BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

The first few years Ken and I were born again we didn’t know this, so we just kept living in defeat. Despite our love for the Lord, we stayed broke and in debt and generally remained victims of our circumstances. Then, in 1967, we heard the Word of Faith and found out the written Word is God speaking directly to us. We learned that it’s “living and powerful” (Hebrews 4:12, "New King James Version"), and we made a quality decision to put it first place in our lives. Desperate for change, we immediately began immersing ourselves in the Word. Instead of reading the newspaper and watching television, we spent every moment we could reading the Bible. We continually went to meetings where the Word was being preached. In between meetings, we listened to tapes of anointed Word preachers and read their books. In short, we followed the instructions God gave in Proverbs 4:20-22: “My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.” We still follow those instructions today, 54 years later. Why? Because we want to keep walking in the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. And since faith comes by hearing the Word of God, that means we must keep abiding in the Word. (See 1 John 5:4 and Romans 10:17.) Faith can’t be stored up for very long. Abiding can’t be done just every once in a while. . It’s a lifestyle. The Most Practical Thing You Can Do When you’re abiding in the Word and it’s abiding in you, it becomes the way you think. Anytime a need arises in your life, your first thoughts are: What does the Word of God say? What has He promised me about this? If you’re facing a financial need, you go to the scriptures that contain God’s Word about prosperity. You open your Bible, and even if you already know God’s financial promises by heart you read them again and again. You put them in front of your eyes, keep them going into your ears, and say them with your mouth until they’re bigger in you than the need, or the bill you have to pay. That’s what Ken and I did when we first started walking by faith and were facing a mountain of debt with no way to pay it off. I put together a list of financial BLESSING scriptures and read them multiple times every day. In less than a year, we were debt free and beginning to prosper. What’s more, we didn’t stop there. We kept abiding in what God says about prosperity and growing in faith for finances year after year. Eventually, it became as easy for us to believe God for $5 million to go on daily television as it was in the beginning for us to believe for food to put on our table. The same principle works in every other area of life. When you need healing, you turn to the healing scriptures. You feed on them every day, believe them and act on them, and they become life and health to your flesh. When you want to minister healing to others, you fill your heart with what God says about that. You abide in verses like Mark 16:18, “They [believers] shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” Then you go out and act on the Word by faith and watch it come to pass. “But Gloria,” someone might say, “I can’t afford to spend my time in the Word. I have a job and a lot of natural responsibilities. I have to be practical.” Abiding in Jesus and in the Word is the most practical thing you can do! When you abide in Him, He gets involved in your job. His supernatural power flows through you and helps you with your natural responsibilities. You’re no longer limited to the world’s system and what it can supply. Through your connection with Him you can live on a higher level, as a citizen of the kingdom of God. BVOV : 7

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