him], that testimony still being on record, to the effect that he pleased God (Hebrews 11:5, Wuest).
Enoch walked with God. He pleased God. And then God took him! Did you get that? Enoch walked so closely with God that one day he just didn’t come back! He was so close to God, because of his obedience to God, that he didn’t die a natural death. He was lifted right into heaven.
Can you, as a new creature in Christ Jesus, say you have pleased God and walked with Him so closely that you could be lifted right up to heaven? If you are born again and alive when Jesus returns, that is what is in store for you. Enoch, being translated out of an evil world, typifies the saints (the glorious Church) who will soon be removed from this earth, who will be changed from mortality to immortality, without their bodies passing through the grave (1 Corinthians 15:51-54).
Enoch is an inspiring example of walking with God.
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — Lessons in Obedience – Adam Part 3
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Something had to be done. God had given Adam dominion over the earth and Adam, by disobedience, had made himself subject to and less powerful than God’s enemy, Satan. It would take time for God to provide the way back for man to come into union and agreement with Him again. But He would do it!
Even in the Garden of Eden, God knew what price He must pay, but He was willing to pay it to get His family back. He said to Satan: “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). He was willing to sacrifice His only Son to bring man back into fellowship with Himself: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
Adam met disaster because of disobedience. He was separated from the life of God and exiled from the perfect environment God had created for him.
And to Adam, God said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit when I told you not to, I have placed a curse upon the soil. All your life you will struggle to extract a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, and you shall eat its grasses. All your life you will sweat to master it, until your dying day. Then you will return to the ground from which you came. For you were made from the ground, and to the ground you will return.” …Then the Lord said, “Now that the man has become as we are, knowing good from bad, what if he eats the fruit of the Tree of Life and lives forever?” So the Lord God banished him forever from the Garden of Eden, and sent him out to farm the ground from which he had been taken. Thus God expelled him, and placed mighty angels at the east of the Garden of Eden, with a flaming sword to guard the entrance to the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:17-19, 22-24, The Living Bible).
Moreover, because of Adam’s disobedience, sin and death passed to all of Adam’s offspring, “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners…” (Romans 5:19).
What a price Adam and his family paid because of disobedience!
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — Lessons in Obedience – Adam Part 2
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God created this man, named him Adam and gave him dominion over the earth. Genesis 3:8 says that God and Adam walked together in the cool of the day. God created Adam in His exact likeness and image because He wanted Adam to be on His level, able to walk and talk with Him in sweet fellowship. He offered Adam the very highest kind of life—to be His family in the earth. Adam was instructed to subdue the earth and replenish it with beings in his own image, which had been created in the image and likeness of God.
God gave only one requirement to Adam: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17).
The only thing God required from Adam was obedience, but the day came when he chose to exercise his own will and disobey God’s command.
The moment Adam ate of the forbidden tree, the very life of God was cut off from him. Adam, by his disobedience, had made himself subject to and less powerful than God’s enemy, Satan. The intimate fellowship, communication and relationship he had so enjoyed with God, was over. When he broke fellowship with God and made Satan his Lord, he was immediately separated from God, and died spiritually just as God had warned. Satan is a dead spirit. Separation from God is spiritual death. He became separated from God, his spiritual life source.
By disobeying God, Adam chose death as surely as if he had signed a legal document saying, “I choose death.” Because of his disobedience, the future of the world was affected—all of Adam’s seed were born into this world with the nature of sin instead of righteousness—with the nature of Satan instead of the nature of God. Adam had committed high treason against God and Satan became his master. Disobedience and rebellion became dominant in the earth. Sin put man in opposition to the thoughts and ways of God. Thus, through one man’s disobedience, death reigned. “For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:17).
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — Lessons in Obedience – Adam Part 1
Posted by admin | Filed under Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Let’s examine the lives of some of those Old Testament men who were faced with the choices of life or death, obedience or disobedience. We’ll learn valuable lessons from their lives. Adam is our example of disobedience, while Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Moses are good examples of obedience. We will see the choices these men made and the consequences.
Some Scripture passages may be familiar. You may have heard and read them many times, but I remind you of the Apostle Paul’s words to the Corinthian church: “Now these things befell them by way of a figure—as an example and warning [to us]; they were written to admonish and fit us for right action by good instruction…” (1 Corinthians 10:11, The Amplified Bible).
These examples of men faithful to God will help inspire us to faithfulness as well. They will reveal to us the victorious outcome of obedience. Or, as in Adam’s case, the disastrous outcome of disobedience. We will let these men, all of whom had a choice, encourage us to make the right choice. First we’ll look at Adam’s downfall that came because of failure to do what God said.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth (Genesis 1:26). And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7). So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth (Genesis 1:27-28).
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — Old Testament Obedience
Posted by admin | Filed under Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
God has always desired a people who would choose to walk with Him—to follow Him and to come into agreement with Himin the earth.
Generation after generation He has desired a people He could elevate to such a place that all the nations of the world would know they were the ones He had blessed.
But there has always been a problem. It existed in the Garden of Eden and was in the children of Israel in the wilderness. To a great extent, it’s in the Church today. The problem? Disobedient people.
Under the old covenant, the people had to be obedient by keeping the Law diligently, with their souls—their minds, wills and emotions.
Under the new covenant, we’re to keep God’s Word not only with our souls, but with our hearts (our spirits). It’s so much easier for us to be obedient to God than it was for them because we have a new heart, born again in the image and nature of God.
More than ever, we should be obedient to Him because now we don’t have to walk according to Old Testament law, but in newness of our born-again spirits. We’ve been reborn to be obedient.
While we’re here on the earth, we must do what we can for God. This includes being obedient and victorious in every area of our lives.
Jesus knew this when He was a man on the earth. He was raised among people who knew they had to obey the voice of God and keep His statutes. He learned what the prophets of God before Him had said, and began a walk of perfect obedience.
Gloria Copeland
