BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

You might think that having a promise about something isn’t the same as actually having the thing itself, and that’s true if the person who made the promise doesn’t have the integrity or the ability to back it. But God has both. Unlike human beings, He doesn’t lie or change His mind. Whatever He says, He does—always! Every single promise He makes, He fulfills. (See Numbers 23:19.) That’s why every one of us, when we received Jesus as our LORD and Savior, were born again! God promised in Romans 10:9 that if we believed on Him in our heart and confessed Him with our mouth, we would be saved. The instant we believed and acted on that promise God fulfilled it, and we experienced the most phenomenal miracle ever. We became “a new creation” on the inside. We were delivered out of the kingdom of darkness and translated into the kingdom of the Son of God’s Love. Our sins were washed away, and we were made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. (See 2 Corinthians 5:17, 21.) You may not have even realized at the time what was happening. You may have been like Gloria. When she got saved, she’d never even heard of the new birth. She’d just read the note my mother had written in the front of the Bible she’d given me for my birthday. It said: “Ken, precious, seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Matthew 6:33.” At the time, Gloria and I were financially broke and in debt, so that promise really caught her attention. Well, I sure do need things added to me, she thought. So, she looked up the verse, read the scriptures that surrounded it and prayed, “God, take my life and do something with it.” How long did she have to wait for Him to answer that prayer? No time at all! She was instantly born again, because Jesus provided salvation for her and for all of us 2,000 years ago. What’s more, because she accepted with simple childlike faith God’s promise to add to her all things if she sought Him first, things quickly started being added to us. Before long, we were able to move out of the nearly empty house we’d been living in, where we didn’t have even a refrigerator or a stove, into a fully furnished apartment. Heirs According to the Promise Soon afterward, I got born again as well. Sitting in the kitchen after getting home from a flying trip one evening, God’s presence filled the room and inside of me I heard His voice. He said, 'Kenneth, if you don’t get right with me, you’re going to a devil’s hell, Son.' I said, “I know it! But what do I do now?” Then I heard inside me, the voice of Mrs. Taggert, my boyhood Sunday school teacher. “Boys, you have to ask Jesus to come into your heart.” I thought as a kid that was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. As a grown man, it still sounded dumb to me. But according to Mrs. Taggert, God promised that if I asked Jesus to come into my heart, I’d be saved. So I did, and His promise came to pass. Although the details of our stories may differ, that’s how all of us were born again into the family of God. In our own way, we believed and received God’s promise of salvation. For, as Galatians 3 says, “Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus…. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (verses 26, 29). “Yes, but Brother Copeland, I don’t think the same principle applies when we’re praying for other things we need. When we’re asking for healing, financial provision or some other blessing, we can’t be certain how God will answer.” We can if we’re basing our prayer on one of His great and precious promises; and He’s given promises that cover every situation. For us to claim them, of course, we must read the verses around them and make the necessary corrections in our lives to meet their conditions. But once we do, we can pray those promises and be certain they will be fulfilled. If you need healing, for instance, James 5:15 promises, “The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” If you have a financial need, Philippians 4:19 promises, “God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” 6 : BVOV

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