July 2015 - KCM Blog Skip to main content

4 Habits of Prospering Christians

by Gloria Copeland

What you are doing today with your time and your resources will determine where you will be this time next year. It will determine whether or not you are prospering in your finances, in your family, in your health.

After 35 years of walking with God on a daily basis and putting Him first place in my life, I have found what it takes to experience continual growth and increase, and you can too.

To put it simply, if you do what I do, you can have what I have: life and peace—God’s prosperous life.

But this is where many people are falling short in their expectation for a prosperous life. To experience the prosperous life, we have definite responsibilities that are laid out in Scripture.

After all these years, Ken and I can say that our prosperity (which is another way to say blessing) is due to applying all of God’s principles on a continual basis and putting His Word first. Those are the things that bring increase. There is no shortcut.

This is not a lazy man’s gospel. You don’t become prosperous by being lazy, sleeping late, not reading your Bible, not going to church, not tithing. Proverbs 13:4 in The Amplified Bible says, “The appetite of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the appetite of the diligent is abundantly supplied.” Proverbs 28:20 declares, “A faithful man shall abound with blessings….” Over and over, the Bible talks about faithfulness and diligence as key factors in prosperity.

The number one law of receiving is simply this: obey God’s Word and don’t quit. Below are four habits you can begin today to help you receive all God has for you.

#1 – Be Faithful…Regardless

Faithfulness and faith are translated from the same word which means “to be trusted, firmly persuaded, assurance, a conviction based on hearing.” Faithfulness includes being loyal and constant in the performance of duties. Faith is being faithful to God and His Word regardless of circumstances, obstacles or people.

Be faithful to do what God has told you to do—when it’s easy and when it’s hard. Be faithful even when you don’t feel like it. In the natural it’s easy to get discouraged and quit. In the natural it’s hard to walk by faith. But believers are not supposed to walk in the natural. Turn the situation over to God and He will empower you. You’re not some little mickey-mouse wimp just trying to get by. You are born of God.

You can’t be a quitter or a coward. God repeatedly charged Joshua to be very courageous. He said, “Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest” (Joshua 1:7).

You need courage to stand in the face of problems and hang on to the Word until things change. That’s what it takes to prosper.

You give God something to work with when you’re faithful and you stand. A faithful servant is in position to be blessed and promoted (Matthew 25:21).

But when lack is staring you in the face, it’s easy to become weak-kneed. Maybe you have tithed and sown, but you can’t tell anything is happening. Even so, you can’t quit. Why? Because you’re a believer. And what do believers do? They believe—they walk by faith and not by sight.

Many times Ken and I have been faced with situations that looked impossible, and we were tempted to give up. But we didn’t quit. If we had let go of our faith, we would have missed God. In all those times, there was no source for us to depend on but God. And no matter how bad things looked, He never failed us. Psalm 31:23 says the Lord preserves the faithful, and that certainly has been true in our lives.

When things seemed the bleakest, we always got something from the Word of God that went off in our hearts and pushed us over the top. Maybe we heard a sermon or found a scripture that became a revelation to us. We discovered that when revelation of the Word goes off on the inside, it’s done on the outside.

#2 – Expect Miracles

There have been times when we desperately needed $100 or even $20 in the early days. But there have also been times when we had to have millions of dollars. A few years ago we fell behind $6 million on our television bill.

As I was driving to the office one day with the pressure of that hanging over my head, the Lord reminded me of some things. Oral Roberts had attended our Ministers’ Conference and brought his new book Still Doing the Impossible. Brother Roberts has had tremendous healings and miracles, but he also has had mighty financial miracles. In one chapter of his book he talks about “How I Learned to Look to God as My Source.” Another chapter is “How God Taught Me to Expect a Miracle.”

That day the Lord put those two thoughts together inside me: God is my source so I expect miracles. As soon as that realization hit me, I couldn’t help but exclaim, “That’s right. God is my source—I don’t have to look to the natural anymore! The natural realm does not determine my future! Thank you, Oral Roberts, for reminding me.”

Now suddenly all things were possible to me. I wasn’t under the weight of those bills anymore. The revelation that God is my source took me up and over the circumstances. Now I was expecting miracles. Now it was settled. I was looking to God to meet my need. My eyes were no longer on the problems. Now my eyes were on the “Big One” Himself.

I tell you, I got set free! After that, I would not consider being concerned about it. If a concerned thought tried to rise up, I would turn my attention to this: God is my source and I’m expecting a miracle! Within a very short time everything turned around and the television bill was paid.

The same thing can happen for you. When you get under pressure, hang on to the fact that God is your source. Don’t look at your paycheck, your bank account or what people are willing to do for you. Those things aren’t your source. Do what I do every day now. Make it a habit to say in your prayers, “Lord, You are my source and I expect miracles today.” Start living in a state of expectancy. When you’re expecting miracles, you won’t quit.

[cow_johnson general_link=”http://community.kcm.org” general_bg_type=”bgcolor” general_bgcolor=”#0792EE” general_bgcolor_to=”#0792EE” general_background_repeat=”repeat” general_color=”#FFFFFF” heading_caption=”Join the conversation in our online KCM Partner Community! Go to community.kcm.org to check it out! ” heading_tag=”h3″ heading_align=”center”][/cow_johnson]

# 3 – Be Diligent

Diligence is another key to your prosperity. It means “steady application to business of any kind; constant effort to accomplish what is undertaken; perseverance.” It takes constant effort to walk in God’s prosperity. Proverbs 10:4 says, “He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich.” Diligence will cause you to increase.

Realize that being a child of God doesn’t excuse you from being diligent. To increase yourself, be diligent in both natural and spiritual things. It comes back to the law of sowing and reaping. You can go to church every Sunday and listen to the Believer’s Voice of Victory broadcast every day, but if you don’t do what you hear preached, you won’t live in victory. The Word has to be diligently applied in your own life for it to do you any good.

Be diligent in your job, whatever it is. It may not be the job you would like to have, but it’s the job you have today. So give it your best and God will promote you. Proverbs 12:24 says, “The hand of the diligent shall bear rule….” Diligent people get ahead. Just look at Proverbs 22:29: “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings….”

God expects us to work and not be lazy.

But what does the Word say we should be diligently seeking first? According to Matthew 6:31-33, we’re not to be seeking the things unbelievers do.

Therefore do not worry and be anxious, saying, What are we going to have to eat? or, What are we going to have to drink? or, What are we going to have to wear? For the Gentiles (heathen) wish for and crave and diligently seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows well that you need them all. But seek (aim at and strive after) first of all His kingdom and His righteousness (His way of doing and being right), and then all these things taken together will be given you besides (The Amplified Bible).

God’s desire is to see you prosper as your soul prospers (3 John 2). Your soul will prosper when you go after God and His Word with every fiber of your being. That’s what’s really valuable.

Wait and listen, everyone who is thirsty! Come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Yes, come, buy [priceless, spiritual] wine and milk without money and without price [simply for the self-surrender that accepts the blessing]. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your earnings for what does not satisfy? Hearken diligently to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness… (Isaiah 55:1-2, The Amplified Bible).

This is talking about the Word of God. God’s priceless wisdom can’t be bought with money. To get it, you have to spend time and fill your heart full of the Word. When you eat the good spiritual food of the Word, it will make your faith strong. When you diligently hearken to God’s Word like this scripture says, it makes your soul prosperous, and a prosperous soul is destined for blessing.

#4 – Give A Tithe of Your Time

In 1982, Kenneth Hagin gave a prophecy that changed my life. I believe the peace and prosperity my family and I walk in today has everything to do with that prophecy and the decision I made as a result of it. It has so impacted our lives that I would like to share it with you. Here’s what it said:

And the year of 1982 will be a year of exploration in the realm of the spirit. Yea, men and women too, shall move into the spirit world. Into an area that they have not been before. And so they shall see and they shall know, and they shall minister. And great shall be the results thereof. And many hearts shall be blessed.

Some shall turn away and shake their head in dismay! And shall say, “Aw!, the very idea of that.” But you see those who are earthly will grow more earthly. And those who are spiritual will grow more spiritual still. And those who are heavenly minded will grow more heavenly minded still. And those who walk with God, for God is a Spirit, will walk in the realm of the spirit, will commune in the realm of the spirit, will see in the realm of the spirit, will minister in the realm of the spirit. And great shall be the results thereof…

Some have walked out only far enough to get their feet wet. They said, “Isn’t this wonderful?” And like children wading in the water they said, “This is it! This is the ultimate! This is the finality!”

But, “Oh!” saith the Lord of Hosts, “That is barely the beginning. You’ve only touched the realm of the Spirit. Wade on out! Wade on out into the realm of the water of the Spirit, until it is not only knee deep, and loin deep, until there is no way that you could possibly touch the bottom. But swim on out and enjoy the fulness of that which I have for thee,” saith the Lord of hosts.

But these things will not always come easy. For you see the flesh will hold you back. That’s the reason that the Word of God teaches you to crucify the flesh. And the mind will hold you back and hold you into the realm of things seen. And hold you into the realm of the physical senses.

That’s the reason the Bible tells you to “Get your mind renewed.” And then you will move into the realm of the spirit. And then there shall be great manifestations that your heart has longed for. And the church has prayed for. And the intercessors have interceded for. And the manifestation and demonstration of the Spirit of God shall come into manifestation and into demonstration. And it shall be as common, everyday, and just as real as everyday natural things are. For you see the realm of the spirit is the natural realm for the Christian who is born of the Spirit…

But you see you cannot walk in the natural all the time. Oh yes it’s necessary that you walk in the natural to a certain extent. Because your body is natural. And your body has natural functions and you must live in that realm.

But yet right on the other hand let your spirit, let your spirit have the privilege of communicating with the Father of spirits. And let your spirit move out beyond the natural. Don’t take up all your time with natural things. Some of those things are legitimate and it’s all right to take a certain period of time there, but see to it that you give heed unto your spirit. And you give your spirit opportunity to feed upon the Word of God. And you give your spirit opportunity to commune with the Father above. And build yourself up on your most holy faith.

It doesn’t take a lot of time just an hour or two out of twenty four. Just pay a tithe of your time unto Me, saith the Lord, and all will be well. Your life will be changed. It will be empowered. And you’ll be a mighty force for God.

Others will just look at thee and say, “He and she are just simply not a good example as a Christian.” Because, you see there is so much carnality. There is so much of the flesh. There is so much of the natural. But, yea, they’ll see the power of the Spirit. They’ll feel the love of God flowing out from you. They’ll feel the rivers of the Spirit of life flowing out from you. And it’ll bring life. And it’ll bring blessing unto your own life. And healing unto your own body. And you’ll be able to minister it unto those around about you and you’ll be glad, you’ll be glad. And you’ll have cause for rejoicing, saith the Lord of hosts.

So let him that hath an ear to hear, hear what the Spirit is saying unto the Church and move on. For this is the year. Yea, this is the year.

When I heard that prophecy, it got down into my spirit. God said that just by giving a tithe of my time, all would be well in my life. At the time, I was concerned about my son, John, so I thought that was really saying a lot. Of course, I loved the Lord and I already spent time in prayer. But I made the decision to get up an hour earlier and pray in the spirit an hour each day because I needed all to be well.

When I started doing this it was wintertime. It was cold and dark and my flesh would have rather stayed in bed. But I got up and prayed anyway. My whole life changed as a result. Over the years, all became well with my family. Today I still spend that time in prayer every day.

You can change your circumstances the same way I did because God is no respecter of persons. Start today by being faithful to diligently seek God and His Word and put Him first place in your life every day. This time next year things can be different for you. If you faithfully give God an hour or two a day, He will be faithful to manifest Himself in your life. So don’t quit. Don’t give up. Double up!

 

6 Steps to Live a God-Given Dream

by Kenneth Copeland

Oh, Jesus! Don’t You know how sick I am? Don’t You know how broke I am? Why don’t You help me? Oh, Jesus…don’t You care?

Most of us have prayed a prayer like that at one time or another.

We’ve also found out such prayers don’t work. They don’t bring the power and provision of God on the scene. They leave us as sick and broke as we were when we prayed them.

Why is that?

It’s because that kind of “praying” does not give Jesus, our High Priest, anything to work with. It does not open the door for Him to do what He is anointed and appointed by God to do.

I realize that statement might come as a shock to some. They assume because Jesus is Lord, He can do anything He desires. But, that’s not the case. According to the New Testament, our heavenly Father has given Him a particular ministry to fulfill. Hebrews 3:1 tells us what that ministry is. It calls Him “the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.”

The word profession used there can also be translated confession. It refers to the words we speak. Its literal translation is “to say the same thing.” Therefore, according to that verse, Jesus is anointed to bring to pass the words we say when we speak His Word.

In light of that, let me ask you something. What is He supposed to do when we stand before Him and say things like, “I’m sick! I’m hurting! I’m broke!”?

I’ll tell you what He’ll do.

Nothing.

Jesus is not anointed to administer those kinds of professions. He is not called to bring to pass devilish things like sickness, pain and poverty. They’re part of the curse and He has defeated them. They are under His feet.

“Then why doesn’t He deliver me from them?” you might ask.

He has delivered you! Through His death and Resurrection He has already provided you with absolute victory in every area of life. The problem isn’t with His giving…it’s with your receiving.

#1 – Tune In to God’s Channel

Think about times when you’ve tried to tune a radio to a particular station and you’ll see what I mean. If the radio is not set on the right frequency, you can’t hear that station. You can’t receive what it’s broadcasting.

What do you do when that happens? You don’t call the station and say there’s something wrong with their equipment. You don’t wonder if they’ve gone off the air. You know enough about technology to understand the problem is not with their transmitting, it’s with your receiver. So you check the batteries in the radio or you keep adjusting it until you can hear the station loud and clear.

We need to have the spiritual sense to operate the same way with God. If we’re not receiving what He has promised us in the Bible, we should stop assuming He is withholding it from us. Instead, we should trust that God is faithful, and go to work to find out what adjustments we must make to receive from Him. We should grab our Bible, ask the Holy Spirit to show us how to tune in to THE BLESSING of God, and look for scriptures that reveal how God operates—scriptures like Genesis 26:2-3. There, God said to Isaac during a time of famine: “Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of: Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father.”

Notice that God said He would perform for Isaac the oath, or the word, He gave to Abraham. He didn’t say, “Sometimes I will perform that word and sometimes I won’t.” No, He said, “I will perform it!”

If that was the only time God made that statement, we might think it applied only to Isaac; but it wasn’t. He made the same declaration in Jeremiah 1:12: “I will hasten my word to perform it.” One translation phrases that verse, “I am quick to perform My Word.” Another says, “God watches over His Word to perform it.”

God hasn’t changed a bit. He said the same thing to Isaac that He said to Jeremiah. He performs His Word!

#2 – Untie Jesus’ Hands

What does that have to do with Jesus’ high-priestly ministry?

A great deal because, as our High Priest, He operates by that same principle.

Mark 16:14 confirms it. There we read about a time just after Jesus’ resurrection when He appeared to the disciples and upbraided them (or sternly corrected them) for “their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen.” Then He said:

Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following (verses 15-20).

Notice the word them in the last verse is italicized. That’s because it isn’t in the original Greek manuscripts. It was added at the discretion of the translators. Sometimes such additions are helpful, but in this case, the added word doesn’t belong. Only when we take it out do we see the clear meaning of the verse: They went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with and confirming the Word with signs following.

According to that scripture, signs and wonders didn’t follow the disciples just because they were the first apostles of Jesus. They followed them because they were speaking the Word. Jesus, their High Priest, was working with, confirming and performing the Word.

No wonder He upbraided the disciples when He found them huddled in a back room feeling sorry for themselves! As long as they were wallowing in unbelief, He didn’t have anything to work with. Until they started confessing His Word in faith, His hands were tied. He didn’t have anything to perform.

#3 – Rejoice in Hope

That wasn’t true just in the lives of those first disciples—it’s true for us today. Jesus Christ is still the High Priest of our profession. God has anointed and appointed Him to perform the Word we confess, and He will do it, as Hebrews 3:6 says, “…if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” Look at verse 14 of the next chapter: “Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.”

That last phrase is important because Jesus can’t fulfill His high-priestly ministry on our behalf if we’re confessing His Word one minute, and moaning about our problems the next. For Him to perform the Word in our lives, we must hold that Word fast in faith and confidence. We must rejoice in hope over it until it comes to pass.

What does it mean to rejoice in hope?

Imagine someone walked up to you and said, “I own a Fortune 500 company, and I’ve decided to pay off all your debts. I’ve put $5 million into your bank account and when you spend that, I’ll give you $5 million more. I’ve also put you on our company’s board of directors.”

If you believed that person was telling the truth, you’d have goose bumps climbing on top of goose bumps. Your hair would be standing straight up with excitement. You’d be so thrilled you couldn’t wait to call all your friends and relatives to tell them the good news. Even though you hadn’t seen a dime of the money yet, if you were confident of that person’s word, you’d be rejoicing in hope.

We ought to be the same way about the promises of God. When we read that God will meet all our needs according to His riches in glory (Philippians 4:19)…or that THE BLESSING of Abraham is ours in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:14)…or that in Christ we’ve been blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places (Ephesians 1:3), if we really believed it, we’d whoop and holler with joy. But most of the time, we don’t.

Instead, we just ho-hum our way through those promises. We say like one fellow said, “Yeah, well, praise God…I’ll put it on my Sears bill and see how far it will go. Ha, ha, ha.”

Why is that? Why does the natural promise of $5 million from a man excite us so much more than the supernatural, limitless promise of our Almighty God?

The first one is received by our natural, carnal mind. It comes to us from the outside in, through our natural, physical senses. If we have enough evidence to back it up, a natural promise requires no faith to believe. So our mind and emotions just respond and start doing back flips.

The revelation of God’s Word, on the other hand, comes to us through our spirit. It comes to us from the inside out. Before our mind can fully take hold of it and start rejoicing over it, that Word has to become strong enough in us to overcome the outward evidence to the contrary, and take over our entire being.

For that to happen, we must meditate on the Word. We must feed on it and stir ourselves up on purpose with the truth of it. We must spend time developing our faith.

#4 – Develop Your Faith in the Gospel

If you’ll do that, one of these days the reality of the gospel will hit you. It will spill out of your spirit over into your soul (your mind, will and emotions) and when it does you’ll take off like your coattail is on fire.

Faith will take hold in you and you’ll start rejoicing in hope. Once you start rejoicing in hope, it won’t be long until the Word of God is made flesh in your life.

That’s how the power of the gospel always works. It becomes a reality first on the inside of you. The external manifestation always begins with an inner revelation. That’s why Hebrews 4:2 says, “For unto us was the gospel preached….” We must hear and receive the gospel in our hearts before it can show up in our lives.

“But what does the gospel have to do with my healing and my finances?” someone might ask.

Everything—because the gospel isn’t just the good news that through Jesus we can go to heaven when we die. Let’s read Galatians 3:8: “And 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.”

Do you see that? Praise God. It’s the glorious truth that: “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” (Galatians 3:13-14).

The gospel is the good news that THE BLESSING God preached to Abraham, which is the same blessing He gave to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, now belongs to us as born-again believers. Certainly, heaven is included in that blessing, but so are healing, prosperity and every other good thing God has to give.

Again! Was there any sickness in that Garden? No!  Was there any poverty or oppression in that Garden? No!

The Garden of Eden was a dream place—a little heaven on earth. It was a perfect manifestation of the goodness and love of God, and that’s what THE BLESSING produces. As we confess it with confidence and give our High Priest the opportunity to administer it, it turns our lives into a God-given dream come true! He is Lord over the curse. He is high priest over THE BLESSING!

#5 – Start Building

“But I don’t have any dreams, Brother Copeland.”

Then open your Bible and get yourself some!

Read and meditate on God’s promises. Build your faith in His goodness and the integrity of His covenant Book until you begin to see a picture of your life that lines up with it. If you’ve been plagued with sickness, build a dream of health and strength and long life. If you’ve been dogged by financial lack, build a dream of abundance. Stay in the Word of God until you see yourself “always having all sufficiency in all things,” so that you “may abound to every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).

Real Bible hope is a God-ordained dream. So build yourself a dream from the Scriptures and start rejoicing over it.

In the initial stages, it will be a dream without substance, but if you’ll keep feeding it…and feeding it with the Word, your faith for it will start to grow. Then that faith will begin to draw the reality of that dream out of your spirit and it will begin to manifest in your life. It will flow out from inside you and start healing your flesh, bringing you finances and making your dreams come true.

I know from experience just how true that is. I’ve been watching it happen in my life and ministry for more than 40 years now, and so have my children. Years ago, for example, when my son, John, who is grown now, was just a little boy, our whole family developed a God-given dream for a station wagon. The car we’d been driving just wasn’t big enough to carry all the stuff for our meetings, so we all started confessing the Word over the situation.

We didn’t cry and moan and say, “God, can’t You see we need a new car? Why don’t You give us a car? Why don’t You give us the station wagon we need?”

No, our High Priest couldn’t have done anything with those words. So we said, “Our God meets our needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. We have our station wagon, in Jesus’ Name!” Then we sowed seed toward it—both word seed and financial seed.

Eventually, it got so real inside me that I quit saying much about it. It was mine. I could see it with the eyes of my spirit.

One day, I realized John could too. We were driving down the road and he said, “Daddy, we got our station wagon! It’s ours, right?”

“Yes, that’s right, John,” I answered.

“Why don’t we go get it?”

It was so real to him he couldn’t figure out why we weren’t already driving it. The reason in the natural was $3,000. In John’s spirit and mine, it was finished.

Sure enough, within a few days a fellow called me, weeping. “Brother Copeland,” he said, “please forgive me. Some time ago the Lord told me to send you some money and I haven’t done it. But I’m sending it to you now.”

The money was just the amount we needed to buy the station wagon of our dreams.

If you’ll put the Word of God in your heart and in your mouth, your High Priest will do the same kind of thing for you. He’ll perform His Word on your behalf.

#6 – Start Confessing

So get rid of those old, unbelieving prayers and confessions. Replace them with words Jesus can work with. Spend time in the Bible and develop some God-given dreams. Keep meditating the Word and feeding your heart with it until those dreams become real to you and you have such confidence in them that you are rejoicing in hope.

If you’ll dare to do it, I can promise you on the authority of God’s Word, you’ll never be disappointed. For you have a High Priest who is anointed to make your God-given dreams come true.

 

How to Find Your Way Out of Impossible Circumstances

by Gloria Copeland

            If you’re new to the things of God, a beginner just learning about the word of faith, no doubt you’re eager to launch into a lifestyle of living contact with God by spending time each day in prayer and the Word. That’s how I was too when I first learned what the Word of God could do.

No one had to urge me to put the Word first place. No one had to tell me to turn off the television and put down the newspaper. I totally lost interest in those things because Ken and I were desperate for God. We were in trouble. We weren’t on the bottom of the barrel. We were under the barrel, and it was on top of us.

We knew that the Word of God was the only answer to our situation. So it was easy for us to sell out to it and spend time in the Word and in living contact with God day and night.

You know, desperation sometimes helps. It encourages you to simplify your life. It inspires you to eliminate the unnecessary things and just go for God. But after you’ve walked with God for a while and things begin to be comfortable, it’s easy to lose the desire you once had for the Word.

That’s what happened to me. Once Ken and I paid our debts and began enjoying the blessings of God, I began to let too much of my time be taken up by other things. They weren’t sinful things, they were just things I enjoyed doing. Almost without realizing it, my appetite for the things of God began to wane. Instead of hungering for time with Him, I enjoyed other activities and interests more. Those activities would have been fine if I had kept them in the right place, but they occupied too much of my time and attention.

I hardly even noticed it had happened until I was attending one of Brother Kenneth Hagin’s meetings in 1977 and he began to prophesy. (I still keep the final words of that prophecy in my notebook today.) Part of that prophecy said to purpose in your heart that you will not be lazy, that you will not draw back, hold back or sit down, to purpose in your heart that you will rise up, march forward and become on fire.

When I heard that, it dawned on me that I had become lazy about the things of God. I was still spending time in the Word, but not as much as before. And I wasn’t as full of zeal either—you can’t be spiritually on fire without spending a sufficient amount of time with God.

The Lord began to deal with me about it. I prayed and determined in my heart that I would change things. In order to simplify my life, I asked the Lord to show me what activities I should eliminate and what I should take on.

He led me to drop certain things that were stealing my time with Him. He also told me to do certain things that would help me get back in the habit of spending time with Him as I should. One specific thing He told me to do was to read one of John G. Lake’s sermons each day. Each time I read one of those sermons, it opened up my heart to the power of God in a fresh way.

He also led me to get up an hour earlier in the morning so I could spend time with Him before I began my day. It was wintertime and my alarm clock would go off and my flesh would say, You don’t want to get up. It’s too dark! It’s too cold! My bed would feel so wonderful and warm that there were a few mornings during the first weeks that I’d agree with my body and go back to sleep.

I didn’t let that stop me though. If I went back to sleep, I’d repent. Then I would ask God to help me, and the next morning I’d go at it again. Eventually, my body became trained.

Your body can be trained to follow God just like it can be trained to follow the devil. Hebrews 5:14 says that mature believers have their “senses and mental faculties…trained by practice to discriminate and distinguish between…good and…evil” (The Amplified Bible). If you practice the things of God, your body will eventually begin to cooperate with you.

Getting up earlier was a challenge for a while. But eventually my body stopped complaining. It became accustomed to getting up at that hour.

My commitment to make time for God every morning has been one of the most important decisions of my life. It made such a difference in my spiritual growth. I’m not the same person I was then. People are always talking about how timid and restrained I used to be. And I really was—but I got over it!

Become Addicted to Jesus

By implementing the changes God instructed me to make, I created a lifestyle of living contact with God. I became addicted to spending time with Him. Do you know what the word addicted means? It means “to devote, to deliver over, to apply habitually.”

You create good habits in God the same way you create poor habits. If you’ll apply yourself to making contact with Him daily through prayer and the Word, it will become a way of life. You won’t even have to think about it—it will just come naturally to you.

That’s what happened to me. Making time with God as my first priority is such a habit that I don’t have to get up every day and think, Well, should I read the Word and pray this morning? I just do it automatically. It’s a way of life for me to spend the first part of my day in prayer. Even when Ken and I are traveling, even when I have to get up at 4 a.m. to do it—I do it.

You might think that’s extreme. You might think I’m the only one around who is that committed to spending time with the Lord every day, but I’m not. I’m one of many.

I have one friend in particular who is very diligent about it. No matter how early she has to get up in the morning, no matter what else her schedule may hold, she puts her time in the Word and in prayer first place in her day. That’s because many years ago she found herself dying of liver cancer. The doctors had diagnosed it and told her she only had a few months to live.

Medical science couldn’t help her, so she turned to God’s medicine. She began to spend time reading and meditating on scriptures about healing each and every day. As a result, she is alive and well today with no trace of cancer in her body.

My friend knows she owes her very life to God’s Word, so she is still faithful and diligent to partake of those scriptures and fellowship with God first thing every morning. She is a minister of the gospel, and like Ken and me, she often begins her day very early. But she says, “Even if I have to get up at 3 a.m., I do it.”

Certainly such faithfulness requires time and effort. It’s not easy. But if believers fully understood the blessings it brings, they would be willing to do whatever was necessary to make their time with God first priority every day.

There are great rewards for that kind of faithfulness! The Bible says, “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him” (2 Chronicles 16:9). The word translated perfect there doesn’t mean without a flaw. It simply means “faithful, loyal, dedicated and devoted.”

God will pass over a million people to find that one who is loyal to Him. He scans the earth looking for a person who will put Him first and let Him be God in their life.

God wants to help us. He wants to meet our every need and work miracles for us. If you were God, wouldn’t you do that? Wouldn’t you move in the lives of your children? The Bible says if you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more the Father gives to His children.

Well, we’re God’s children. We’ve been born of His Spirit. We look just like God on the inside because He’s our Father.

He has us in His heart. He cares about us. He loves each and every one of us as if we were the only child He has. God has a great and wonderful ability to have a family of many millions while treating each member as if they were the only one.

But God can’t bless us like He wants to if we won’t let Him be God in our lives. He can’t pour out His provision upon us if we keep clogging up our heavenly supply line by putting other things before Him. If He is to show Himself strong on our behalf, our hearts will have to be turned wholly toward Him.

Your Desire Follows Your Attention

Maybe today your heart isn’t turned wholly toward God. Maybe you’re facing the same situation I was facing back in 1977. You’ve grown busy and lost your appetite for the things of God. You know you ought to be praying more and spending more time in the Word, but you’ve lost your desire. You just don’t want to do it.

If so, you can turn yourself around. You can rekindle your fire for the Lord by making the same kinds of changes I made. Before long, you’ll find yourself addicted to God instead of the earthly pursuits that have been so consuming you.

How can I be so sure?

Because God showed me that your desire always follows your attention. Most people think it’s the other way around. They think their attention follows their desire, but that’s not the case.

One of the greatest practical examples of the fact that desire follows attention is the average golfer. In the springtime when the weather is nice and there is plenty of opportunity to play golf, most avid golfers become very absorbed in their sport. The more they play, the more they want to play. They think about it, read about it, talk about it. They are constantly wanting to play golf!

But when winter comes, they put away their golf clubs. They stop talking about it and thinking about it. They don’t mope around all winter because they can’t be on the golf course. Why? Because they’ve turned their attention to other things and their desire for golf has lessened.

I’ve seen that same principle at work in our conventions. People will come to a Believers’ Convention, and when they arrive they will often be completely caught up in natural affairs. They’ll be preoccupied, worrying and fussing about some business deal at the office or some problem they left at home.

But after just a day or two of attending the meetings and spending hours in the Word of God, they’ll completely forget about that business deal and that problem. They’ll be so absorbed in the Word that those things won’t interest them at all.

It doesn’t matter how disinterested you may have grown about the things of God. If you will turn your attention toward Him, your heart will follow.

I know that from experience. I turned my attention to the Word of God, spent time listening to tapes, spent time in prayer until I became so addicted to the things of God that I lost interest in many of the other things that had so engaged me before. For example, I enjoy decorating homes and offices, and I used to spend a great deal of time at it. But as I became more involved in the things of God, I just didn’t want to spend much time decorating. Now it’s a chore to do it.

What’s more, every time I thought about taking up some new project, starting a new hobby or buying something that would require me to spend my time maintaining it, I’d say to myself, Can I afford this? Can I afford the time it will cost me? Usually I decided I couldn’t. I had come to value the things of God so much and have such great desire for them, I just didn’t want to give my time to anything else unless it was absolutely necessary.

A Tithe of Your Time

My resolve to put prayer and the Word first place in my life every day was even further strengthened in 1982 by another prophecy by Brother Kenneth Hagin. In that particular prophecy, the Spirit spoke of wading further out into the realm of the spirit, until it’s so deep, you can’t possibly touch the bottom. But the Spirit warned, our flesh will hold us back from that. It’s only by renewing our minds that we can move into the realm of the spirit. Brother Hagin went on to say by the Spirit of God that if we’d just give an hour or two out of every 24, our lives would be changed and empowered, all would be well, and we would be a mighty force for God.

That prophecy has influenced and encouraged me tremendously throughout the years. In fact since hearing it, I have spent at least an hour or two alone with the Lord every day. When I began to do this, there were things in my life and family that I wanted to see changed. There were things in the lives of my children that needed to be improved.

When I heard the prophet say that if I’d spend an hour or two a day with the Lord, things would be well with me, I took God at His word. Today I can give testimony that word was true. It worked. At the writing of this article, everything in my life and the life of my family is good. Things are well with us. My children are healthy, blessed and serving the Lord.

There is no question about it. The time I’ve spent with God has changed my life. And I can say with certainty that if you’ll spend an hour or two a day with Him, it will change your life too.

How could it be otherwise? How could you possibly spend an hour or two daily with the highest authority and the most kind and loving Being in the universe without having it affect your life?

You may be facing problems today that seem to have no solutions. You may be caught in impossible circumstances. But I want you to know, God can change those things. If you’ll give Him a way into your life by making living contact with Him every day, He’ll give you a way out of those impossible circumstances. He’ll help you solve those problems. He’ll move on your behalf until you can say, “All is well with me!”

If you want a change, make a change.

Commit yourself to do whatever it takes to maintain living contact with God, and spend time with Him every day. Determine right now that by the strength and grace of God, if you have to get up earlier in the morning, you will do it. If you have to go to bed later at night, you will do it. If you have to change jobs, you will do it.

Decide that no matter what it takes, you will maintain your communion with God, and you will guard your heart above all, for out of it flow the issues of life.