How to Develop Sensitivity by Kenneth CopelandPosted by admin on June 24th, 2009

Making a quality decision to live the commandment of love is the beginning of a sensitive heart. A decision of quality is one from which there is no return and about which there is no further debate.

Love is tender. When I made the decision to walk in the commandment of love, I began to order my thinking in that direction and it softened my heart. This decision started the laws of the spirit working in my heart; causing it to be tender and sensitive.

I had to become sensitive to the commandment, to walk in love, when God called Gloria to preach. It was not easy to give up my cook! There are still people today who think that “women can pray. But bless God, they sure better clean house while they are doing it!” I am not saying women ought to neglect their families. Don’t neglect your family. Everybody has duties in a household and must be sensitive to those duties. Make it a point to be sensitive to the fact that the other members of your family have things to do for God, too.

The hard part for me was dealing with my flesh. God had dealt with Gloria to pray in other tongues at least an hour every day. She morning. It is just wonderful for her to pray. But I couldn’t cope with why she didn’t stop long enough to come cook me some eggs! I was so insensitive. I thought it was more important for me to eat than for her to be in intercession for me, my life and ministry.

One morning I tore into the kitchen, slamming doors and banging pots around because I was angry. “Why won’t she get in here and cook me some eggs?” I made the mistake of asking God. I said, “You called her to preach. Now what am I going to do about some eggs?” He said, Go cook them yourself. That is not what I wanted to hear! It finally got to me that I was shameless and insensitive. I know what spiritual values are all about. She has saved my life more than once because of her tenacity about the Word of God.

I quickly started getting sensitive. I got on my knees and I made a decision before Almighty God, and wrote it down. “I settle this forever before Almighty God. I will not listen to a lying spirit of the devil again. Self-pity, condemnation, self-debasement, unbelief and doubt have no more part in me, nor I in them. I know how to receive, and how to please God, and I will do those things.”

Then, I started getting tender in my heart. I made a decision to walk in love where this is concerned and do what I know to do. It straightened my thinking. Instead of majoring in a minor like making her cook, I began to major in a major thing, which is intercessory prayer.

Tenderness rose up on the inside of me. I made the decision to make this commandment of love the commandment of my life. I want to be someone Jesus can have some fun with and share His life with. I’m just barely beginning to get there. He’s with me all the time, but there is something about being close to Him all the time. I don’t want Him to withdraw from me because I’m insensitive.

Make the decision to live by faith. God is your source. You can’t be sensitive to God, and to those around you, if you are criticizing the government. Inflation and depression are not greater than the laws of God. Act on the laws of God when things get rough. Don’t stop your giving, double up on it. Don’t violate the laws of God, honor them and God will honor you. Give the Word first place.

Be sensitive to the Word. Whatever the Word says, do it. If the Word says you are His righteousness, believe it. If the Word says you are healed, believe it. Walk in it. Live it. Eat it. Sleep it. Study it. Meditate it. Feed it into your heart and become sensitive to every word.

Develop a personal relationship with God. Receive His Word as God speaking to you. Put your name in the promises. Talk to God like you talk to your closest friend. Be sensitive to enter into praise and worship. It will cause you to be more sensitive to the Spirit of God, and more aware of His presence.

Then, get the sin out of your life. I made up my mind, some time ago, that I had been fighting some things long enough. There were some things in my life that needed purging. I separated myself to fast, pray and fellowship with God.

Fasting won’t get the sin out of your life. Repentance will. But I made up my mind, I was not going to do anything else until it was all gone. I did what Joel 2:13 says: “Rend your heart, not your garment.” I opened my heart before God and I dug things out that I had been keeping hidden. I made the decision to do what it took to get the sin out of my life.

I came out of there changed. Finally, pray. Enter the life of the Spirit with all of your heart, all of your mind, all of your body and with all of your resources. Walking in the spirit is walking with God, being sensitive and having a sensitive heart to God.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Sensitivity to Love by Kenneth CopelandPosted by admin on June 18th, 2009

Become sensitive to the Holy Spirit Himself. God has sent His personal Emissary to lead and guide this great spiritual army. Now is not the time to be so proud that we can’t be sensitive enough to the Holy Spirit to walk in love with our own husband, wife, or a member of our own crew. In World War II, each division had to cooperate with the other.

Each service had its role to play. The war could not have been won without the joint operation of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps all working together. In God’s army we are all fighting for the same cause.

The Baptist unit, the Catholic unit, the Presbyterian unit, the Full Gospel unit will all have to work together. I am not going to miss the greatest spiritual outpouring this planet has ever seen over some little minor two-bit fuss that will never last in the light of God’s power.

Ephesians 4:16 says, “From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.” Jesus put the Body together, but the joints hold it together.

In order for God to do anything about our unity, we have to do something about it first. We are the ones who fail to stick together. Every part has its role to play. The old adage that says, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” is true.

When we find a weak link in the Body of Christ, we should not cut it off and criticize it. We should rally around that weak one and love him. We should carry him piggy-back and strengthen him if we have to. We shouldn’t be selfish.

We play a big part of the coming together in the unity of our faith. God’s influence will do it, but we have to agree with Him and become sensitive to His influence. “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness [darkness, insensitiveness] of their heart” (Ephesians 4:17-18). It is possible to become insensitive, blind and hard, even though you are a born-again, Spirit-filled believer.

“Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness” (verse 19). If the life of God is not flowing through your reborn spirit, lasciviousness will begin to work. Things you would not have done in the past don’t look so bad anymore. Lasciviousness means “no restraint from impurity.” The more insensitive you become, the less restraint you have to impurity.

Another way to say “impurity” is “weakness of the flesh.” You cannot be strong in your flesh without practicing the Word of God. The Word builds sensitivity in your spirit, to hear the voice of God. The result of impurity will be the grieving of the Holy Spirit.

If God is grieved, Jesus withdraws. He will never leave you, nor forsake you to the end of the earth. But if you are not sensitive to the Holy Spirit, you will find that when you want to hear Him, you can’t. You think, Dear God, I used to get all kinds of revelation. What is wrong now?

Do you remember how sensitive you were right after you were saved? You were in love with everybody but the devil! Then perhaps a few people offended you and you hardened yourself to them. It led you to judge them as hypocrites. Maybe you saw some humanity in ministers of God. You became disappointed by their lack of perfection.

No one has a right to judge any ministry. They are not your servant. They are your gift. They are God’s servants. Pray for them. Leave it up to God. You cannot judge another man’s heart. There are two times when you ought to pray for someone. One is when you think he is right, the other one is when you think he is wrong!

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Sensitivity to Spiritual Warfare by Kenneth CopelandPosted by admin on June 9th, 2009

There is a great battle going on in the earth. This war in the spirit will be fought much like the wars that are fought in the natural. Our military works effectively through the chain-of-command. In God’s army, God is the Commander-in-Chief and Jesus is the Chief-of-Staff. We have to be sensitive to their instructions.

Training for battle takes a long time and millions of dollars. A fighter plane has three or four hours range per mission. You can fight the total capability of that aircraft in three and a half hours. It took eighteen months to teach the pilot how to do it. It takes over a year to train a marine infantry soldier. But a real hand-to-hand combat battle is over in minutes. So, the training lasts a lot longer than the actual war.

In the Body of Christ, we have been in training for the greatest spiritual invasion of this age. We have had skirmishes in the spiritual realm in individual lives, in local churches, and in ministries. But on January 1, 1983, (I don’t know what the day had to do with it, but
I know from God that’s when it began), God began to rally and marshal all of His forces together.

Soon, all of us will go into one massive spiritual invasion of the strongholds of the devil. Many Christians have been fighting a holding action for a long time. But now it is time for an all-out offensive.

Did you realize that for the first time in history, God has Satan split on two fronts? He has him facing Israel on one side and the Body of Christ on the other. Satan was never powerful enough to handle either one of us alone. What will he do with both of us facing him?

The Lord said to me in mid-January 1983, in a time of prayer, I liken this to the invasion of Europe in 1944 and ’45. It took a long time to activate that invasion because it was so massive. It had never been attempted before in human history. All of the free countries of the world met together in one location, the British Isles. They gathered together with one goal before them—rid the earth of Adolf Hitler and all he stood for.

The Lord showed it to me this way so that I could understand what His position is. If we understand His position in this final conflict, we can understand what our position is. January 1, 1983, gave birth to a total change of spiritual atmosphere all over this world.

It will continue to change. We will continue to go in this direction and face what no other Christian generation in history has ever faced. No other military organization in the world had ever faced an army like the one that was gathering in England. There were a lot of new things that had to be learned.

Our generation is going into the greatest outpouring of the Spirit of God that has ever occurred in the history of the world. This is not maneuvers, it is not training, and it is not going to be battles fought individually by single churches, single families or individual believers.

We are coming together as the army of Jesus with one goal before us—to rid the earth of Satan and all he stands for! It is the final conflict when Satan will be slammed down from his position forever.

We have some fresh troops just coming in off the street who don’t know anything about religion. They have not been trained in religious tradition. They’ve not been told that they can’t do what the Word says they can do. I get thrilled at the thought! Watch them. They will raise the dead before we get a chance to tell them they had better “use wisdom.”

Be sensitive to them. A good commander can take someone who has some wildfire and teach and train him. He can be handled with the power and wisdom of the Holy Ghost. It’s the ones who won’t take action that you can’t do anything with.

We also have a few old “bomber crews” who have a lot of missions under their belts. They will have their part in this invasion force. They are the ones with the experience, but some have developed a few bad habits. They got away with some things in these little missions that won’t work in this big one. Those experienced troops will have to become very sensitive.

It is very difficult to take someone who has been successful on thirty missions and tell him that he hasn’t been doing it right. Things are different now. In training they use blanks. But today this enemy is for real.

The devil has his guns loaded. He has launched an attack trying to stop our invasion. He is moving in every area. He is attacking families like never before. Those who thought they would never contemplate divorce have started playing with those thoughts. Those who never thought about adultery are now toying with the idea. They rationalize it because they feel that suddenly, nobody understands them anymore.

Some who thought they would never see the day they would ever let a glass of alcohol come near their lips, are having a little wine with their meals and looking forward to the second glass. Believers are using foul language, words they thought would never come out of their mouth again since they made Jesus the Lord of their lives.

Ministers are being bombarded with thoughts of defeat and despair. Pastors of “Word churches” who stand up for the integrity of the uncompromised Word of God, are finding themselves in situations that men of God don’t have any business being in.

Have you noticed that suddenly, Christians have stopped calling sin, sin? They’re calling it “their problem.” “Well, you see I have this problem that’s really just more than I can handle, and I know God understands.” God forgives sin but He does not condone it. I don’t care what kind of a problem you have; you don’t have any business getting involved with other women.

I don’t care if your wife ran off because you started talking in tongues. Even if she has lived with another man since she left. That doesn’t mean you have such a problem that adultery will cure it. Adultery will not cure it. Adultery will kill you. The wages of sin is death. Sin is not the cure. Sin is sin.

I know I am blunt, but there isn’t the time for sweet-talk. The devil is bloodthirsty. He will kill you if you let him. Training camp is over. We have to get honest and open with one another. We are not fighting little skirmishes here and there. We have the lives of men and women all over this world in our hands. I know this is blunt, but there is only a short time remaining. Playtime is over. It will all be over soon.

The hour is such that things we got away with one year ago, we will not get away with now, and survive. We will find ourselves standing knee-deep in more hell than we know how to deal with.

We have some new crews joining our forces who will have to take some crash courses in faith, love, and power. It is time to act like soldiers, tighten up and get back to the manual. We have to get back in the Word of God and become sensitive to it.

Check your weapons. Have you been in the Word like you were years ago? Have you been praying like you did several years ago? Have you experienced a little success in the Word of God and then laid the Word down? When the problems start compounding, engines start failing and things come apart, do you suddenly realize that you don’t have the kind of Word in your heart like you thought you had?

Has your commitment waned? Is your sensitivity to the instructor (the Holy Spirit) what it should be? Be sensitive to those in your midst who are fresh out of training. Go back over your weapons with them. You may find out they remember what you might have forgotten.

Be sensitive to the entire Body of Christ. We have one goal ahead of us. It is not to prove who is the best “bomber pilot,” the best preacher or the best wife. But to DO our best and follow close behind the Leader, the Lord Jesus Christ. Be sensitive to His command and meet the needs of this dying world. Pull Satan down from his strongholds.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Sensitivity of Speech by Kenneth CopelandPosted by admin on June 3rd, 2009

As believers, we should make a decision to become sensitive to the words we speak. Our words are what bind us to one another. Our ability to speak makes us like God. God spoke His Word and would not change. He gave authority over the earth to Adam, and Adam gave it to the devil. God stuck by His Word even though it cost Him His Son. No other being on earth but man has the right to choose words and speak them in faith.

It’s time that we as Christians remember the covenants we make, even if we have to swear to our own hurt. We have broken too many contracts thinking it was all right because the other party was not honoring it. When we make a covenant, and say, “I will,” “I do,” “I shall,” “I’ll be there on time,” we had better be there on time.

Until we learn to become sensitive to the integrity of our own word, we will not understand what it means to act on God’s Word. His power comes from His keeping His Word—from His keeping it and from our keeping it. Without knowing this, it is almost impossible to grow spiritually and experience the better things of God.

That is what is wrong in so many marriages. People are insensitive to the covenant they have made. They said, “I do,” and forgot it fifteen minutes later. Men and women who begin to have trouble in their marriages should know the Bible marriage vows so well, that the very moment strife comes in, they run to the communion table.

If they would get on their knees and reaffirm the covenant they made before God, reciting their vows to one another again, they would find themselves as tender with one another as they were on their wedding night.

If you say, “But Brother Copeland, we are too far gone,” you’ve just admitted that you are too selfish to even try. Many think that adultery is the major cause of divorce, but Jesus said the rite of divorcement was given “because of the hardness [or insensitiveness] of your hearts” (Matthew 19:8). The Body of Christ must act like God, and swear to our own hurt, where marriage is concerned. It will cause us to be as victorious as God. He is not a loser.

When you, your wife and your children become sensitive to each other’s needs, rather than your own, no sin on earth is big enough to stop the love of God from flowing in your household. The love of God never fails. Your marriage will not fail when it is based on God’s love.

God is moving in this hour. His eyes are going to and fro across the earth seeking those who have a perfect heart: those to whom He may show Himself strong. A perfect heart is a sensitive heart. It is one that has matured in sensitivity to God, to the needs of those around it, and to the Word of God.

Kenneth Copeland