BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

One reason is a lot of Christians don’t think God cares enough about them to BLESS them financially. Even though they know the Bible says that God is love and they assent mentally to the fact that God loves them, they haven’t made a quality decision to believe that love. (See 1 John 4:16.) As a result, when financial pressures arise, instead of looking to God in faith, they give in to fear. They say, “Oh God, how could You love me and still allow me to experience this kind of trouble? Don’t You care?” This is the problem the Israelites had in the wilderness. They did not believe God loved them. They believed He hated them. Time and again when they ran short of supplies and it looked like they wouldn’t have enough to survive they said, “God brought us out here to kill us!” They were wrong, of course. God didn’t bring them out of Egypt to kill them. He brought them out so He could take them in to the Promised Land. But they kept doubting Him and getting into fear because they didn’t believe His love. Jesus’ disciples made the same mistake when they encountered the storm on the Sea of Galilee. They saw the boat filling up with water and, rather than trusting Jesus to handle the situation, they panicked and said, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” (Mark 4:38). They didn’t have any faith in His love! How do we develop that kind of faith? It comes by hearing and hearing The WORD of God (Romans 10:17). It comes by feeding on scriptures like 1 John 4:8, which says that “God is love,” and meditating on them to the point where every time we see the word God in the Scriptures, we automatically think Love. God and love are inseparable. When Jesus said, “Have faith in God” (Mark 11:22), He was saying, “Have faith in Love.” But most of us don’t think that way yet because we still have a lot of mind-renewing work to do. It’s a work of grace, but it also requires Bible study and making a purposeful choice to declare by faith, “I believe God’s love. I trust His love for me. I trust Jesus completely because I completely trust His love.” Whatever He Says to You, Do It! Of course, trusting Jesus to be your Financier also involves making a quality decision to submit to His lordship in that area of your life—to let Him direct you and to do what He tells you to do. If He tells you to be the church janitor you say, “Yes, Sir!” and spend your weekdays cleaning the church. Then, if He calls you to go out on the weekends and preach, you do that too. If your preaching schedule gets so busy you need a jet to fly to your weekend preaching meetings, Jesus will provide you one. He isn’t limited by the size of your paycheck. If you’ll obey Him and be right where He told you to be, doing exactly what He told you to do until He says different, He can BLESS you financially a million different ways. “But Brother Copeland, I don’t want to be the church janitor!” 6 : BVOV

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