Kenneth and Gloria Copeland Ministries
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Ready to Reveal His Glory
by Kenneth Copeland
What is keeping you alive right now?
Have you ever thought about that? You should, because the answer—if you get it right and fully understand its implications—will revolutionize your life. So stop and consider for a moment…What is it within you that actually generates life?
“Well, Brother Copeland,” someone might say, “I’m alive because my heart is beating. I’m alive because my lungs are taking in oxygen and all of my internal organs are doing their job. My body is keeping me alive.”
That sounds reasonable. But it’s not accurate. I know that, not only because of what the Bible says, but from personal experience. I’ve been in hospital rooms where a person’s body was being totally sustained by life-support systems. The heart was still beating. With the aid of machines the body was breathing in and out. But anyone with any spiritual sense could tell you, that body was nothing but an empty shell. No one was home. The person who once lived there had moved out.
The second those machines are unplugged, that body will completely shut down because the life force that once kept it alive has departed. The spirit of the person is gone.
Medical science may not be clear about that fact. But every born-again believer should be because the Bible clearly tells us that our life force flows from our spirit. Proverbs 4:23 says it this way: “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”
A Storehouse of Blessings
The Hebrew text of that scripture literally says, Out of your innermost being flow the forces of life. That means it’s actually your spirit that keeps your body functioning. It’s not three meals a day that’s doing it. It’s not oxygen and water. Certainly those things are important, but in themselves they won’t make a body live.
It’s your spirit that does the job. Your spirit not only animates your body, it ultimately determines the quality of your life. It determines who you are, what you can do and what you can have—not only in this age but in the age to come.
That puts the unbeliever in a no-win situation because his fallen, sin-ridden spirit is limited. It’s cut off from the light and resources of God. An unbeliever’s darkened spirit will bind him to failure, defeat and submission to the devil while he lives on the earth; and it will doom him to eternal darkness when he dies.
As a believer, however, you’re in an entirely different situation. Your spirit is a veritable powerhouse of life and light. Reborn in the image of Jesus, your spirit has been joined eternally to Almighty God. He has invested all His resources into your inner man. As Ephesians 1:3 says, He “hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.”
Notice that verse doesn’t say God will bless you with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places someday when you die and go to heaven. It says He hath—past tense—blessed you. In other words, all God’s blessings are already yours now because you’ve been born again.
They aren’t hidden away in some heavenly warehouse where you can’t get to them, either. They are stored up in Christ, and since He has made His home in your spirit (John 14:23), it’s accurate to say that all of heaven’s blessings are stored up in you.
Think of it! The riches of heaven itself have been poured into that earthen vessel called your body, where your spirit resides. The very glory of heaven has been poured into you.
Getting a Glimpse of That Glory
When I say the glory of heaven is in you, I don’t mean it in some kind of abstract, religious sense. I mean it very literally. According to the Bible, heaven itself is illuminated by the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He’s the One who is living—in all His glory—in your spirit. He is dwelling in your heart.
Sometimes when we say that Jesus is living in our hearts, we think of Jesus as He was during His earthly ministry. We think of Him walking the dusty roads of Israel, going about doing good and healing all who were oppressed of the devil. But, as wonderful as Jesus was in His earthly incarnation, He has left that lowly estate behind. He is now the risen, glorified King of kings and Lord of lords. He has returned to His full, heavenly glory.
Here and there through the Bible, we see glimpses of Him in that breathtaking glory. Through the eyes of the prophet Ezekiel, for instance, we see Him shining from the inside out:
As the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward…as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord (Ezekiel 1:27-28).
Through the eyes of the prophet Habakkuk, we see His blazing glory illuminating the heavens with brightness like sunlight, and lightning-like rays of power flashing from His hand (Habakkuk 3:4).
Through the eyes of the Apostle John on the Isle of Patmos, we see His head and hair shining with light as white as snow, “and His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet…like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters…and His countenance…like the sun shining in its strength” (Revelation 1:14-16, New King James Version).
Every one of those prophets described Jesus as absolutely aflame with God’s glory. They saw Him radiant with heavenly fire. When I try to imagine it, I think of hardwood fires I’ve built that roared and popped until the coals were so hot they glowed with an amber or bronze color. Think of it—Jesus’ entire body glows like that with the power of Almighty God!
As He Is…So Are We
That image in itself is stunning enough. But what’s more astonishing is this: That blazing, all-glorious King of kings and Lord of lords with lightning-like power shooting from His hands and the life of God Himself roaring in Him with such white-hot force that His very body glows with it, that Jesus is the One who is living inside us. Our spirits have been re-created in His image. First John 4:17 says, “…as he is, so are we in this world”!
“But, Brother Copeland, how could that be? We’re still just flesh and blood. We live in earthly bodies. That kind of glory can’t shine through us!”
Yes it can. The Bible demonstrates that again and again.
In Genesis, when Adam and Eve were first created, they were flesh and blood but the glory of God clothed them from the inside out so completely that they didn’t need clothes. They were so ablaze with God’s glory that they didn’t know they were naked until they yielded to sin and that glorious light was snuffed out.
In Exodus, when Moses went up on the mountain to receive the commandments for Israel from God, he spent so much time in God’s glory that his face shone with it. He had so much fire coming out of his face that he had to wear a veil over it to keep from killing people when they got close to him.
In the Gospels, when Jesus went up on the Mount of Transfiguration, His earthly body was so transfigured by the fire of God’s glory that “His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them” (Mark 9:3, New King James Version). At that time, Jesus’ body was just as natural, just as much flesh and blood as ours is, yet it was totally lit up with the fire of God!
If that’s not enough to convince you that God’s glory can shine through you, consider what happened in the book of Acts when the fire of God’s glory fell again…this time not just on a few special saints but on all 120 ordinary believers who had gathered in the upper room on the day of Pentecost. Acts 2 tells us how it happened: “They were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (verses 1-4).
Most of us have vastly underestimated what actually occurred that day. We’ve imagined a noisy wind and little tongues of fire appearing like little flames from a Bic lighter over the heads of the disciples. But that’s not what happened.
The sound those 120 believers heard wasn’t an earthly wind at all. It was a sound from heaven. It was the sound of heaven pouring itself into earth, filling the atmosphere with God Himself. God left the throne and came to Jerusalem that day, and the roar that accompanied Him was so loud that everyone in the world heard it.
Along with that heavenly sonic blast came the very fire of God’s glory. It didn’t just appear as little flames over their heads. He filled the upper room. He—the One in Ezekiel 1, the One in Habakkuk 3, the One in Revelation 1—He sat on each of them, entering them in full power and glory and they absorbed it. They took into their reborn human spirits the blazing glory of the Holy Spirit Himself.
Not Just Religiously Right, but Gloriously Bright
What does all that have to do with you?
If you’re born again and baptized in the Holy Spirit, that same fiery glory is in you right now. That’s right! The same glory that lit up Adam and Eve, the same glory that made Moses’ face shine, the same glory that transfigured Jesus’ flesh-and-blood body on the Mount of Transfiguration, the same fire that filled the upper room and launched the first disciples into a ministry of power, signs and wonders the likes of which the world had never seen…that same glory now resides in the spirit of every born-again, Holy Ghost-baptized believer.
It’s actually the life force within us. Our spirits are the hiding place of the very power and glory of God!
There’s just one problem. God never intended for that glory to stay hidden. God intended it to light us up with heavenly fire so we could go out into this dark world and bring light to the people who need it. He meant for it to flow through us so fully that when we lay hands on the sick, they recover; when we cast out devils, they flee. He put that glory in us so that we could do the works of Jesus and even greater works (John 14:12).
“But I don’t know how to do that!” you might say. “I don’t know how to operate in that kind of glory.”
That’s OK…you can learn. So can I. The New Testament guarantees it. It says that “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).
The word translated knowledge in that verse refers to practical, operational knowledge. That means God isn’t withholding the wisdom we need to operate in this glory we’ve been given. If we’ll open our hearts by faith, He’ll give us revelation knowledge about it and we’ll learn to shine with His power.
He’ll give us the wisdom we need to do what Proverbs 4 says and guard our spirit above all so that nothing hinders the release of the glory that resides there. We’ll get rid of devilish stuff like strife, envy and hatred because we know that trash will cause us to walk in darkness. It will keep the glory from shining through. We’ll resist and rid ourselves of every trace of fear because we realize that fear will pollute our spirit. It will short-circuit the light.
We’ll walk in love—love for God and love for each other—not because we want to be religiously right but because we want to be gloriously bright. When we miss it, we’ll repent quickly and get back on track walking in the light as He is in the light. Then the blood of Jesus will keep us cleansed from all sin and our spirits will overflow continually with the glory and power of God.
That’s what true prosperity overflow is all about! And we’re right in the middle of it now. We are grasping the revelation of this and becoming beacons of light—all of us shining together with the glory of Jesus Christ in the darkest time this earth has ever known. We are reaching out to others with hands filled with the lightning-like splendor of God’s power and finishing the job Jesus left us here to do. Together, in the Word and the power of His Name, we are more and more every day revealing His marvelous glory.
Courtesy of: KCM.org(Kenneth and Gloria Copeland Ministries)
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