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Co-founder, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Author of several books
Co-host with Kenneth, Believers’ Voice of Victory
broadcast, 500+ stations worldwide
“You would think everybody would be thrilled to hear that God is good, but the fact is, it often upsets religious people – especially preachers,” Gloria says.
Oral Roberts broke the mold in the 1940s when he began to preach about God’s goodness, and he was criticized for it. That’s because other preachers had developed sermons about how God uses sickness, poverty, and pain to teach us something.
King David understood the goodness of God. He knew that God would take care of him, provide for him, and deliver him from danger. From that revelation he wrote Psalm 23, which shows incredible insight into God’s goodness. “The Lord is my Shepherd …”. The more deeply we understand the truth of these words, the more we will be able to trust God in every circumstance of life. Our confidence in Him will make us bold when others are timid. This is what happened to David.
Everything God tells us to do is for our own good and protection. We’re His children, and He wants us to obey Him because He wants to see us blessed.
One of Gloria's friends had to learn about God’s good nature in a new way. Raised in a traditional church, she and her husband went through some tough times financially though she often prayed and asked God to send them money to meet their needs. Then she’d admonish herself for that and ask God to meet the needs of the hungry kids in China. One day the Holy Spirit showed her a picture of herself with a dot on her forehead. When asked, the Lord said the dot represented “the poverty mentality you developed from traditional teachings. It’s keeping you from trusting Me to meet your needs.” God revealed that He was able to meet her needs and those of the children in China.
God's Dwelling Places
God has a place in His family that is tailor-made for your individual gifts and callings. He is high and mighty, but He also cares about every area of your life – natural and spiritual. Gloria believes that in His providence He has provided His every son and daughter a blessed and peaceful place that is theirs to inhabit and enjoy!
The land has always been important to God. God intended the earth to be a place where He and His family could enjoy each other. The entrance of sin changed that. B
ut Gloria still thinks God wants us to have surroundings that are beautiful and pleasant to us because that kind of environment encourages fellowship with Him. One of the first things God talked to Abraham about was a place where He would send him (Gensis 12:1, “Get thee out…"). Even when God’s people Israel were living in captivity in Babylon, He said to them, “Build ye houses, and dwell in them, plant gardens …" Jeremiah 28:29). God likes putting His people in peaceful environments.
From the beginning of her faith walk, Gloria says she began believing for the right place to live. Since the reality of God’s Word came into their lives, God has always given them a good home to live in, though not always big or fancy. Through the years, she cut out pictures and made notes of things she wanted in their dream home. She prayed five years over whether to build or not; she also prayed about the wisdom of God for this project. She prayed and listened for direction. Timing was everything, and one day she and Ken knew it was time to build. Their house is such a demonstration of God’s goodness that it’s a joy to walk in it. “God wanted the Israelites to walk in their dreams, He wants me to walk in my dreams, and He wants you to walk in yours,” Gloria says.
Before you knowingly begin to seek God, He already has a plan working for you. Ken is a good example of this. Gloria says that from the time Ken was a small child, he wanted to fly airplanes and sing. Before he was born again, he didn’t use his talents and dreams exactly the way God intended. After he was born again and God called him to preach, the purpose behind his natural giftings became clear. Being a pilot has blessed their ministry and enabled them to go around the world preaching the gospel in hard to reach places. His singing has been a vital part of their ministry and a blessing to the Body of Christ.
God has already given us some equipment that will help us walk out His individual plans for us. Without His Word and His Spirit to enlighten us, however, we can never grasp the plan He has for us. If only people knew how good God’s plan was for them they would rush to Him to get in on it. But because they never seek God, they never know. That’s one of the reasons the Lord wants us to share the gospel with every creature!
Obeying God's Will
Some people ask, “If God is so good, why is there so much evil and pain in the world?” To that deep and complicated question, Gloria says the answer is quite simple: God is not the only one at work in the earth. There is another spiritual being who constantly oppresses us. The one who opposes God is the source of all evil. God’s plan to defeat him is through believing in the shed blood of His Son Jesus Christ.
The kingdom of darkness has affected this natural, physical earth on which we live (Romans 8:21). Just as the enemy’s kingdom is revealed in his names, the kingdom of God is characterized by the goodness revealed in the name of its king. It is a kingdom filled and governed with the peace and blessing of God. God makes the people in His kingdom free. The choice is ours. God says the same thing to us that He said to the Israelites, “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing …". (Deuteronomy 30:19,20). We can choose our path, but we cannot choose the consequences of that path. We cannot have it both ways. We’re either going to be dedicated to God, living His way and being blessed, or we’re going to be living like the world, overcome by sin and death. The blessing is that God will teach us His path and His ways.
Early in their Christian life before they knew these things, the Copelands found out what can happen when one steps outside the circle of blessing by disobeying the Lord. They were struggling financially and having no success in life. God had spoken to their hearts that He wanted them to move to Tulsa and attend Oral Roberts University. They could think of several good reasons not to do that: Ken would have been a 30-year-old freshman, they didn’t have the money for tuition or anything else, and they had two small children. They didn’t know how they would make ends meet, so they didn’t follow the leading of the Lord.
“We disobeyed Him, stayed right where we were, and things got worse and worse and worse,” Gloria says. The longer they disregarded God’s direction, the farther out of His will they got until they hit some real trouble. They had a car wreck that seriously endangered their lives. With God’s help and mercy, they became willing to move to Tulsa and obey God’s direction concerning Oral Roberts University. No, God did not send the car wreck, Gloria says, but by disobeying, they got out of God’s territory and into the enemy’s territory to be vulnerable to something like that. “God was not our problem, but He was surely our answer,” she says.
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