Kenneth Copeland — Determine your Destiny

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Gloria Copeland

But the more I studied the Word and meditated on
it, the more my thinking changed. Hope began to
develop. I grabbed hold of 2 Corinthians 9:8 that
says, “God is able to make all grace abound toward
you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all
things, may abound to every good work.”

An inner image of all my needs being met with
plenty left over for every good work began to grow
by God’s Word. I began to see it on the inside. I
got a revelation of it. After that it wasn’t a matter
of how God would meet my financial needs. It was
a matter of fact that He’d already met them. All I
needed to do was get in line with Him. After a while,
that revelation was so real in my consciousness
that I began to think like a man without debt. I
began to talk like a man without debt.

It wasn’t long until Gloria and I were totally,
completely debt free. We didn’t owe anybody
anything and God was the One Who had done it.
We hadn’t asked anybody for a dollar.

I’ve never written an appeal letter in this ministry
and I never will because I don’t have to. My needs
aren’t met by your giving. My needs are met by my
giving because I’m standing on the Word that says,
“Give and it shall be given unto you” (Luke 6:38).
That’s why my needs are met. God is my source,
so I don’t have to put any pressure on you. Now,
God may use your giving to meet my need, but
that’s not where my earnest expectation is built.
My hope is built on the forever Word of God’s
promises.

I learned how to think that way by studying Jesus.
He never looked to people to meet His needs. It’s a
good thing, too. One time when He was preaching,
everyone in His congregation walked out. They just
got up and left. The only people who stayed were
the members of His own staff.

Did He get upset about it? No, He just went right
on to the next place and held another meeting. That
time He had a landslide. But the landslide didn’t
affect Him any more than the walkout because those
people weren’t His source. God was His source. He
was there to help them. He didn’t call them there
to help Him. They did help Him, but not because He
pressured them to.

Do you get the picture? I did. Thirty-plus years ago,
it came alive inside me. I took hold of it and it
changed my financial life forever.

I got a picture of prosperity from God’s Word, and
faith made that picture a reality. That’s how the
process always works. First you have to have the
hope, then faith goes into action. Hope is the inner
image. Faith becomes the substance of that image.
Hope is the blueprint. Faith is the material.

Faith can’t build on wishes. How many times have
you heard someone say, “I sure do wish God would
do something for me”? The rest of the statement
hangs unspoken in the air, “…but He probably won’t.”
That’s not faith. That’s unbelief. But it works the
same way faith does—only backward.

Fear is actually faith in the negative dimension. It’s
faith in failure, danger or harm. When someone is
meditating on negative thoughts or, “worrying,” as
we call it, he or she is developing inner pictures. Not
pictures of hope, but pictures of despair.

Just as fear is the flip side of faith, despair is the
flip side of hope. It’s an inner image of failure,
sickness, poverty or whatever else the devil wants
to inject into you. Despair is actually hope in the
negative and fear, like faith, brings it to pass.

Do you see how powerful this process is? This is
the process that controls the course of your life.
These inner images, whether they are of hope or
despair, become the blueprint for your faith or fear,
and ultimately control your destiny.

Once you understand that, you hold the key to your
future. You hold the key to becoming everything
God wants you to be. It doesn’t matter where you
are right now. You may be sick. You may be broke.
You may be defeated. It doesn’t matter!

What you must do is dig into the Word and begin
building your hope. Start developing God’s pictures
within you. As long as you have an image of your
own defeat on the inside of you, you’re destined to
be defeated on the outside as well. But change that
inner image with the Word of God and no demon
in hell will be able to hold you down. Jesus came to
change the inner man. “If ye continue in my word,”
He told us, “then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you
free” (John 8:31-32).

Get that truth working inside you. Put it in there until
hope begins to paint new pictures in your heart.
Then, hang onto those pictures relentlessly. Don’t
ever let them go. Eventually— inevitably—faith will
make those pictures as real on the outside as they
are on the inside.

“For as he [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he”
(Proverbs 23:7). It’s the pictures inside you that
determine your destiny. Get yourself some power
pictures. God’s Word is full of them. The question is,
are you?