Of all the success secrets anyone has ever come up with, there’s one that tops them all. It can make you prosperous when the entire world economy is in trouble. It can keep you safe in the most dangerous places. If you’ll live by it, it will not only protect you, perfect you and direct you in every situation; it will enable you to live a consistently supernatural life.
Where can you find this powerful secret?
It’s actually revealed throughout the Bible. But personally I think it was Mary, the mother of Jesus, who summed it up most concisely. At the wedding in Cana, after informing Jesus that the host had run out of wine, she turned to the servants of the household and said these seven words: “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it” (John 2:5).
Those are, without question, some of the wisest words ever spoken.
When the servants at the wedding acted on them, they stepped out of the natural realm and into the supernatural plan of God. They obeyed Jesus’ command and filled the waterpots with water. He turned it into wine and transformed a disastrous situation into a divine success.
“Yeah, I know it,” you might say. “That’s the kind of thing that always happened in the Bible when Jesus got involved in a situation. I just can’t figure out how to get it to happen for me.”
It’s simple: Whatever He says to you, do it.
That’s the key to getting Jesus to manifest Himself and release the power of God—anytime, anyplace, in any area of your life. Jesus Himself confirmed it. In John 14:21, He said, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.”
If you haven’t already, you ought to underline that verse in your Bible. Put little stars around it. Make it stand out because it’s extremely important and you need to be paying attention to it.
Most Christians aren’t. They’re just trying to figure out on their own how to get Jesus to manifest Himself to them. They’re crying, they’re fasting, they’re lying on the floor begging Him to move in their circumstances, their families, their finances and their churches.
They’re sincere about it, too. Yet nothing is happening for them because Jesus didn’t say, “I’ll manifest Myself to the person who cries the longest.” He didn’t say, “I’ll manifest Myself to those who go the longest without eating.”
He said, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them…I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.”
God Has a Plan With Your Name on It
Exactly how do you go about having and keeping Jesus’ commandments?
You do it by putting His WORD first place in your life and making it your final authority. You do it by listening all the time to what He’s saying to you in the Scriptures and in your spirit, by continually inquiring of Him about everything in your life and obeying every command He gives you.
“But Brother Copeland, I don’t have time for that,” you might say. “I have too many other things to do.”
No, you’ve got it turned around. You don’t have time to do anything else until you’ve inquired of The LORD. If you haven’t inquired of Him, the things you’re doing might be taking you in the wrong direction. You might be working the wrong job, living in the wrong place and coming up with the wrong plans. You might just be doing what makes sense to you in the natural.
That’s not how believers are supposed to live! That’s how worldly people live—and if you live like the world does, you’ll get the world’s results. To get supernatural results, God’s results, you have to find out what His plan is.
He does have a plan for you, you know. He has one for every believer. The Bible leaves no doubt about it. It says: “We are God’s [own] handiwork (His workmanship), recreated in Christ Jesus, [born anew] that we may do those good works which God predestined (planned beforehand) for us [taking paths which He prepared ahead of time], that we should walk in them [living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us to live]” (Ephesians 2:10, The Amplified Bible).
It also says in 1 Corinthians 12:18 that God has set each one of us in the Body of Christ “as it hath pleased him.” That means God has a place on this earth and in the Body of Christ with your name on it, and that place is where you belong. You don’t belong anyplace else in this universe but right there.
I’m not saying God just wants you to stay in one spot your whole life. I’m saying your place is wherever He tells you to be. My place, for instance, is in the ministry and I inquire of Him all the time about where He wants me to go preach. He might tell me to be in London one day, Venezuela a couple of days later, and Chicago the next day. If He does, I’m on my way because I know that if I go where He commands, then I’ll be where I belong. What I do will prosper because He takes pleasure in the prosperity of His servant (Psalm 35:27).
Kingdom Business Is Supernatural
This is the way the kingdom of God works—not just for preachers but for every believer.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re pastoring a church or running a lemonade stand, whatever you’re called to do is Kingdom business. Since Kingdom business is supernatural, the key to succeeding at it is doing whatever Jesus says to do.
If He calls you to open a lemonade stand, He has a reason for it and a way He wants it to be done. He may want you to corner the lemonade market and pour millions of dollars into spreading the gospel. He may be planning to send the next president of the United States to buy a glass of lemonade from you so that you can pray for him, BLESS him and change the future course of the nation.
Sadly, most Christians weren’t raised to think about such things. They grew up being told, “Darling, you can just be anything you want to be.”
No! Not in God’s kingdom. If you’re in His kingdom, He’s already got a plan for you. That plan is where your church is. It’s where your protection is. It’s where your prosperity is. It’s THE BLESSING plan.
Getting off that BLESSING plan and doing things your own way is like getting off the freeway and onto a dirt road. Instead of speeding along at 65 or 70 mph, you’re trudging along hitting one pothole after another. You’re driving through Sickville, Broke Valley and Nobody-Loves-Me-Anyhow County. You’re writing country songs about being sorry, disgusted and sad.
Why?
Because you’re out of your place. You’re on the wrong road.
“But Brother Copeland, what if the right road—the one God wants me on—leads to Timbuktu or some other strange, faraway place?”
What if it does? How do you know you wouldn’t like Timbuktu? If your spot is in Timbuktu, that’s where your prosperity is. It might look like the poorest spot on earth but God could send you there and make you rich. He could turn you into such a BLESSING that the whole area blossoms economically and everyone starts calling it “The Garden Spot of Timbuktu”!
“Well, I don’t think that’s very likely,” you might say. “I just don’t have that kind of faith.”
Then start listening to God. His words are filled with faith. That’s why Romans 10:17 says, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (New King James Version). Every word God speaks, whether in the Bible or by His Spirit within you, is a faith container. When He gives you a command, His command carries with it the faith you need to obey it. The command itself authorizes and empowers you to do what God is telling you to do.
But you have to hear what He’s saying. You have to spend time with Him reading and meditating on His written WORD and fellowshiping with Him in prayer.
Personally, I talk to God all day long. It’s easy to do. After all, He lives right here inside me. I abide in Him and He abides in me. So it just makes sense for me to commune with Him throughout the day about what He wants me to do and how He wants me to do it.
“Well, that sounds like a great way to live, Brother Copeland, but The LORD just doesn’t speak to me like He does to you.”
Certainly He does. He’s not an absentee Father. He’s speaking to you constantly. In fact, He’s speaking to everyone. Otherwise Jesus wouldn’t have said, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20).
According to that verse, any man can hear the voice of God because He is speaking to everyone all the time, not in an audible voice from heaven that can be heard with physical ears, but with an inward voice that can be heard on the inside of a person, in his spirit.
If people aren’t listening to God on the inside, even if He did speak to them audibly it wouldn’t help them. The folks in the New Testament proved this. When they were with Jesus and God spoke to Him out loud in a booming voice from heaven, they heard the noise but didn’t understand what was being said. They just thought it thundered (John 12:29).
When God Said, Run!
That kind of thing happens all the time. On Sept. 11, 2001, for example, God spoke to everyone in the World Trade Center—every one of them. But they didn’t all hear and understand what He was saying. If they had, the World Trade Center towers would have been empty that day.
Gloria and I have a close personal friend who pastors a great church on Wall Street not far from ground zero. Many of his congregation worked in the World Trade Center. In the weeks prior to 9/11, he’d been teaching on the protective power of the blood of Jesus and on listening to the voice of God.
He wasn’t teaching on those subjects because God had told him about the terrorist attack. He was just following God’s plan, doing what Jesus said to do, and so were the people in his church. As a result, not a single one was injured.
One of them was about to walk through the doors of the World Trade Center that morning and he heard God say, Run! So he just took off, ran around the corner and down into the subway. Another was on his way to work there when he decided to take his daughter out to eat instead of dropping her off at school. She and I just don’t get to spend much quality time together, he thought. So, although he was rarely late to work, he was late that particular morning because he spent some extra time with his daughter.
This is the way we, as believers, are supposed to be living! We’re supposed to be listening to Jesus and doing whatever He says to do. That’s the key to being protected, directed and prospered all the time.
I was vividly reminded of this a few months back when I went to preach in Maracaibo, Venezuela. The pastor of the church there was driving out to meet me at the airport and decided to stop by the bank on the way. When he did, two guys grabbed him and his son, put a gun to his head, tied the two of them up and put black hoods over their heads. They intended to kidnap them and steal his new pickup truck.
Now, this pastor is a very bold man of God. He’s been in Venezuela doing what Jesus has told him to do for years and God has BLESSED him. His church has grown and affected all of Latin America. So he wasn’t worried. He just started pleading the blood of Jesus and forgiving those guys.
The kidnappers took them to an abandoned building to kill them. All this time the pastor kept speaking words of faith and love to them. Suddenly he and his son heard a female voice say to the kidnappers, “You’d better think about what you’re doing. This is a man of God and he helps a lot of people here. You’d better just leave him alone.”
When the kidnappers heard that, they huddled up and talked between themselves. Then they untied him and turned him loose. They did steal his pickup truck, but he had such favor with the police that they quickly found it and returned it to him.
Actually, he didn’t even bother to tell me about the incident. I heard about it the next morning in church when he told the whole congregation. That was yesterday? I thought. You got kidnapped?
The words he kept saying were, “I’m in God’s plan! I’m not finished! No one can kill me! That’s not God’s plan!”
This is the supernatural life, my friend, and it’s a wonderful way to live!
So get with the program. Decide that what God called you to be is what you are, and that’s what you’re supposed to be doing: You’re supposed to be good at it and successful at it. You’re supposed to be healed and prosperous and powerful.
God doesn’t have any little plans. His plan for you is big and it’s absolutely perfect. Find out what it is. Be still and listen to Him every day. And whatever He says to you, do it.
Points to Get You There: THE BLESSING Plan
God has a place on this earth and in the Body of Christ with your name on it. He has a plan uniquely designed for you. That plan is where your church is. It’s where your protection and your prosperity are. It’s THE BLESSING plan, and it’s big because God doesn’t make small plans. Here are some points to get you there.
Spend time fellowshiping with God about His plan for you. Ephesians 2:10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”
Ask Him to reveal to you where He wants you to be. 1 Corinthians 12:18: “But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.”
Get the faith you need to fulfill God’s plan by reading and meditating on His Word. Romans 10:17: “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
Continually inquire of The LORD about the affairs of life and listen for His voice. Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”
Whatever He says to you, do it. John 14:21: “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.”
*Article taken from April 2015 issue of BVOV Magazine. Read the PDF version here.
