In fact, The Amplified Bible translates Proverbs 4:20 this way: “My son, attend to my words; consent and submit to my sayings.” Submitting to the Word means making adjustments in your life. Say, for example, you hear the Word in Philippians 4:4 that you are to “rejoice in the Lord always.” If you’ve been doing a lot of griping and complaining, you’ll have to change in order to submit to that Word. You’ll have to repent and alter your behavior.

In addition to inclining your ear to the Word of God, the Proverbs 4 prescription also says you must keep it before your eyes and not let it depart from your sight. In Matthew 6 6:22-23, Jesus reveals why this is so important. He says: “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”

Your eyes are the gateway to your body. If your eye (or your attention) is on the darkness, or the sickness that is in your body, there will be no light to expel it. If, however, the eyes of your heart are trained strictly on the Word, your whole body will eventually be filled with light, and healing will be the result.

I can tell you from experience how important it is to keep the Word constantly before your eyes and in your ears. Several times since I have been walking by faith, I’ve let myself get too busy to do it. And, almost before I realized it, I became too sick to stay on my feet.

On those occasions, I would immediately get my Bible and begin meditating on the healing scriptures. I would even go to sleep listening to tapes of the Word. Usually, within a few hours, I was completely healed.

There were a few times when I had to stand in faith longer. But whether my healing came instantly or over time, the wonderful truth is—it always came. God’s medicine has never failed to bring a healing and a cure in my body.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

“But, Kenneth,” you may say, “I’ve met people who know the Bible from cover to cover and still can’t get healed!”

No doubt you do. But if you’ll look back at God’s prescription, you’ll find it doesn’t say anything about “knowing” the Bible. It says attend to the Word.

When you attend to something, you give your attention to it. You make it top priority, setting aside other things so you can focus on it. When a nurse is attending to a patient, she looks after him constantly. She doesn’t just leave him lying alone in his hospital room while she goes shopping. If someone asks her about her patient, she doesn’t feel it’s sufficient to say, “Oh, yes. I know him.”

In the same way, if you’re attending to the Word, you won’t leave it lying unopened on the coffee table all day. You won’t spend your day focusing your attention on other things.

On the contrary, you’ll do what Proverbs 4 says to do. You’ll continually incline your ear to God’s Word.

Inclining your ear includes more than just putting your physical ears in a position to hear the Word being preached (although that, in itself, is very important). It also means opening the ears of your understanding by meditating on and pondering that Word. To truly hear, you must listen with the ears of your spirit to what the Holy Spirit is saying to you through the written Word. Mark 4:23-24 puts it this way: “If any man has ears to hear, let him be listening, and let him perceive and comprehend…. Be careful what you are hearing. The measure [of thought and study] you give [to the truth you hear] will be the measure of [virtue and knowledge] that comes back to you—and more [besides] will be given to you who hear” (The Amplified Bible).

The hearing referred to in these verses is not a passive activity. It requires actively engaging with God’s Word, believing and obeying it.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

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

In the spiritual realm as a born-again believer, you have life
and the ability to share it with others. You need to learn how to
give this life to meet their needs. The Word of God says, “How
beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and
bring glad tidings of good things!” (Romans 10:15). I wondered
what this really meant until I heard the story of a missionary
and his family who were captured by the Japanese during World
War II. After they were taken captive, they were told that
Washington, D.C. had fallen, that the United States had surrendered,
and that Japan was in control. Well, you can imagine
what this did to those people. They felt absolutely hopeless! The
Japanese dragged them around the country and finally began
killing them because there wasn’t enough food. They took this
missionary’s little girl and shot her. The next day they heard a
deafening roar and saw the sky covered with B-29s! Those people
just went crazy! They had been completely without hope,
laboring under the lie that their country was defeated. Later a
G.I. kicked in the door on their compound and said, “You’re
free,” and when he did, the missionary fell down before him and
kissed his boots! You have the life-giving force of God Himself
residing inside you, and the world is desperate for that life!
Don’t be stingy with it. Freely you have received…freely give.

When you make it your need to get salvation into the hands
of the people, when you make it your purpose to feed the gospel
to the unsaved, God will support what you do. This is true
prosperity! God has obligated Himself to communicate the
message of Jesus Christ to the world. He will move heaven and
earth to do it because, to the man who has never heard it, Jesus
has never died or been resurrected from the dead. To that man,
the sacrifice of Jesus means nothing. The Word says in
1 John 4:17, “…as he is, so are we in this world.” God is feeding
us through Jesus. When you go to the Lord, He has more than
enough to meet the need. Have you ever turned to the Lord
with a problem and had Him say, “Well, that’s new! You’ve
come up with something heaven can’t cover”? Of course not!
God has more than enough to solve the worst problem you
could have. Jesus is the channel to us, and we are the channel
to the world.

True prosperity is the ability to look a man in the eye in his
moment of impossibility and take his needs as your own. Those
who are spiritual are to help those who are not. We are to bear
one another’s burdens. When a brother comes to you with a
problem, join with him in prayer, join your faith with his. Put
pressure on Satan with the Name of Jesus and get him off the
man. Put pressure on the laws of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus. Lean on your righteousness in Jesus Christ. Lean hard on
it! Lean hard on your sonship. Lean hard on the blood of Jesus.
Praise God, they work!

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Suppose a man decided to save his left arm and just use
his right one, thinking that years later when his right arm got
tired, he could switch over and use the left one again. What
would happen to his left arm? It would lose its ability to function,
wouldn’t it? Now, this is a foolish idea, but the principle is
true for a man with $100,000 stashed away because of fear that
one of these days there wouldn’t be any money left.

If you are exercising this kind of fear with a few dollars, you
are just as guilty of being a reservoir—a dead end, a satanic
stoppage—as the man who stopped up a million dollars.
Someone with no more than a secondhand shirt can be just as
guilty of greed as a man with millions of dollars piled up somewhere.
One is just as deceived as the other. To a person who is
cold, a secondhand shirt looks pretty good. As I pointed out
before, the Bible does not say that money is the root of all evil;
it says the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10),
and there are millions of people committing that sin who don’t
have a dime! God can do more with 15 cents given in faith than
kings can do with mountains of gold! The little widow proved
this with her two mites (see Mark 12:41-44). Remember not to
limit God to only what you can see and understand with your
head. When the entire world is completely destitute, God will
still have plenty and can make it abound toward you. As He is,
so are we in this world. So don’t be afraid to become a cheerful,
freehearted giver.

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

You know, the Bible says in Philippians 4:19 that God will
meet your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus,
not according to your need. I have heard it preached that if you
ask God for $100 but need only $20, you’ll probably just get
$10. You won’t find that in the Bible, but God does say:

If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of
the land (Isaiah 1:19).

What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that
ye receive them, and ye shall have them (Mark 11:24).

…ye have not, because ye ask not (James 4:2).

When you act on the Word of God, the desires of your heart
will begin to grow and line up with God. Then He can cause all
grace to abound toward you (see 2 Corinthians 9:8). The first
step is to get your mind off yourself. Begin to take up the needs
of the Body of Christ as if they were your own. The Word states
very plainly that if a man comes to you needing food and
clothes, don’t just pray for him and send him away cold and
hungry. Feed him and clothe him!

Another thing, God will not just meet your needs according
to your job. Businessmen have come to me and said that these
things work for me only because I am a preacher, but this is
foolishness! I know preachers everywhere it’s not working for.
Some men say, “But I don’t have the opportunity for people to
give to me. I’m not out preaching. They don’t think of me when
they give. I have to work for mine.” Well, if you have more faith
in your job and your own ability to work than you have in the
Word of God, then it definitely won’t work for you. God will
certainly use what is available in your job to bless you or even
get you a better one, but He is not limited to your job unless you
limit Him to it. If you will stop and think for a moment, God
did not make His covenant with a preacher; He made it with a
farmer, a working man named Abram. The Scriptures show that
Abram turned to the Sodomite king and said, “I don’t even want
the string from your sandal because you could say a man made
Abram rich” (see Genesis 14:23). No man made Abraham rich.
God made him rich. Can you see this?

Kenneth Copeland Ministries