Aviation has always been a part of Kenneth Copeland’s life. From his days as a private commercial pilot, to serving as Oral Roberts’ pilot when he was a student at ORU, to the present day, Kenneth has studied almost everything to do with flying airplanes. Naturally then, particularly when he was a new believer, God showed him that just like there are fundamentals of flying that apply to every kind of aircraft, so there are fundamental laws of faith that apply to anything we need to receive by faith including salvation, healing, finances, restoration or a miracle.

Hebrews 11:1-3 tells us that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible” (NKJV).

By faith. That’s how we receive. Hebrews 11 shows us so much about this, including how so many of the Old Testament saints lived and received by faith. Note these examples from the New King James Version.

“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going” (verse 8).

“By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (verses 9-10).

“By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised” (verse 11).

“By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac” (verse 17).

“By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come” (verse 20).

“By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshiped” (verse 21).

“By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave instructions concerning his bones” (verse 22).

“By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king’s command” (verse 23).

“By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy thepassing pleasures of sin” (verses 24-25).

“By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible” (verse 27).

“By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest he who destroyed the firstborn should touch them” (verse 28).

“By faith [the children of Israel] passed through the Red Sea as by dry land, whereas the Egyptians, attempting to do so, were drowned” (verse 29).

And on Hebrews 11 goes, so much so, that the Scripture later says, “And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens” (verses 32-34).

Never Let the Devil See You Sweat

It is by faith we receive, and if we are believing God to receive our healing, then this is how we are going to receive it. Therefore, it’s essential that we develop the measure of faith God has given each one of us (Romans 12:3).

So how do we develop our faith? We strengthen it with the Word of God; we read and study everything God says about our faith and receiving our healing by faith (Romans 10:17). We put God’s Word in our hearts and in our mouths (verses 8-9). We say it and declare the end from the beginning (Matthew 8:8; Isaiah 46:10). And, as God taught Kenneth, we never let the devil see us sweat.

He learned this years ago when he was a student at ORU and was putting into practice listening to the Holy Spirit in preparation to pray for people to be healed. One time, he and Gloria had driven home to Fort Worth for a visit with family, and no sooner had they arrived, than Kenneth’s mother received a call that they needed to come to the hospital quickly because his great-aunt Eiley was dying.

His mother said immediately that they needed to hurry, to jump in the car and go. But Kenneth didn’t have the same sense of urgency. He had been learning to turn inward and listen for the leading of the Holy Spirit, just like he’d learned in aviation to “stop and wind your watch.” That’s an aviation phrase pilots use to express what to do if something starts to fail with an aircraft. The meaning is that if systems start to fail, instead of panicking and fearing that the plane will fall out of the sky, which it won’t, pause and maintain your composure, begin to think of your checklist, and go through it.

In a spiritual sense, to stop and wind your watch is to turn inward and listen for the prompting of the Holy Spirit for what course of action to take; because, after all, He is our helper (John 14:26).

“Kenneth,” his mother pressed, “if we want to see her, then we need to get there quick.”

But he told his mother, “I need to go change my shirt.” As he went into the bedroom and began to change his shirt, he turned to the Lord for direction and as he said, “Lord,” he immediately heard the Lord say, “Don’t ever let the devil see you sweat. You get over there and I’ll tell you what to do.”

When they headed out the door to leave, Kenneth told his mother, “You drive, and drive slowly, please.”

“Kenneth!” she exclaimed.

When they arrived, a family member was already making funeral arrangements on the phone. Kenneth went on over to the bed and said, “Aunt Eiley, open your eyes.”

“Kenneth,” she responded, “what are you doing here?”

“I came to pray for you,” Kenneth told her.

About that time, Kenneth’s mother said, “Look at that thing. That’s what’s choking her to death.”

And Kenneth declared, “Well, no, not anymore,” and he went on to pray what the Holy Spirit told him to pray.

The result was that Aunt Eiley was healed, and she continued to live alone for two more years!

Here’s the point: Kenneth hand learned to stop and wind his watch, spiritually speaking. He had developed his faith by feeding his spirit with the Word of God, particularly all the verses that teach us how to live by faith, release our faith, declare our faith, and use our faith to receive. He had developed his faith to believe for healing—for himself, for his family and for anyone else who wanted to be made whole.

It’s a lesson for us all. How important it is when we hear a difficult report and are standing in faith to receive, to stop and wind our watch. To turn inward and listen for the leading of the Holy Spirit so we stay in faith, keep walking by faith, and continue to respond with faith.

10 Scriptures To Build Your Faith for Healing

Sometimes, when we’re focusing so hard on receiving and, in particular, receiving our healing, we need to give equal attention to developing our faith, because it is by faith that we receive. To help you build your faith for healing, consider the following verses on faith. Memorize them. Personalize them. Say them daily. And watch faith rise up on the inside of you.

1. “Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses]” (Hebrews 11:1 AMPC).
2. “Have faith in God [or have the faith of God]…. You can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart” (Mark 11:22-23).
3. “You can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours” (Mark 11:24).
4. “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7 NKJV).
5. Faith works by love (see Galatians 5:6).
6. “So the promise is received by faith. It is given as a free gift. And we are all certain to receive it, whether or not we live according to the law of Moses, if we have faith like Abraham’s. For Abraham is the father of all who believe” (Romans 4:16).
7. “Then Jesus told them, ‘I tell you the truth, if you have faith and don’t doubt, you can do things like this and much more. You can even say to this mountain, “May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,” and it will happen’” (Matthew 21:21).
8. “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing” (James 1:2-4).
9. “At that time you won’t need to ask me for anything. I tell you the truth, you will ask the Father directly, and he will grant your request because you use my name” (John 16:23).
10. “(As it is written, ‘I have made you [Abraham] a father of many nations’) in the presence of Him whom he believed—God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did” (Romans 4:17, NKJV).

It was Smith Wigglesworth who said, “I’m not moved by what I see. I’m not moved by what I feel. I’m moved only by what I believe.” Let’s remember this as we build our faith to receive our healing.

© 1997 – 2024 Eagle Mountain International Church Inc. Aka Kenneth Copeland Ministries. All Rights Reserved.

God is Love and He loves us! His Word tells us so: “Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:7).

God loves us so much that He gave us Jesus, and when we accept Jesus as Lord of our lives, we enter into a covenant of love with God Himself. “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

What better month than February to celebrate this Covenant of love we have with God! He has made us part of His family, something that is precious to Him. Long before the beginning of time, He loved the thought of being surrounded by sons and daughters made in His own likeness. His heart yearned for a family of people He could love and BLESS.

All the magnificent splendor of creation we see around us today came out of that divine desire. God made it all for one purpose only—to BLESS His family. He created the earth and everything in it for us! We were in His heart and mind long before we ever showed up on the planet. His dream before the foundation of the world was to prosper you and me and all the rest of His family in every way imaginable as we spend eternity building our lives and world together with Him.

If you know the story of Creation, then you know that God’s dream first sprang to life with Adam and Eve, the great-great-grandparents of us all. You also know that things didn’t go well for them, nor for God pretty much from the beginning. In the Garden of Eden, Adam committed high treason. He bowed his knee to the devil, a spiritual outlaw and thief who at one time had been an archangel created by God. When Adam surrendered his authority to the devil, he became the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4). As a result, from then on, many times throughout the course of history, God would be faced with situations that threatened to destroy His dream forever.

So, in His endless wisdom and foresight, God put into motion the truth and power of blood-backed agreement—or Covenant! You could say that Covenant became God’s way of holding on to His family for dear life. What love!

Develop a Covenant Mindset

The word covenant comes from the Latin phrase that means “a coming together.” In a general sense, it’s simply an agreement between two or more people or parties. It brings those parties into relationship through a formal commitment made binding by arrangement, a testament or will, or a legal contract.

In the Bible, whenever a covenant is made between God and man, it’s always God who initiates it. In each case, He sets the conditions and standards of the agreement. He determines how the people with whom He is making covenant gain access to the benefits of the arrangement. God has done and is doing everything He possibly can to squeeze every one of us as tightly as He can into a place of BLESSING—once and for all. It’s the reason He wants you in Covenant with Him.

His motive has always been relationship. He desires more than anything to be in constant fellowship with you and shower you with His goodness. When you enter into Covenant agreement with Him, you are obligating yourself by faith to a relationship with Him. You’re binding yourself to Almighty God. Once you make that connection and commitment, He can release His purpose and desire for you, your life, and all creation, through the promises and BLESSINGS of the Covenant.

Imagine what this can do for your life, your marriage, and all the other relationships in your life. How important, then, it is to renew our minds to the value and significance of covenant, and that we learn to read the Scripture with a covenant mindset and listen to the preached Word with covenant ears.

To help renew your mind to think about covenant the way God does, consider the following 3 Step Process of Covenant—God’s Language of Love.

1. The first step in the covenant process is the calling to covenant.

God, the Father, takes this step by graciously inviting us to join ourselves to Him. Then He, in turn, can join Himself to us, bringing all of who He is and all of what He has into our lives. Nehemiah 9 tells us it was God who chose Abraham. It wasn’t Abraham who initiated their covenant relationship. God approached him first. He brought Abraham up from his homeland, and gave him a new identity. He even promised to give him all the land as far as his eyes could see (verses 7-8), an offer seemingly too good to be true.

God has essentially done the same for us as believers today. He has called us just as He called Abraham and made us an astounding offer. He’s offered us the opportunity to enter into a relationship with Him for all eternity. He’s promised to BLESS us and assured us, as Romans 8:28 NKJV says, that “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

Do you see it? As believers we are “the called”! That means God has already taken the first step in the process of establishing Covenant with us. He has extended to us a personal invitation to join ourselves to Him.

2. The second step in establishing a covenant is the actual entering into the covenant.

This is where the terms of the covenant are agreed upon by both parties, and the agreement is executed or acted upon. In Hebrews 11:8-9, we see Abraham taking this step. We see that, “It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going.And even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith—for he was like a foreigner, living in tents. And so did Isaac and Jacob, who inherited the same promise.”

Imagine how much trust it took for Abraham to say yes to God’s call without knowing where that call would take him. Imagine how much faith it took for him to leave everything behind without having any idea of exactly what lay ahead. When he acted on God’s promise in Faith, he entered into covenant. He accepted God’s invitation and joined himself to Him.

Hundreds of years later, when God gave the people of Israel the opportunity to enter into a covenant relationship with Him, He added to this a second step. He required the Israelites to agree verbally with His covenant conditions. He had them declare out loud together all the BLESSINGS and the curses of the Law. Like the reading and signing of a contractual agreement, this formalized their agreement to enter covenant with Him (Deuteronomy 27-30:19).

We take this step today by believing on God’s Son, Jesus, the second Person of the Trinity, and receiving Him by faith as our Savior and LORD!

3. The third and final step of the covenant process is keeping or maintaining the agreement.

A covenant relationship, like any relationship—whether it’s in a marriage, in parenting, business or simply a friendship—requires maintenance. Relationships need nurturing. For them to remain healthy and vital, you can’t just forget about them. You must remember and attend to them.

Jesus spoke about this to His disciples just before He left them to go to the cross. During their last Passover meal together, He took the bread, “Then he broke it in pieces and said, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, he took the cup of wine after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant between God and his people—an agreement confirmed with my blood. Do this in remembrance of me as often as you drink it.’” (1 Corinthians 11:24-25).

When Jesus instructed His disciples to do this “in remembrance of me,” He was pointing back to what their Hebrew forefathers had done for thousands of years. When they ate the Passover meal, they remembered how God had delivered them from the bondage of Egypt (Exodus 13:3; Deuteronomy 4:9). This remembering kept their minds focused on their Covenant with Him.

This is why Jesus established under the New Covenant what we today call “Communion.” By telling us to eat and drink the Covenant meal, He provided us with a simple action step we can take to remind us that we’re in Covenant with God through Him. He gave us a powerful way to release our Faith in that Covenant. A way to nurture our connection with Him and keep it not only intact but healthy, active, strong, thriving—alive!

How Weddings Mirror God’s Covenant of Love

Most marriage ceremonies contain three major covenant elements and are revealed in the Bible. Each one, in its own way, reflects a major aspect of our ultimate union with Jesus Christ.

First, most traditional wedding vows exchanged at the altar begin with the words: “I promise.” God-initiated covenants begin the same way. Each of the biblical covenants start with a promise. The promise is made by God the Father when He initially lays out the conditions, standards, and BLESSINGS of the agreement.

Second, there is the cutting of the covenant. In weddings, this cutting is signified by the bride and groom proceeding down the center aisle with her family sitting on one side and his on the other. This symbolizes the fact that two families are being joined here. Two families are coming together in covenant and becoming one (Genesis 2:23).

When God cut Covenant with us, the same thing happened. Two became one. Only in the cutting of God’s Covenant, Covenant Blood was shed. Jesus stepped in as the living sacrifice on our behalf and joined us to God.

Third, there is the seal of the covenant. In weddings, the marriage covenant is sealed first with the exchanging of rings and then a kiss at the altar near the end of the ceremony. Our Covenant with God is sealed by the Holy Spirit. His presence in us is the seal or guarantee of our Covenant with Him.

No doubt in some way, you will celebrate love this month. Whether it be with roses and chocolate, or cards and a special dinner, why not celebrate God’s Love first? Why not celebrate Covenant—God’s language of love.

Adapted from Kenneth Copeland’s newest book written with Greg Stephens, God, the Covenant and the Contradiction, available at KCM.org.

© 1997 – 2024 Eagle Mountain International Church Inc. Aka Kenneth Copeland Ministries. All Rights Reserved.