To understand how this prescription works, you must realize that the Word of God is more than just good information. It actually has life in it. As Jesus said in John 6:63, “It is the spirit that quickeneth [or makes alive]; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”

Every time you take the Word into your heart, believe it and act on it, that life of which Jesus spoke, the very life of God Himself, is released in you. You may have read the healing scriptures over and over again. You may know them as well as you know your own name. Yet every time you read them or hear them preached, they bring you a fresh dose of God’s healing power. Each time, they bring life to you and deliver God’s medicine to your flesh.

That’s because the Word is like a seed. Hebrews 4:12 says it is “alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]” (The Amplified Bible). It actually carries within it the power to fulfill itself.

When you planted the Word about the new birth in your heart, then believed and acted on it, that Word released in you the power to be born again. By the same token, when you plant the Word about healing in your heart, believe and act on it, that Word will release God’s healing power in you.

In Isaiah 55:10-11, the Lord describes the process this way:

For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

Add to that the promise in Jeremiah 1:12 where God says, “…I am alert and active, watching over My word to perform it” (The Amplified Bible), and you can be certain God’s Word is powerful medicine you can count on to produce results every time.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

There is a medicine so powerful it can cure every sickness and disease known to man. It has no dangerous side effects. It is safe even in massive doses. And when taken daily according to directions, it can prevent illness altogether and keep you in vibrant health.

Does that sound too good to be true? It’s not. I can testify to you by the Word of God and by my own experience that such a supernatural medicine exists. Even more important, it is available to you every moment of every day.

You don’t have to call your doctor to get it. You don’t even have to drive to the pharmacy. All you must do is reach for your Bible, open to Proverbs 4:20-24 and follow the instructions you find there:

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 [Hebrew: medicine] to all their flesh. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. Put away from thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee.

As simple as they might sound, those four verses contain the supernatural prescription for divine health. It’s a powerful prescription that will work for anyone who will put it to work.

If you have received healing by the laying on of hands, following this prescription will help you maintain that healing. If you have believed for healing, but are experiencing lingering symptoms, it will help you stand strong until you are completely symptom-free. And, if you are healthy now, it will
help you stay that way—not just for a day or a week, but for the rest of your life!

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

By believing God and including the needs of the Body of
Christ in your needs, you become an open channel for the
things of God to flow through to others. Everything you have
received from God flowed through Jesus. Did Jesus ever lose
anything by giving it to you? No, He still owns it all. First John
4:17 makes a startling statement, “…as he is, so are we in this
world.” This does not say as He was or as we are someday going
to be; it says as he is, so are we. In His position at the right hand
of God, Jesus has more than enough to give. Well, we are His
joint heirs, and He is ready to see to it that we have enough to
give (see Philippians 4:10-19).

An example of this channel can be seen in the book of
Revelation. God gave His revelation to Jesus, who signified it to
His servant John by His angel; the angel gave it to John; John
was to give it to the churches; and they, in turn, would give it
to the Body of Christ who would feed it to the world. A constant
channel, a constant flowing—the flow of love…the flow
of power…the flow of money…the flow of food…the flow of
everything you need!

The basic principle God has planned to use in supplying the
Body of Christ and allowing the Body of Christ to supply the
world is summed up in one verse from Ecclesiastes, “Cast thy
bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days”
(Ecclesiastes 11:1). Give, and after a while it will come back to
you again. You have to start “casting your bread” sometime—
tomorrow will never do. You can’t wait until your bread comes
back before you cast it out. Many are waiting for their ship to
come in who have never sent one out! Things don’t work that
way. It would be like saying to a stove, “Give me some heat, and
then I’ll put in some wood.” You give—then it will be given to
you again. The key is to give continually. As you are walking in
the Word and God’s prosperity is being produced in your life, you
will reach a point when your bread is coming back to you on
every wave! It is your job to put it on the water. It is God’s job to
see that it comes back! You do your job and let God do His, then
you will be continually receiving. The more you give, the more
you will get; the more you get, the more you will have to give.
God intended for these things to work this way. When you get to
this point, more will be coming in than you can give away!

Satan operates in a way exactly opposite from this. Everything
he does spells filth and stoppage. When you see a wicked
man with a great amount of wealth, you are looking at a financial
reservoir created by Satan to stop the flow. “And Jesus
looked around and said to His disciples, With what difficulty will
those who possess wealth and keep on holding it enter the kingdom
of God!” (Mark 10:23, The Amplified Bible). If a man has a million
dollars in a safe and won’t spend it, it is absolutely worthless—
to him and to everyone around him. There are many people
who could benefit from it, but he has the channel blocked. The
only one profiting from this kind of thing is Satan. He uses the
forces of hate, fear and greed to keep financial resources locked
up. Proverbs 1:19 tells us that greed takes away the life of its
possessors. Satan can show you how to make money, but he
can’t show you how to keep it. Selfishness is never able to maintain
what it builds—it always destroys.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Now, a big question in the minds of many Christians is does
Satan bless people financially? Many times it looks as though the
ungodly men have all the money, but this is not true. There is
more wealth hidden away than they will ever possess. The Bible
says plainly that God will cause us to have the hidden wealth of
the world, the hidden riches of the secret places (see Isaiah
45:3). The Word tells us that “…the wealth of the sinner is laid
up for the just” (Proverbs 13:22). Why then does the sinner
have it? Because there are certain facts of financial law that will
work when put to work. Israel has proven this. God taught
Abraham certain things that the Jews are using today, and they
are still working. You won’t find a Jew who believes in poverty
because poverty is not in the Old Covenant. It is in religion, not
in the Bible. It was put into Christianity as a religion during the
Dark Ages when the Word was taken from the people and put
away in monasteries. Poverty oaths were fed into Christianity
when the religious hierarchy took over. The men operating it
were not born-again men.

You can look at the world’s system of finance and see a perfect
picture of Satan’s whole pattern. It can be stated in just a
few words—“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and
to destroy” (John 10:10).

How do you kill a body of water? Stop it from flowing.

How do you kill a physical body? Stop it from functioning.

How do you kill the Body of Christ financially? Pile up all
the money in reservoirs and stop it from moving. Satan is a
deceiver. Absolutely nothing he does is a blessing. Proverbs
1:32 confirms this, “The prosperity of fools shall destroy them.” It
may look as if he is blessing, but he always destroys. He always
presents a dead end, no way out. In fact, if you want to discern
between the work of God and the work of Satan, remember:
Satan always tells you there is no way out, but Jesus says, “I am
the way” (John 14:6). If it is doubt, defeat or discouragement, it
is from Satan—ALWAYS.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

There is a basic, fundamental truth that runs throughout
the entire Bible, throughout God’s history of dealing with man.
Every time there was a need, no matter what that need was,
God had a man somewhere who had the resources—spiritually,
mentally or financially—to meet that need. For Israel, there
was Moses. For the world, there was Jesus. For Jesus, there was
a man with a donkey. For Ephesus, there was Paul. The Bible
says God gave gifts to men—apostles, prophets, evangelists,
pastors, teachers (see Ephesians 4:11). He had a man to provide
every need. No one person will ever be so spiritual that he
doesn’t need other people. We all need one another.

Begin to include the Body of Christ in your needs. Begin to
include the lost in your needs. If a man came to you needing
clothes and you didn’t have any clothes to give him, both of
you would be in trouble. You need clothes for yourself, and you
need to be able to supply him with clothes. Jesus said, “Why do
you worry about what you will eat and what you will wear?
Your heavenly Father knows you have need of these things”
(see Matthew 6:31-32). But He also said, “Give, and it shall be
given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together,
and running over, shall men give into your bosom” (Luke 6:38).

When I realized this and began to consider the needs of
others before my own, I found that my needs were met supernaturally!
It was uncanny! I had spent practically all of my
adult life in debt. It seemed that every business venture I tried
just fell apart, leaving me even further in debt. Then I turned to
the Lord, determined to commit myself to His Word, and began
walking my bedroom floor with my Bible in my fist, shouting at
the top of my voice, “My God meets all my needs according to
His riches in glory by Christ Jesus!” I just kept confessing this
hour after hour, day after day! My situation looked absolutely
impossible at the time! I had no place to preach and nothing
much to say! (One thing I could say was, “My God meets all my
needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus!” I knew
that sentence very well!) Eleven months later I was completely
out of debt. In the meantime, I learned to include other people
in my needs by giving to them and getting involved with them.
When I began to give, I suddenly realized one day how very
busy I was with God’s work. Years have come and gone and I
haven’t caught up yet. When you do this, God will move heaven
and earth if necessary to reach you.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

To live a prosperous life, your soul must prosper in all the
truth of the Word. God’s power is in direct relationship with
His Word. He has used His Word to release His power. He has
sent His Word to us so that we may be in contact with His great
power. Isaiah was quoting God Himself when he wrote, “So
shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not
return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please,
and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11).
His power covers the entire spectrum of human existence—so
also then does His Word. We can see it in scriptures such as
Hebrews 1:3 that says He is upholding ALL things by the Word
of His power and Hebrews 4:12-13 that the Word is a living
thing which covers spirit, soul, body and thought life. It even
goes so far as to say that nothing in the earth is hidden from the
Word of God.

Your faith is in direct relation to the level of the Word in
you. Get your Word level up so that you can believe spiritually,
mentally, physically, financially and socially. Thus you will be in
the position to handle any problem that comes your way
according to the Word of God. You may not have the answer,
but God has! Getting through to you is His only difficulty! God
always knows the answer, but we are not always in a position to
hear what He is saying.

If you know how to use God’s ability to receive healing and
never use it to help anyone but yourself, then it won’t work for
you very long. If you can believe God for healing, help someone
else get healed. Spread it around! If you know how to
believe God financially, start helping the people around you.
You will begin to grow as you reach out to others.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Once again, we have the world’s information opposing
God’s information. If you know what God thinks or what He
has said, then you have a very easy task of thinking and believing
the same way. If you know what God has said, you cannot
be deceived.

To the world, prosperity, like everything else, is completely
born of the senses, or the sense-ruled mind. The world is governed
by natural impulse and the physical senses. Its slogan is
seeing is believing. If you can see it, taste it, hear it, smell it, or
feel it, then it must be true; if you can’t contact it with
your physical senses, it is not true.

As we have discussed earlier in this chapter, the world’s definition
of prosperity is very limited in its scope—financial ability
and power. In fact, it goes only this far by its own admission.
The world itself admits that it has no power to overcome poverty,
sickness, spiritual ills or social ills.

True prosperity is the ability to use God’s power to meet the
needs of mankind in any realm of life. This covers much more
than just finances, politics and society. Money is not the only
degree of prosperity. You can have all the money in the world
and still be poverty-stricken spiritually, mentally and physically.
Money is the lowest form of power that exists on earth. Do you
know what is the highest? The power of prayer! You can pray in
the Name of Jesus, and God will use His ability to handle your
situation, whatever it is. It takes the power of God to make
you completely whole. God’s power is the only power that
covers the entire spectrum of human existence. God is more
than enough!

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

God has a highly organized system to meet the needs of
every facet of your life. The world’s system of meeting our
needs works exactly opposite from God’s system. God’s system is
totally adequate. The world’s idea of anything is very limited at
best and stands a 99.9 percent chance of being totally wrong.
As believers, we must be careful not to limit God in our individual
lives to what the world says is so. The problem with the
world and its system of operations is that there is a spiritual
mad dog loose in it and his name is Satan.

The world has a system of healing that is a miserable
failure! We thank God for what good has been done with it, but
we are forced to admit it falls far short of being adequate to
meet the needs of the sick around us. Some men are dedicated
to it as if it were a god. The world’s system of healing makes a
god of the hospital and a god of medicine. Actually, for the
most part, it leaves God out entirely, and without God, it will
not work! There is no way to get healing except through the
power of God, either directly by His power or by the power He
built into the human body. No man on earth can heal apart
from God.

There are two choices before you—the world’s system of
healing or God’s system of healing. God’s system and its laws
are contradictory to the world’s system. The world cannot
understand God’s system of caring for the human body. The
Bible says the things of God are foolishness to the world (see
1 Corinthians 2:14). God made the human body. He definitely
should be able to repair it. Ford Motor Company has that much
sense! If they can build the whole car, surely they can build
parts for it.

We haven’t known much about the law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus and a lack of understanding has caused problems in
making this law function for our benefit. The Apostle Paul wrote,
“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the
renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). In order to be successful
at God’s business, we must understand how His system works.
Don’t expect God’s best to come from the world’s system. He will
work around and through it in order to reach you, but it is
always far below His best.

The absolute priority in studying prosperity is that you
should never think of it from a carnal viewpoint, from the
world’s attitude. You must train yourself to think in line with
God’s Word. If you’re not careful, when you think of the laws of
prosperity, all you will see is money—only a very small part of
prosperity. True prosperity is God manifesting Himself to us in His
Word. If He is manifesting Himself through His Word, He is
always within easy contact because you can handle the Word.
The only way you can have God with you on a continual daily
basis is through His Word. We should not judge by our feelings
or by our emotions, but by what God has said in His Word.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

The Bible says God’s Word is established forever, and it is
law (see 1 Peter 1:25). When God speaks, His words become
law in the world of the spirit. Jesus said, “Man shall not live by
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
God” (Matthew 4:4).

The success formulas in the Word of God produce results
when used as directed. Mark 11:23 says, “…whosoever shall say
unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea;
and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things
which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he
saith.” Here Jesus introduced a principle—a spiritual law—that
works. It doesn’t make sense to the natural mind that with faith
you can have whatever you say even though it may be contrary
to what you can see with your physical eyes, but Jesus said it
and by the eternal Almighty God, it is so! When you act on it,
mix your faith with it, don’t doubt in your heart, this spiritual
law will work for you!

Do you see how this functions? The laws of prosperity
work the same as the laws of salvation, healing and so forth.
We are dealing with the same God, the same Word, the same
Jesus, the same force of faith and the same thief, Satan, who is
trying to steal it away from you! There are many people who
have the world’s idea of salvation, and they will go to hell with
it! It is wrong! Man’s good intentions have nothing to do with
eternal salvation. You can have good intentions to fly, but you
will never get off the ground until you make the proper
arrangements—until you put the proper laws into operation. A
farmer can intend to have a good crop, but if he never plants
the seed, how can he possibly produce a harvest? These laws,
both spiritual and physical, must be followed if you expect to
get results.

The Bible says in Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things
belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed
belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the
words of this law.” Any law that God has ever revealed to His
saints will never pass away. It will work every time it is put to
work. Anything God taught Abraham or his descendants about
operating financially will work just as well today as it did several
thousand years ago. If you don’t believe it, you’ve never
met a Jew! The formulas still work, and they always will! Every
law God has given us is recorded in His Word, and He sent the
Holy Spirit as our teacher to lead and guide us in these laws
and show us how they operate for one reason—so that we will
put them to work. Each time one of these laws operates, it glorifies
the Almighty God who spoke it and adds one more defeat
to Satan who said it would not work.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

As we begin this study of prosperity and how it functions
according to the Word of God, let’s read the basic scriptures on
which our whole study is founded. Let me mention here that
we are putting the Word of God first and foremost throughout
this study, not what we think it says, but what it actually says!
When we see it in the Word, believe it, and begin to act on it,
faith is created. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the
word of God” (Romans 10:17).

As you read our basic scripture text, remember Jesus said in
John 17:17, “Thy word is truth.” For a clearer meaning substitute
the Word for truth as follows: “Beloved, I wish above all
things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul
prospereth. For I rejoiced greatly, when the brethren came and testified
of the truth [the Word] that is in thee, even as thou walkest
in the truth [the Word]. I have no greater joy than to hear that my
children walk in truth [the Word]” (3 John 2-4).

It would be good to point out that when the Apostle John
wrote this epistle, he was an old man and had been in the
Christian walk for a long, long time—in fact, from the time of
his youth. He had walked with Jesus and watched Him closely
throughout His earthly ministry. John was a wise old man,
strong in the Lord, and he said, “I wish above all things that you
prosper and be in health.”

Through our traditional ideas, we have been lead to believe
that prosperity is bad or ungodly. However, John writes that
we should prosper and be in health and then it says in verse 11,
“Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He
that doeth good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath not seen
God.” If prosperity is evil, why would He want us to prosper?
You see, there is nothing wrong with prosperity in itself. Money
is not the root of all evil. The love of money is the root of all evil
(see 1 Timothy 6:10), and there are people committing this sin
who don’t have a dime! I want you to realize, however, that
prosperity covers much more than finances.

When John said we should prosper and be in health, he
added the phrase, “Even as thy soul prospereth.” Man is a spirit;
he has a soul consisting of the mind, the will and the emotions;
and he lives in a body. Thus, there is spiritual prosperity; there
is mental prosperity; and there is physical prosperity.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries