June 2015 - KCM Blog

3 Ways Christians Shaped America

Posted on June 30, 2015 - 4:54 pm by kcmblogsite

by David Barton

In early America, Christians and ministers were responsible for shaping our form of government. We were involved in three vital arenas.

#1 – Christians were involved in shaping worldview.

We taught society that everything in life can be addressed by principles in the Bible. Ministers addressed issues people were dealing with at the time, and gave them God’s wisdom about those subjects. They also taught their congregations from the Word what their civic responsibilities were in regard to elections, government leaders, etc.

Christians were responsible for creating a biblical worldview throughout the culture. Even atheists knew what was right and wrong, knew the Ten Commandments and often followed them. Christians had tremendous influence in society by demonstrating that the Word of God was practical and applicable. Their example and ideals helped shape the culture that led to the American Revolution.

Our Constitution contains radical ideas that no other nation has ever put into practice. In fact, it contains so many novel concepts that political science professors investigated to find out where the founding fathers got their ideas of separation of powers, checks and balances, and democratic elections. After 10 years of studying 15,000 writings, they discovered that 34 percent of the quotes in the Founding Era came from the Bible. And in the writing of the Declaration, the source quoted most often was Two Treatises of Civil Government, a book that cites the Bible more than 1500 times. Biblical thinking so undergirded our founding documents that John Adams stated, “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were…the general principles of Christianity.”

#2 – Christians, pastors and churches were also intricately involved in the making of governmental policy.

Today many people believe that government is a secular institution and religious people should not be and never were involved in the process. That view can only be held because they don’t know who our founders really were. For example: Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon had numerous volumes of gospel sermons published. He was responsible for two American editions of the Bible, including America’s first family Bible.

Dr. Benjamin Rush started the first Bible society and Sunday school society in America. He believed if people would only read and study the Bible, all social problems could be resolved.

Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 24 held what would today be considered seminary or Bible school degrees.

Men like these formed our early laws and policies. In fact many ministers and theologians were members of Congress and members of their state assemblies.

#3 -Finally, Christians were actively involved in defending our country.

Many brigades in the American Revolution were made up of ministers who led their parishioners to defend their rights. The minutemen in Lexington, Mass., were deacons of Rev. Jonas Clark’s church. They followed their pastor as he led the charge to defend the town. These Christians and many others understood that we have “dual citizenship” and stewardship responsibilities here on earth as well as in heaven.

When you look at American history, Christians, pastors and churches were responsible to a large degree in shaping worldview, in shaping policy and in defending our country. As Christians, God made us stewards of the nation He gave us. It’s time to renew our minds to that truth and get involved again in shaping America.

David Barton, nationally known author and public speaker, is the founder and president of WallBuilders, a pro-family organization which seeks to educate grass-roots society to rebuild America’s constitutional, moral and religious foundations.

For more information go to www.wallbuilders.com, call 1-817-441-6044 or write to WallBuilders, P. O. Box 397, Aledo, TX 76008-0397.

KCM Partner – YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN!

Posted on June 30, 2015 - 2:52 pm by kcmblogsite

As you know, the weather this spring has been quite severe for much of the U.S. Several states have experienced excessive rainfall, excessive flooding, rivers cresting and many tornados. Here at Kenneth Copeland Ministries, we want you to know, as our Partner, YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN!

Our Disaster Relief team has been traveling to affected cities to find our partners for the last two months, and we are not finished yet.

And while the Disaster Relief team is on the road, the entire team here at the Kenneth Copeland Ministries is praying and standing with you in faith that you are protected and that your steps are directed by the Lord!

Click here to watch the latest videos!

Statement on the Supreme Court Decision

Posted on June 30, 2015 - 9:49 am by kcmblogsite

By David Barton

The Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that established homosexual marriage as national policy is unambiguously wrong on at least three crucial levels: Moral, Constitutional, and Structural.

On the Moral Level

The Court’s decision violates the moral standards specifically enumerated in our founding documents. The Declaration of Independence sets forth the fundamental principles and values of American government, and the Constitution provides the specifics of how government will operate within those principles. As the U. S. Supreme Court has correctly acknowledged:

The latter [Constitution] is but the body and the letter of which the former [Declaration of Independence] is the thought and the spirit, and it is always safe to read the letter of the Constitution in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration first officially acknowledges a Divine Creator and then declares that America will operate under the general values set forth in “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” The framers of our documents called this the Moral Law, and in the Western World it became known as the Common Law. This was directly incorporated into the American legal system while the colonies were still part of England; following independence, the Common Law was then reincorporated into the legal system of all the new states to ensure its uninterrupted operation; and under the federal Constitution, its continued use was acknowledged by means of the Seventh Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Numerous Founding Fathers and legal authorities, including the U. S. Supreme Court, affirmed that the Constitution is based on the Common Law, which incorporated God’s will as expressed through “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”

Those constitutional moral standards placed the definition of marriage outside the scope of government. As acknowledged in a 1913 case:

Marriage was not originated by human law. When God created Eve, she was a wife to Adam; they then and there occupied the status of husband to wife and wife to husband. . . . It would be sacrilegious to apply the designation “a civil contract” to such a marriage. It is that and more – a status ordained by God.

Because marriage “was not originated by human law,” then civil government had no authority to redefine it. The Supreme Court’s decision on marriage repudiates the fixed moral standards established by our founding documents and specifically incorporated into the Constitution.

On the Constitutional Level

The Constitution establishes both federalism and a limited American government by first enumerating only seventeen areas in which the federal government is authorized to operate, and then by explicitly declaring that everything else is to be determined exclusively by the People and the States (the Ninth and Tenth Amendments).

Thomas Jefferson thus described the overall scope of federal powers by explaining that “the States can best govern our home concerns and the general [federal] government our foreign ones.” He warned that “taking from the States the moral rule of their citizens and subordinating it to the general authority [federal government] . . . . would . . . break up the foundations of the Union.” The issue of marriage is clearly a “domestic” and not a “foreign” issue, and one that directly pertains to the State’s “moral rule of their citizens.” But the Supreme Court rejected these limits on its jurisdiction, and America now experiences what Jefferson feared:

[W]hen all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another.

By taking control of issues specifically delegated to the States, the Court has disregarded explicit constitutional limitations and directly attacked constitutional federalism.

On the Structural Level

The Constitution stipulates that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government” (Article IV, Section 4). A republican form of government is one in which the people elect leaders to make public policy, with those leaders being directly accountable to the people. More than thirty States, by their republican form of government, had established a definition of marriage for their State. The Supreme Court decision directly abridges the constitutional mandate to secure to every state a republican form of government.

To believe that the Judiciary is an independent and neutral arbiter without a political agenda is ludicrous. As Thomas Jefferson long ago observed:

Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.

Judges definitely do have political views and personal agendas; they therefore were given no authority to make public policy. The perils from their doing were too great. As Jefferson affirmed, the judges’ “power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control.” He therefore warned:

[T]o consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. . . . The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal. The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the Judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.

The Supreme Court’s decision is a direct assault on the republican form of government that the Constitution requires be guaranteed to every State.

The Road Ahead

The Supreme Courts decree on marriage will become a club to bludgeon the sincerely-held rights of religious conscience, especially of those in the several dozen States who, through their republican form of government, had enacted public policies that conformed to both the Moral Law and the traditional Common Law.

While the Supreme Court decision paid lip service to the rights of religious people to disagree with its marriage decision, history shows that not only does this acknowledgment mean little but also that it will be openly disregarded and ignored, particularly at the local level. After all, there are numerous Supreme Court decisions currently on the books – including unanimous Court decisions – protecting the rights of religious expression in public, including for students. Yet such faith expressions continue to be relentlessly attacked by school and city officials at the local and city levels. (See www.religioushostility.org for thousands of such recent examples.)

Even before this decision was handed down, numerous States were already punishing dissenting people of faith, levying heavy fines on them or closing their businesses – not because those individuals attacked gay marriage but rather because they refused to personally participate in its rites. These governmental actions were initiated by complaints of homosexuals filed with civil rights commissions – and all of this was already occurring without a Supreme Court decision on which they could rely. Now that such a decision does exist, expect a tsunami of additional complaints to be filed against Christian business owners, and both the frequency and the intensity of the penalties to be increased.

Now is the time to display stand-alone courage on the issue of marriage as well as the judicial activism of the Court – now is the time to stand up and be counted, regardless of whether anyone else stands with you. Now is the time for individuals to broadly voice support for traditional marriage (which will likely cause you to be verbally berated or attacked by its opponents) as well as for the rights of religious conscience of dissenters (which will cause you to be charged with defending bigots and haters). Good people can no longer be silent and allow themselves to be intimidated by the mean-spirited attacks that occur when you begin to speak out on this issue.

It will soon become obvious that this decision opened a Pandora’s Box that will initiate a series of policy changes affecting everything from hiring practices to college athletics, from non-profit tax-exempt status to professional licensing standards. So the battle is not over; it is literally just beginning. We have a duty to let our voice be heard.

Strikingly, duty was the character trait of Jesus. He loved us because it was the right thing to do; He went to the cross because it was the right thing to do; He forgave us because it was the right thing to do. It was His duty. Our Founders repeatedly praised that character trait, and noted the numerous spiritual blessings that came from its performance:

The man who is conscientiously doing his duty will ever be protected by that Righteous and All-Powerful Being, and when he has finished his work, he will receive an ample reward. Samuel Adams, SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION

All that the best men can do is to persevere in doing their duty . . . and leave the consequences to Him who made it their duty, being neither elated by success (however great) nor discouraged by disappointment (however frequent and mortifying). John Jay, ORIGINAL CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT, AUTHOR OF THE FEDERALIST PAPERS

The sum of the whole is that the blessing of God is only to be looked for by those who are not wanting in the discharge of their own duty. John Witherspoon, SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION

People of faith need to regain the concept of duty, and we would do well to adopt the motto that characterized the efforts of Founding Father John Quincy Adams: “Duty is ours, results are God’s.” Now is the time for people of faith to be silent no more.

Article written by David Barton. Original Post: http://wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=169861

Announcing VICTORY™ network (formerly BVOVN) with 24/7 word of faith teaching!

Posted on June 23, 2015 - 5:22 pm by kcmblogsite

Effective July 1, 2015, VICTORY network [formerly Believer’s Voice of Victory Network (BVOVN)] – an exclusive 24/7 word of faith channel — will launch on DISH satellite TV channel 265!

In 1967, God gave Kenneth and Gloria Copeland a word of direction that would alter history. He said:

I am coming so soon. I want this uncompromised message of faith on every available voice.

In the following years, they obeyed that directive, taking the message of faith, victory, healing and prosperity to believers worldwide—through national radio, citywide events, books, tapes and eventually a television broadcast that became known as Believer’s Voice of Victory.

In 2015, as the Copelands continue to obey the Lord’s leading, the inevitable expansion of that voice of victory has arrived—with the introduction of VICTORY network! Beginning July 1, VICTORY will deliver 24/7 word of faith teaching through DISH satellite TV channel 265, govictory.com, and Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV streaming devices.

You now have available to you a dream Kenneth and Gloria have long held: a 24-hour-a-day network with nothing but the word of faith preached from the most trusted Bible ministers available. In the beginning, VICTORY will feature the BVOV broadcast, live KCM events, live Eagle Mountain International Church services and classic teachings. In the coming months, we will be adding exciting new programming and further development of the vision.

We are so thankful for YOU! Because of you, we’re able to accomplish the mission God has given to get the message of faith on every available voice. Together, we are changing lives all around the world with the truth that JESUS IS LORD!

Sincerely,

Team KCM

Together, we can do GREATER works and spread the uncompromised message of faith on every available voice! Learn more about partnering with Kenneth Copeland Ministries here.

On the Road Again – KCM Disaster Relief Team Update

Posted on June 17, 2015 - 11:53 am by kcmblogsite

Our Disaster Relief team has been on the road checking on Partners in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas every week since the beginning of May. We want all of our Partners to know that we are here for you, and we’re praying for you daily, standing with you in faith that “no weapon formed against you shall prosper”! Check out the latest video from the KCM Disaster Relief team below, and be on the lookout for more to come.

You can do greater works like this by Partnering with us.

Click here to learn more about how we can make a difference together.

Mountain-Moving Faith 101

Posted on June 16, 2015 - 5:24 pm by kcmblogsite

by Kenneth Copeland

It is important for you as a believer to realize that God has given you the power and ability to operate in the God kind of faith. God’s will for you is that you be delivered from this present evil world (Galatians 1:4). He does not want you to live subject to its beggarly elements. As you act on God’s Word, you will release the power of God within you, that mountain-moving faith, to bring victory for you over the circumstances of life.

Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, 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. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses (Mark 11:22-26).

The Translator’s New Testament says, “If anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be carried away and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is happening, then it will happen for him” (Mark 11:23). Believing you receive is believing that it is happening for you now!

The purpose of mountain-moving faith is to remove the things which come into our lives to hinder us spiritually, mentally, financially or physically. Some people believe that this promise only pertains to spiritual mountains. However, in Matthew 21:21, Jesus used faith-filled words to cause a fig tree to wither from the roots and die. That was natural, not spiritual.

In Mark 11:22-26, Jesus said, “whosoever,” so this is for the believer, not just for the minister or someone with some kind of special calling. You have the potential to operate in the same faith that I have. He also said, “When you stand praying, forgive.” Operating in mountain-moving faith is dependent upon operating in forgiveness. Faith pleases God, but faith works by love (Galatians 5:6). It is impossible to please God and to hold something in your heart against someone at the same time. You forgive because you choose to forgive and because it pleases God, not because you feel like doing it.

Believing You Receive

Mountain-moving faith is centered around believing you receive (believing it is happening for you now!). There is more to believing you receive than just having someone lay hands on you and saying, “I believe I receive.” Some people will have others pray in faith, but will not put themselves into it enough to really receive anything from God. It takes effort and commitment to the Word of God to walk in this kind of faith.

In order to believe you receive, you must establish in your heart that the Word of God is true. You need a standard, something that will put you in agreement with God. The miracle you need is already inside of you because God is in you. All you need is to find the key that will open the door and release it. The key is getting your spirit, soul and body in agreement with the Word.

You Are a Triune Being

You are a spirit. You have a soul, which consists of your mind, your will and your emotions. And, you live in a body. Each area has a specific role to play in believing you receive.

Each area of your being produces a specific type of strength. As your body is nourished with food, it produces physical strength. Your soul produces willpower as you feed your mind intellectually. Your spirit produces a spiritual force called “faith.” It must be nourished with spiritual food—the Word of God. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17).

God made you a spirit-being which gave you the ability to have dominion over the natural realm. When you begin to use your faith to move a mountain in your life, you must begin with a spiritual foundation on the Word of God.

At the new birth, your spirit receives the faith of God and the nature of God. You do not have to be concerned about your spirit believing the Word. It is born of God and it assimilates spiritual food and produces faith. Jesus said, “My words are spirit and they are life.” Basing your faith on the Word of God is the spiritual aspect of believing you receive.

The Word Is Your Foundation

The Word of God is your foundation. Most of the time, when you pray, you can still see the mountain or feel the pain in your body. The Word is the only thing solid enough to stand on when opposition comes your way. First John 5:14-15 says, “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.” God’s Word is His will.

First John 3:22 says that we receive whatever we ask of Him because we keep His commandments and do those things which are pleasing in His sight. We receive our petition when we pray in line with His Word.

Anchoring the Soul

The Word of God must also affect your mind, your will and your emotions. Your aim is to cause your soul to work in harmony with your spirit. By doing so, you will open the floodgates of the power of the Holy Spirit within you. It will cause a change to come in your physical body and your natural circumstances.

The participation of your soul in believing you receive involves hope. Your mind must have an image to focus upon. Hebrews 11:1 says that faith is the substance of things hoped for. Hope is a vital part of this scripture. It is the goal setter. Hebrews 6:19 says that hope is the anchor of the soul. Without that anchor, the faith of God which is in you cannot be channeled in a specific direction.

Hope is the blueprint, or inner image of the mountain being removed. You need a clear, strong picture on the inside built on the promises of God because hope is the plan that your faith will bring to pass. If it isn’t clear, faith cannot produce it. If it isn’t strong it won’t hold as an anchor. The image begins in the mind. After meditating in the Word, it will form in your spirit. As you confess the Word your hope is built on, it builds and takes root in your heart with more and more strength. From that abundance, faith will flow and bring good things to pass (Matthew 12:34).

It takes meditation in the Word—seeing it, writing it, hearing it, speaking it—to change your inner image. God gave you an imagination so that you could paint an image of the Word on the canvas of your mind. That mental picture forms the good treasure of your heart. Out of that good treasure, you will bring good things to pass.

Faith Is an Action

The last area to get involved in, in believing that you receive, is the body. The body always wants to be first, but you must get your spirit and soul in their proper places first. You must be on the Word. Your soul must be anchored with an inner image of the Word. Then, you must act on the Word.

James 2:17 says, “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” Works in this scripture means “corresponding action.” If your spirit and soul believe the Word, but you do not act accordingly, your faith will not come to completion.

Your physical body will do whatever it is trained to do. If you have an inner image of the Word of God and you are speaking it in faith from your spirit, but you are acting contrary to what you are saying, you will hinder your faith. You must train your body to follow the Word of God. If you are believing for healing in your body, do something that you could not do before! Act on what you believe. Begin to act like the Word is true.

Believing you receive is your spirit, your soul and your body working together in harmony with the Word of God, giving the Spirit of God the opportunity to bring it to pass in your life.

Reach out in faith today. Believe “it is happening for you now.” Allow the mountain-moving faith, the God kind of faith within you to change your circumstances as well as your life! Glory to God!

How to Live in the Reality of God’s Blessing

Posted on June 10, 2015 - 3:18 pm by kcmblogsite

by Kenneth Copeland

Have you ever read a promise in the Bible and wondered how it could ever come to pass in your life?

Have you ever read, “by [His] stripes ye were healed” when your body was wracked with sickness and pain? Or heard someone preach that God will meet “all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” when your bank balance was zero and your unpaid bills were piled high?

Healed sounds great, you thought. Needs met sounds great. But I don’t know how to get there from here. It looks impossible!

Everyone who has ever lived by faith has felt like that at one time or another.

Everyone.

Even Abraham, who was one of the greatest God-believing, impossible-promise-receiving, scriptural heroes who ever lived. The first time he heard God’s promises to him, he had no idea how they would ever come to pass.

He’d grown up in a totally heathen culture—surrounded all his life by people who worshipped the moon. So when God said, “I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing” (Genesis 12:2), Abraham had no clue how to connect with that blessing and cooperate in its fulfillment.

He must have been especially puzzled about how God was going to make of him a “great nation.” After all, Abraham’s wife was—and always had been—barren. What’s more, they’d both grown too old for baby making.

How do you get from being a childless old man with a barren old wife to being a great nation? he must have wondered. It’s impossible!

#1 – Learn to Live the Life of Faith

Over the years, God answered that question for Abraham. He taught him how to think in a way that would connect him with THE BLESSING. He taught him how to talk and live the life of faith so well the Scriptures call him the faith father of us all.

Granted, Abraham’s faith made him look, sound and act different than everyone else. But it sure produced results.

It opened the door for THE BLESSING to do the same thing in his life it was originally designed to do for Adam and Eve when God spoke it over them. It empowered him to “Be fruitful, and multiply…and have dominion” (Genesis 1:28). As Abraham’s faith connected with THE BLESSING, that blessing produced such supernatural abundance in his life it created around him a kind of Garden of Eden wherever he went.

That’s how THE BLESSING works. It worked that way for Adam and Eve until they cut themselves off from it by yielding to sin. It worked that way for Abraham when God passed it down to him. It worked that way for Jesus during His earthly ministry, and it will work that way for us.

According to the Bible, as born-again believers we have inherited THE BLESSING of Abraham through Jesus. God didn’t give it to us as just an afterthought. He had us in mind from the start. When He blessed Abraham, He did it so that through the plan of redemption, we could receive that blessing too. Galatians 3:8-9 says it this way: “The scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.”

Praise God, the former heathens described in those verses are believers like you and me! We are the people who have been made righteous by the blood of Jesus and blessed with faithful Abraham.

That means if we can find out what Abraham did, if we can learn what God taught him about how to connect with THE BLESSING, we can enjoy the benefits of it as surely as he did.

#2 – Believe That You Are Whatever God Calls You

Galatians 3:13-14 confirms that. It says: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”

The last phrase of that passage leaves no doubt about it: We receive THE BLESSING, which is the promise of the Spirit, the same way Abraham did—through faith.

“But Brother Copeland,” you might say, “I don’t know what Abraham knew about faith. God hasn’t taught me the things He taught him.”

Sure He has. He put them down for you in black and white. Right there in your Bible, He recorded every faith lesson Abraham ever learned. Read Romans 4 and you’ll see those lessons for yourself. You’ll find out exactly how to “walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham” (verse 12).

You’ll see, for example, that God called Abraham “a father of many nations,” and He didn’t start calling him that after Isaac was born. God called Abraham the father of many nations when there were no sons in sight.

When God calls you something, that’s what you are. You may not look like it, you may not feel like it, but God’s Word is the truth no matter what you can see or how you feel.

That’s how it was in Abraham’s life and that’s how it is in ours. If God calls us overcomers (and He does in 1 John 5:4) that’s what we are. We aren’t going to become overcomers one of these days. We already are because God said so. If we’ve made Jesus the Lord of our lives we are born of God, and He said, “Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.”

Abraham understood that principle. That’s why Romans 4:17 says when God called him a father of many nations, Abraham stood “before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” Abraham not only stood before God and believed Him, he acted like God by calling those things which are not as though they were.

Since Abraham is the father of our faith, we should do the same thing. After all, the Bible says we have been born again in God’s image (Colossians 3:10). It tells us to “be imitators of God as dear children” (Ephesians 5:1, New King James Version).

God always operates that way. He speaks things into being. So He taught Abraham to do it, too. He showed him how to connect with THE BLESSING by calling himself blessed.

If we want to follow in his footsteps and enjoy THE BLESSING like he did, that’s the first thing we must do.

#3 – Let the Word of God Take Over Your Mind

The second thing we’re to do is study and meditate on God’s Word until it takes over our mind and nothing can shake our confidence in it. We’ll learn to think like Abraham: “Being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform” (Romans 4:19-21).

Abraham didn’t focus on his negative circumstances. He didn’t meditate on his 100-year-old body or his very old and barren wife. He fixed his mind on God’s promises. He meditated on THE BLESSING until THE BLESSING controlled his mind.

Abraham’s thinking was so dominated by and saturated with THE BLESSING that when God told him to sacrifice Isaac, he didn’t even flinch. He was able to march up Mount Moriah with confidence because he figured after he obeyed God’s command and sacrificed that boy, God would raise him right back up.

We know that’s what Abraham was thinking because Hebrews 11:17-19 says: “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.”

When you think about it, Abraham’s attitude was amazing because he didn’t know what we know about God. He’d never seen or heard of God raising anyone from the dead. Yet he was so fully persuaded that God would keep His promise to make him a father of many nations through Issac that he expected the impossible to happen.

If Abraham could be that fully persuaded, how much more should we be? We have inherited the same blessing, and ours has been guaranteed not just by the blood of animals like Abraham’s was, but by the precious blood of Jesus, God’s own Son!

What’s more, we don’t have to believe God with our own, natural mind like Abraham did. As born-again believers, we can think supernaturally because “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). We have the mind of the Anointed One. Talk about having an advantage! That same kind of divine mind is available to us, but we have to take it by faith.

#4 – Call Things That Be Not As Though They Were

If we want to follow the faith of Abraham, we must begin to call things that be not as though they were. We must speak God’s Word over our minds and say, “I thank God my mind is as anointed as the mind of Jesus. THE BLESSING is working in me now and an anointed mind is part of my blessing. Praise God, I have a brilliant mind!” Then act on 2 Corinthians 10:3-6.

Once you start saying things like that, scriptural promises such as those in Deuteronomy 28 will come alive as you read them. That chapter spells out in detail the things that are included in THE BLESSING of Abraham. It says:

And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out. The Lord shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face: they shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways. The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee….

“Do you really believe God will do those kinds of things for us?” you might ask.

Yes, I do because THE BLESSING of Deuteronomy 28 is our blessing! It has “come upon us” through Jesus. If we’ll connect with it like Abraham did, it will do for us what it’s always done. If we’ll fill our anointed minds with it by meditating those verses and speaking them over ourselves until we are fully persuaded, no matter how impossible our circumstances might appear to be, that blessing belongs to us. It will do for us the same thing it once did for Adam and Eve…and Abraham…and Jesus. It will empower us to be fruitful, multiply and have dominion in every area of life.

Some folks think that’s too good to be true. They claim we can never enjoy that kind of blessing on this earth. But I know we can, not only because the Bible says so but because I’ve proven it in my own life again and again.

When I was diagnosed with degenerative joint disease a few years ago, for example, I knew I had to connect with THE BLESSING to turn that condition around. So I did exactly what Abraham did. I considered not my body that was screaming in pain. I focused on THE BLESSING of God instead. I fixed my mind and my mouth on the fact that I was healed by the stripes of Jesus (1 Peter 2:24).

I called things that be not as though they were. I said, “I’m healed,” and I said it not just once or twice but countless times month after month.

I won’t kid you, it wasn’t easy. Sometimes I hurt so bad I thought I’d have to stuff a rag in my mouth to keep myself from talking about it. I’d sit on my back porch with heating pads wrapped around my legs and turn the heat up as high as it would go, hoping the heat would hurt bad enough to distract me from the pain in my joints.

It took effort to speak words of faith during that time. I was tempted to say things like, “Dear God, how long must I be in pain like this? How long before my healing comes?”

But I didn’t do that. I stuck with the truth. I locked on to THE BLESSING and refused to let go. I connected with that blessing by speaking, believing and acting on the Word of God and, sure enough, the impossible happened. I have MRIs to prove it. One shows my body with degenerative joint disease and ruptured disks in my back. The other, done some time later, shows all the disease is gone and all the disks healed, regenerated and standing tall!

That’s the kind of thing that happens when we make the faith connection. We open the door to THE BLESSING of God and His goodness pours into our lives. Sickness becomes health. Poverty becomes wealth. We start living like the overcomers God made us to be.

We discover for ourselves the lesson Abraham learned some 4,000 years ago: “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.”

Why You Shouldn't Give Up On Prosperity

Posted on June 4, 2015 - 3:30 pm by KCM

When Ken and I first began to walk by faith, we were in a terrible financial condition. It would have been very easy at the time to give up and quit. But as the laws of prosperity became a reality to us, the light at the end of the tunnel became brighter and brighter. Our debts were not taken care of immediately—it took some time for us to pay all of our bills. During this period, we had to put the force of patience to work and refuse to give up. And as a result, in less than one year, we were free from debt and headed on a path to victory.

Perhaps you are questioning what patience has to do with gaining results in your life.

Well patience is what undergirds and sustains your faith until the result is manifest. When you learn to release the power of patience, you can receive anything from God that agrees with His Word. Patience is the difference between trying and doing. It’s the difference between fishing and catching fish. It’s the difference between attempting to walk by faith and succeeding. Patience makes all the difference as we see in the following scripture:

Do not, therefore, fling away your fearless confidence, for it carries a great and glorious compensation of reward. For you have need of steadfast patience and endurance, so that you may perform and fully accomplish the will of God, and thus receive and carry away [and enjoy to the full] what is promised…. But the just shall live by faith…and if he draws back and shrinks in fear, My soul has no delight or pleasure in him. But our way is not that of those who draw back to eternal misery (perdition) and are utterly destroyed, but we are of those who believe…and by faith preserve the soul. Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses] (Hebrews 10:35-39, 11:1, The Amplified Bible).

Your fearless confidence carries a great and glorious compensation of reward! And patience encourages fearless confidence in God’s Word despite contrary evidence in the seen world. If Ken and I had continued to operate based on what we saw, we would still be in debt today. But we had confidence that God’s Word would not fail and it produced great results.

So when Satan brings a test or trial against you, do not fling away your confidence in God’s Word. This refusal to cast away your confidence in His Word is the power of patience at work.

Hold Yourself Calm

I like what Psalm 94:12-13 tells us about patience: “Blessed…is the man whom You discipline and instruct, O Lord, and teach out of Your law, That You may give him power to hold himself calm in the days of adversity,” (The Amplified Bible).

Patience is the power to hold yourself calm during adversity. Isn’t that good?

According to this scripture, holding yourself calm is the result of being instructed by God’s Word. It is being a doer of the Word and not a hearer only (James 1:22). When you act on what God’s Word says about your situation the power of patience is released.

You need to stay calm and focused on the Word in the face of adversity when it looks like doom is inevitable—when Satan puts strong pressure on you to faint and give up. At that moment, you may be tempted to succumb to the pressure and let go of God’s Word. Don’t do it! You cannot succumb to Satan’s pressure without flinging away your confidence in God’s Word.

There is no middle ground.

When it comes to standing on the Word you are either on or off.

Patience has the courage to refuse to believe what Satan tries to prove true in the natural world. When situations appear contrary to what the Word promises, you must take a firm stand in faith and say, “I will not succumb to pressure. I am moved by nothing except the Word of God.”

When Satan’s pressure says that God’s Word is not working—patience rejects it as a lie.

Patience has no fear because it knows that God’s Word has never failed. Patience knows that when faith is exercised to receive a promise from the Word, success is inevitable.

Pleasing God

We read in Hebrews 10:38, “the just shall live by faith.” If you are to please God you must operate in faith. And faith not only believes that God exists but faith also believes that God rewards those that diligently seek Him. And then we read that “if he draws back and shrinks in fear, My soul has no delight or pleasure in him.”

So why is it that God takes no pleasure in you if you draw back in fear?

Because the instant you draw back in fear, you quit operating in faith. And faith is the assurance (the title deed) to the things you are believing for. God desires to bless you. He takes pleasure in the prosperity of His people. But He takes no pleasure in—and cannot bless—fear.

Jesus tells us: “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32).

Faith, undergirded by patience, will defend and protect your soul from Satan’s attacks—from fear. Faith in God’s Word is your proof that you have received, even though you cannot yet see it with your natural eye. That kind of faith comes only through God’s grace and the “power of patience.”

So remain steadfast. Don’t give up. Continue to put the Word first place in every situation. It is God’s good pleasure to prosper and bless you in every area of your life.