BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

When Even Jesus Can’t Work a Miracle “Yeah, but Brother Copeland, miracles don’t always happen in those situations. I’ve been in services where the gospel was preached and the minister talked about miracles, and yet, as far as I could tell, no one received much of anything at all.” Then you’re in good company. Jesus had the same experience in His hometown of Nazareth. When He preached in the synagogue there, not one major miracle happened, even though the power of the Holy Spirit was on Him and He delivered the greatest sermon any group of people could ever hope to hear. Reading from Isaiah 61, He said: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book…. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." (Luke 4:18-21) If you think that message sounds a lot like what Philip preached, you’re right. Philip got that message from Jesus! He’d heard Jesus preach it time and again. Everywhere Jesus went, He preached the same message: “The Spirit of The LORD is upon me. I’m here with the Anointing of God on Me to remove all the burdens and yokes the devil put on you through the curse. Poor man, you don’t have to be poor anymore! Sick man, you don’t have to be sick anymore! Blind man, you don’t have to be blind anymore! I AM THE BLESSING of The LORD, and I’m here!” In Nazareth, however, unlike in Samaria, the people didn’t pay heed to that message. Instead, they got offended. They’d known Jesus since He was a child and they didn’t like what He was saying. “Who does He think He is going around claiming to be anointed by God?” they said. As a result, “He could there do no mighty work” (Mark 6:5). Look at that verse again. It doesn’t say that Jesus wouldn’t do any mighty work among the people in Nazareth; it says He couldn’t. That goes crosswise to a lot of people’s theology. They think God can do anything He wants, anytime He wants. They believe that whether or not they receive a miracle is totally up to Him. But it’s not. Once we’ve heard the gospel, receiving our miracle is up to us. “But Brother Copeland, what if I hear the gospel and believe it, but it’s just not God’s will to heal me?” Why wouldn’t it be His will? What’s so special about you that He wouldn’t want to heal you? Multitudes of people came to Jesus to receive healing when He was on earth and “he healed them all” (Matthew 12:15). Not one time did He ever tell anyone it wasn’t His will to heal them. It didn’t matter who they were or what their condition was, Jesus was willing to work miracles for the worst of the worst. Take the leprous man described in Luke 5, for instance. According to Luke, who was a physician, this man’s body was “full of leprosy” (verse 12), which means he was in the last stages of the disease. He had open sores all over him, and he was ready to just go somewhere and die. Totally cut off from friends and family and rejected by society, if anyone ever had reason to wonder if God would heal him, this man did. But he went to Jesus anyway. Having heard about the anointing on Jesus, he fell on his face in front of Him and said, “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean” (verse 12). How did Jesus respond? “He put forth his hand, and touched him” (verse 13). Imagine it. This man probably hadn’t been touched in years. His disease was contagious. He was disfigured. He smelled bad. No one even wanted to get near him. Yet Jesus not only got close to him, He touched him, saying, “I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him.” Talk about a miracle! Suddenly, the killer disease that had been gnawing away at that man was gone, along with every demon that was behind it, and every foul thing that had happened to his body because of it. His whole life changed in an instant. Why did it happen? For the same reason miracles happened to the people in Samaria. Because of the anointing. The man took heed to what he had heard and chose to believe. Your Miracle, Your Choice “But Brother Copeland, that happened thousands of years ago!” So what? Jesus is “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). He’s as loving and anointed today as He ever was. He still has the same power and He’s still speaking the same word to everyone who looks to Him in faith for a miracle. He’s still saying, “I will….” That’s why you don’t have to wonder if He’ll do a miracle for you. He’s already made His choice where you’re concerned. He’s chosen you! He’s chosen to love you, redeem you, heal you and BLESS you with THE BLESSING of Abraham. He’s chosen to make His Anointing fully available to you. Now the choice is yours. As God said in Deuteronomy 30:19: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.” The power to release the anointing in your life is in the word choose. It’s when you choose to believe in the anointing on Jesus that the connection is made. BVOV : 7

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