BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

him from the calling and purpose God had on his life. By then, however, it was too late. The Arrest That Changed Everything The breaking point came late one night in 2016, when John was stopped by police and arrested for driving while intoxicated (DWI). Though the infraction did not involve any other vehicles and no one was injured, it would result in heavy consequences for John— beginning with spending a night in jail. The shame of possible public humiliation and failure pressed heavily on him. More than anything, his concern over what this might mean for the reputation of his parents and the ministry they had spent decades building weighed heavily on him as well. While the matter of the tra…c violation was resolved in the courts with a †ne and community service, for a year following his arrest John lived in a pressure cooker of guilt, waiting for news of his arrest on a DWI charge to reach his parents. When they did †nally learn about the arrest, Kenneth Copeland told his son he felt it would be best for him to step down as CEO of the ministry. John agreed. For years, John Copeland had lived under the weight of a legacy and the pressure of expectation. His life had been shaped and fashioned based on integrity, faith and trust in God. Now out of work and virtually on his own, he found himself faced with perhaps the biggest decision of his life: Where do I go from here? Unsure about his future, John eventually decided to leave Texas and move to Florida. "I had worked for 31 years of my life and been married for 30 of those years," John re–ects. "Moving to Florida was the †rst time I didn't have anyone living with me. My kids were o˜ in college; my marriage was over. It was my †rst time being alone. For the †rst six months in Florida, I didn't have any friends. "Living by myself, I had to learn how to be alone—with myself, and with God," John says. "That was a revelation for me. You've got to come to a place where you're good with being by yourself, because you can't expect somebody else to make you happy. "At †rst I didn't really talk much to people, but I realized that I had to have some social interaction," John recalls. "I went from having a built-in community of friends, mainly because of who my dad was, to being forced to get out of my comfort zone and create a whole new life. I had to make friends on my own with people who didn't know me or where I came from. "I actually began to enjoy the small talk." A True Turning Point Over time, John said, he began to realize his "spiritual life had gone quiet." "When I left Texas," he says, "I wasn't mad at God. I just quit communicating. I quit reading the Word. I quit praying. I was just doing my own thing, including entering into a couple of business ventures. Before long, it got to where nothing was working. Everything I tried failed. Every day it felt like I was getting kicked in the gut. I should have been making money, but instead I was losing money. I lost everything!" The reality of how his life was going shook John to his core. But he would soon realize that, although his spiritual life had gone quiet, it wasn't dead. "You can get to a place where you're so empty and negative that your expectation becomes negative," says John. "But God gave us the tools to get out of anything we're in—His Word and our mouths." For John, it began with his words. "I started each day by saying, 'Today is going 1 2 : B V O V People don't need your theology— they need your honesty.

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