The Power of HOPE

by Kenneth Copeland

At this very moment, the creative power that made the universe is living inside you.

That’s a startling statement, isn’t it? If it is true, it should revolutionize your life.

Think about it. If you had access to the power that created the world, it would be hard to feel sorry for yourself for very long, wouldn’t it? You’d look pretty silly sitting around being the victim of circumstances.

Here’s the amazing fact: If you are a born-again child of God you do, in fact, have inside you His supernatural, creative power. That’s not just an exciting idea. It’s not hypothetical. It’s the plain truth of the gospel.

Most believers are shocked when I say that because they don’t fully understand what happened to them when they were born again. They don’t realize they actually became a new species of being. John 1:1213 says, “As many as received [Jesus], to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

You are born of God! Do you understand that? The moment you received Jesus Christ as your LORD, the Spirit of the living God came to live inside you. Your inner man was reborn in His image. God literally became the Father of your spirit. Just as your body took on the same genes and traits of your natural mother and father when you were born, your spirit took on the spiritual “genes,” so to speak, of your heavenly Father when you were reborn.

Your spirit took on His hope, His faith, His Love— and all the other spiritual forces that are characteristic of Him. All of them together are called eternal life. The Greek word for it is zoe. It’s a word that defies definition. So the best way I can explain zoe is by saying it’s the part of God that makes Him God. And He invested zoe in your spirit when you made Jesus The LORD of your life.

The tragedy is, most believers have never learned how to take advantage of it. They walk around with the power of God Himself on the inside of them and never do a thing with it. That’s why, today, I want to show you how to start tapping in to the power of God within you by focusing your attention on one particular aspect of that power: the force of hope.

Why hope? Because hope is one of the three most powerful elements in the universe. It is one of the three eternal and living substances that run the entire kingdom of God.

First Corinthians 13:13 says, “Now abideth faith, hope, charity [or love], these three.” Take note of that word abide. Abide means “make a home somewhere.” So, the Bible is telling us that faith, hope and love make a home together.

Gloria and I make a home together. We abide in the same house. We live there together because we need one another. Faith, hope and love need one another in much the same way. They abide together because they need each other’s assistance to carry out what they are designed to do.

Importance of Hope

Most people understand how crucial faith and love are. But few understand the importance of hope. They’ve never realized that without hope, faith and love simply can’t function effectively.

Biblical hope is more than just wishing for something. Wishing carries an element of doubt. Biblical hope carries no doubt. In fact, the word hope in Greek indicates “earnest expectation of something about which there is no doubt at all.”

This isn’t a human kind of hope. It is God’s kind. It’s one of the supernatural forces He used to create the universe and He put it inside you when you were born again. What I want to teach you today is how to use this hope. But before you can use it, you have to be absolutely certain you have it.

“But, Brother Copeland, you don’t understand. My circumstances have been so bad for so long, I don’t have any more hope!”

Yes, you do! Hebrews 6:19 says, “Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast.”

You may feel totally hopeless right now. This may be the most hopeless moment of your entire life. But, according to The WORD of God, you have hope. So the first thing you need to do is acknowledge that. Say, “Thank God, I have hope!”

You may be in the deepest hole of your life. But if The WORD says you have hope, then glory be to God, you have hope!

Plant the Seed of Hope

The next thing you need to do is plant that hope so it can grow. Jesus told us the whole kingdom of God is compared to a man who plants a mustard seed in the ground. Even though that seed is the smallest seed there is, it grows up and becomes greater. Hope is of the kingdom of God so it works the same as that seed.

So, if you plant your hope, if you focus it on a particular problem in your life, it will grow up and become greater. Greater than what? Greater than the problem!

Once it’s planted, you have to feed and water it with The WORD of God. The WORD is what energizes hope and makes it strong. It has the supernatural ability to stir up inside you a sense of expectancy about what God has promised. If you feed on God’s promises, hope grows.

As you spend time in The WORD and meditate on those promises, you begin to expect them to happen. The “earnest expected” mechanism within you—this supernatural force called hope—takes over your imagination and causes you to see God’s promises fulfilled in your life. It paints images in your heart and mind that will eventually become reality in your life. Thus, as you feed on God’s promises, hope grows.

But that process also works in reverse. If you feed on the world’s junk, that same “earnest expected” will begin to partake in the despair of the world. If you feed it enough of the world’s information, you’ll begin to earnestly expect your children to get hooked on drugs. You’ll earnestly expect to lose your job, and earnestly expect to get the flu. You will join in on the recession everyone is talking about and fully expect it to ruin your finances.

Once you start earnestly expecting those things, you’ll start talking about them, “for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matthew 12:34). You’ll start calling things that are not as though they were—and you know what will happen after that? Those things will start happening in your life!

That’s how your “earnest expected” mechanism works. It’s a flawless system that never breaks down. But you’re the one who determines which direction it goes. It’s your choice. You can feed it with The WORD of God and get hope or feed it with the words of the world and get despair.

You may think your circumstances are tearing you apart, but I have news for you: Your circumstances are not the problem! All circumstances, I don’t care what they are, must bow their knees and submit to the Name of Jesus and The WORD of God when faith, hope and love are brought to bear on them.

When I first began to understand how hope works, I was a 30-year-old student at Oral Roberts University. I had been out of school 13 years and I was really struggling.

I had flunked algebra in high school. (As a kid, I never could figure out why anyone would want to put parentheses around a bunch of numbers. It made no sense to me, so I just didn’t pay any attention to it.) Now, there I was facing a college algebra professor. He said, “Good morning,” on the first day and that was the last thing he said that I could understand.

Naturally speaking, the situation looked hopeless. But I went to the library and checked out a high school algebra book to help me. I would study 15 or 20 minutes when suddenly my brain would freeze up. It would just quit on me as if the circuits were overloaded.

At first I didn’t know what to do. Then I discovered I could pray in the spirit and get my brain going again. I’d walk around the room praying in other tongues until my brain began to relax. I’d sit down and study for another 15 minutes or so until my brain would stall again. Then I’d get up and pray in the spirit and it would break loose every time.

I did that over and over again. Finally, I progressed to the point where I could study 30 minutes, then 45, then an hour. Eventually I could study all night long if I wanted and still be just as refreshed mentally as when I started.

Do you know what saw me through that situation? Faith and hope! Hope painted a picture inside me with The WORD of God. Hope told me that no matter how impossible algebra might seem to me, I could understand it because I had the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16).

Hope enabled me to see myself studying and understanding without freezing up, to see myself on the other side of the barriers. That’s what I didn’t have in high school. That’s what kept me going. I’d see that picture in my imagination and I’d get up and pray in the spirit until another piece of the puzzle came through.

Lay Hold of Hope

Do you see now how to put the process of hope to work? It’s not easy. It’s not something you can work on for a minute or two and ignore the rest of the time. That’s why the Bible says to “lay hold upon the hope” (Hebrews 6:18).

To lay hold means to “sink your spiritual teeth into something and to refuse to let go, knowing it’s working—regardless of how you feel, regardless of what the circumstances look like, regardless of what the devil (or anyone else!) says.”

You have to be diligent. Verses 11-12 say, “We desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end: that ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” If you want hope to work for you, you’re going to have to practice it continually. You can’t do it in spurts. You can’t wait until your life is falling apart and then jump up suddenly and get full of hope in about two hours.

No, this is something you do all day, every day. You build your hope continually. Then, when the devil brings bad feelings and pressures you to tear down your hope with words of despair, you refuse to give in to that pressure. Refuse to allow your feelings to dictate your conversation—and make no exceptions at any time!

That’s diligence. It’s the difference between military life and civilian life. When you’re on the battlefield you had better be diligent. You can’t afford to slack up. If you do, the enemy will get you before you know what has happened.

You need to understand that we’re in a battle. We’re not civilians in the kingdom of God. We’re warriors. As 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 says, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) casting down imaginations.....”

Pay close attention to that last phrase: casting down imaginations. Have you ever been driving along in your car when suddenly you imagined yourself having a terrible wreck? It might not have been a long, drawn-out thought, just an image flashing across your mind.

I’m going to tell you something very crucial right now. Don’t ever, ever, ever let a thought like that slip past you, even if it is only a brief, seemingly unimportant thought. If it includes an image of your destruction, cast it down. Say out loud, “No! I refuse to let that thought remain in my mind. I cast that imagination down in the Name of Jesus!”

That’s what it means to be diligent in casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. You must stand guard over your imagination all the time.

Sometimes, when circumstances are very bad, get your Bible and some teaching CDs or DVDs and go off by yourself until you stop negative thoughts from bombarding your mind. Gloria and I have done that many, many times. Years ago, we did that where our children were concerned. It was obvious from the circumstances that the devil was after them and the pressure was getting worse and worse.

Finally, we decided to deal with the situation head-on. We spent one whole day piled up in the middle of the bed with our Bibles and our notebooks, looking up every scripture we could find about children. We wrote them all down, prayed over them and made an irrevocable declaration.

We said, “On the basis of the promises of God and by the blood of Jesus, our children are not going to hell. The WORD of God says our children are taught of The LORD and great is their peace, and that settles it forever.”

Then, no matter what happened, we stood our ground in the Name of Jesus. To keep from wavering, we had to cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the word God had given us about our children. We had to bring all our thoughts into captivity and into obedience to that word. All our thoughts!

“Well, I try to do that, but sometimes I just can’t help what I think.”

You most certainly can. God’s WORD says you can. It says, “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Philippians 4:8).

God’s WORD tells you to choose what you think, and cast down what you’re not going to think. When you do that, hope will work. It will work for you just like it works for God. In fact, if you’ll guard your mind, there will come a moment when hope suddenly rises up, filled with faith and the Love of God, and completes the transaction in the realm of the spirit.

When that happens, you’ll suddenly know that what you’re hoping for is yours. It’s yours, and all the demons in hell can’t keep you from receiving it. You find yourself saying, “It’s done! It’s mine, glory to God!” Then, all that’s left is the manifestation—and it’s not far away.

If you haven’t had that experience, you need to! It’s the climax of hope. It’s how every need in your life should be met, and will be met if you’ll learn to use the forces God has put inside you.

Hope. It’s the creative aspect of God. You have it living within you right now. Realize that. Use it. Feed it. Speak it. Guard it.

Put it to work with The WORD of God and you need never be a victim of circumstance again.

Faith, hope and love need one another.... They abide together because they need each other’s assistance to carry out what they are designed to do.