Gloria Copeland:
"GOD HAS YOUR MIRACLE ON HIS MIND"
What do you need from God today?
Stop and think about that for a moment. It's a serious question. Picture yourself the way you want to be, healthy and whole in every area of your life. That is the will of God for you, you know. 1 Thessalonians 5:23 says He desires you to be "preserved sound and complete [and found] blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah)" (Amplified Bible)
God wants you to be sound and complete. It's His perfect will for you to be whole, undamaged and intact--spirit, soul, and body--before Jesus returns. In light of that fact, let me ask you again: What changes would you need God to make for His will to be fulfilled in your life? What would it take for you to be whole?
It would take a miracle.
That may well be what you're thinking right now. If so, I am here to tell you God has one for you. He has as many miracles as you need. He is the God of the miraculous.
What's more, He is thinking about you today. That's amazing, isn't it? The fact that the Almighty God, the Creator of Heaven and earth, has you and me on His mind is almost more than we can comprehend. Yet we know it's true because the Psalmist says, "How precious it is, Lord, to realize that you are thinking about me constantly! I can't even count how many times a day your thoughts turn towards me. And when I waken in the morning, you are still thinking of me!" (Psalm 139:17-18, The Living Bible).
Just imagine that! When you woke up this morning, God was thinking about you. He was aware of your needs. He was mindful of the blessings He has laid up for you, and He was making plans to get them to you.
In other words, when you awoke this morning, God had your miracle on His mind.
Every Part Precious
I preach about healing a lot, and healing is wonderful. But sometimes you need more than healing, you need a miracle. A miracle is different. A miracle is something that is absolutely impossible apart from the supernatural working of God. It's something that cannot happen by natural means.
If you have a disease, you need healing. But if you have a part missing--if you were born without fingers or toes, for example, you need a miracle. For years, it's been prophesied that we will see those kinds of miracles again in the Body of Christ. It's been prophesied that we'll see all the miracles the early Church saw and even greater miracles than those. I sense in my heart that we're there!
I truly believe it. They might say, "Surely, you don't expect to see somebody grow a part on their body where there was no part before!"
Yes, I do. God has parts for people! The Bible says He made all of our parts before we were born, and we can easily believe that. Why is it so unthinkable that He could add another part at a later time if it's needed?
Just before the verses we read that tell of God's thoughts about us, Psalm 139 says:
"I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them" (verses 14-16).
According to those verses, God wrote down all your members (every part of you) in His book. And because God does all things well, He didn't write them down as broken or missing. He wrote them down as whole and intact.
My friend Billye Brim has revelation of that, so she speaks to her body according to those Scriptures. She says, "My parts are written in God's book. So, parts, I command you to be the way God designed you to be. I command you to be whole and complete in agreement with God's book. All my parts are intact with nothing missing, nothing broken. All the parts of my body function and work as they're designed. I receive what the Book says about me!"
You may not have thought God cared about your parts, but He does. Your parts are as important to Him as they are to you. He made them for you, and He wants you to have them the way He made them. We need to get that revelation, because God is ready to restore some parts. He wants to work miracles!
You might think this would be impossible and, naturally speaking, you'd be right."With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26). "All things are possible to him that believeth" (Mark 9:23)so we need to start believing.
We need to start expecting the impossible!
It's Never Too Late
Of course, people with physical abnormalities or missing parts aren't the only ones who need miracles. Miracles are also needed when natural circumstances have gone on so long that it looks like it's too late for a turnaround. Abraham and Sarah needed that kind of miracle, for example. They needed a child for their lives to be whole and intact. Yet they were well past childbearing age when God told them He was going to give them one. They were about 100 years old.
No doubt, their natural thought was, Even if God did heal our barrenness, it's too late for us now. We're too old. That kind of thing can't happen this late in the game.
But God did it for them, didn't He? He proved that it's never too late for a miracle.
A friend of ours experienced a "never too late" kind of miracle in his family. His name was Justus Du Plessis and although he went home to be with the Lord a couple of years ago, he experienced some amazing things during his lifetime as a Pentecostal minister in South Africa. On one occasion, his father was desperately ill. In fact his father's death was so imminent that the doctor who came to see him went ahead and filled out his death certificate.
After the doctor left, the church members gathered around to pray and while they were praying, he was healed. Do you know what he did? He got up, took a shower, milked the cows and then walked to the doctor's house to return his death certificate.
Talk about a miracle coming late in the game! You know it's late when you have to take back your own death certificate!
Clearly with God, it's never too late for a miracle.
The Definitive Factor
Okay now, you may be thinking, if God wants to give me a miracle and I want to receive one--what's the problem? Why hasn't a miracle already taken place in my life?
For a miracle to get from Heaven to earth, a divine connection has to be made. Miracles aren't magic. They don't just happen--poof!--because God decides to wave His miracle wand one day. No, miracles primarily occur when people put themselves in position to receive them.
To find out how to position yourself for a miracle, you can study the miracles in the New Testament. As you do, you'll see patterns emerge. You will find certain elements were almost always involved when miracles happen.
The first of those elements is faith. Whenever a miracle takes place someone on earth is believing. It might be the person who needs the miracle. It might be the person who is ministering. It might be someone praying for the one who is in need. The situations may vary, but the fact remains that it is faith in God which connects the power of Heaven with the need on earth. For a miracle to happen, someone has to believe that God is willing and able to do it--and do it now.
Galatians 3:5 confirms that. There the Apostle Paul, rebuking the Galatians for their legalism, asks this question: "Does He Who supplies you with His marvelous [Holy] Spirit and works powerfully and miraculously among you do so on [the grounds of your doing] what the Law demands, or because of your believing...?" (The Amplified Bible).
The answer is obvious. God works miracles because we believe! We could look at one miracle after another and see that truth in action.
In Mark 5, when the woman with the incurable issue of blood receives her healing, Jesus says, "Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole" (verse 34).
In Mark 10, when blind Bartimaeus receives his sight, Jesus says, "thy faith hath made thee whole" (verse 52).
In Luke 17, when the leper is not only healed but his body parts are restored and made whole from the disease that had eaten them away, Jesus says, "thy faith hath made thee whole" (verse 19).
In Acts 3, when Peter and John heal the man who was crippled from birth, they give glory to the name of Jesus. And Peter says, "And His name through faith in His name hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know: yea, the faith which is by Him hath given him this perfect soundness" (verse 16).
It's interesting to notice that the power of God isn't mentioned in most of those instances, just the faith of the people. I think that's because God's power and His willingness to heal and work miracles never changes. The variable is people's faith. Faith is the definitive factor. Just Do It!
As important as faith is, however, that alone won't get the whole job done. You can't just sit around believing on the inside and doing nothing on the outside. For faith to come alive you have to take action. As James 2:26 says, "faith without works is dead."
You can see the connection between "doing" and "receiving" in the very first miracle Jesus ever performed. I especially like to think about this miracle because it was clearly not a miracle Jesus planned to do. It was one that was drawn out of Him by the person who most wanted that miracle--His own mother Mary. John 2 tells us that she and Jesus were attending a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the host ran out of wine. Mary looked to Jesus to do something about it. He told her His time to do such things had not yet come, but her faith was unshaken. She continued to expect a miracle, and she turned to the servants and said:
"'Whatever He says to you, do it.' Now there were six waterpots of stone standing there, as the Jewish custom of purification (ceremonial washing) demanded, holding twenty to thirty gallons apiece. Jesus said to them, 'Fill the waterpots with water.' So they filled them up to the brim. Then He said to them, 'Draw some out now and take it to the manager of the feast [to the one presiding, the superintendent of the banquet]'" (verses 5-8, The Amplified Bible).
What happened when the servants did what Jesus said?
They saw a miracle. The water was turned into wine!
It would serve us well to always remember what Mary told the servants that day. She said, "Whatever He tells you to do, do it." That's one of the major keys to receiving a miracle.
Whatever the Lord says to you--do it.
If the Lord tells you to get up and run, then get up and run. If He tells you to dance and shout, then dance and shout. One time a man attended Healing School, and during the meeting the Lord told him to run. He didn't want to run in the meeting, so he ran out the door--ran outside and ran around the block. If you think that's silly, think again, because he came back in healed!
Whatever the Lord tells you to do, do it!
If He tells you to repent of something, you repent. If He tells you to forgive someone, forgive them. He knows what you can do that will bring you into position to receive. So listen for His instructions, then obey!
Kick Doubt Out
Once you've believed and acted on your faith, refuse to doubt or fear. When the devil comes to you and says, You're not going to get that miracle. You don't deserve it. Remember how many times you've failed God. Refuse to entertain those doubt-producing thoughts. Instead, just answer him and say, "Bless the Lord, I don't get what I deserve. I get what Jesus bought for me. I get the mercy of God. I get a miracle!"
Every time I think about refusing doubt and fear, I think about the story of Jairus. Initially, when he came to Jesus, his daughter needed a healing. She was very sick, and Jairus believed if Jesus came and laid His hands on her, she would be healed. But before that healing could take place, Jairus' daughter died. Suddenly the girl didn't just need a healing, she needed a miracle.
Do you know that Jesus wasn't disturbed by that? He knew that God could work a miracle just as easily as He could perform a healing. So He said to Jairus, "Do not be seized with alarm and struck with fear; only keep on believing" (Mark 5:36, The Amplified Bible). We know that this worked because the little girl was raised up whole.
That's a good word for all of us who are positioning ourselves for a miracle. No matter what the devil says, no matter what our circumstances may say, no matter what our natural senses might try to tell us--if we'll refuse to doubt, refuse to fear, and keep on believing God, our miracle will surely come!
Gloria Copeland
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Newark, TX