BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Q & A by Kenneth Copeland Q: I ask God’s forgiveness, but I keep having the same problem with sin in my life. What’s the key to victory? A: You’re not alone. The Apostle Paul once faced the same dilemma! In Romans 7 ("Amplified Bible, Classic Edition"), he said, “I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh.... For I fail to practice the good deeds I desire to do, but the evil deeds that I do not desire to do are what I am [ever] doing” (verses 18-19). In verses 24-25 ("AMPC"), Paul asks (and answers) the same question you’ve been asking. “O unhappy...man that I am! Who will release and deliver me...? O thank God! [He will!] through Jesus Christ (the Anointed One) our Lord!” Paul found his deliverance in Jesus and so will you! The key is abiding in Jesus and having His WORD abide in you. In one of the last conversations Jesus had with His disciples before His crucifixion, He spoke to them about that. He told them that they were cleansed because of The WORD He’d taught them. He promised if they would continue to abide in Him and allow His WORDs to remain in them, they could have whatever they asked. Now, that’s victory! You see, God’s WORD has the power within itself to overcome sin. All you have to do is get that WORD inside you so that it will go to work empowering you to overcome sin in your life. Jesus said, “If ye continue [meditate and be consistent] in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32). Put God’s WORD first place in your life. Make the decision to act on The WORD and spend time in it. You’ll soon begin to enjoy the freedom and victory you’ve longed for! V * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * article from p.5 continues * * * * * I know Christians who get upset if they hear about something like that going on today. If they find out a minister has allowed some financially strapped believer to give into an offering, they get mad and say, “People in that kind of poverty need to hang on to every penny they’ve got. They don’t have enough as it is. God certainly doesn’t require them to give!” Actually, He does—particularly if they’re believing to prosper, He requires them to give, not because He’s trying to get something from them but because He wants to get something to them. He wants them to activate the spiritual law Jesus talked about in Luke 6:38: “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over....” Giving starts the receiving cycle. That’s why “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). When we give, we’re planting financial seed which THE BLESSING of The LORD can multiply into a financial harvest that will break us out of poverty, prosper us and make us a BLESSING to the world! A Much Better Plan If you want to see a wonderful picture of how this works, read in Genesis 26 about what happened to Isaac. After Abraham died, Isaac ran head-on into a financial crisis. A famine hit the land of Canaan and he decided he’d have to move his family to Egypt to survive. Before he could implement his plan, however, The LORD appeared to him and told him to change it. “Don’t go to Egypt,” He said. “Stay here and dwell in this land.” Why did God want Isaac to stay in Canaan? Because, as He put it, “I will be with thee, and will bless thee…and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father…and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (verses 3-4). That was a much better plan! If Isaac stayed put, THE BLESSING of God on him could not only prosper him and his family right there in Canaan, it could break the famine and BLESS everyone in the region. It could bring to pass the will of The LORD that “there should be no poor among you.” Sure enough, Isaac went with that plan. He sowed in that land and received in the same year a hundredfold harvest. He also began digging out his father’s old wells and hit water right in the middle of the drought. Because water was so scarce and precious, however, as soon as he’d get a well flowing the Philistines would come and take it away from him. So rather than fight them, he’d let them have the well and just go dig another one. Ultimately, following the direction of The LORD, he drilled down and hit an underground river. According to Jewish commentaries, over the process of time, with all that water flowing, the land began to flourish again. Fruit trees blossomed. Crops grew. Things began to look up all over the country. Isaac did especially well. He kept on getting richer until his estate got bigger than the king’s. Things get a little touchy when your house is bigger than the palace, and eventually the king got offended and told Isaac to leave the country. He thought the famine was over and Isaac wasn’t needed anymore. But it turned out he was wrong. The same spiritual mess that had caused the famine in the first place was still there. THE BLESSING of The LORD on Isaac had just been superseding it. So once Isaac was gone, everything crashed. The fruit trees dried up. The crops withered. The famine returned, and conditions went right back to the way they were. 6 : BVOV

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