September 2014 - KCM Blog Skip to main content

4 Steps to Keep Your Cool Under Pressure

The pressure is on. There’s no question about it. We have more to do these days-and less time to do it in-than ever before.

Things, both in the natural world and in the world of the spirit, are moving at a rapid-fire pace. It’s exhilarating-and it also can be draining. In fact, if you don’t learn how to handle the pressure, it can drain you completely dry.

I know because at one time in my life I let it happen to me. I felt like I was the most tired man in the world back then. I was so tired that no amount of rest would help. I went to bed tired and I woke up tired. Every bone in my body ached. At times, Gloria had to physically help me out of bed.

I felt much like the Apostle Paul must have felt when he wrote in 2 Corinthians 1:8: “For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble…that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life.”

At that time in his ministry, Paul was under so much pressure he despaired of life. That’s what I did too. I got to the point where I wasn’t even fighting to live anymore. I went to God and said, “I’ve had all this I can stand. I just want to come on home now.”

What causes that kind of devastating fatigue? It took me a long time to find out, but when I did, I realized it was really very simple. My life force was being drained out. I was giving out more spiritual strength than I was putting back into myself. As a result, I developed a spiritual deficit that very nearly killed me.

Let me give you a word of warning. Don’t believe the old adage that says what you don’t know won’t hurt you. God’s Word says just the opposite. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…” (Hosea 4:6). In the spirit realm, what you don’t know can kill you.

#1. Stop Running on a Spiritual Deficit

Most people don’t know, for example, where their life force resides. They don’t know their spirits are the generators that provide energy for everything they do. So they fail to take care of those generators. They overload them and neglect them until they “burn out.”

Let me illustrate. Say you have a 100-watt generator and you start plugging 10-watt bulbs into the circuit that generator supplies. You can put in 10 bulbs and they’ll all burn brightly. Your generator will be running at full capacity, pulling all the load it’s made to pull.

When you put bulb number 11 on line, the whole string will dim a little. If you put in a 12th bulb, they’ll dim a little more. Put in 13 and you’ll see smoke coming out of that generator. It will burn out because it’s not equipped to produce 130 watts.

What happens then? All the lights go out. Not just the three extras you put in-all of them go out. The overload knocks out the whole string.

That’s what is happening to many dedicated believers today. They’re so busy ministering, so busy working for God, instead of with God, they’re overloading their spiritual generators. They’re putting out more than they’re putting in.

Proverbs 4:23 warns us against such careless treatment of our spirits. It says, “Keep thy heart [or spirit] with all diligence; for out of it are the issues [or forces] of life.” Most people don’t understand the importance of obeying that verse. They think if they eat right and rest and exercise, they’ll have all the strength they need. But they’re wrong. The real strength for living, the force that literally keeps the body alive, comes from the spirit man.

Your body has to have strength and life from your spirit being or it can’t function. When your spirit is strong, you can sleep a few hours, eat a good healthy meal, work out a little and you’re ready to go again. But when your spirit is weak it doesn’t matter how many hours you sleep or how many vegetables you eat, you just can’t seem to get on top of things.

#2. Remember Where Your Life Force Comes From

When you’re suffering from that kind of weakness, you need to follow Paul’s example. He wrote, “Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). In spite of all the pressure Paul was under, in spite of the fact that he had despaired of life, he found the strength not just to go on, but to go on in victory.

Where did he find that strength? In his inward man! In his own reborn spirit!

It doesn’t matter how tired you are. It doesn’t matter how depressed you feel. It doesn’t even matter if you feel like you’ve been dragged through a knothole backwards and you’re so stressed out you can’t take one more step. The answer to your situation is not “out there” somewhere. The answer is inside you.

Look again at what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 about his predicament: “We were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: but we had the sentence of death in ourselves….” If you’ll look up the Greek word translated sentence in that last phrase, you’ll find the better translation is the word answer.

Now, actually a sentence is an answer. When someone robs a bank and they’re sentenced to 10 years in prison, that 10 years is the legal answer to their crime. Keep that in mind when you read these verses and you’ll realize how truly powerful they are.

“We were pressed out of measure…insomuch that we despaired even of life: but we had the sentence [or answer] of death in ourselves.”

When the pressure is so great it’s about to kill you, where do you look for the answer? Inside your own reborn, Holy Ghost-filled spirit!

Your deliverance is inside you because that’s where the Holy Spirit is. Your help is inside you because that’s where your Helper is. The joy, the strength, the love…everything you’ve been looking for is right there inside your spirit.

#3. Fast Your Body and Feast Your Spirit

“Oh, but Brother Copeland, my spirit hasn’t been in very good shape lately. I’ve been too tired to read my Bible or go to church. All I’ve had the energy to do is lie around and watch television.” Well then, you’re in trouble.

To get out of that trouble, start feeding the man of faith on the inside of you. Set aside some of the physical food you’ve been chewing on and sink your spiritual teeth into The Word of God. Take a day or two to fast your body and feast your spirit!

Fasting helps give your spirit man a rest. All the physical operations of the body drain energy from the spirit. You have many involuntary physical functions, for example, that go to work every time you eat a meal. Those functions take a toll on the spirit. They drain your generator. When you fast, you give your spirit a break.

That’s why it’s good every once in a while to fast a few meals and just be quiet. Don’t do anything. Don’t put any pressure on. Just be still. Go get back in bed and turn your tapes on, read your Bible for a few hours and sip a little fruit juice.

Shut down all the physical functions you can and feed on The Word. You don’t even have to pray. Just be still for a while and know that God is God. Let The Word rejuvenate your spirit man. When you do pray during that time, pray in the spirit. Relax in God’s presence.

There’s an old religious cliché that used to be especially popular among ministers. “We’re just going to burn ourselves out for God,” they’d say. That’s not what God wants. That’s what the devil wants! He would love to see you just work yourself until you burn out and die. He’d kick up his heels at your funeral!

Don’t give him that opportunity. Take the time to feed your inner man so you won’t burn out. Keep feeding your spirit until you increase your strength. Burn brighter and stronger every year.

Be transformed from glory to glory by “beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Increase the wattage of your spiritual generator by spending time focusing on the Lord. Take your focus off the things of the world and look at Him. Begin to work with Him instead of just for Him.

#4. Focus on Jesus Living Inside You

Where must you look to see Jesus? First, in The Word. And second, in your own spirit.

That second place is where most of us have trouble. We can see Jesus as great and magnificent in The Word of God. We can envision Him sitting grandly in heaven at the right hand of the Father. But we haven’t developed our ability to see Him living inside us.

You must have that ability to survive the pressure in these last days. You’ll need to be able to see Jesus within you just as clearly as you can see Him in The Word. You’ll have to know-not just with your brain but with every fiber of your being-that He Who is within you is greater than he that is in the world.

Never forget this: Once you truly see that the very Spirit and power of Jesus resides on the inside of you, nothing-no amount of debt, no disease, no problem of any kind-will be able to defeat you. When your inner image of the Jesus Who lives in you becomes bigger than your image of the problems around you, you’ll conquer any challenge the devil brings your way.

So get to work on that inner image. Begin to look inside yourself and say “I am the righteousness of God. I have fellowship with my heavenly Father. I do walk with Him hand in hand and Jesus Christ is my blood brother. Through Him, I have an eternal blood covenant with Almighty God.”

I know you’re facing needs. I know you’re facing difficulties. But I also know that 2 Peter 1:3 says God has already given you all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Jesus. Once you develop that inner knowledge of Him, those needs will be met and those difficulties overcome.

The answer to everything is inside you right now. Everything you’ll ever need is in your spirit. All the money…all the health…all the strength…all the wisdom…all of it is in you because that’s where Jesus is!

“We have this treasure in earthen vessels,” Paul says, “that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).

Pressure… What Pressure?

I’m not telling you there won’t be trouble on the outside. Certainly there will be trouble. As a matter of fact, Paul said he was troubled by circumstances on every side…but on the inside he was not distressed.

“We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed” (verses 8-9).

Paul fixed his attention, not on external circumstances, but on his inner man because that’s where the excellency of God’s power is. “We’re perplexed,” he said. That Greek word perplexed means “to be cornered by the circumstances.” “But we’re not in despair.” In other words, even when it looks like there’s no way out, I can find a way out if I look on the inside.

“Persecuted, but not forsaken.” If I’m persecuted on the outside, how do I know God hasn’t forsaken me? Because when I look on the inside, I can see Jesus saying, “I’ll never leave you nor forsake you, even to the ends of the earth.”

Perplexed…persecuted…cast down. There’s no doubt about it, Paul was under more pressure than most of us today will ever experience. But he handled it…and so can you if you’ll do these four things:

 

1: Remember where the pressure is coming from. (The outside!) And remember where your life force comes from. (The inside!)

2: Stop running on a spiritual deficit. Take time to feed your inner man with The Word of God.

3: Fast your body if necessary and feast your spirit on The Word so your inner man can get stronger more quickly.

4: Focus on Jesus inside you until your inner picture of Him is bigger than the outside situations you’re facing.

 

If you’ll build up your spirit man in those three ways, when pressure comes it won’t affect you like it used to. Problems that once knocked you flat won’t even bother you anymore.

Think about it. A 5-foot, 140-pound bully who scared you silly when you were in second grade couldn’t even make you blink now that you’re 6 feet tall. You’ve grown. You’re stronger now. That second-grade bully isn’t a threat anymore.

That’s what happened to Paul. He grew! He kept feeding on The Word until the image of Jesus within him grew bigger than the pressures around him. He grew up so much that just a few years after he wrote about being “pressed out of measure, so that we despaired even of life,” he wrote “…I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:11, 13).

Don’t let the bullies get you down. Just keep feeding your spirit man on The Word. Get strong on the inside. One of these days, when the circumstances are putting the squeeze on you and someone asks how you handle the pressure, you’ll look at them with surprise and say, “Pressure… What pressure?”

 

4 Steps to Enjoy Life More

If you’re a Christian, you should be enjoying life.

Did you know that?

If you’re born again, if you’ve made Jesus Christ your Lord, you should be so satisfied—so joyful, so overflowing with life that you should seem almost ridiculously optimistic to the unbelievers around you. You should greet every day with such confident expectation that it’s going to be filled with the goodness of God that others watch you with wonder and ask, “How can you be so full of hope when the world is so dark? How can you be so certain your life will be blessed?”

Those are the kinds of questions the early New Testament believers heard all the time. That’s why Peter had to write them and say, “…be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you” (I Peter 3:15). Apparently, those first century disciples understood what many, long-faced, woebegone Christians today do not. They realized Jesus truly meant it when He said in John 10:9-10 (The Amplified Bible), “I am the Door; anyone who enters in through Me will be saved (will live). He will come in and he will go out [freely], and will find pasture. The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows).”

Most believers today can quote those verses, but few fully believe them. They don’t realize if we, as Christians, are not enjoying abundant life we’re missing it somewhere. We’re not taking hold by faith of what Jesus came to give us.

1. Realize that You Have a Good Shepherd

“But, Brother Copeland, you don’t understand my situation,” someone might say. “I have some serious problems. I came from a poor family. I don’t have the opportunities most other people have. My circumstances are bad.”

That may be true, but according to Jesus, all those things are irrelevant. He said anyone who receives Him as the Door of salvation becomes a free person. They can come and go and find plentiful pasture (or provision) for their spirit, soul and body. They can have abundant life.

Notice Jesus didn’t say that just certain people—like preachers, or highly educated people, or people of a certain color and a certain social standing could do it. He said anybody who came through the Door could have and enjoy overflowing, abundant life.

If you are an anybody you qualify. You’re free to come and go as the Lord leads you. You’re not trapped inside your natural circumstances, or locked out of God’s blessings. You have become a free person, and wherever you go you’re going to find pasture. You don’t have to depend on someone else to give it to you. You don’t have to look to your employer, the government or anyone else. Jesus is your Shepherd and He will lead you. He will provide for you. What you have depends only upon what you are willing to receive from Him.

Oddly enough, many well-meaning believers seem more willing to receive what the devil wants to give them than what Jesus has for them. They’re constantly embracing devilish gifts like sickness, oppression and lack because they’ve been religiously brainwashed to believe God sent those things to teach them something.

But they have it backward. The devil—not Jesus—is the one stealing their health and their finances. He is the one trying to kill and destroy them. Jesus said, “I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd risks and lays down His [own] life for the sheep” (John 10:11The Amplified Bible).

Does a good shepherd pick up a little lamb and break its legs just so he can demonstrate his ability to fix them? Does a good shepherd starve them or leave them without water? Certainly not. When you’re under the care of the Good Shepherd, you can say what David said in Psalms 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake” (verses 1-3).

2. Chase Away the Shadows 

“Yeah, but that psalm doesn’t stop there,” someone might say. “It says that sometimes we’ll have to go through the valley of the shadow of death.”

Sure it does. But you can even enjoy life in that valley if you’ll stay with your Shepherd. That’s one thing I’ve learned over the past 40 years. I’ve found out that it doesn’t matter where I go, if Jesus is with me, things will be good.

He’ll turn that valley of the shadow of death into a banquet hall for me. He’ll lead me into green pastures. He’ll make me lie down beside the still waters. He’ll make sure I have everything I need to have and enjoy abundant life even in that seemingly dismal place.

So if Jesus says we need to go through the valley of the shadow of death, I don’t mind going there. I just say, “Well, praise God, let’s go! I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me.”

“But, Brother Copeland, what about the shadow of death? Doesn’t that scare you?”

Why should it? My Lord and Savior is the biggest Person in the valley and He is right there with me. What’s more, a shadow never hurt anyone. All a shadow can do is scare you. The shadow of a dog may look big enough to bite your head off. But when you turn on the light, you find out the dog behind the shadow is half the size it appeared and it doesn’t even have any teeth!

Remember that the next time you’re in a valley and the devil tries to cast a shadow over you. Instead of letting that shadow scare you, just turn the light on and get rid of the silly thing. You’re fully equipped to do that because the Bible says you are born of light (Ephesians 5:8). It says you can walk in the light as Jesus is in the light (I John 1:7). You can cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light (Romans 13:12).

As a New Testament believer, you don’t have to put up with the shadow of death like the Old Testament saints did. You’ve been delivered from the power of darkness and conveyed into the kingdom of the Son of Light (Colossians 1:12-13). So don’t let the devil darken even one of your days. When he tries, throw him into confusion with the brightness of your light.

3. Live in the Light of Love

Think about it and you’ll see why. Have you ever walked out of a dark room into the bright sunshine? You couldn’t see anything for a moment or two, could you? That’s what happened to Saul on the road to Damascus. He’d been living in darkness, persecuting Christians, and when Jesus shined the light of God’s glory on him, he couldn’t see for three days. Someone had to go pray for him to be filled with the Holy Spirit before he could get his sight back.

According to John 1:5, that’s the effect light always has on darkness. That’s why, when the light of Jesus shines in the darkness, the darkness comprehends it not. The word translated comprehends (or comprehendeth in the King James) can also be translated find. So you might say it this way, when the light shines in the darkness, the darkness can’t find it.

Wouldn’t you like to live so fully in the light that the devil couldn’t find you? According to the Bible, that’s possible. It tells us we can live in such a way that the wicked one touches us not (I John 5:18).

I John 2:10 gives us the secret to that lifestyle. It says, “He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him.” In other words, the key to living in the light is keeping the New Testament command of love.

Once the Lord spoke to me and said, Wouldn’t it be foolish to walk through the door, turn out the light, and stumble over everything in the room? Yet that’s the way most of My people try to live. They turn the light out by neglecting to keep the commandment of love. They yield to unforgiveness, strife, envy and all kinds of other unloving attitudes and behaviors. Then when they can’t find their way in life, they start crying out to Me. “Oh God, lead me! God, direct me! God, help me!” But all they really need to do is turn the light back on. All they need to do is repent and start walking in love.

The more I thought about that, the more it dawned on me how true that is. Jesus proved it when He was on the earth. No matter how hard the devil tried to corner Him, He could find the way out of any difficulty because He always walked in the light of love.

4. Get Rid of Strife, Unbelief & Unforgiveness

As His disciples, Jesus intends for us to operate the same way. That’s what He had in mind when He said, “…whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5:39). He wasn’t telling us to just let people beat the daylights out of us. He was teaching us to put on the armor of light, to step under the protective covering of love so the devil couldn’t touch us.

The only time we see the Church as a whole walking in that kind of love was during the first great spiritual outpouring in Jerusalem right after the Day of Pentecost. The book of Acts tells us the believers at that time “were of one heart and of one soul” (Acts 4:32). They loved each other so completely that they “sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need” (Acts 2:45).

As a result, the power of God got so strong among them that sick people who got within a shadow’s length of Peter would be healed. Sometimes people think the shadow itself did the healing. But there wasn’t any healing power in Peter’s shadow. The power or the light of God that was coming out of him was doing the work.

You were born again as a child of light, so that light is in you in its most powerful form. But it cannot shine forth as long as you keep clouding it with strife, unbelief and unforgiveness.

If you want to walk in the full power of that light, you’ll have to repent of all those things. I don’t mean just feel sorry for it. Repentance isn’t just being sorry, it’s getting in agreement with God about those things, acknowledging to Him that they’re wrong, and then believing you receive your forgiveness for it and your cleansing from it.

Once you’ve done that, determine to become so committed to keeping God’s command of love that you’d rather die than violate it. If someone mistreats you, take the position Jesus and Stephen did when they looked at those who were about to murder them and said, “Father, forgive them….”

That kind of love literally arms you with light. It protects you so that the ugly stuff people say and do doesn’t bother you. You stop worrying about how they’re treating you and concern yourself instead with how you’re treating them.

I’ll never forget the day the Lord showed me that perspective. I’d been moping around because I felt like Gloria wasn’t paying attention to me the way I thought she should, and I said to myself, Aw, she doesn’t care about me anyway.

The second I said that, the Spirit of God jerked me to attention and almost hollered at me. It’s none of your business whether she cares about you or not! It’s your business to care for her! It’s enough for you to know that I care about you. So you see to it that you care for her and whether she cares a thing about you or not is between Gloria and Me!

The Lord’s tone of voice was so strong it left me trembling. I didn’t want Him to ever have to speak to me like that again. So I committed myself right then and there to do what He was telling me to do.

As a result, Gloria and I have walked in the light where our marriage is concerned, and the devil hasn’t been able to touch it. It’s like heaven on earth in our house.

That’s the way our Good Shepherd wants us to live all the time. Everywhere we go, in everything we do, He wants us to enjoy green pastures and rest beside still waters. He wants us to live in freedom, coming and going wherever He leads us. He wants us to enjoy abundant, overflowing life.

Whether we’re walking through the valley or sitting on the mountaintop, He wants us to be living in the light.

Hawaii Is Not Forgotten

For the first time in nearly 22 years, Hawaii was faced with the threat of not one, but two hurricanes, back-to-back, during the first week of August 2014 ─ Hurricanes Iselle and Julio. By the time both storms hit Hawaii on August 8 and 9, they had significantly weakened and were downgraded from hurricane to tropical storm status. Even so, as Tropical Storm Julio approached the southern and eastern regions of Hawaii’s Big Island, it was still packing 90 mph winds. The storms caused flash flooding, wind damage and downed trees, especially in the small, agricultural communities on the Big Island. After much prayer and consideration, the KCM Disaster Relief team decided to take a small, two-man crew and head to Hawaii’s Big Island to check on the 168 KCM Partners who call Hawaii home. The team’s main focus was to find the 57 Partners who live in the most affected regions. Although damage was not severe and no lives were lost, many people in these regions were without power and running water for weeks following the storm, causing them a great deal of personal loss. It is always a blessing for the Disaster Relief team to knock on the doors of our Partners’ homes, and it was amazing for these Partners all the way in Hawaii to know that KCM had not forgotten them ─ no matter where they were.

To learn more about our Disaster Relief Outreach Team, CLICK here!