beliefs

Jesus said the Holy Spirit would guide us into all truth. Not just enough truth to get by on. Not just an occasional truth to help us teach our Sunday school classes. All truth!

If you're a businessman, that means the Holy Spirit will show you how to increase your profits and reduce your expenses. If you're a mother, it means the Holy Spirit will show you how to settle arguments between your children. If you're a student, it means the Holy Spirit will show you how to excel in your classes.

Are all your needs met today? If not, why not?

According to the Word of God, it's either because you're not praying about them at all or because when you do pray, you're praying wrong.

What does it mean to pray wrong? In many cases it simply means to pray without expecting results. Many believers do that, you know. They use prayer as a kind of spiritual wishbone. They just play around with it. This probably won't do much good, they think, but who knows? It won't hurt to give it a try.

Words are serious business. And, as believers, we need to get serious about learning how to use them. We need to begin to put them to work for us like God Himself does. The Bible tells us that He uses words to “call those things which be not as though they were” (Romans 4:17).

Most of us don’t have the faintest idea how to do that. We’ve spent our lives “telling it like it is.” We’ve constantly used our mouths to report on the sorry state of affairs around us. Thus, the very thought of calling “things which be not as though they were” seems a little crazy.

How does the devil see you? Does he see you as a terrifying and mighty warrior of God...or does he see you as a wimp he can whip in a minute?

The answer to that question depends on you. I realized that one day as I was studying the children of Israel and their failure to enter the Promised Land. The key to their failure is found in these words: “And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”

The devil has used the traditional teaching of Paul’s thorn in the flesh to talk believers out of the blessings of God for years, to try to convince us to settle for everything from sickness to sin—and to do it of our own free will.

It is perhaps the most destructive and the most widely accepted misinterpretation of Scripture that exists in the Body of Christ today. I’ve gone into countries to preach to people who hardly had any knowledge of the Word at all and still I have found that somehow they’d been taught about Paul’s thorn.

And most of them have been taught wrongly.

What happens when you hesitate to do something God has told you to do? Your adversary takes the first step. The devil gets the jump on you.

If you want to live by faith, hesitation is one of the most hazardous habits you could ever have. It comes from being indecisive. The Bible says a man like that is “unstable and unreliable and uncertain about everything he thinks, feels, decides” (The Amplified Bible).

The Spirit of God is delivering a vital message to you today: Get ready for Jesus’ return! It’s an old message. But there’s a fresh urgency to it. An urgency you can’t afford to ignore.

Some believers make the mistake of saying, “Oh well, I just don’t think we’re supposed to know about the Second Coming. It’s supposed to come upon us like a thief in the night!”

God has given you a promised land. It’s a place flowing with milk and honey, where your every need can be met. A place where you can keep sin underfoot as you rule and reign with Christ. A place where no weapon formed against you will prosper. A place where you are seated with Christ in heavenly places, far above principalities and powers—far from oppression.

As you study the Word of God, you’ll find that’s an accurate description of the kind of victory you should be experiencing in Christ—not in the sweet by-and-by—but right here, right now.

The more you fellowship with God around His Word, the more you’ll know the “power outflowing from His resurrection.” You’ll develop joy. You’ll develop faith. You’ll start developing God’s own characteristics...just by fellowshiping with Him. You’ll begin to understand who you really are in Jesus.

I remember one day I was reading the story of the woman with the issue of blood who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment and was healed.

Have you ever been in the position in the past where every time you opened the Bible you received a river of revelation? Does it seem lately that the river’s run dry? If so, I strongly suggest that you backtrack to the last revelation God gave you. Back up and see if you acted on it, if you did what God showed you to do. If you didn’t, start again, digging in to that revelation and then putting it into action in your life. You’ll soon find new revelations are beginning to flow.

A lot of people have been playing games when it comes to the Word. They claim to be faith people in public. But, in private, they never open the Bible at all. Then, when a time of trouble comes and they try to stand on the Word, they fall flat on their spiritual faces.

Well, the time for playing games is over. It’s time for us to realize that real faith involves action. James 2:20 says faith without works [or corresponding action] is dead.

So many times when we need insight into a problem, we try to get it by focusing our attention on that problem. We study it. We ponder it. We examine it from every angle. But the Apostle Peter gives us a different approach. He says we should take heed (or focus our attention) to the written Word of God until the answer to that problem dawns on us through the light of revelation.

God is not full of surprises. He’s not an unpredictable being who likes to keep you guessing. Countless believers, however, have the idea He is.

“You just never know what God is going to do,” they say. They base that idea on 1 Corinthians 2:9 which says, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” They interpret that scripture to mean that God is keeping secrets from His people.

But, praise God, He isn’t!

Some people find it difficult to believe God’s promises because they’ve seen so many things in the natural world that seem to contradict them. They’ve seen faithful tithers go broke. They’ve seen sick Christians fail to receive their healing.

In reality, it would be more accurate to say that they think they’ve seen those things. Because, you see, there’s a deceiver at work in the world. A deceiver who’s busily doing the same thing he’s been doing ever since the Garden of Eden: tricking mankind into believing God’s Word isn’t true.

If you know how to listen to the voice of God, you can hear Him calling throughout the Body of Christ today. He is calling for unity. He is calling us to lay down our disagreements and come together in preparation for Jesus' return.

Just the thought of that scares some believers. "How can I unify with someone from another denomination?" they say. "I'm not going to give up my doctrines and agree with theirs just for unity's sake!"

What they don't realize is this: scriptural unity isn't based on doctrine.

As a believer, you have the power of the Holy Spirit inside you. But that power won't go to work until you put it to work!

The Holy Spirit won't just muscle in on you. He won't come in and turn down the television set and jerk you up off the couch and say, "Now you listen to Me."

No, He's a gentleman. He's sent to help you to do the will of God, to strengthen you, to counsel you...but He won't do a thing until He's asked.

That's why the book of James says if you're in trouble or afflicted, pray. It's prayer that puts the power within you to work.

People go to great lengths trying to wring knowledge from God when all they need to do is go to the Bible. God's not holding Himself back from anyone. It's His will for every man and woman to walk in revelation of Him.

"Well now, Brother Copeland," you might say, "God's not going to give all these sinners out here a revelation." Really? Why do you think He sends evangelists to preach to them? Why do you think He sent His Word? To reveal the truth!

Recently, God has been raising up ever-growing numbers of people who are hungry. Hungry to know their Lord in a deeper way. Hungry to serve Him—in pulpits, on mission fields, in homes, in office buildings and anywhere else He might choose to send them.

They are people who simply aren't content to find the path of least resistance and coast their way into heaven. No, they're determined to run the race...to run, as the apostle Paul said, to obtain the prize. Spiritually speaking, they are on the road to excellence.

Are you among them?

The world's order of things is unsure and indefinite. Desperate words of uncertainty are crying out daily from radio, television and newspapers. Everything around us seems to be in turmoil.

But, praise God, if you're a believer you have something you can depend on: the unchanging Word of God!

God has no double standard. He doesn't say one thing today and something else tomorrow. He is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Believing. That's the key to everything in the kingdom of God. It's the way we tap in to the very power of Almighty God. Most of us know that. But few of us are sure exactly how to do that kind of believing. We don't know how to put it into action.

Actually it's so simple, it's startling. It's as simple as saying, "I believe I receive."