On the Wings of Faith

by Kenneth Copeland

Take a moment to declare with gusto: This is my Bible. This is my LORD speaking to me. I am what it says I am. I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do. Whatever God’s WORD says, I believe it! I have it! It’s mine! Hallelujah!

One morning not too long ago, I was sitting on the deck behind our house looking out over Eagle Mountain Lake. I had just finished my morning routine, which includes reading the healing scriptures I keep taped to my bathroom mirror. Fresh on my mind were these verses from Psalm 103:

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s (verses 2–5).

As I sat there enjoying the view of the trees and the water and praising The LORD, I noticed some buzzards flying around overhead. Suddenly, a bald eagle swooped by and joined them. Eager to get a better look at him, I said, “LORD, send him back around!” He did, and as the eagle circled by me again, I was reminded of those verses and thought, God is renewing my youth like that bird’s! The eagle is a magnificent bird. What thrills me most about them is their aviation skills. As a pilot, when I’m confronted with a thunderstorm I have to go around it (unless I’m flying a Citation X or Gulfstream that has a ceiling of 50,000 feet). Mr. Eagle, however, doesn’t have to do that. Instead, he takes flight and uses the updraft in front of that storm to his advantage.

He puts his wings in “climb mode” at just the right altitude and locks them in place, so he doesn’t have to flap. Then, he allows the updrafts to keep lifting him higher. He has air sacs in his lungs that enable him to go to high altitudes so, once he’s above the storm, he can stay there as long as necessary. He can circle around, looking down on everything and enjoy himself.

Why can he do that?

God created him that way.

God created us as believers that way too! He created us to mount up in victory with wings as eagles (Isaiah 40:31). He gave every one of us the measure of faith (Romans 12:3) so that when the storms of life start swirling around us we don’t have to run from them. Instead, we can go into climb mode. We can take flight on the exceeding great and precious promises in God’s WORD and lock our spiritual wings into just the right altitude.

If a storm of sickness threatens, we can lock into a healing altitude. If lack threatens us, we can lock into a prospering altitude. If clouds of defeat start to gather, we can lock into a victory altitude. We can keep rising higher on the wings of faith and overcome!

When I think of what can happen when a believer locks into God’s WORD like that, I’m reminded of Joel Osteen’s mother, Dodie. Many years ago, she faced a storm that, in the natural, she had no way of surviving. I’ll never forget the day she and John (Joel’s dad) called Gloria and me to tell us she had been diagnosed with liver cancer. According to the doctors, her condition was fatal. The cancer had progressed to the point where they said there was nothing medical science could do to help her.

Gloria and I prayed and agreed with her and John for her healing, of course, but Dodie knew better than just to depend on other people’s faith. She knew she had to use her own, so she went into climb mode. Once the doctors gave their diagnosis, she never went back to the hospital. Instead, she put together a list of healing scriptures.

From then on, every morning when she got up, she read them. During the day, she read them again. In the evening, she read them again. She didn’t quote them from memory. She read them all, out loud, every day, three times a day. She also acted on those verses. She behaved not according to how she felt but according to what she believed—The WORD of God. James 2:17 says, “Faith, if it does not have works (deeds and actions of obedience to back it up)…is destitute of power” (Amplified Bible, Classic Edition). So, even though Dodie felt so weak sometimes she could hardly walk across the room, she refused to go to bed.

Your Most Important Business

Not only did Dodie Osteen end up overcoming that particular storm, but she has also been flying high, in health, ever since. Decades have come and gone, and she is alive and well today. John has already gone to heaven, but Dodie is still going strong. Gloria and I were privileged to be there for her 75th birthday, and we can confirm that she is vibrant and full of the Spirit of God. Dodie eventually published that list of healing scriptures she put together. I have most of them marked with tabs in my Bible. A number of them are on the list of healing scriptures that I read every day from the list posted on my bathroom mirror.

“But Brother Copeland,” you might say, “I don’t understand why you keep reading those same verses every day. By now, surely you can remember what they say.”

Certainly, I can. But God didn’t tell me just to remember His WORD. He said:

“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 to all their flesh” (Proverbs 4:20–22).

People here in Texas (especially if they’re from the country) don’t generally use the phrase attend to like the Bible does there. Instead, they just say, “tend to.” If they’re focused on something that’s a priority, they talk about having to tend to it. If they’re on the way to an urgent appointment, for example, and somebody wants them to stop and chat, they’ll say, “I’d like to visit with you, but I have some important business I have to tend to first.”

For us as believers, God’s BOOK is our most important business! We must tend to it first and foremost. How do we do that? By keeping that BOOK in front of our eyes, not only by reading and saying it aloud, but by seeing ourselves in the light of it.

When you read in Psalm 103, for instance, that God forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, you see yourself forgiven, healed and well. When you read in 2 Corinthians 8:9 that though Jesus “was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich,” you see yourself very, very prosperous. You see yourself out of debt and “furnished in abundance for every good work and charitable donation” (2 Corinthians 9:8, AMPC). This is how God’s WORD becomes life to you and health to your flesh. You see yourself in it. You think about it. You meditate on it. You call yourself what it calls you.

From the time I was a young boy I had trouble sleeping. I’d lie in bed at night, hour after hour, wide awake. After I got born again, however, and started reading The WORD, I found out I can call myself asleep. I saw in Psalm 127:2 that The LORD “giveth his beloved sleep,” and realized that sleep is a gift from God. So, I wrote that verse along with some other sleep scriptures on a piece of paper, and put them on my nightstand. Now, instead of lying awake half the night, when I go to bed I call myself what The WORD calls me. I say, “Thank You, LORD, that I am fast asleep.” And very soon I am.

“Well, that’s just silly,” somebody might say.

No, it’s not. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s operating like God does. He “calleth those things which be not as though they were” (Romans 4:17). That’s how He accomplished what He did with Abram. He said to him , “A father of many nations have I made thee” (Genesis 17:5). Talk about something that, in the natural, sounded silly! At the time, Abram was about 100 years old; his wife, Sarai, was 90; had been barren all her life; and they’d never had a child together. Nevertheless, God said, “I made you a father of many nations, so that’s what you are,” and He changed Abram’s name to Abraham (which means “father of many nations”). From then on, Abraham called himself what God called him, and in less than a year he became exactly what God said. God works the same way with us as believers today. He said, “by whose [Jesus’] stripes ye were healed” (1 Peter 2:24) and made us well. So that’s what we are. As we agree with Him by faith and call ourselves healed, what God has already done manifests in our body and, like Abraham, we become what God said.

This is how God’s WORD becomes life to you and health to your flesh. You see yourself in it. You think about it. You meditate on it. You call yourself what it calls you.

Pay Closer Attention Than Ever

According to Mark 11:22-23, by faith in God we can have what we say. All too often, however, God’s people are saying what they have. That’s the reason so many are stuck in defeat. They’re calling themselves sick when they want to be healed. They’re calling themselves broke when they want to be prosperous. Charles Capps used to compare this to calling the cat when you want the dog to come.

“The cat is sitting right here,” somebody might say. “Why are you calling the cat if you want the dog?”

“Because I can see the cat and I believe in just calling it like it is.”

Now, that is silly! It’s also a recipe for failure, because as long as they keep calling the cat, the dog is not coming. When you call things in your life what the Bible calls them, however, you can be sure they are coming! They are going to manifest because the Bible is a BOOK of covenants. Every one of its exceedingly great and precious promises are backed by the precious blood of Jesus. They are all yes and amen in Him (2 Corinthians 1:20).

Next time you pick up your Bible, remind yourself of that. Take a moment to declare with gusto: “This is my Bible. This is my LORD speaking to me. I am what it says I am. I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do. Whatever God’s WORD says, I believe it! I have it! It’s mine! Hallelujah!”

Once you’ve said that, open up your Bible and read it. Return time and again to the verses and promises you’re standing on by faith. Go back over them, keeping in mind Hebrews 2:1 that says, “We ought to pay much closer attention than ever to the truths that we have heard, lest in any way we drift past [them] and slip away” (AMPC).

The LORD spoke to me about this where aviation is concerned when I first started flying our ministry airplane. Knowing that because I’d been a pilot for years, my familiarity with flying could lead to carelessness and I could let things slip, He said: You’re flying for Me now, and you need to change your attitude about some things. Even if you’re just repositioning the airplane from one airport to the other, I want you to plan the flight. Don’t just kick the tires, light the fires and take off. Believe Me and plan the flight.

Familiarity can lead to sloppiness, and sloppiness can be dangerous. It’s been said that most car wrecks, for example, happen within 25 miles of home. That doesn’t mean you need to move. It means that when you get close to home, you need to keep your wits about you. You need to make sure you don’t quit watching what you’re doing because you’re so familiar with the area. I don’t care if you’re just going around the block, fasten your seat belt. Be aware of what you’re doing. Be attentive to the details involved in driving.

Do the same with God’s WORD. Find out what it says to you and about you, and once you find it, attend to it. Keep those exceeding precious promises before your eyes, in your ears, on your mind and in your mouth. Keep reading them—and don’t let them slip. I’ve learned from experience how easy it is to quote something over and over without noticing how much I’m altering it. I’ve done that with songs I’ve recorded. After years of singing a song, I’ve gone back and listened to the original recording and thought, I didn’t realized I’d changed that. But without being aware of it, over a period of time I did. It just happened.

Don’t let that happen with the Scriptures! Go through your Bible and put tabs on the pages to mark the exceeding great and precious promises of God you are claiming by faith. Turn to them often and read them out loud like Dodie Osteen did. Write them on notepaper and index cards and tape them to your mirror and your nightstand. Lock into them so that when the storm comes (and the storms of life come to all of us) you can face it with The WORD in your heart and mouth and overcome it. Like the eagle, you can ride high to victory on wings of faith!

POINTS TO GET YOU THERE

1. Just as the eagle has physical wings, you have wings of faith to lift you to victory. (1 John 5:4)

2. You can lock into God’s exceedingly great and precious promises by faith and triumph over every storm. (2 Cor. 1:20)

3. When sickness threatens, you can lock into a healing altitude by faith in God’s healing promises. (Psalm 103:2-3, 5)

4. When lack threatens, you can lock into an altitude of abundance by faith in God’s prosperity promises. (2 Cor. 8:9)

5. Keep reading and declaring God’s promises so you don’t let them slip. (Heb. 2:1)

Keep those exceeding precious promises before your eyes, in your ears, on your mind and in your mouth. Keep reading them—and don’t let them slip.

If you need healing in your body, look up the following verses and read them aloud daily. Refuse to give in to doubt and unbelief. And remember, God’s WORD works!

Ex. 15:26

Ex. 23:25

Deut. 7:14-15

Deut. 30:19-20

1 Kgs. 8:56

Ps. 91:9-10, 14-16

Ps. 103:1-5

Ps. 107:19-21

Ps. 118:17

Prov. 4:10

Prov. 4:20-24

Isa. 41:10

Isa. 53:4-5

Jer. 1:12

Jer. 30:17

Joel 3:10

Nah. 1:9

Matt. 8:2-3

Matt. 8:16-17

Matt. 18:18-19

Matt. 21:21

Mark 11:22-24

Mark 16:14-18

Rom. 4:16-21

Rom. 8:2, 11

2 Cor. 10:3-5

Gal. 3:13-14, 29

Eph. 6:10-17

Phil. 2:13

Phil. 4:6-7

2 Tim. 1:7

Heb. 10:23

Heb. 11:11

Heb. 13:8

Jas. 5:14-16

1 Pet. 2:24

1 Jn. 3:21-22

1 Jn. 5:14-15

3 Jn. 2

Rev. 12:11