BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

timeless teaching by Kenneth Copeland originally published October 1995 Turning Up the Power Oh, God, I need more power! Please...please...please give me more power, LORD! Have you ever prayed a prayer like that? I have. In fact, some years ago I was praying along those lines, earnestly beseeching God to give me greater power to minister. It was a fine, very spiritual-sounding prayer. But The LORD interrupted me right in the middle of it. 'Kenneth,' He said, 'where would I go to get you more power?' The question stopped me cold. 'No one has more power than I do,' He continued. 'And I’ve already filled you with My Spirit. I’ve put within you the same miraculous force that created heaven and earth, the same supernatural strength that raised Jesus from the dead. Where am I going to go to find something greater than that?' The point was clear. As born-again, Holy Spirit-filled believers, you and I don’t need more power. We simply need to more fully release what we’ve already been given. We need to allow the Spirit of God within us to flow through us in greater measure. If we’re not seeing miracles in our lives and ministries, it isn’t God’s fault. He isn’t the One who is limiting us. We are! That may not sound to you like good news—but it is. Here’s why. If you’re the one who is keeping a lid on the power of God in your life, then you’re the one who can take that lid off! You don’t have to sit around waiting for some super-anointed prophet to come to town and lay hands on you. You don’t have to wait for God to send an angel to hit you with his glory stick. You don’t have to wait for anything. You can make a quality decision to increase the flow of God’s power in your life—starting today! God Is Always On “Now, Brother, I don’t believe we can just turn God’s power on at will.” I don’t either. But thank God, we don’t have to! His power is always on! He turned it on and made it available to every one of us almost 2,000 years ago on the Day of Pentecost, and He hasn’t turned it off since. It’s me I turn on and off. God is always on! He’s just waiting for us to get fully turned on to that power. He is waiting for us to get with the program and start doing the works that Jesus did, and even greater works (John 14:12). The problem is, we’ve kept Him waiting for a long time. That’s because, despite what the Bible says, most Christians don’t actually think they could ever do what Jesus did. After all, He is the divine, firstborn Son of God, and He clearly had a greater measure of God’s power flowing through Him during His earthly ministry than any of us do. It’s true. Jesus did operate in greater power than we do. But not for the reason most people think. His great anointing was not due to the fact that He is the Son of God. It couldn’t have been! For Philippians 2:7 says when Jesus came to earth, He stripped Himself of His divine privileges. He laid aside the rights of deity and ministered as a man. What then was the secret of His astounding power? You can find it in John 3:34: “For since He Whom God has sent speaks the words of God...God does not give Him His Spirit sparingly or by measure, but boundless is the gift God makes of His Spirit!” (The Amplified Bible). According to that verse, the reason Jesus was able to operate in unlimited power was because He spoke The WORDs of God. He didn’t just speak God’s WORD when He was ministering. He didn’t just speak it when He was feeling spiritual. He didn’t stand in church and say, “Well, praise God. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but The LORD delivers him out of them all!”...and then walk outside and say to His disciples, “Boys, things are really looking bad. Judas is stealing our money. The religious leaders are trying to kill Me. I just don’t know if we’re going to make it.” No, Jesus didn’t speak words of faith one moment and words of doubt the next. He always spoke God’s WORD: “As my Father hath taught me,” He said, “I speak these things” (John 8:28). 18 : JUNE '14

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