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Posts Tagged ‘finances’

Developed in Perfect Love

14 Oct

by Kenneth Copeland

Not long ago, the Lord told me that we need a much higher degree of revelation that God is love, and that His love is in us to be used.
As you develop and exercise that love, He said, it will not only fill you up, it will flush the fear out of your soul. Once fear is flushed out and you begin to step out in faith and love, an area of protection will develop around you, an area of joy which is your strength—an area that the world has no explanation for. They’ll begin to wonder, “Who is this that even stops and stills the storms?”
We can read 1 John 4, and clearly see how this process works. There, the man known as the Apostle of Love says:

Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us (1 John 4:15-19).

Notice the very first thing that we need to do once we’ve confessed Jesus as our Lord is to know and believe the love God has for us.
We have to develop faith in that love and have it secure in our hearts. When we do, there won’t be an ounce of fear in us. Any time the devil threatens us with some kind of harm, we can rebuke him and say, “You’d better not touch me. I am a dearly beloved child of Almighty God. If you do anything to hurt me, you’ll have my Daddy to deal with and we both know you don’t stand a chance against Him. So just back off right now!”

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Gloria Copeland – Build The Whole House

04 Nov

Kenneth and Gloria Copeland

With that foundation laid, you’ll be ready to step out in faith and receive the abundance God has in store for you.

Many people who have lived godly lives have failed to do that, so they’ve missed out on God’s financial blessings. Although they’ve continually applied the principles of God’s Word and become prime candidates for great prosperity, they’ve unwittingly passed it by because religious tradition has taught them that God wants them in poverty. Christians like that have great wealth in their spiritual bank accounts, but because they don’t realize it’s there, they never tap into it!

Don’t let that happen to you. Don’t just build the foundation for prosperity and stop there. Go on and build the whole house. Dare to believe that if you’ll seek first God’s kingdom, His way of doing and being right, all other things (the food, the clothes, the cars, the houses, everything!) will be added to you as well.

Build your foundation, then dare to believe—and you will surely prosper!

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

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Gloria Copeland– Seek First Things First Part 2

04 Oct

Kenneth and Gloria Copeland

I remember back before Ken and I knew we could trust God to take care of us financially, I thought it was my job to worry about how we were going to pay our bills. I spent a great deal of my time thinking things like, What are we going to do about this light bill? How will we be able to make our car payment? To me it would have been irresponsible not to worry about such things!

Then I found out it isn’t God’s will for us to worry. It is His will for us to believe Him to care for us. I also learned that as believers, we’re not to seek after material riches. We’re not to pursue money like people who are without God. They have to pursue it. They don’t have a covenant with God, so if they don’t seek material goods, they won’t get them!

But we’re not like those people. We’re not in the world without God and without a covenant (Ephesians 2:12-13). We have God’s promise of provision. He has assured us in His Word that He will not only meet our needs, but give us an abundance.

It’s important for us to remember, however, that a covenant is always between two parties. It has two sides to it. A covenant says, “If you do this, then I’ll do that.”

God’s part of the covenant is to prosper us—spirit, soul and body as well as financially. What is our part of the covenant? It’s not to seek after that prosperity. If we do that, we’ll get sidetracked. Our part of the covenant is to seek first His kingdom, His way of doing and being right!

Our part is to say, “Lord, I’ll do whatever You tell me to do. I’ll obey Your Word and do what is right in Your sight—even if it looks like it will cost me.”

Of course, obeying God’s Word never costs in the long run. It pays! You always put yourself in a position for increase when you seek after God and do things His way.

I’ll be honest with you though, there will be times when you can’t see how that increase is going to come. Ken and I know about those times. We’ve been through them.

When we saw in the Word of God that we were to “keep out of debt and owe no man anything, except to love one another…” (Romans 13:8, The Amplified Bible), we weren’t too excited about it. At that time in our lives, it looked to us like we’d never be able to do anything financially without borrowing money.

We thought, How will we ever get a car? How will we get a home? How will we finance our ministry? We’re doomed!

But we had already decided to obey God no matter what the cost, so we committed to Him to get out of debt and stay out even though we thought it would be to our disadvantage.

Of course, that decision has since turned out to be one of the wisest financial decisions we’ve ever made. That’s the way it always is. Obeying God always works to your advantage in the end!

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

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Gloria Copeland– Seek First Things First Part 1

27 Sep

Kenneth And Gloria Copeland

In light of that truth, it’s easy to see why God wants us to increase financially at the same rate we increase spiritually. He wants us to outgrow our fleshly foolishness so our prosperity will bring us blessing and not harm.

“But Gloria,” you say, “I need financial help fast!”

Then get busy growing. Get busy building your foundation for prosperity.

How? By finding out what God says in His Word and doing it.

You see, the foundation of prosperity is a continual lifestyle built on the Word of God. It is doing whatever God tells you to do, thinking whatever He tells you to think, and saying whatever He tells you to say.

Godly prosperity is the result of putting God’s Word—all of it, not just the parts about financial prosperity—first place in your life. It comes when you apply His principles on a continual basis—not just because you want money, but because Jesus is your Lord and you want to follow Him. It comes when you start obeying the instructions Jesus gave us in Matthew 6:

I tell you, stop being perpetually uneasy (anxious and worried) about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink; or about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life greater [in quality] than food, and the body [far above and more excellent] than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father keeps feeding them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by worrying and being anxious can add one unit of measure (cubit) to his stature or to the span of his life? And why should you be anxious about clothes? Consider the lilies of the field and learn thoroughly how they grow; they neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his magnificence (excellence, dignity, and grace) was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and green and tomorrow is tossed into the furnace, will He not much more surely clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not worry and be anxious, saying, What are we going to have to eat? or, What are we going to have to drink? or, What are we going to have to wear? For the Gentiles (heathen) wish for and crave and diligently seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows well that you need them all. But seek (aim at and strive after) first of all His kingdom and His righteousness (His way of doing and being right), and then all these things taken together will be given you besides (verses 25-33, The Amplified Bible).

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

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Kenneth Copeland — Build Your Financial Foundation

20 Sep

Kenneth And Gloria Copeland

Never try to build a house without first laying a foundation.

I don’t care how eager you are to get it finished, how excited you are about filling it with furniture and decorating it all just right—take the time to put down a solid foundation first. If you don’t, that house will be so unstable it will soon come tumbling down.

That’s simple advice, isn’t it? Anyone with any sense at all knows it. Yet in the spiritual realm, people make that mistake all the time. They see a blessing God has promised them in His Word, and they are so eager to have it, they ignore the foundational basics of godly living and pursue just that one thing.

That’s especially true in the area of prosperity. Often, people are so desperate for a quick financial fix, they just pull a few prosperity promises out of the Bible and try to believe them—without allowing God to change anything else in their lives. Of course, it doesn’t work and those people end up disappointed. Sometimes they even come to the conclusion that it wasn’t God’s will for them to prosper
after all.

But I can tell you today, from the Word of God and from personal experience: It is definitely God’s will for all of His children to prosper!

That’s why He inspired the Apostle John to write, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth” (3 John 2). The margin says, “I ‘pray’ above all things.”

Notice there, however, that John didn’t just say, “I desire (pray) for you to prosper.” He said, “I desire (pray) for you to prosper as your soul prospers.” He tied financial prosperity to the prosperity of your mind, will and emotions—your soul.

God’s plan is for us to grow financially as we grow spiritually. He knows it is dangerous to put great wealth into the hands of someone who is too spiritually immature to handle it. You can see dramatic evidence of that fact in the lives of people who have acquired financial riches through this world’s system, apart from God. In most cases, such riches just help people to die younger and in more misery
than they would have if they’d been poorer.

That’s because they use their wealth to sin in greater measure. They use it to buy all the cocaine they want and drink all the alcohol they want. They use it to pay for an immoral lifestyle that eventually destroys them.

The wages of sin is death. That is an inescapable fact. So, when people get money and use it to sin, it does them more harm than good. As Proverbs 1:32 says, “…The prosperity of fools shall destroy them.”

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

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