YOU ARE THE PROPHET OF YOUR LIFE (PART 1)

BY KENNETH COPELAND



In November 1998, Gloria and I were returning home from a series of meetings in Riga, Latvia, when the Spirit of God said to me, “Arise and shine, it’s 1999, it’s the year of the overflow.”

When I first head the Spirit say those words; I didn’t full understand what they meant. So I continued to listen and pray and ask questions.

“The world is full of sin,” I later heard the Lord say.

I could certainly agree with that.

But the He also said, “The earth is filled with My Glory.”

When I heard that, I said, Lord, I know I’m hearing You and I’m not going to argue with You, but….

“You’ve misunderstood something, He said. I said it was full. I didn’t say it was overflowing.”

Instantly I saw what He meant.

The earth had been filling up with God’s Glory, and it had been filling up with sin. But now it was full, and it was about to overflow.

As the Lord continued to reveal what was to happen in 1999, He showed me that, when righteousness overflows, it manifests as His Glory. That is, when God’s way of doing things and being right overflows, when love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, meekness, faith and temperance overflow, it manifests as His presence.

In other words, the Spirit was saying that you and I were about to see full supernatural manifestations of God’s presence in the earth, the fire, the light, the cloud and the rain. We were about to see the lame walk, the blind see, the dead raised to life. And we were about see it in overflowing proportions.

In this glorious time of overflow, however, the Spirit explained that we would also see sin flood the earth as never before, and we would see it manifest as judgment.

What exactly did He mean by judgment?

The Lord described it to me as simply running our string of mercy completely to its end. Once we reach the end of mercy, He said, that no manner of human manipulation or juggling of issues can change it. Nothing but absolute disaster is left. It’s like running headlong into a brick wall.

I was reminded of Romans 6:23 which says, “the wages of sin is death.” The Spirit was saying that those wages, death, and all the other results of sin listed under the curse in Deuteronomy 28 were about to manifest to the point where we would actually see them.

We would see the results of sin. We would see judgment.

YOUR MOUTH IS YOUR FUTURE

As we approach mid-1999, many situations happening around us are such that, if we don’t take heed to the Word of God, we will end up in trouble, and sooner that we might thing.

These days, the sobering truth is that we don’t have several years to mess around, then repent and get our lives straightened out. God’s time calendar is up! The Church is about to leave with Jesus.

That is why, as you and I face this immediate choice of either God’s Glory or sin’s judgment, it is vitally important that we understand this: As born-again, Spirit-filled believers, our stepping into the overflow of God’s Glory and walking in it daily doesn’t just happen automatically.

No. In fact, it’s possible that we could stand in the middle of the greatest outpouring of God’s Glory this world has ever seen, and just watch it pass us by, never experiencing a drop of it.

What you and I experience in these days of overflow comes down to something God began teaching me 32 years ago. It comes down to our mouths.

That’s right. The degree of overflow you and I experience in our lives during these last of the last days will be determined by our mouths. It will be the result of the words we speak.

You see, you and I are where we are right now because of the words we spoke yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. That is simply the way God created us. And, like God, our words carry power.

Actually, within the realm over which God gave us authority, the words we speak day after day carry the same degree of force behind them as the words God Himself speaks, even the same force as the Word that came out of His mouth and created the universe.

Consequently, it should be no surprise that this is the most difficult Bible principle Christians have to deal with day in and day out. It is the simplest principle, yet it is the most difficult area in our lives to discipline.

If you think about it, believing God and His Word is not nearly as hard as disciplining our tongues to speak in line with the Word and in light of the revelation that the words we speak now will come to pass later.

GOD NEEDS YOUR VOICE

As I said earlier, God began teaching me about the power of the spoken word more that 30 years ago, and I emphasize began teaching. This has been an issue I have had to deal with over and over, in my own life and ministry. But as I do, the Spirit brings greater and greater revelation.

As a matter of fact, just last Christmas, the Lord gave me fresh revelation concerning the force and effect of our words. It came as I was preparing to preach a Christmas message that I have preached for the past 32 years.

While I was praying, I heard the Spirit of God say, “the birth.”

Now, I knew what that meant, and immediately Matthew 1:18 came to mind, “The birth of Jesus was on this wise.”

I thought I knew where the Lord was headed with this, but as I studied the passage and read through verse 22, it took a direction I never expected.

“Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying…”

“Spoken of the Lord by the prophet.”

When I came to that part, I couldn’t go any further. I just stopped and I thought, “Dear Lord, look at that.”

Then I came across Matthew 2:15, “And was there until the death of Herod; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet.”

And then in verse 23, “And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets”

Suddenly, an awesome awareness rose within me.

I saw how the most eternally significant event in all the history of heaven and earth, a one-time opportunity in which nothing could go wrong, or mankind would be finished, could only take place as a result of the voice of a man.

Everything surrounding Jesus’ birth was a fulfillment of what God’s man, a prophet, had spoken, and he wasn’t even a born again man, either!

Once I received this revelation, I quickly realized that it didn’t stop there.

Reading through the Gospels, we can find that it wasn’t just the birth of Jesus that had to be spoken by the prophets of God, it was His entire life and ministry, too!

Think about it. Jesus did not arrive on the scene, saying, “My Father, God, has spoken to Me, and this is what He said.”

No. Luke 4:16-21, which recounts the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, says He opened the book and “found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel.”

Jesus began His ministry by reading what had been spoken by the prophet Isaiah, and then recorded. He actually found Himself in the Word, in the Old Covenant prophecies, and then He went around preaching what He had found.

Luke 4:21 says Jesus began telling the people, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” Notice the word “fulfilled.”

As Jesus spoke the word that had been prophesied about His life and ministry, that Word became “full-filled.” It was standing there “full” and in the flesh. What’s more, He then went about “overfilling” it.

Acts 10:38 say Jesus “went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him.” In other words, Jesus was anointed. He went about speaking the Word of God under that anointing. He went about ministering under that anointing. The Word and the anointing overflowed Jesus.

The point you and I need to grab hold of, though, is that all the overflow in Jesus’ life and ministry did not begin manifesting until He began speaking the Word of God, not His own words, but God’s Word. (John 12:47-50)

And what exactly was that Word? None other that the very same Word that had been spoken by the prophets, words spoken by people, people just like you and me.

ME, A PROPHET?

People have always had the idea that prophets are “special.”

The truth, however, is that anyone called by God, prophet or not, is no different that the rest of us. Prophets are just people, not ‘”special” people. What makes the different is the anointing, the power that God gives them to do “special” things.

We see in the Bible that God never anointed anyone because they were special. It was always His Anointing on them that made them special, but there were time when some folks lost sight of that fact.

When King Saul got the idea he was “special,” he lost the anointing and never got it back. David nearly did the same. Eventually, however, he came to his senses and realized, I am not king because I’m special. I’m king because God anointed me.

Even Jesus was very aware of the effect of God’s Anointing upon Him. As we saw earlier, He said in Luke 4:18-19:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted; to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind. To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”

Jesus came preaching the anointing and ministering by it.

So, what does the anointing have to do with the power of our words? Or for that matter, how do the anointing and our words figure into the overflow of God’s Glory in the earth today?

To answer those questions, let’s look ad Matthew 11:9, 11.

“But what did you come out to see? A prophet, yes, I say to you, and more than a prophet. Verily I say to you, among them that are born of women there has not risen a greater that John the Baptist.

Jesus considered John the Baptist who had prepared the way for Jesus’ ministry, to be the greatest prophet there ever was. That’s saying a lot. Yet, Jesus also had this to say:

“Notwithstanding he (that’s you and me or any believer) that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater that John. (verse 11)

My friend, you and I were born again under the New Covenant, a covenant better and more powerful than the Old Covenant under which all the prophets, from Abraham to John the Baptist, operated. Our covenant is more powerful because Jesus died, went to hell and was raised from the dead so we could have His Anointing within us.

That is why we are called the Body of Christ. We are the Body of His Anointing in the earth.

Just think how much more powerful our words can, and should be today that the words of any prophet under the Old Covenant!
Why? Because they have Jesus’ resurrected Anointing power behind them!

You and I are anointed to confess our sins and be forgiven.

We are anointed to confess God’s Word and be healed.

We are anointed to confess God’s Word and live in health.

We are anointed to confess God’s Word and live in wealth.

We are anointed to confess God’s Word and prosper in our souls.

We are anointed to speak the Word and prosper in every way!

We are the prophets of our own lives.

Matthew 12: 34-37 says it this way: “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of the hearts brings forth good things; and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned.”

Man was created in the likeness of God and given the right to chose his own words, speak them, and thereby declare his eternal destiny.

As believers, however, you and I have God’s Word to speak and God’s Anointing with which to speak it.

My brother and sister, our future is up to us, and it’s all based on the “words” that we use to “bring forth” things, words to “bring forth good things,” or words to “bring forth evil things.”

What’s more verse 36 say we will all give account for “every idle word” we speak. That literally translates as “every inoperative word that proceeds not, or is based not, in faith, that is, every nonworking word.

Every one of us has the right to resist the Word of God and not walk in it. We have every right to reject the Word, reject Jesus and to hell.

Yes, God ordained a path for each of us to walk in, a path absolutely finer than we could ever imagine. He was unwilling for us to have even one bad day, one broke day, one sick day. He desired that everyday be an overflow day.

But that overflow only comes one way, “by thy words your shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned. (Matthew 12:37)
In these days, my friend, what you and I say can mean the difference between and overflow of God’s Glory and an overflow of judgment.

Let’s put God’s Word in our mouths, and bring forth the Glory!