Whenever you find yourself stumbling into failure or sin, check your love life. Sit down with the Lord and ask Him to show you if you’re in strife with anyone or if you’ve taken offense. If you have, the devil can come in and trip you up.
As a preacher, I’ve seen that happen countless times. I’ll be preaching about something and some believer will get upset with me about it. He’ll decide I’m wrong and go off in a huff—and first thing you know, he’s in trouble.
There is nothing—absolutely nothing—that is more important than learning to love. In fact, how accurately you perfect the love walk will determine how much of the perfect will of God you accomplish. That’s because every other spiritual force derives its action from love. For example, the Bible teaches us that faith works by love. And answered prayer is almost an impossibility when a believer steps outside of love and refuses to forgive or is in strife with his brother.
Most of us would never dream this verse could apply to us. After all, we’re believers! We’d never say that there is no God.
But maybe we should think again. It’s true that with our mouths we would never say something like that...but don’t we sometimes say it with our actions?
We say it by sinning just a little here and there and thinking it won’t matter. We’ll go to an immoral movie or have a gossip session about the pastor, ignoring God’s command to the contrary.
With our actions we’re saying, “There is no God.”
One area of our lives we believers have particularly neglected is the area of our relationships. We simply haven’t heeded the Word of God where they’re concerned. We’ve fussed with one another and criticized one another so much that we’ve hindered the forces that God has given us to make us successful in this world. That’s right! Strife causes trouble in the spirit realm.
It opens the door to the devil. It keeps our prayers from being answered. It even keeps our angels from moving on our behalf!
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.
Most believers don't know anything about true humility. If you tell them they're the righteousness of God, they'll fight to keep from believing it. You can give them scripture references to prove it, and they'll still argue.
"Oh no," they'll say, "I'm not righteous. I'm just an old sinner saved by grace." They're making a sincere attempt to be humble. But they're sincerely wrong. They're so afraid of being exalted by pride that they've let Satan trick them into falling right into it.
If you give the devil place, he will take it. You have to stay alert and keep your shield of faith high because if you don't, he'll turn around and steal back from you the ground you just took.
There have been people who have received their healing and have fallen back into their old thinking patterns of sickness. They let their faith down and gave the devil an opening. When he came along with an old symptom, they weren't ready for him. They fell victim to his counterattack.
Self-consciousness is a major problem in the Body of Christ today. It keeps us from doing the things God tells us to do. Instead of simply obeying Him, it makes us start to wonder, Now what will people think of me if I do that? What if I command that person to get out of the wheelchair and he doesn't get up? What if I start believing for prosperity and go broke? What about that, God? I won't look too good, will I?
Too often we ask God to fix the problems around us when what He really wants to do is solve the problem within us. I did that myself for years where my weight was concerned. I prayed and prayed for God to help me lose weight. Yet I experienced repeated failure. I lost literally hundreds of pounds, only to gain them right back again.
Finally one day, I made a firm decision. I told God, "I am not going one step further until I find out what to do about this!" Then I went on a fast, shut myself away from everyone, and determined to hear from God.
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.
Times of hardness are inevitable. You need to know that. It's true that we've been redeemed from the curse, and there's nothing Satan can do to reverse that, but he is going to challenge you on it.
So don't be surprised when things get tough. Times will come when you have to stand strictly by faith, when you'll have to speak and act as though what God says is true even when you can't feel it or see it happening around you. There will be times when everything looks terrible. That's when you must endure hardness as a good soldier.
We believers need to start watching our language! We need to quit throwing words around like they weren't important and start using them like our lives depended on it--because, according to the Word of God, they do! (Proverbs 18:21).
Too many of us have what Proverbs 19:1 calls a perverted mouth. Having a perverted mouth means more than lying and using profanity. It means having a disobedient mouth. It means saying things that are out of line with the Word of God.
There's a dimension of living you can only experience when you make a decision to please the Father in every activity of your life. In that dimension, Jesus becomes real to you and manifests Himself to you.
Just after the turn of the 20th century, God poured out His Spirit and started a revival on Azusa Street. It was an awesome time, a time when people's entire lives were turned inside out. Everything else in their world seemed to lose importance. Supernatural things were happening. God was manifesting Himself in their presence.
The living Word of Almighty God is the only power strong enough to discipline your flesh. It's the only power that can cause you to think, look, talk and act like a born-again man.
When I became a Christian, I was dominated by a horrible smoking habit. I tried to quit every way I could think of but nothing worked. After months of struggling and failing, I decided to attend some meetings in Hilton Sutton's church in Houston, Texas. Before I went into those meetings, I tucked my cigarettes above the sun visor in my car and left them there.
So many believers are unsure of their ability to hear God or know His voice. They're always afraid that they won't be able to tell when the Spirit of God is talking to them.
What they don't realize is this: Hearing the voice of the Spirit is a privilege that the Bible says belongs to every believer (Romans 8:14). All we have to do to exercise that privilege is to receive it by faith and put ourselves in a position to hear.
Next time the devil tries to tell you that you can't hear God's voice, remember that.
Praise precedes victory!
You can see a graphic example of that in 2 Chronicles 20. There, the Bible tells us that a multitude of forces was marching against Israel. The army of Israel was so outnumbered, they literally didn't know what to do. So they fasted and prayed until they received a word from God. "Be not afraid or dismayed at this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God's" (2 Chronicle 20:15, The Amplified Bible).
Years ago, God spoke a phrase to Gloria's heart that I've never forgotten. She'd been asking Him to teach her to walk in the spirit, to operate more fully in the supernatural power of God.
In consistency lies the power, He said.
That revelation was tough for me. In the natural I'm anything but consistent. My human nature tends to be up one day and down the next. But, praise God, I don't have to depend on my human nature to get me by. I have Jesus Christ living within me and He's the same yesterday, today and forever!
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!
Being peculiar. That's not something most of us work to achieve, is it? But, you know, we should.
God has called us to be peculiar—to stand out from the rest of the world as living proof of His power and His love (1 Peter 2:9).
He doesn't, for example, want us to share the ailments of the world. He doesn't want us to share their sickness and poverty and failure. He's never wanted that for His people.
Walking in the spirit. That's the key to overcoming the flesh. If you follow the prompting of the Spirit of God within you, you won't be dominated by the pressure your flesh tries to put on you.
As you listen to the written Word and the Holy Spirit telling you what to do, you'll constantly be making little adjustments in your life according to what He says. And those little adjustments will keep darkness from overtaking you.