BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Adversaries at the Door In 2011, the Lord said, 'All I want you doing is practicing peace.' “He wanted me to pay attention to my thought life and resist any thought that didn’t lead me into peace,” Nancy explains. “I put a close watch over my thought life and practiced staying in peace every day. Doing that is really a flow of walking in the spirit. I’d realized that the hardest times of my life had been each time the Lord promoted me. In 1 Corinthians 16:9 Paul said, ‘A great and effective door has opened to me, and there are many adversaries’ ("New King James Version"). “When God gives you an open door of ministry, the devil doesn’t congratulate you and say, ‘Well done, go on through.’ No, there are adversaries at the door. He opposes you. He bombards your mind with lies, sometimes to the point of mental torment. “The Lord taught me that there were three steps to overcoming those thoughts. The first step was to answer the thought with the Word of God. For instance, the lying thought might be, ‘You’re going to get sick and die prematurely.’ I’d respond by saying. ‘That’s not my thought. Satan, you’re a liar. Jesus Himself took my infirmities and bore my sickness. I will not get sick and die prematurely. Spirit of fear, you’re the one that spoke that to me. Now, you leave.’ That’s the second step: Tell the spirit of fear that’s speaking to leave. “The final step was to praise and worship God, which held my attention on God and His Word and off the threat. “Over the years, I became more and more skillful at handling my thought life,” Nancy said. “That’s important because as long as you think right, the devil’s got nothing to work with. He’s got to get you thinking wrong so he can trouble your life. Any flow of worry is the flow of an unrenewed mind. So, for two years from 2011 until 2013, the Lord had me practicing peace every day.” Peace in the Midst of Tragedy In October 2013, Ed and his pilot took off from Wichita, Kan., on their way to Texas. About 15 minutes into the flight, something went wrong with the aircraft, and it crashed. Stephen and Grant showed up at their parents’ house. “Mom, we’ve been notified that Dad’s plane crashed. There were no survivors.” Suddenly, the pieces of a puzzle fell into place for Nancy: the five-month prayer burden sensing death, and the importance of practicing peace every day for the past two years. “When that tragedy came, I already knew how to yield to the flow of peace and joy,” Nancy explains. “The day my husband left, the flow of peace and joy didn’t leave. It was still available, but I had to yield to it. I could have yielded to grief and sorrow. “I’m not saying I didn’t weep, but I wasn’t weeping unto sorrow and grief. I wept because I realized that a page had turned in my life. I was in a new chapter now, and it didn’t include Ed. But I wouldn’t yield to anything that threatened my peace or joy. The Bible says that the kingdom of God isn’t meat or drink. It’s righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. That’s the flow the Holy Ghost is always leading us into.” Nancy turned to her sons. “Don’t touch this with your thought life,” she told them. “Don’t start asking questions like: Why did this happen? Did we miss it? Should we have done something different? Questions take you into the mental arena. You will never find answers in the mental arena. It will open the door for depression, sorrow and grief. Answers are of the spirit arena, which is the faith arena. Any answers we need, God will provide.” The day Ed died, Kenneth Copeland called Nancy, speaking into her life by the power of the Holy Spirit. The instructions for Nancy’s future were in his mouth. The Lord told Nancy, 'Brother Copeland walks in graces that you need to receive from if you’re going to finish the race and fulfill all I have for you.' “I realized that God had me praying for Ed and that plane crash five years before it happened,” Nancy says. “Sometimes you can’t change events because there are other people involved. One thing that did change was who was on the plane when it crashed. “Normally, there would have been several other people onboard. My sons were often on the plane. I was often on the plane. Other ministers and family members were often on the plane. I can’t remember the last time it was just Ed and the pilot flying. I believe that through prayer and the help of the Holy Spirit, there weren’t more people on the airplane.” 16 : BVOV

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