Posts Tagged ‘mercy’
Gloria Copeland — Receiving Faithfulness Part 2
Posted by admin | Filed under Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Joshua and Caleb held onto their confession of, “We can
take the land” for 40 years, until they were both 80 years
old. Then Caleb said to Joshua, who was their spiritual
leader, “Give me that mountain. I can take the land.” His
confession had remained unchanged.
Caleb knew of the faithfulness and mercy of God. It
motivated him to draw closer to God instead of running
from Him. He was convinced his God was able. When we
get a revelation of mercy and obtain it for ourselves we will
begin to speak it out in faith. That’s when mercy begins to
explode and manifest itself outwardly.
It all comes down to this: God’s original plan was for
man to live in close communion with Him. But after Adam
sinned, this was no longer possible. God could only deal
with man at arm’s length. Fellowship was impossible.
But, the Father had mercy on man and sent His only
Son to be our Savior and Redeemer. Through His death
and resurrection, Jesus restored us to our rightful place in
God’s original plan—a place of fellowship and communion
with the Father.
As joint heirs through Christ’s saving power, we have the
right to God’s mercy and all that goes with it. So, take
advantage of this gift from God. Ignite the power of mercy
in your life by spending time in prayer and fellowship with
the Father. Study His Word. Take hold of the promises found
in His Word, and by faith speak your needs into being. Confess
and believe in His power. If you do these things, God’s mercy
will continually be manifest in your life. For His mercy
endureth…forever!
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — Receiving Faithfulness Part 1
Posted by admin | Filed under Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
If we are having trouble keeping our confession of
faith, we need to take hold of mercy. Obtaining mercy
will enable us to be faithful to God. Paul illustrated this
in 1 Corinthians 7:25. In dealing with family affairs in
the Church, he said, “Now concerning virgins I have
no commandment of the Lord: yet I give my judgment,
as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful.”
It was the revelation of mercy that caused Paul to be
faithful to God. It was as if he said, “I’ve never received
a commandment of God in this, but I am faithful enough
to God and He is faithful enough to me that I know how
He thinks about it, and I will just go ahead and tell you.”
Paul knew that obtaining the mercy of God would keep
men from fainting and preserve their faith.
The Apostle Peter acknowledged the scriptural truth
of what Paul said and continued the same thought when
he wrote 2 Corinthians 4:1: “Therefore seeing we have this
ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; but have
renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking
in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully;
but by manifestation of the truth….”
Have you ever fainted in the middle of your confession
of faith and said, “Dear God, I just can’t hold on to this any
longer. I don’t think I can continue to stand up. I have been
confessing this thing for weeks and weeks. How long am
I going to have to do it?” If you have come to that place,
remember Ephesians 6:13 says, “Wherefore take unto you
the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand
in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand
therefore….” If you are ready to stand forever, you won’t be
there very long.
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — Igniting Mercy’s Power
Posted by admin | Filed under Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
The words we speak are important. Holding onto our
confession of the living Word will ignite the mercy of God!
Hebrews 4:12-14 says:
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and
sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even
to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of
the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the
thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there
any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but
all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of
him with whom we have to do. Seeing then that
we have a greater high priest, that is passed into
the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast
our profession.
We are to keep a faithful confession based on the
Word of God. We can do that because our High Priest has
already been touched with the “feelings of our infirmities”
and “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without
sin” (Hebrews 4:15). On that basis, we are to come boldly
to the throne of grace and as verse 16 says “obtain mercy”
through the mercy of our High Priest, Jesus.
If we cling to confessions of how bad we feel and do not
take hold of mercy, we are not igniting the dynamite. We
are igniting some other force that we did not want to blow.
The wrong words give the devil power he does not rightfully
possess. It is like holding an explosive and giving him the
match. When we confess sickness and disease, we let him
blow us away with our own guns.
The spiritual law of the Word of God is in Mark
11:23 where Jesus said: “That whosoever
shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be
thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart,
but shall believe that those things which he saith shall
come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.”
That law works on the negative side, as well as the
positive side. If Satan had any power, he wouldn’t have
to use deception. He would just kill us. But, since he is
powerless, the only thing he can do is deceive us by lying
to us. He tries to work and put us into an area where we
will make the wrong confession. If he can get us to say, “I’m
so bored. I’m so no-good. Oh, I’ll never make it. Oh God, I’m
so sick and tired,” he knows we can have whatever we say.
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — A Spiritual Force Part 1
Posted by admin | Filed under Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
From Paul we can see that mercy is not only the
pattern we are to follow, but a spiritual force. At the new
birth, the Holy Spirit imparts to us what the English Bible
calls everlasting life. In Greek, it is called “zoe life” or the
life of God. “Zoe” is the element that makes God, God. It is
eternal because you cannot kill or stop it.
Jesus said, “I have come that they might have ‘zoe’ and
have it in abundance” (John 10:10). We are forever as God is
forever, because we have the substance of “zoe” life within us.
Receiving everlasting life is not the same thing as
living forever. You were created a spirit and a spirit can
never cease to exist. To a spirit, death is being separated
from the life of God. You will exist forever whether you
serve the devil or whether you serve God.
In the second resurrection, the graves will give up
the bodies of every person who has died without the Son
of God. Those who have died without obtaining God’s
everlasting life will manifest for eternity the presence
of sickness, disease and death just as they did in their
physical life.
When someone loses his soul, he loses control of it. A
person who goes into hell does not go blank. He has a better
memory and consciousness than he had when he was in his
body. Look at the rich man in Luke 16 who died and went
into hell. He lifted up his eyes and said, “Father Abraham.”
Not only did he recognize Abraham, but he knew his
brothers and Lazarus the beggar. He said, “Send Lazarus
down here with water to put on my tongue (v. 23-24).” He
was wiser in the spirit after he died than he was before.
One time God opened my eyes and allowed me to
see what people’s spirits looked like when they were not
attached to their physical bodies. I saw good Christian
people with undeveloped spirits that looked awful.
They had great big heads because they were mentally
developed and little, spindly, scrawny, spiritual bodies
caused by a lack of spiritual food. These people had fed
on religion, the junk food of the spiritual realm. It had
ruined their bodies.
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — Receiving Mercy
Posted by admin | Filed under Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Having mercy available and reaching out to accept it are
two different things. Salvation is here for us to take, but
we can reject it all day long if we want to. If we do that,
the mercy of God will not make any difference in our lives.
It doesn’t matter what you have done. Jesus Christ came to
save sinners. He did not come for the righteous. There
weren’t any. The Bible says Jesus died for the ungodly.
It is up to you to receive the mercy of God.
Paul wanted to encourage us to take hold of mercy. He was
writing to tell us that the great things he experienced did
not happen to him because he was an apostle. They
occurred because he was a believer. He said, “Howbeit for
this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ
might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them
which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting”
(1 Timothy 1:16). Paul became a pattern of the mercy of
God for us to follow. Most of us came to the Lord Jesus
Christ either directly or indirectly through His ministry
because he wrote two-thirds of the New Testament.
The Apostle Peter, like Paul, wanted to direct attention
away from himself and the fact that he had walked and
talked with Jesus for three and a half years. He wanted
people to realize the true basis for his ability to receive
mercy and the power to do miracles. When he healed a
lame man, he said to the people who were around, “Why
look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power
or holiness we had made this man to walk” (Acts 3:12). In
other words, he was saying, “It was neither our holiness
nor our calling, but faith in the Name of Jesus that made
this man strong.”
I once knew a quiet, elderly man who was head usher
in a church. His name was Brother Steel. One day he was
a few minutes late coming to church. I found out he had
been fishing that afternoon and had been bitten by a
water moccasin. He pulled up his pant leg and showed me
where the snake had bitten him. I asked him what he did.
He said, “I reached down there and got him and said, ‘I’ll
tell you one thing old boy, in the Name of Jesus the Bible
said if a snake bites you, he ain’t going to hurt you. There
ain’t no way you’re going to hurt me.’ And I just throwed
him away.” He said, “I didn’t feel too good. That’s kind of
the reason I was late to church.”
This man just believed the Bible. Like Paul, he obtained
mercy because without the mercy of God there is not
anyone who can reach down and get a cottonmouth water
moccasin by the hand, curse it in the Name of Jesus and
throw it away. This man did what the Bible commands us
to do, and that is to have faith in the Name of Jesus.
We must first obtain mercy before we can pattern ourselves
after Paul. When Paul was born again, the mercy of
God got down on the inside of him and brought forth a
revelation that I could see. His testimony is a witness to
God’s mercy. In the Bible, we see him first as a killer. Then
we see him as a preacher of the gospel. As a preacher, he
was beaten with rods, lashed with 40 stripes three times,
thrown into dungeons and shipwrecked twice. He experienced
perils from countrymen and fought wild beasts—all
to get the Word of God to people and set them free.
Gloria Copeland
