BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

********** ADVERTISEMENT ********** "Jesus—The Name Above Every Name" Jesus’ Name is far above every name and He’s given it to us to use! Kenneth Copeland shows you step by step how to use the Name of Jesus and expect signs to follow. You’ll get the rock-solid confidence you need in the authority you have in His Name. Release the power of God in your life today! Power of the Name of Jesus Package Study Guide included 10 CDs and study guide now $19.99 reg $34.99 #B190901 kcm.org/mag 1-800-600-7395 (U.S. only) FREE standard shipping included. Offer price valid until Sept. 30, 2019 ********************************** * * * * article from p. 4 continues * * * * “But Brother Copeland, don’t all Christians have faith in Jesus’ Name? Didn’t we have to have faith in it just to get saved?” Yes, but getting saved isn’t the end of the story. The Bible says, “The just shall live by faith” (Hebrews 10:38). To maintain a living faith in the Name of Jesus, you have to keep feeding it on The WORD of God. You have to keep going back to what He said about that Name, or your faith will become weak and depleted. You’ll continue to say “in the Name of Jesus” when you pray, but you’ll just say it by rote. You’ll say it out of mental assent and familiarity, without any actual faith. To understand why this is, think about how your physical body operates. It has to be fed to produce energy. If you keep using that energy, even if all you’re doing is lifting your arm up and down, you’ll eventually have to eat to replenish your strength. Otherwise you won’t be able to lift your arm anymore. The same is true with faith because, like your body, faith is a living thing. It’s spiritual strength that comes by “hearing, and hearing…the word of God” (Romans 10:17). If you keep using it and you don’t replenish it by going back and hearing more WORD, your faith will get to where it has no strength at all. Unlike physical weakness however, when your faith gets weak you won’t necessarily notice right away. Because you can’t feel faith, you may only realize it’s getting weak when it stops producing results: When you pray for something in Jesus’ Name, for example, and nothing happens. Or you command healing to come in that Name and yet days…weeks…and months go by…and the sickness still remains. Yes, No or Wait Awhile? This happens in the Body of Christ far too much these days. We’ve gotten way too accustomed to waiting long periods of time for our prayers to produce results. In some circles, Christians have even come up with doctrines to explain the delay. “God always answers prayer,” they say. “Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes it’s no, and sometimes it’s wait awhile.” That just isn’t true. There’s not one instance in the Gospels where Jesus ever told anyone who came to Him for healing to wait awhile to receive it. No, He always responded like He did to the man who came to Him in Matthew 8 to be healed of leprosy. Jesus didn’t say to that man, “Yes, I’ll heal you, but you’ll have to wait about four years.” He said, “I will; be thou clean,” and healed the man immediately (verse 3). Jesus is still saying that same “I will” today! He’s “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). “All the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen” (2 Corinthians 1:20, "New King James Version"). So He stands ready to heal and deliver anyone immediately, anywhere, anytime. He’s just waiting for us to give Him the opportunity to do it. He’s just waiting for us, as His representatives, to release His mighty power by stepping out with all boldness by faith in His Name. What exactly does that look like? You can see in Acts 3. It tells about a time after Jesus’ resurrection when Peter and John were going into the Temple to pray and a lame man asked them for alms. "And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him with John, said, Look on us. And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something of them. Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk. And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God" (verses 4-8). You talk about immediate results! Peter and John didn’t just pray for that man and walk away hoping someday God would answer. They just gave the faith command in Jesus’ Name, grabbed the man’s hand, and jerked him to his feet. They believed that Jesus’ Name would do the job and the man would immediately be made whole. “Yes, but Peter and John could do that kind of thing,” someone might say. “They were apostles!” True, but that wasn’t the reason the man was healed. Peter himself said so. He told the astonished crowd that gathered around to marvel over the miracle, “Why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus…. And his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know: yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all” (verses 12-13, 16). Peter didn’t say anything at all about his being an apostle. He talked about faith in Jesus’ Name. He just echoed what Jesus said in Mark 16: “These signs shall follow them that believe; In my name they shall…lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover” (verses 17-18). 6 : BVOV

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