You Can Provide for Your Family! - Kenneth Copeland

Right now, the devil is desperately working to get you to believe you’re a victim of the economy. As the cash flow in the world’s economy tightens, he is pressuring you to see yourself as nothing more than a consumer feeling the pinch. He’s trying to convince you that you can’t even provide for your family. But he’s absolutely wrong!

If you’re a born-again child of God, the Bible paints an entirely different picture of you. It says you’re a victor not a victim. It says that because the Lord is your Shepherd, you shall not lack. According to the Bible, you’re on earth to be more than a pinch-feeling consumer. You are here to be a provider!

You’re the Seed of Abraham

As the seed of Abraham (Galatians 3:29), you are God’s representative on earth. You’re blessed with the divine power not just to survive this world’s economic shortcomings, but to thrive despite them. You’re an agent of God sent to take prosperity everywhere you go—that includes providing well for your family and others around you.

Ever since the Garden of Eden, God has blessed His people and commissioned them to be the benefactors of the earth. When He blessed Adam and Eve, He told them to fill the entire planet with the goodness of Eden. When He blessed Abraham and his seed, He did it so that through them “all families of the earth” would be blessed (Genesis 12:3). Now that the Church has inherited the Blessing, God intends to carry out that plan through us. He intends us to be the source of His Blessing  to all people—not just spiritually, but financially as well.

Granted, the Body of Christ hasn’t cooperated very well with Him thus far. For a long time, we let the devil sell us the lie that Christians are supposed to be poor. But those days are gone forever.

The Word has gotten out: Through the Blessing of Abraham that is ours in Christ Jesus, God has made His people rich!

I found that out more than 40 years ago and started preaching it to anyone who would listen. At first, most people thought I was either a lunatic or a heretic.  Maybe it bothered them that while I was preaching prosperity, I was wearing a suit that had been altered so many times it had one big pocket in the back. It didn’t bother me, though. No matter what I looked like on the outside, I was rich on the inside and I knew that before long it would start showing.

Sure enough, it did. As Gloria and I kept tithing and giving out of the little bit we had, all the while believing God would multiply it back to us so we could give more, our financial situation began to change. Debts got paid off. Income increased. Eventually, instead of looking like part of the problem, we started looking so much like part of the solution that one day the bank called us wanting to borrow some money.

That’s the way God meant for things to be.

If you are sitting around wondering how on earth you are going to provide for your family, there’s good news: Not only can you provide for your family, but God can use you to be a provider for others, too.

You’re Meant to Be a Provider

You are not under this world’s economic thumb. You are not meant to simply scrimp by, barely paying your bills, and living under the constant fear that you can’t provide for your family. No, God has called—and provided for—you to do much more than that. He makes it possible for you to not only be a provider for your family but for others around you.

“But Brother Copeland, I’m not like you!” you might say, “I’m not called to be a provider for others.”

Sure you are.

If you have given your life to Jesus, you are the seed of Abraham just like I am. You’re as much his heir as any covenant child of God who has ever walked the face of the earth. In fact, you’re as much Abraham’s seed as Isaac himself was. You have the very same blessing, and it will do for you what it did for him.

When famine hit the land where Isaac was living, he didn’t run around whining about the bad economy. He obeyed God, put faith in the Blessing and prospered right in the middle of the famine. He planted crops and dug wells that ended up providing not only for his own household but for the whole region.

“Yeah, but that’s Old Testament!”

If that bothers you, then go to the New Testament and look at Jesus. When Jesus told His disciples to feed the multitude. They said, “Lord, all we have are a few loaves and fishes. That’s not enough to feed the 12 of us, much less 20,000 other people!”

Remember how Jesus responded? He didn’t agree with them. He didn’t say, “Oh, yeah! What was I thinking? You guys don’t have much, do you?”

No, He pointed to their seemingly meager supplies and said, “Bring them here,” he said. Then he told the people to sit down on the grass. Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, looked up toward heaven, and blessed them. Then, breaking the loaves into pieces, he gave the bread to the disciples, who distributed it to the people. They all ate as much as they wanted, and afterward, the disciples picked up twelve baskets of leftovers.” (Matthew 14:18-20).

For centuries, Christians have missed the biggest part of that miracle by assuming the loaves and fishes multiplied in Jesus’ hands. But if you pay attention to the Gospel accounts, you’ll see that’s not what happened. Jesus couldn’t possibly have handed His 12 disciples enough food to feed 20,000 people—it would have taken all day.

What Jesus did was begin the multiplication process. Then He handed the food to His disciples and it continued to multiply in their hands. The people had assembled themselves in rows, so the disciples distributed the food by giving a portion to the person at the end of each row. He took some for himself and passed the rest to the next person.

     Take some and pass it down. As the people did that, the food increased in their hands. The Blessing multiplied it until everyone had more than enough.

Can you see it? That’s God’s plan for the Body of Christ! It’s why Jesus came to earth! He came to get the multiplication anointing back into our hands. He came to restore to us the Blessing of Abraham not only so our needs would be met but so that, by the power of that Blessing, we could meet the needs around us until there are basket loads left over.

See Yourself As God Sees You

Are you getting this revelation? Are you getting a vision for not only providing for your own family but also the family of God?  I want you to see that you can provide for those around you—your family and those God impresses you to give to.

“Brother Copeland, my finances are so tight I just can’t see how I can do that!”

That’s the problem. You can’t see it…so you can’t do it.

But the Word can change that. It has the power to help you see things in a whole new light. If you’ll open your Bible and find out what it says about your finances; if you’ll meditate on the promises of God, choose to believe them and say, “That’s true. I agree with that,” you can start seeing yourself like God does. You can picture yourself as the provider He created you to be.

I won’t kid you. It won’t happen overnight. Retraining yourself to think in line with the Word, instead of the way you were raised or what you’ve been around all your life, takes time. You’ll have to turn off the news for a while to do it.

Especially in the current economic climate, secular media reports will just re-establish your old ways of thinking. They can only tell you what’s already happened. They can’t tell you things to come. Any projections they do conjure up are made totally apart from God. Stop looking at the picture the world is painting of you as a victim, and start looking at the profile God has painted of you in His Word.

Spend some time in Psalm 112 and get an accurate news report for a change. Take a good, long look at how God sees you, as a believer. Agree with the profile He has provided of you that says: “Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, that delighteth greatly in his commandments. His seed shall be mighty upon earth: the generation of the upright shall be blessed. Wealth and riches shall be in his house: and his righteousness endureth for ever” (verses 1-3, King James Version).

Notice, those verses don’t say anything about the seed of the righteous struggling to get by. They don’t describe the people of God as weak—economically or any other way. They don’t paint a portrait of the blessed man out on the street because of a foreclosure. They say he has a house and it’s full of wealth. They say God’s seed is mighty on the earth.

That’s what we should be saying too! We shouldn’t be talking about how hard times are. We should be confessing, “I am the seed of the righteous and I am mighty on the earth! Wealth and riches are in my house!”

Begin seeing yourself as the provider God created you to be. Begin thanking God right now that you can provide for your family and for anyone else He bring across your path.

THE BLESSING Always Works

Do you wonder if what I’m saying is really true? Do you still question whether you can provide for your own family let alone have enough extra resources to provide for others who need it? If so, read the next few verses. They let us know THE BLESSING keeps working even in the bleakest financial times.

Light shines in the darkness for the godly. They are generous, compassionate, and righteous. Good comes to those who lend money generously and conduct their business fairly. Such people will not be overcome by evil. Those who are righteous will be long remembered. They do not fear bad news; they confidently trust the Lord to care for them. They are confident and fearlessand can face their foes triumphantly. (Psalm 112: 4-8).

Clearly, those scriptures were written for dark times. They were written for times when evil tidings and bad news are a daily affair.

That’s not so unlike the current situation. The people in charge of this world’s economic system have gotten into a mess borrowing money, and now they’re trying to fix it by borrowing more. That’s the definition of insanity: to keep doing the same thing expecting different results. It isn’t going to work. It can’t work!

“But Brother Copeland, what do you think they should do?”

I think they should get a Bible. It has all the answers. It was written by the wealthiest people who’ve ever lived on the earth, and it tells how they got that wealth. Anyone who chooses to ignore it—especially when they’re in financial trouble—is downright foolish; and yet that’s what the world’s so-called “economic experts” are doing.

God has people all over the world who are smarter than those experts. One of them is a man I know only as Deacon Lewis. I met him in the mountains of Jamaica years ago when I was preaching some meetings there. As I recall, he had traveled all the way from Kingston to get to the services.

After one of the meetings, I spoke with him. I noticed he hadn’t missed a single service and I was curious about it. “Did you come up here to the mountains just for these meetings?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “I quit my job so I could come.”

“You quit your job?” I’d known people who were committed to coming to church before, but that beat all I’d ever seen.

“Yeah, I had to quit. But that’s OK,” he said. “I can take what I am learning from you about the Word and get a much better job.”

People who don’t know anything about THE BLESSING would think what Deacon Lewis did wasn’t very smart. Babylon’s financial experts would advise against it—especially in a place like Jamaica where good jobs are hard to come by. They’d say, “Forget the Bible study, man. You’ve got to earn a living!”

But the Word says something different. It says the Blessing of the Lord maketh rich and the man who delights in God’s Word will guide his affairs with discretion (Proverbs 10:22). He’ll end up in the light when everyone else is stumbling around in darkness.

Sure enough, that’s what Deacon Lewis did. He went back home and got a much better job than he had before. He wrote a letter and told me about it—I wasn’t surprised at all.

Deacon Lewis put God’s Word to work in his life and so can you. Not only can you provide for your own family, but God can use you to provide for others in His family. When others are crying doom and gloom and looking for someone to bail them out, you’ll be bringing good news and extending a helping hand.

Dare to Believe

No matter what your bank balance looks like right now, if you’ll dare to believe God’s profile of you as a prosperous provider, there will come a time when people around you will say the same thing about you that God says in Psalm 112:9—“they share freely and give generously to those in need. Their good deeds will be remembered forever. They will have influence and honor.”

If you’ll imprint Psalm 112 on your imagination and see yourself in the light of it, when others are cutting back on their giving because of the economic crunch, you’ll be giving more than ever before. While the world is hanging on to every dollar it can get, you’ll be dispersing. Your own family will be well provided for, but you’ll be jumping up from the dinner table to go meet someone’s need.

The devil, of course, will hate it. “The wicked will see this and be infuriated. They will grind their teeth in anger; they will slink away, their hopes thwarted.” (verse 10). But so what? Anything he does to stop you will roll off you like water off a duck.

No matter what he does, you and all the rest of this Blessed bunch will keep multiplying and providing in ever-greater ways. We’ll keep getting richer and richer because, as the seed of Abraham, it’s not the economy, it’s not our jobs, or our sweat and toil that bring us wealth; it’s “the blessing of the Lord makes a person rich, and he adds no sorrow with it.” (Proverbs 10:22).

Now more than ever, we—as God’s agents on the earth—need to believe that. For the sake of God’s plan and for the sake of a world that is in desperate need of the Blessing that’s on us, we must see ourselves like God does. We must act like 2 Corinthians 8:9 is true: “You know the generous grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty he could make you rich.”

Jesus became as poor as we were, for only one reason: to make us as rich as He is—not so we could be the consummate consumers, but so we, “will always have everything we need and plenty left over to share with others.” (2 Corinthians 9:8). He did it so we could become the greatest providers this world has ever seen.