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Orders from Headquarters
by Kenneth Copeland
Lord, please tell me Your will for my life!
Every Christian I know has prayed those words at least once. Most of us have prayed them hundreds of times.
Without a doubt, that’s a prayer God wants to answer. Yet all too often, believers remain frustrated. Seemingly unable to hear specific instructions from the Lord, they end up wandering around in a spiritual twilight, incapable of clearly seeing the unique path God has planned for them.
If you’ve ever wondered why that is, this one fact may shed some light on the matter for you: If we, as believers, are ever going to receive God’s specific instructions for our lives, we must first obey the general instructions He has given us.
We must hear and obey the first and second commands God has given us in His written Word before we will be able to hear His still, small voice giving us more detailed instructions about our daily lives.
That makes perfect sense to me. Years ago when I reported for basic training in the U.S. Army, we first learned our general orders. General orders are the overall military requirements everyone in uniform must obey. Once we understood those orders, we learned about the direct orders which were given to us by our superior officers. Finally, we heard about the orders of the day. The orders of the day contained detailed, specific information we needed—what uniform to wear, what time to report where, and what to do when we got there.
Obviously, all those orders were important. But I figured out real quick that if I didn’t keep those first two sets of orders, I’d never hear the orders of the day. Do you know why I wouldn’t hear them? Because I’d be locked up in a military jail somewhere!
If I’d received orders, for example, to serve at a base in Arizona—where it’s 100 degrees at night and an absolute oven in the daytime—the Army would expect me, first and foremost, to show up at that base. I didn’t have the option of saying, “Hey, I think I’ll just go serve at that base in Hawaii instead.” If I had showed up in the islands with a lei around my neck asking for my orders for the day, do you think I would have received them?
Certainly not. The Army doesn’t work like that.
Neither does the kingdom of God.
As soldiers in the army of that kingdom, we’ve been given general orders by the Commander in Chief. Those commands are mandatory and they are vital—so vital that everything else in our lives hinges upon our obedience to them.
Matthew 22 is one of the many places in the New Testament we find those general commands. There we read about a young lawyer asking Jesus a crucial question: “Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (verses 36-40).
No. 1: Receive God’s Love
Love God. Love others. Those are the general orders of the kingdom of God. And direct orders to each member of the Body of Christ. They are easy to remember. Simple to understand. Yet, have you ever failed to live by them? And as a result, have you been unable to find God’s specific will for your life and break through to your destiny? If so, you’re not alone!
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
There are definite things you can do to step up and step into obedience to those two all-important commands. The first is simply to receive God’s love for you.
“What?” you may ask, “I thought this was about me loving God…not about God loving me!”
It is. But the Bible says, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
In other words, the cycle of love begins with God. His love for us is what ignites within us a love for Him and a love for others. Receiving His love is what enables us to obey our general commands.
So, let me ask you a question. Do you know how much God loves you?
Most believers don’t. Yet Jesus told us plainly just before He went to the cross. He prayed to the Father for His first 12 disciples and for all who would believe in Him, and said, “You have sent me, and have loved them as You have loved Me” (John 17:23, New King James Version).
I’ll always remember the day I first read that. Sitting in our little, shotgun-style house in Tulsa 38 years ago, I’d made a commitment to the Lord that if I saw anything in His Word, I’d believe it, confess it and alter my lifestyle to fit it. But when I read that verse, it staggered my mind. I thought, Dear Lord, did I read that right? Does that say God loves me as much as He loves Jesus?
For a moment old religious thinking tried to rise up and stop me from accepting it. There was no question about it, though. The scripture plainly said God loves me as much as He loves Jesus. So I began to say that out loud and as I did, joy came rushing in!
If you’ll receive the love of God, the same thing will happen to you. So start right now. Open your mouth and say, “God loves me just as much as He loves Jesus!” Say it like you mean it. Keep saying it and thanking God for it until the truth of it begins to saturate your heart.
And when the devil tries to convince you God doesn’t love you that way, tell him to shut up! Don’t give his lies any place in your thinking. Stop them short by praising God right out loud and saying, “Father, thank You for loving me so much. Thank You for giving Your own Son for me that I might not perish. I receive that love now, in Jesus’ Name.”
No. 2: Believe God’s Love Is in You
Here’s the second thing you can do to walk in obedience to God’s general commands: Believe that the love God has for Jesus actually abides and lives in you.
Believe, as Romans 5:5 says, that the love of God has been shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Ghost. Believe, as Jesus said in John 17:26, that the love with which God loved Jesus is in you. First John 4:15-16 says, “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us.”
Think about that. The creative principle of the heavens, the very love of God Himself has been imparted into your spirit and you have been authorized to love others with it.
When you begin to believe that, you activate within yourself the most powerful force on earth. You’ll start loving everybody. You’ll not only love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, you’ll start loving and praying for the meanest people you know. You’ll be so full of love, you won’t have to work at releasing it…it will just begin to overflow.
I know that from experience. One morning, not long ago, I was walking down the hall of our home meditating on how much God loves me and how His love dwells in me. Suddenly, the presence of God surrounded me. I wasn’t up on Mount Sinai or any place special, I was just on the way to my kitchen for breakfast, and I got totally caught up in God’s love.
When I did, gratitude and love just poured out of me. I started saying, “Oh Lord, I love You so much. I’m grateful for the green grass outside. I’m grateful for the sky and the birds that fly in it. I’m so grateful for Your strong arms that sustain me and Your strong hands that care for me. I love You...I love You…I LOVE YOU!”
Do you know what happened when I said that? God answered me back. Clear as can be, in my spirit I heard Him say, I love you, too. And that made me love Him even more!
No. 3: Practice, Practice, Practice
When you start receiving and believing God’s love, you’ll experience His presence and love. You’ll find that it isn’t a struggle to love Him and receive His love. Then you’ll be ready to take the next step and begin using and practicing that love on other people.
Exactly how do you go about doing that?
You can start by taking time to really forgive people who have wronged you. Don’t just casually say, “Oh, I forgive So-and-So.” Rather, in prayer take time to picture that person in your mind. Lift him before God and say, “Father, I turn the unloving feelings I’ve had toward this person over to You. I will not be bitter against him. I surround him with love.”
Imagine Jesus walking up behind that person and putting His big arms around him, bringing peace to him. Then just keep confessing, “I love that person as much as I love myself.” Don’t hurry through it. Take time to cleanse your spirit.
Spend extra time loving God and focus on forgiving people who have been especially hard cases in your life. Pray for them at night before you go to bed. Shut off the radio in your car and confess your love for the Lord, and for them, while you drive to work.
In addition, start to practice being agreeable. Consciously endeavor to live and walk in harmony with those around you—especially with your family, pastor and people at church. The devil will work the hardest to get you into strife with them because he knows when you’re in agreement, there’s power!
You activate the promise Jesus gave in Matthew 18:19-20: “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
Refuse to get into strife in any area. Don’t allow yourself to become accustomed to being angry. Stop getting mad at your car…computer…and traffic lights. When you let yourself get irritated at the physical things around you, you’re actually practicing being angry. Before you know it, you’ll be shooting off your mouth at somebody and you’ll sound angry, even if you aren’t.
Ask me how I know!
The Lord really had to jerk the slack out of me about this. I had to deal with it in my own life. So, I can tell you firsthand what to do. Every time you catch yourself saying something angry and unloving—whether you’re talking to a thing or to a person—repent out loud. Say, “I judge myself for that in the Name of Jesus. I’m not full of anger, I’m full of the love of God.”
It’s amazing what that will do for you. The more you practice being agreeable and kind, the more agreeable and kind you’ll become. The car and the computer may not appreciate it, but the people around you will. They’ll be glad you’re not acting like an angry bad-mouth anymore.
No. 4: Don’t Just Sit There. Do Something!
Another way you can practice the love of God is by looking for secret ways to bless people. Give someone a gift and write a little note on it that says, “The Lord told me to give this to you.” But, don’t put your name on it. Just stand back and watch, and then give the Lord all the praise and glory.
Actions like that will charge up your confidence in the love of God dwelling within you. And that indwelling love will spring to life. Faith and love work hand in hand. Faith needs action. It’s not enough to sit around believing the love of God is in you. You have to get up and do something. As James 2:14-17 says: “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead.”
If your love life is dead, resuscitate it by putting love into motion. Go to your closet, pull out the best you have and give it to somebody who needs it. Better yet, secretly slip them a gift certificate so they can go buy something brand new!
Don’t do it to be seen or appreciated. Do it purely out of love. You’ll experience so much joy! You’ll get excited about giving to and loving others.
No. 5: Become God-Inside Minded
Finally, seal the deal on your life of love by continually confessing, “Greater is He—who is love—within me than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).
Cultivate within yourself the conscious awareness that God Himself, your very own heavenly Father, is walking with you and talking with you 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (2 Corinthians 6:16-18).
Become God-inside minded. Say to yourself, “When I walk, God walks. His hands are in my hands. I have the mind of Christ. God is not a million miles away. He’s inside me right now. He’s my Father and I’m His very own son. I’m a joint heir with Jesus and my body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.”
When you begin to live in the light of that revelation—when you begin obeying and abiding by God’s general commands of love—you won’t find yourself wandering around in the spiritual twilight, trying to find your way. No. You’ll be walking in the light of heaven itself. You’ll be hearing specific orders from headquarters at every turn! You’ll be treading on the path of the righteous, which is like the light of dawn that grows brighter and brighter every single day!
Courtesy of: KCM.org(Kenneth Copeland Audio)
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