Faith Prepares
by Kenneth Copeland
Of all the things I learned from being around Brother Oral Roberts, among the most valuable was this: For faith to work like God designed, it must be accompanied by action. As Brother Roberts explained it to me, “When God tells me to build a building, if I don’t have the money (and he rarely did), I go dig a hole. Even if all I can do is break up some ground, I get started. I take a step of faith.”
Oral Roberts took many such steps during his life and ministry. He practically invented building buildings by faith. So he knew very well the importance of the principle revealed in James 2:17: “Faith, if it hath not works, is dead.”
The works referred to in that verse doesn’t mean the kinds of religious works people sometimes do to try to earn things from God. No, under the new covenant we don’t receive from God by doing religious works. We receive by grace through faith. So James is simply telling us to put our faith into action, because as Weymouth’s translation (verse 18) puts it, “faith apart from corresponding actions” is dead.
Remember the woman with the issue of blood in Mark 5? She not only believed she would be healed if she touched Jesus’ garment, she also acted on that belief. She pressed through the crowd that surrounded Jesus and touched the hem of His robe. When she did, “immediately the fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of the affliction” (verse 29, "New King James Version").
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