April 2015 - KCM Blog

How to Tune In to the Voice of God

Posted on April 30, 2015 - 10:09 am by kcmblogsite

What is the Spirit of God saying to you today? What is He telling you about your spiritual development…your family…and your finances? If you’re facing trouble, what word of victory has He spoken to you?

As a born-again child of the living God, you ought to know the answers to those questions.

I’ve learned by experience, however, the majority of believers don’t. I can tell by just listening to them talk. “Oh, my goodness,” they’ll say, “I’m in a crisis and I don’t know what to do!”

If that’s your situation, I’m going to be straight with you. You’d better go to God and find out what to do. You’d better be quiet long enough to hear what He has to say and pay attention to it. You’d better get rid of that fear and start believing God. Otherwise, the devil is going to end up getting the best of you.

If you read the Bible you’ll see God has been trying to get His people to understand that for thousands of years. In fact He gave those exact instructions to an Old Testament king named Ahaz back in the days of the prophet Isaiah. Ahaz was in serious trouble at the time. He had two enemy armies coming against him and he had no idea what to do about it. So God sent His Word to Ahaz through the prophet Isaiah and gave him a whole new perspective.

Instead of agreeing with Ahaz about how powerful his enemies were, God let him know they didn’t impress Him much. He referred to them as two “smoking stumps” (Isaiah 7:4, The Amplified Bible). Then He assured Ahaz their plans against him would not stand if he would simply obey the following instructions: Take heed…be quiet…fear not (verse 4)…and believe (verse 9).

Check Your Receiver

Before you head down the road looking for a prophet like Isaiah to tell you what God is saying to you, let me save you a trip. You don’t need a prophet to tell you what to do. You have a better covenant than Ahaz had. You’re not just a servant of God like people were in the Old Covenant. Through the blood of Jesus, you’ve become a full-fledged son and the Bible says, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Romans 8:14).

Jesus confirmed that fact in John 10 when He said that His “sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice” (John 10:3-4, New King James Version).

As a child of Almighty God, you have the right and the spiritual ability to hear the voice of God for yourself!

“But, Brother Copeland,” you might say, “God never speaks to me.”

Sure He does. You’re just not listening.

Have you ever turned on your television and found something was wrong with the picture? Maybe it was fuzzy or the sound was crackling with static. Or maybe you couldn’t get a picture at all. Did you grab the telephone, call NBC and tell them that something was wrong with their transmitter? Did you get some television executive on the line and say, “Hey, you guys must not be broadcasting anymore. I turned on my set and you weren’t there!”

Certainly not! That didn’t even occur to you. You were smart enough to figure out the problem most likely wasn’t with the transmitter. The problem was with the receiver. The problem was with your own television set.

So instead of blaming the broadcaster, you started trying to find the problem on your end. You might have checked the electrical connections. You might have looked to make sure the cable was hooked up. You might have checked the settings on the television to make sure they were all adjusted correctly.

What’s more, you stayed with it until you got it fixed. Why? Because you never doubted the fact that the networks were still broadcasting. You understood if you could just successfully tune in, they would be there for you.

Find His Frequency

Don’t you think we ought to have at least as much faith in God as we have in the television networks? They can break down. They can fail us. But God never will. He has given us His Word. He has promised He’ll lead us by His Spirit and enable us to know His voice. So if we’re having difficulty with those things, we need to stop blaming Him and determine where we’re missing it.

Actually, that’s not hard to do. When we have trouble hearing God’s voice it’s almost always for one of the following four reasons.

We don’t believe He is speaking.

We’re not paying attention.

We’re allowing some kind of interference to drown out His voice.

We just plain don’t know what frequency He is on.

Let’s focus right now on that last point. Exactly how do you locate the frequency God uses to speak to you?

I’ll tell you right off the bat, you don’t do it by using those fleshly paddles on the sides of your head—your natural ears. Some people try to hear God that way. They think if He would just speak audibly to them everything would be solved.

They’re mistaken. Our natural ears weren’t designed to hear the voice of God.

We were created to hear Him in our inner man or what the New Testament calls “the hidden man of the heart” (1 Peter 3:4).

As Hebrews 3:7-8 says, “Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.)”

God leads His children not by outward voices or signs and wonders but by the inward witness of “the hidden man of the heart”. So to find His frequency, the first thing you’ll have to do is tune in—not with your head but with your heart!

Learn to Discern

How do you know the difference between your head and your heart?

Scripturally speaking, your head is your soul which is comprised of your mind, will and emotions. Your heart is your spirit which is the core of your being that has been born again and joined to the Spirit of God. Granted, discerning the difference between the voice of your soul and the voice of your spirit can be challenging and it takes spiritual wisdom to do it. But the Bible tells us clearly how to develop that wisdom: We do it by spending time in the written Word of God.

Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the Word is “quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged 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.” It contains the voice of God in its most tangible form.

God always agrees with His written Word and His Word always agrees with Him. In fact, Psalm 138:2 says He has magnified His Word even above His Name. That means God has put His Name on His written Word the way we would put our name at the bottom of a contract. He has given us His Word as a covenant and signed it in the Name of Jesus by the blood of Jesus.

Since God cannot lie, there is no way He will ever do or say anything contrary to that Word. He has absolutely joined Himself to it forever. So the first place God takes us to train us to recognize His voice is to His written Word. He uses it to tune our spiritual ears to the real so that we can easily recognize a counterfeit.

Have you ever watched an impersonator mimic a celebrity? If he is good at what he does, you’ll think, I know who that guy is impersonating. It’s so-and-so. He sounds just like him! But if you were to put the real personality right next to the impersonator, the differences would be glaring. If you could see them both at the same time, you’d think, That guy doesn’t sound much like him at all!

That’s the way it is with God’s written Word. The better you know it, the more you’ve heard God’s voice speaking to you through it, the easier it is for you to tell the difference between His voice and another voice. The easier it is for you to divide your soul from your spirit and discern the difference between the voice of your head and the voice of your heart.

When you’re trained to hear God’s voice in His Word, the devil won’t be able to sneak deceptions in on you, either. When he tries to razzle-dazzle you with some religious-sounding voice that says, I love you, my son. But it’s just not my will to heal you at this time, you won’t buy it. You’ll rise up and say, “That’s not the voice of God. That’s a lie from hell because it doesn’t agree with the Word that says ‘by His stripes ye were healed.’”

Let me warn you though, you won’t get that kind of training just casually reading the Bible now and then. You won’t get it by knowing generally what it says…or by mixing what it says with your own opinions. If you desire to truly learn to hear the voice of God in the Word, you’ll have to do with it what God told Ahaz to do.

You’ll have to take heed to it. You’ll have to pay attention!

Zero In

Paying attention is more than just mentally assenting to a scripture and saying, “Oh yes, hallelujah. Amen.” To pay attention means to lock in on what’s being said and make a firm decision that from now on, you will see this matter the way God sees it instead of the way you’ve always looked at it.

To do that, you’ll have to do the second thing God told Ahaz to do. You’ll have to be quiet. You’ll have to shut up all the mental jabbering you’ve been doing, stop thinking about your own opinions and listen—really listen—to what the Word says.

Do you realize it’s possible to read great quantities of scripture and never really hear what God is saying in it? It’s not only possible, people do it all the time. Here’s how it happens. We’ll read a verse or two and something in them will trigger another train of thought. We may start thinking about what Aunt Sally said about that scripture. Or what Grandma used to say. Or we may even let our mind wander off on something else altogether—all the while we’re still reading our Bible! We end up with only a vague idea of what we read because we weren’t really paying attention to the Word, we were paying attention to our own thoughts.

Reading the Word of God that way is like shooting scattershot at a flock of birds—you don’t ever hit anything. To hear the voice of God through His Word, you have to take aim and zero in on every word as you read it. Instead of just breezing through the Bible reading it like you’d read a novel or a history book, read it deliberately.

Meditate on it by asking yourself, What does that mean to me? How does it change my life? Ask the Lord to reveal specifically what He is saying through that Word to you.

Read every verse with the attitude that This is God speaking to me and I am going to do what He tells me to do. Make a quality decision you’re going to act on that Word as quickly as you would the word of your doctor, lawyer or a very close, trusted friend.

Determine in advance that you’re not going to bend the Word to fit your lifestyle. On the contrary, you’re going to bend your lifestyle to fit that Word. With that attitude, your spiritual ears will be open to hear whatever God has to say.

Fear Not!

“But, Brother Copeland, I’m afraid I’ll do those things and I still won’t be able to hear the voice of God.”

Well, stop being afraid of that! Fear not!

Instead take a step of faith and believe what Jesus said. He said you’re His sheep and you hear His voice. So stop doubting Him and calling Him a liar. Don’t ever, ever, EVER again say, “I can’t hear God’s voice.”

Start agreeing with Jesus. Start believing and agreeing with the Word. Say, “The Word says I can hear God’s voice and I believe it! I do hear the voice of God!”

Then put your faith into action. Open the ears of your heart and start listening for the voice of the Spirit, especially when you’re reading the Word. Pay attention not just to the activity in your brain but to the quickenings in your inner man (primarily the area just below your chin, or chest area).

If you’re not sure where to locate those stirrings, just think back to a time when you had what we sometimes call a “hunch.” Suddenly something just dawned on you and you knew or understood something you hadn’t known before. Those kinds of dawnings come from your born-again spirit.

Purpose to become more aware of the promptings that arise from your spirit because they are the leading of God. Learn to trust them. The Holy Spirit will help you to step out on them a little at a time.

Initially He won’t be giving you risky, world-shaking kinds of leadings. When you’re first learning to identify God’s voice, it will be mostly yes and no answers, not to go sell everything you own and invest it in some off-the-wall business venture. He’ll begin by showing you simple truths from the Word that you can act on. He’ll reveal from the Word, for example, how you can obey more fully the law of love. He’ll show you ways to bless the people around you.

The more you trust His voice and follow His leadings, the more clearly you’ll find you can hear from Him. Before long, hearing from God won’t be an occasional event but an everyday part of life. And when someone asks you, “What is the Spirit of God telling you today?” you won’t hesitate a moment.

You’ll know exactly what to say.

National Day of Prayer 2015

Posted on April 30, 2015 - 12:00 am by KCM

The 64th annual National Day of Prayer, May 7, 2015, will have profound significance for our country. It is an unprecedented opportunity to see the Lord’s healing and renewing power made manifest as we call on citizens to humbly come before His throne.

The theme for 2015 is Lord, Hear Our Cry, emphasizing the need for individuals, corporately and individually, to place their faith in the unfailing character of their Creator, who is sovereign over all governments, authorities, and men. To further highlight the theme, I Kings 8:28 was chosen as the Scripture for this year:

“Hear the cry and the prayer that your servant is praying in your presence this day.”

The National Day of Prayer has great significance for us as a nation as it enables us to recall and to teach the way in which our founding fathers sought the wisdom of God when faced with critical decisions. It stands as a call for us to humbly come before God, seeking His guidance for our leaders and His grace upon us as a people. The unanimous passage of the bill establishing the National Day of Prayer as an annual event, signifies that prayer is as important to our nation today as it was in the beginning. The National Day of Prayer belongs to all Americans. It is a day that transcends differences, bringing together citizens from all backgrounds.

What You Can Do:

Pray for America and all nations. See the National Prayer below, which will be prayed on May 7, 2015 at Noon EST.
Get involved in an event: http://nationaldayofprayer.org/event-finder/
Click here to learn how to pray for America, including 30 Ways to Pray for Authority, a family prayer guide, a 52-week prayer guide and much more: http://nationaldayofprayer.org/how-to-pray-for-america/
Watch the National Observance Thursday, May 7, 2015 at Noon EST LIVE from Washington D.C. GOD TV will broadcast this special event, which will be available to millions of viewers in more than 100 countries around the world. The program will also be broadcast on DirecTV channel 365 and streamed LIVE on nationldayofprayer.org

National Prayer – To be prayed on May 7, 2015 at Noon EST

Heavenly Father,

We come to You in the Name that is above every name—Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Our hearts cry out to You.

Knowing that You are a prayer-answering, faithful God—the One we trust in times like these—we ask that You renew our spirits, revive our churches, and heal our land.

We repent of our sins and ask for Your grace and power to save us. Hear our cry, oh God, and pour out Your Spirit upon us that we may walk in obedience to Your Word.

We are desperate for Your tender mercies. We are broken and humbled before You.

Forgive us, and in the power of Your great love, lift us up to live in Your righteousness.

We pray for our beloved nation. May we repent and return to You and be a light to the nations. And we pray for our leaders and ask that You give them wisdom and faith to follow You.

Preserve and protect us, for You are our refuge and only hope.

Deliver us from all fears except to fear You, and may we courageously stand in the Truth that sets us free.

We pray with expectant faith and grateful hearts.

In Jesus’ name, our Savior.

Amen.

– 2015 National Prayer by Dr. Jack Graham

To learn more about the National Day of Prayer, visit www.nationaldayofprayer.org

5 Points to Live in Divine Protection

Posted on April 22, 2015 - 9:05 am by kcmblogsite

These days the news media are always talking about the latest “scare.” For a while, it was Ebola…then it was the flu…next it will be something else. As a believer, however, you don’t have to partake of those scares. You can live in perfect safety, even in the midst of a dangerous world, by dwelling in the secret place of the Most High. Here are some points to get you there.
1) Know what God’s WORD says about your protection.

Psalm 91:10: “There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.”

2) Determine to live every day under the safety of God’s wing.

Psalm 91:4: “He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.”
3) Enter into the secret place of God’s protection with words of faith.

Psalm 91:2: “I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.”

4) When trouble threatens, refuse to fear.

Psalm 91:5: “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day.”

5) Remember that in Christ the war on terror has been won.

Isaiah 54:14: “In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from oppression; for thou shalt not fear: and from terror; for it shall not come near thee.”

6 Ways Your Life Helps the World See Jesus

Posted on April 21, 2015 - 5:03 pm by kcmblogsite

People today are hungry to see Jesus.

They don’t just want to hear about Him. They don’t just want to know what other people say about Him. They want to see Him for themselves. They want to see His character. They want to see His life. They want to see His power.

The time has come for us, as the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, to rise up and give them what they want. It’s time for us to let Jesus walk and talk and live His life through us. It’s time for us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to do the works that He did so that the world can see Jesus through us.

That’s been God’s plan for the Church all along. He has always intended for us to reveal Jesus to the world during our earthly lives just as Jesus revealed the Father to the world during His earthly life.

Think about that! Jesus revealed the Father so perfectly that when one of His disciples said, “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us,” Jesus answered him and said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:8-9).

What do you think will happen in the world when we manifest Jesus so completely that the same thing can be said of us? What will happen when the people of the world can say of us, “If you’ve seen them…you’ve seen Jesus.”

I’ll tell you what will happen. We’ll have a worldwide harvest of souls swept into the kingdom of God the likes of which this earth has never seen!

The Word of God tells us that time is coming. Ephesians 4:13 refers to it as the time when “we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”

What’s more, the Holy Ghost is letting us know that time is now! We’ve entered into the last of the last days. This is the time for the fullness of the manifestation of Jesus through His Body on the earth.

#1 – Pursue Love

That’s one reason so many Christians desire to operate in the gifts of the Spirit these days. They’re responding to the stirring of the Holy Ghost within them. They’re sensing the Church shouldn’t just be reading about the manifestations of the Spirit described in the New Testament anymore, but rather, Christians should be walking in them! For as 1 Corinthians 12 says:

The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. But covet earnestly the best gifts (verses 7-12, 31).

Many believers today are wholeheartedly obeying the instruction in that last verse. They are earnestly coveting spiritual gifts. They long for them. They pray for them. They study the Bible to build faith for them. But for the most part, the Church is still not moving in them fully.

What more can we do?

The Apostle Paul himself answers that question. Right after he tells us to earnestly covet the best gifts he says, “…and yet show I unto you a more excellent way.” Then he writes an entire chapter on the subject of love.

Pursue love…and desire spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 14:1). According to the Bible, a more excellent way to walk in the power of God is to pursue love. That’s the best way to develop a lifestyle of doing the works of Jesus. Walking in love is the best way for the world to see Jesus through us.

Why is that so—why is the way of love such an excellent way? Think about it scripturally for a moment and you’ll see the reason. Acts 10:38 tells us that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil.” So if we’re going to do the works Jesus did, we’ll do the same thing, right? We’ll bring healing and deliverance to those who are oppressed.

Keeping that in mind, consider what Isaiah 54:14 reveals about how the devil inflicts that oppression. It says, “Thou shalt be far from oppression; for thou shalt not fear.” According to that scripture, oppression comes from fear! Fear is the spiritual force behind sin, oppression, sickness and every other bondage of the devil. Fear is the spiritual connector to the entire spectrum of death.

But, glory to God, the New Testament tells us that “perfect love casteth out fear” (1 John 4:18). Love destroys the devil’s hold. It undermines his whole operation! And not only that, love connects us to the oppression-destroying power of God because that power operates by faith and faith works by love (Galatians 5:6).

#2 – Fear Not

No wonder the Bible calls love the more excellent path to God’s power! The more we walk in love, the freer we are from fear and the more fully the Anointing of Jesus can manifest itself through us. When fear is gone there is nothing in us to hinder or interrupt its flow.

That’s why Jesus said what He did to Jairus in Luke 8. Jairus had thrown himself at Jesus’ feet and asked Him to come minister to his daughter who was at the point of death. He was making a demand on the manifestation of Jesus’ Anointing. He was expecting Him to go straight to his house, operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit and raise his daughter up.

On the way to Jairus’ home, however, Jesus was delayed by a woman who came to Him to be healed of an issue of blood. By the time He had finished ministering to her, Jairus had received word that his daughter was already dead. “But when Jesus heard it, he answered him, saying, Fear not: believe only, and she shall be made whole” (verse 50).

Fear not! Those were the first words out of Jesus’ mouth in that desperate situation. Why? Because He knew fear would contaminate Jairus’ faith and stop the flow of the anointing.

In essence, Jesus was saying to Jairus, “If you allow fear to get in you, you’re going to block the flow of My Anointing. Even if I go home with you, I won’t be able to do much for you. So fear not, believe only!”

Jesus is saying the same thing to us today. After all, the manifestations of the Holy Spirit operate now exactly as they did back then. There aren’t two Holy Spirits—one that worked in Jesus’ day and another that works today. No, He’s the same yesterday, today and forever. So for Him to manifest Himself fully through us, we must keep our faith uncontaminated. We must keep growing in love until we flush fear completely out of our lives. Then the Anointing of Jesus can flow freely through us.

Practice Until You Get Stronger and Stronger

How do you grow and develop in love? The same way you grow and develop in anything else. You practice it. You exercise it until you get stronger and stronger in it.

Some people start out by trying to practice love on the meanest, ugliest person they know. But I don’t recommend that. Granted, the Bible does tell us to love our enemies. It does tell us to love each other as Jesus loved us. If you start there, however, you’re likely to end up frustrated and defeated.

Why is that? It’s because, according to the Scriptures, the divine cycle of love begins with God’s love for us and our love for Him, then it extends outward to other people. The Apostle John said it this way:

In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world (1 John 4:9-11, 16-17).

According to those verses, the first thing we must do to develop in love is to practice believing the love God has for us. We have to practice believing, for example, what Jesus said in John 17—that the Father loves us just as much as He loves Jesus! That’s hard to swallow but the Bible says it. So when we find ourselves worrying about something, we should reject fear and practice believing God’s love instead.

We should say, “I refuse to worry about this. My Father loves me just as much as He does Jesus so I know He is going to take care of me. His love will never fail me. He’ll never leave me or forsake me. I just cast all my cares over on Him because I know He cares for me!”

The more we think about that and pray over it, the more the revelation of God’s love for us will develop. It will grow and grow until it overtakes our thinking, our emotions and everything else in us!

#4 – Fall in Love With the Lord

“That sounds good, Brother Copeland,” you might say, “but the Bible also says I’m supposed to love God and, honestly, I just don’t love Him like I should.”

No problem. You can develop your love for the Lord. How? On purpose, by faith, begin confessing your love to Him.

I found that out by personal experience many years ago, not long after I got saved. I was sitting in a church service listening to people talk about how much they loved Jesus and, frankly, I felt left out. I just didn’t seem to have the same love for God that they did. Certainly, I appreciated what He had done for me, but I didn’t experience what I would call love.

To understand that you have to realize where I’d come from. There had been so much demonic activity in my life before I was saved, that I actually said with my mouth that I didn’t believe love was real and if it was, I was incapable of it. My heart was so hard, that I had no emotional response to anybody. I didn’t care about a human being on the face of the earth, including myself.

Of course, my mother was praying for me night and day at that time. And God began to break through my hardheartedness, even before I was born again, by setting me up with the prettiest girl in the state of Arkansas, Miss Gloria Neece. I fell head over heels in love with her the moment I met her! And I married her as quickly as I could. Less than a year later, we both got saved.

So as I sat in that church service listening to people talk about how much they loved Jesus, the only experience I had to compare it with was the one I had had with Gloria. I knew I’d never experienced that kind of love for the Lord. But I wanted to. So I went up to the altar of that church, got on my knees and said by faith, “Lord, I’ve never said this to You before but I’m going to say it to You now because I believe it. I love You, Lord. I love You.”

#5 – Confess Your Love to the Lord

I didn’t feel a thing before I said it. But as soon as I got those words out of my mouth, the reality of the love of God came all over me. He manifest Himself to me right then and there. Suddenly, I didn’t care what anybody else was doing or thinking, I was having church all by myself! The love of God just began to flow through me like a river and I just kept on saying, “Oh, God, I love You! Jesus, I love You! I love You!”

I was too scripturally illiterate to realize it at the time, but I had actually stepped out on a promise of the Word of God. By choosing to love the Lord and saying it on purpose by faith, I’d activated the spiritual principle Jesus revealed in John 14:21: “He who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him” (New King James Version).

The moment I confessed my love for Jesus, I experienced the love of the Father and Jesus manifest Himself to me.

That same thing will happen to you!

So if you want to develop your love for the Lord, begin by telling Him over and over again, all day long, “Lord, I love You with all my heart. I love You with all my soul, with all my will, my mind and my strength.” When you wake up in the morning say, “Oh Jesus, I love You so much today. I commit everything I am and everything I have to You. How can I serve You today, Lord? What can I do for You?”

I dare you (or as we say in Texas, I double-dog dare you) to do that for the next 30 days and see what happens in your life. If you’ll start every day like that, you’ll get a revelation of the love of God beyond anything you’ve ever known before. You may not get all emotional like I did…or you may. But either way, the love of God will respond in you and the tide of it will rise higher and higher.

If you continue to do that, eventually, when the devil tries to throw some fearful, wicked thought at you, you’ll just laugh at him. You’ll say, “Ha, ha, ha…Satan you can’t scare me with that stuff. I know how much God loves me. He loves me just as much as He does Jesus. He takes good care of me. So you might as well get out of here and go peddle that fear somewhere else because I’m not going to buy it anymore!”

When you start talking like that the devil flees the scene. Why? Because he knows perfected love casts out fear and fear is the only weapon he has. When fear is eliminated, it’s over for him. He’s finished.

#6 – Fall in Love With People

Once you start loving the Lord and receiving His love that way, you are going to love others. It’s inevitable! First John 5:1 leaves no doubt about that. It says plainly, “Every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.” In other words, every one who loves the Father also loves the children!

We start off loving God because He first loved us. We practice our love on Him and we end up falling in love with everybody around us. As His love begins to flush the fear out of us, suddenly we can drop the barriers that have separated us from other people. We aren’t afraid to love them anymore because we know they can’t hurt us. We are safe in the love of God.

As a result, we can abandon ourselves to each other. We can forget about our own protection and preservation and just lose ourselves in helping meet the needs of those around us. We can draw on the ministry of Jesus—not just to meet our own needs or to prove we’re spiritual hotshots—but because we need His power to take care of others. We need it to help them and heal them and get them free!

It doesn’t make any difference how impossible a situation might be, when we have that attitude and that heart of love, the gifts of the Spirit are going to operate. Signs and wonders, healings and miracles are going to break forth. People all over the world—spiritually hungry people—will finally get what they need. They get to see Jesus. They’ll see His love. They’ll see His life. And they’ll see His power.

As we grow up in love, we will walk in the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ. We will reveal Him just as He revealed the Father…and the world will see Jesus again!

The KCM Disaster Relief Team Helps Families in Oklahoma Recovering from Recent Tornados

Posted on April 15, 2015 - 4:53 pm by kcmblogsite

Watch this video to see how the KCM Disaster Relief team helped families in Oklahoma recovering from recent tornados.

Our Outreach Department reaches out and changes lives in the aftermath of disasters, and helps fellow Partners find hope when the enemy attacks!

Be a part of the Disaster Relief and Evangelism teams’ efforts by becoming a Partner at HERE.

5 Steps to Live Long & Strong!

Posted on April 15, 2015 - 1:19 pm by kcmblogsite

by Gloria Copeland

“With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation.”

(Psalm 91:16)

The Bible has a lot to say about God’s will concerning our life here on the earth—how we are to live and for how long. God has a good, long life planned for us. But without that revelation, when we reach 60 or 70, we may start winding down and getting ready to go.

God never meant for us to die young. It’s His will for us to live out the full number of our days. Traditionally, Psalm 90:10 has been quoted in regard to man’s life expectancy. It says: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten (seventy years)—or even, if by reason of strength, fourscore years (eighty years)…” (The Amplified Bible). But what most people don’t realize is that reading this verse alone is taking it out of context. A footnote to Psalm 90 in The Amplified Bible explains:

This psalm is credited to Moses, who is interceding with God to remove the curse which made it necessary for every Israelite over twenty years of age (when they rebelled against God at Kadesh-barnea) to die before reaching the promised land (Num. 14:26-35). Moses says most of them are dying at seventy years of age. This number has often been mistaken as a set span of life for all mankind. It was not intended to refer to anyone except those Israelites under the curse during that particular forty years. Seventy years never has been the average span of life for humanity. When Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes, had reached 130 years (Gen. 47:9), he complained that he had not attained to the years of his immediate ancestors. In fact, Moses himself lived to be 120 years old, Aaron 123, Miriam several years older, and Joshua 110 years of age. Note as well that in the Millennium a person dying at 100 will still be thought a child (Isa. 65:20).

Here we learn that the Israelites who died at 70 were living under the curse caused by disobedience. According to Galatians 3:13, Jesus has redeemed us from the curse being made a curse for us. If we have made Jesus our Lord, freedom from all the conditions the curse causes belongs to us—that includes sickness, destruction and early death.

So don’t have the mind-set that you should only live to be 70. What God actually said about man’s life span is found in Genesis 6:3: “And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.”

Think about it. That means at 60 you are just middle-aged. That’s not the time to start slowing down. Instead stand on this scripture and others like Psalm 103:2-5: “Bless the Lord…who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction…who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Be determined to enjoy to the fullest the many productive years the Lord has promised you.

#1 – Live Long…by the Book

Like every other blessing, there are conditions to living a long life. Psalm 91 is a picture of the person who receives this blessing.

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet. Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation.

The person this is talking about loves God and stays connected to Him. He doesn’t fear, but trusts the Lord to be his refuge and says so. The truth of God’s Word is his shield and buckler. He dwells or abides under the shadow of the Almighty in obedience, and God shows him His salvation. The word salvation means “material and temporal deliverance from danger and apprehension, preservation, pardon, restoration, healing, wholeness and soundness.”

God will satisfy you with good things, including healing, protection and long life when you are living and abiding in Him.

#2 – Keep Doing God’s Will

For years I heard Kenneth Hagin say you ought to live 70 or 80 years, and if you’re not satisfied, live awhile longer. He proved that to be true. He passed 80 and just kept going until he finished his work.

A commentary on Psalm 90 in the Tehillim says until Moses reached 80, like other men he was growing weaker. But look what happened to him then. “When he reached the age of eighty, Moses received an extraordinary infusion of youthful energy and vitality, because at that time he was chosen to lead the Jewish people out of Egypt, to receive the Torah, and to lead the Jews to the Promised Land. This Divine mission so invigorated him that his health and strength remained undiminished until the moment of his death.”

Deuteronomy 34:7 says, “And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.”

Just as He did with Moses, God can give you a new assignment at any time. So if you have noticed that you’ve been slowing down because you’re getting a little older, double up on the Word. Let the Word be made spirit and life to you (John 6:63). And get involved with what God is doing. That’s the best way to live a long, productive life.

Acts 1:1-2 in the New Living Translation says, “Jesus began to do and teach until the day he ascended…” That’s my plan too—to do and teach until I ascend! I encourage you to do the same. Live long and live strong—stay well and stay here as long as God has something worthwhile for you to do.

#3 – You Don’t Have to Be Sick

One woman wrote to us and asked, “If I keep getting healed, how am I ever going to die?” The best way for your body to die is for your spirit to just leave. You don’t have to be evicted—forced out by sickness, disease or accident. God can call you out and say, Come home. Come on up here. You can simply pass over from this side to the other side, from earth to heaven. I get excited just thinking about it. Glory to God!

You don’t ever have to be sick. God’s best is for you to live in divine health every day, but He is also eager to heal. John G. Lake said, “Divine healing is the removal by the power of God of the disease that has come upon the body. But divine health is to live day by day, hour by hour in touch with God so that the life of God flows into the body just as the life of God flows into the mind or flows into the spirit.”

You live in divine health by staying in continual contact with the Word of God and the Spirit of God. In fact, the way to be free in every area of life is to attach yourself to God.

It’s your responsibility to stay well and whole. You do that with the Word of God and by resisting the devil. Go to the Bible and find out the truth. Realize that healing belongs to you and stand in faith for it. Rebuke symptoms when they try to come. Say, “No, you’re not coming here, in the Name of Jesus. I’m healed by the stripes of Jesus.”

When the devil tries to crowd your mind with dark thoughts about your life being cut short, rebuke them. Replace those thoughts with the promises of God. Speak the Word out loud in faith. Remember Psalm 91 says the person who makes the Lord his refuge, the one who receives protection and deliverance, has to say so.

#4 – Obey Natural and Spiritual Laws

God didn’t make your physical body to fail. He made your physical body to sustain itself when given the right food and the right conditions. He created your body to stay well and live to be of old age.

And if that’s your goal, you’ll need to determine that. Regardless of what ailments your relatives have had, they don’t need to affect you. Don’t look at your family history. You are born of God. Now you’re part of His family. You can take the Word of God and stop any unwanted, hereditary tendencies in your life.

Now, that doesn’t mean you can eat unhealthy foods all the time and expect to live healed and live long. Most sickness is self-induced by living wrong and eating wrong. There are natural and spiritual laws by which we are to live. It’s our responsibility to eat the right kind of food, exercise, rest—to make choices that will help us stay healthy.

God expects us to obey Him. Scripture tells us over and over to hearken to God’s voice and His Word. Proverbs 4:20-22 says, “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.” The margin of my Bible indicates the word health can be translated as “medicine.” God’s Word is medicine to your flesh. Not only that, this medicine affects everything in your life. It will cause your faith to rise up and receive.

Get into the Word—it’s essential to your life and health. Spend time there and find out what God is telling you to do. If He instructs you to make changes, know that they will always be for your benefit. Psalm 25:12-13 in The Living Bible says, “Where is the man who fears the Lord? God will teach him how to choose the best. He shall live within God’s circle of blessing….”

When you are obedient to walk in His ways, God surrounds you with blessings—healing, protection, favor, whatever you need.

#5 – Guard Your Heart

If symptoms linger, if our healing doesn’t readily manifest, Ken and I start checking to see if we are walking in love and obeying God. We ask ourselves if we are spending enough time in the Word of God for it to be made life and health to our flesh.

Proverbs 4:23 in The Amplified Bible warns, “Keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flow the springs of life.” You “keep” your heart by keeping it full of the Word of God. That’s the most important thing you have to do in this life. You can’t live in divine health and keep your faith up without a steady diet of the life force of God, which is the Word of God.

The wisdom of God is written down for us in His Word. Revelation of the Word is precious because it takes care of everything in our life. It causes health and healing to come. It brings happiness, joy and peace—nothing missing, nothing broken. Walking in God’s wisdom is a key to living long and living well. Proverbs 3:13-18 says:

Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.

By spending time in the Word of God we can have so much life flowing out of us that sickness and disease can’t even get close to us.

Jesus teaches us that our commandment is to walk in love. We are to love God with all our heart and to love each other. You can’t live long and strong and be in strife, unforgiveness or other disobedience. When that happens the life flow is hindered. Disobedience also comes in the form of wrong words, traditions of men, anger, bitterness, grief, fear, envy and jealousy. All disobedience opens the door to the enemy and stops the life flow. These things can adversely affect our health and our ability to receive from God.

Disobedience opens the door to the effects of the curse in our lives, but obedience releases the blessings of God.

I’m convinced it would be possible to live to be 120 years old by obeying the Word of God. If you ate the way God said to eat and abstained from what He said to abstain from, you’d be well on your way to a strong, healthy body. Add to that a steady diet of the Word of God, allowing the life force of the Word to continually quicken (make alive) your mortal flesh. Then if you were faithful to obey the Word of God in every area of life, I believe you could live an active, productive life of 120 years or more.

When you walk with God, you can walk healed and live long. “And ye shall serve the Lord your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee…the number of thy days I will fulfil” (Exodus 23:25-26).

What’s the ‘Big Gun’ in Your Spiritual Arsenal?

Posted on April 8, 2015 - 8:16 am by kcmblogsite

The answer might surprise you.

All spiritual battles are not created equal.

Some are simply skirmishes, easily won and quickly left behind. Others are fierce fights against the heavy artillery of an adversary who is hell-bent on our defeat.

When we face those kinds of fights, we must use the most powerful weapons God has given us. We must pull out the big guns.

“Big guns?” you ask. “Aren’t all the weapons of our spiritual warfare mighty through God?”

Yes, they are all mighty and effective. All of them fire the ammunition of faith so they’re all powerful. But they’re not all the same. For instance, if we compared them with natural weapons, we might say that one is like a pistol, another like a rifle and another like a cannon.

If we’re in a spiritual battle and we’ve already used the pistol and the rifle, but the devil just keeps hanging on, only the cannon will do—the cannon of thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is the “big gun” in our spiritual arsenal. It keeps us connected to God and receiving from Him even when circumstances are dark. It keeps us in an attitude of faith even when the devil is assaulting our senses and giving us a thousand natural reasons to doubt the Word and the power of God.

When the storms of life are thundering around us, if we’ll just stop right in the middle of it all and give thanks, it will keep us standing strong.

Don’t Wait Until Things Get Better

“But Brother Copeland, I don’t feel like giving thanks at times like that.”

Neither do I. But it doesn’t matter how we feel. The Bible says, “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). So we don’t have the luxury of waiting until things get better. (If we don’t give thanks, they’ll never get better!) We can’t afford to wait until Sunday. The Bible tells us to give thanks now, right in the midst of whatever we’re facing.

That’s what Jesus did even when His ministry was being rejected by whole cities of people. When He ran up against stiff-necked religious leaders who refused to repent after witnessing the presence and power of Almighty God—even then, Jesus prayed and said: “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight” (Matthew 11:25-26).

Just think how easy it would have been for Jesus to give in to frustration or discouragement in that situation! There He was preaching His heart out, moving in such authority that devils were fleeing, miracles were happening, and people were being healed and set free. Yet people ignored those works, and not only that, they actually accused Jesus Himself of being demon possessed!

If most of us were in that situation, we’d get mad and quit the ministry! We’d throw our hands up in disgust and say, “What’s the matter with this ignorant bunch of people? Don’t they know God is moving in their midst? Can’t they hear a word I’m saying? I give up! I’m not messing with this bunch anymore!”

But Jesus didn’t do that because it would have broken His connection to the Father. And He knew that in the heat of that spiritual battle, He had to keep His connection strong. So He pulled out the big gun and gave thanks!

Silencing a Sinister Enemy

He did the same thing when He went to Lazarus’ tomb. Talk about a major spiritual battle! Lazarus had been mummified by the time Jesus reached him. The embalming chemicals were already working on his body. If that weren’t enough, he’d been dead four days and his body was beginning to decompose.

A major miracle was needed to raise Lazarus from the dead.

We know from reading the scriptures that Jesus had already prayed about the situation. He had received direction from the Father before He ever arrived on the scene. But when the moment of truth came and He stood in front of that tomb surrounded by a crowd of unbelieving people, the first thing He said was, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me” (John 11:41).

Why did He say that? Because He knew the Word of God. He knew that Psalm 8:2 says, “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength [or praise] because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.”

At Lazarus’ tomb, Jesus was facing one of Satan’s most sinister weapons—the enemy of death. That enemy was boasting and bragging of its triumph. It was taunting that grieving crowd, challenging anyone to break its grip.

Jesus accepted that challenge. But before He did, He moved the big gun into position. He used the weapon that Scripture guarantees will silence every enemy of God—the weapon of thanksgiving and praise.

Not Just Gratitude but Faith

You can do the same thing. When you’re praying for someone to be healed, for example, and you’ve loaded your faith pistol and rifle by praying and standing on the Word, just before you walk into the hospital room to lay hands on that person, load your cannon. Start praising God and say, “Father, I thank You that You have already heard me and I go into this room victoriously. I thank You that this work is already complete and this person is healed!”

Don’t wait until you see the person raised up. Fire your thanksgiving gun before you ever go in there. Stop the enemy and the avenger, bring him to a standstill before—not after—the miracle takes place.

Of course, it takes faith to do that. Anybody can give thanks after God moves. No doubt, all the unbelieving folks around Lazarus’ tomb were praising and thanking God after their once-dead friend came walking out in his grave clothes. But Jesus gave thanks beforehand. And if we’re going to see the miraculous power of God in our lives, that’s what we too must do.

We must do more than just give thanks after we receive the answer to our prayers as an act of gratitude. We must give thanks before we receive the answer as an act of faith. That means we must learn to thank God in the midst of what may seem like hopeless, terrible situations. We must thank God when it looks like the devil has just won the fight.

How can we possibly do that? Because we know what the Bible says. We know that no matter how things may appear, the devil hasn’t won the fight. Jesus defeated him once and for all 2,000 years ago. And if we’ll dare to stand on His victory and give thanks, we can win every time.

Don’t Dig Up Your Seed

We can also find ourselves receiving marvelous answers to our prayers. Read the following two verses about prayer and you’ll quickly see why.

“What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (Mark 11:24). “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” (Philippians 4:6).

When you put those two scriptures together, you can see how prayer and thanksgiving work together. When we pray, we believe we receive what we asked for. Then we demonstrate our faith by giving thanks—not after but before we see the answer!

Look at 1 Timothy 2:1-3: “I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour.” Thanksgiving is right in the middle of supplications, prayers and intercessions.

If we fail to follow this prayer concept, the devil will mess us up. The day after we pray—when the pressure gets worse and it looks like all hell is breaking loose in the situation we prayed about—he’ll tempt us to cast aside our confidence. Maybe God didn’t hear me yesterday when I prayed, we’ll think. I’d better pray that prayer over again.

So, we start over. Pray the prayer of faith. Believe we receive. But the next day things look even worse so we end up going back and praying that prayer again…and again…and again.

Do you realize what we’re doing when we do that? We’re digging up our faith seed! Because we think it isn’t working, we’re planting it one day and digging it up the next.

You know as well as I do, if you treated a natural seed that way it would never be able to grow. It would never produce any fruit.

The same is true with spiritual seed. You have to leave it in the ground and give it growing time. You have to protect it, watch over it and water it with the Word until it sprouts.

Once you make your request known to God, believe you receive it and thank Him for it. If you wake up the next morning and the situation hasn’t changed say: “I’m not moved by what I see. I’m not moved by what I hear. I’m moved by what I believe. So I give You thanks, Father, for answering my prayer!”

Load Your Weapons

When you do that you’re obeying the instruction God gives us in Colossians 4:2: “Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving.”

You’re watching over your prayer to make sure the devil doesn’t come in and steal the answer. You’re like a security guard continually stopping the enemy and the avenger with your big gun of thanksgiving and praise.

“But does that really work, Brother Copeland?” you might ask.

Absolutely. I’ve seen it work miraculously in my own life many times. On Aug. 1, 2000, for example, I stood with some other ministers of God who laid hands on me and I believed I received restoration in my back. It had been damaged over the years through things like football injuries, a car accident and being thrown from a horse, and it had deteriorated until it was causing me excruciating pain.

In that area of my body, I needed a fulfillment of Psalm 103:5. I needed my youth renewed like the eagle’s. Since that’s one of the benefits God promises me in His Word, I believed I received it that day.

But the full manifestation of that benefit didn’t come instantly. My complete restoration has been a process.

During the past few years, there have been days when I’d get on the treadmill and within a few minutes, I’d hurt so badly I’d cry out to God! But I’d still say, “Lord, I thank You for a pain-free body. I thank You that on Aug. 1, 2000, at 7:20 p.m., I received restoration in my back. I thank You that the job is done, in Jesus’ Name! I’m a free man! I’m free of back pain!”

It wasn’t easy. I had to watch and be continually alert, guarding against discouragement and staying in an attitude of gratitude. But I’m sure glad I did because today, my back is 98 percent restored (and still improving). In fact, in some areas of my body, I’m stronger than I was 30 years ago. Like I said, I’m a free man!

God desires to do the same kind of thing for you. Healing belongs to you. He longs to deliver you and answer your prayers. He is looking for every work of the devil in your life to be destroyed.

So load your weapons. Bring the cannon of thanksgiving onto the battlefield of faith. Keep your eyes on Jesus and, “By him offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually giving thanks to his name” (Hebrews 13:15).

He has won the victory—receive it now!

Step Into Resurrection Life

Posted on April 1, 2015 - 12:06 pm by kcmblogsite

by Gloria Copeland

Truly, it’s time for us to stop looking for the living among the dead. It’s time for us to stop wandering around in the cemetery of sin, sickness and failure and to step into resurrection life!

As a resurrected creature, you’re no accident going somewhere to happen. Your life isn’t just a loose web of events and circumstances. God has specific plans for you.

Maybe He intends for you to have the greatest healing ministry of this century. Or perhaps He wants to turn you into a tremendous preacher. Maybe He has a revelation prepared for you that will enable you to bless the whole world. But you’ll never know what He has in store for you until you put your attention on Him.

That’s why the devil works hard to keep you focusing on the problems of life. That’s why he tries to keep your attention turned away from the living Word of God. He doesn’t want you to know you’re full of the resurrection life of Jesus. In fact, the prospect of it terrifies him.

Why? Because once you truly understand that you have the life of God inside you, you’ll begin to act just like Jesus did. You’ll lay hands on the sick and they’ll recover. You’ll cast out demons. You’ll preach the gospel to every creature.

In short, you’ll be just what God intended you to be. You’ll be the Body of Christ on the earth.

Don’t let Satan bind you with the grave clothes of yesterday’s sin and defeat. You’re not dead anymore. You’ve been raised with Jesus. Come out from the tombs and start living resurrection life!