In God's eyes, you are exactly as Ephesians 1:3-4 describes you: "All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes."

If you're like many believers, however, when you read the two verses above, your heart sinks. How can that be? Sometimes I stumble and mess things up.

Covetous thinking is what turns people into money lovers. First Timothy 6:9-10 says it this way: "But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows."

There are many reasons people are overweight—physical, psychological, emotional. But the bottom line is people are overweight because they give in to the draws of the flesh, including psychological and emotional draws.

Second Corinthians 5:21 says, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” At Kenneth Copeland Ministries, we believe that when Jesus died for us and rose again, He purchased for us a total and complete redemption which required that He endure a physical and spiritual death.

We know Jesus had no sin. He was not born with a spiritual nature of sin like men who have earthly fathers, and He never committed any sin while He was on the earth (Matthew 1:23; Hebrews 4:15).

Answered prayer is based on having a covenant relationship with the Lord, as all Christians do. The promises of that covenant are expressed in the Scriptures. From God’s point of view, those promises are the legal provisions which He has supplied for His children. They define the covenant relationship and are inseparable from it.

One of the biggest changes between the Old and New Covenants is how sin was handled.

In the Old Covenant, God established the priesthood to provide a way for the Israelites to cover or atone for sin—the breaking of the law. The high priest offered a blood sacrifice each year in the Holy of Holies to cover the sins of the people. When the high priest failed, the people had no approach to God.

In contrast, the blood of Jesus did not just cover over our sins; it eradicated our sins.

The Biblical instruction to judge ourselves was given in 1 Corinthians 11:31: “For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged.”

This scripture was given as an important part of understanding how God disciplines His children. If we don’t understand the truth about God’s discipline, we may give Him credit for bad things that happen in our lives.

The truth is, God did not make angels and man imperfect. God created them to have a choice. And that is where the opportunity to choose against God entered in.

As we celebrate America’s independence today, many may ask this question. Contrary to the arguments, a Christian nation is not one in which all citizens are Christians, nor do the laws require everyone to adhere to Christian theology. Rather, America is a Christian nation because Christianity shaped and made her what she is today. 

According to historian David Barton, Biblical Christian principles are responsible for the following:

Sin that has become a habit can feel like an impossible mountain to climb. But here’s what you need to remember—when you were born again, you instantly became an overcomer (1 John 5). You are an overcomer. That’s who you are. That’s what you are.

The devil would give anything he’s got to keep you from finding that out. Jesus already overcame him for you and gave you the authority to knock him down anywhere, anytime. All you have to do is pull the sword of the Spirit on him.

Sin is what separates man from God. This chasm between God and man happened in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve rebelled against God and ate the forbidden fruit, thereby giving the authority and dominion they possessed on earth over to Satan. Because of that original sin, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, KJV).