BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

I don’t mean to sound hard-nosed about it, but that’s how it is. This is a spiritual law. Like “the law of faith” (Romans 3:27) and “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:2), believing and speaking works every time, all the time. It’s as dependable as the law of gravity. Have you ever heard of a gravity alert? Have you ever turned on the morning news and heard the newscaster say, “Due to a large gravity fluctuation, all children weighing less than 20 pounds will need to wear a weighted belt to keep them from floating away”? Of course not! You never heard that and you never will because the law of gravity operates consistently. The very idea that it might do otherwise is silly. By the same token, it’s just as silly to think God’s law of believing and speaking might not operate consistently. It’s foolish to claim that sometimes that ‘saying’ stuff doesn’t work. God’s system always works. He never misses it. So if you’ve endeavored to apply what the Bible teaches about speaking faith-filled words and you haven’t gotten the expected results, don’t blame the failure on Him. Say, “LORD, help me with this because somewhere here I’m missing it.” Don’t Just Remember That Potato, Eat It! I’ve said that to God many times and He’s always responded. I remember one time in particular I was preaching a series of meetings in Louisiana. During the first few days of meetings I began to feel excruciating pain in my left leg. I was busy with my ministry schedule so I just quoted 1 Peter 2:24 and some other healing scriptures and declared, “I believe that by Jesus’ stripes I am healed.” Instead of my leg getting better, however, it continued to get worse. By the time I finished preaching the last meeting, it was throbbing with such a vengeance I went back to my hotel room and stretched out across the bed. “LORD,” I prayed, “this isn’t right. Where’s my disconnect? I know You paid for this victory and I want to know why I’m not getting hold of it.” As I lay there very quiet, listening down on the inside of me, I heard The LORD answer. 'Kenneth, you’ve been quoting healing scriptures but you haven’t opened your Bible and read them. You haven’t looked at them. You’ve just been reciting them from memory. The memory of a potato won’t feed you. You can remember how it tastes and smells and looks, but for it to nourish you and do you any good, you have to actually take a bite of it.' I saw instantly what He meant. His WORD is spiritual food. It’s what feeds faith and makes it strong; and in this particular instance I hadn’t properly fed myself. I hadn’t really done what God says to do in Proverbs 4:20-22: “My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.” Right away I made the correction. That afternoon I spent time in The WORD, looking at healing scriptures and feeding them into my spirit. By the time I got on the plane to fly home I had faith in my heart and I was saying with my mouth, “I am a healed man!” Even so, when we landed in Dallas my leg was still hurting so badly I could hardly walk. As if to tempt me to abandon my confession, a man with a wheelchair met me at the gate. (To this day I don’t know who he was or why he was there.) Although that wheelchair looked mighty good right then, I said, “Thank you anyway, but healed men don’t need wheelchairs.” Then I walked almost a mile to the car. After leaving the airport, Gloria and I went to my parents’ house and I fell asleep with my mother sitting by the bed praying for me. I suddenly woke up about 3 a.m. and sat straight up. Mother said, “That did it!” Glory to God: All the pain in my leg was gone! God’s system had done its job. Faith in God’s Words AND in Your Own “Brother Copeland, that’s a great testimony but I haven’t been able to get those kinds of results. Even though I spend time in The WORD and I believe it with all my heart, my words just don’t seem to carry that kind of power.” 6 : BVOV

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