6 Steps to Live a God-Given Dream

Oh, Jesus! Don’t You know how sick I am? Don’t You know how broke I am? Why don’t You help me? Oh, Jesus…don’t You care?
Most of us have prayed a prayer like that at one time or another.

We’ve also found out such prayers don’t work. They don’t bring the power and provision of God on the scene. They leave us as sick and broke as we were when we prayed them.
Why is that?

It’s because that kind of “praying” does not give Jesus, our High Priest, anything to work with. It does not open the door for Him to do what He is anointed and appointed by God to do.

I realize that statement might come as a shock to some. They assume because Jesus is Lord, He can do anything He desires. But, that’s not the case. According to the New Testament, our heavenly Father has given Him a particular ministry to fulfill. Hebrews 3:1 tells us what that ministry is. It calls Him “the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.”

The word profession used there can also be translated confession. It refers to the words we speak. Its literal translation is “to say the same thing.” Therefore, according to that verse, Jesus is anointed to bring to pass the words we say when we speak His Word.

In light of that, let me ask you something. What is He supposed to do when we stand before Him and say things like, “I’m sick! I’m hurting! I’m broke!”?

I’ll tell you what He’ll do.
Nothing.

Jesus is not anointed to administer those kinds of professions. He is not called to bring to pass devilish things like sickness, pain and poverty. They’re part of the curse and He has defeated them. They are under His feet.

“Then why doesn’t He deliver me from them?” you might ask.
He has delivered you! Through His death and Resurrection He has already provided you with absolute victory in every area of life. The problem isn’t with His giving…it’s with your receiving.

#1 – Tune In to God’s Channel

Think about times when you’ve tried to tune a radio to a particular station and you’ll see what I mean. If the radio is not set on the right frequency, you can’t hear that station. You can’t receive what it’s broadcasting.

What do you do when that happens? You don’t call the station and say there’s something wrong with their equipment. You don’t wonder if they’ve gone off the air. You know enough about technology to understand the problem is not with their transmitting, it’s with your receiver. So you check the batteries in the radio or you keep adjusting it until you can hear the station loud and clear.

We need to have the spiritual sense to operate the same way with God. If we’re not receiving what He has promised us in the Bible, we should stop assuming He is withholding it from us. Instead, we should trust that God is faithful, and go to work to find out what adjustments we must make to receive from Him. We should grab our Bible, ask the Holy Spirit to show us how to tune in to THE BLESSING of God, and look for scriptures that reveal how God operates—scriptures like Genesis 26:2-3. There, God said to Isaac during a time of famine: “Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of: Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father.”

Notice that God said He would perform for Isaac the oath, or the word, He gave to Abraham. He didn’t say, “Sometimes I will perform that word and sometimes I won’t.” No, He said, “I will perform it!”

If that was the only time God made that statement, we might think it applied only to Isaac; but it wasn’t. He made the same declaration in Jeremiah 1:12: “I will hasten my word to perform it.” One translation phrases that verse, “I am quick to perform My Word.” Another says, “God watches over His Word to perform it.”

God hasn’t changed a bit. He said the same thing to Isaac that He said to Jeremiah. He performs His Word!

#2 – Untie Jesus’ Hands

What does that have to do with Jesus’ high-priestly ministry?
A great deal because, as our High Priest, He operates by that same principle.

Mark 16:14 confirms it. There we read about a time just after Jesus’ resurrection when He appeared to the disciples and upbraided them (or sternly corrected them) for “their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen.” Then He said:

Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following (verses 15-20).

Notice the word them in the last verse is italicized. That’s because it isn’t in the original Greek manuscripts. It was added at the discretion of the translators. Sometimes such additions are helpful, but in this case, the added word doesn’t belong. Only when we take it out do we see the clear meaning of the verse: They went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with and confirming the Word with signs following.

According to that scripture, signs and wonders didn’t follow the disciples just because they were the first apostles of Jesus. They followed them because they were speaking the Word. Jesus, their High Priest, was working with, confirming and performing the Word.

No wonder He upbraided the disciples when He found them huddled in a back room feeling sorry for themselves! As long as they were wallowing in unbelief, He didn’t have anything to work with. Until they started confessing His Word in faith, His hands were tied. He didn’t have anything to perform.

#3 – Rejoice in Hope

That wasn’t true just in the lives of those first disciples—it’s true for us today. Jesus Christ is still the High Priest of our profession. God has anointed and appointed Him to perform the Word we confess, and He will do it, as Hebrews 3:6 says, “…if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” Look at verse 14 of the next chapter: “Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.”

That last phrase is important because Jesus can’t fulfill His high-priestly ministry on our behalf if we’re confessing His Word one minute, and moaning about our problems the next. For Him to perform the Word in our lives, we must hold that Word fast in faith and confidence. We must rejoice in hope over it until it comes to pass.

What does it mean to rejoice in hope?

Imagine someone walked up to you and said, “I own a Fortune 500 company, and I’ve decided to pay off all your debts. I’ve put $5 million into your bank account and when you spend that, I’ll give you $5 million more. I’ve also put you on our company’s board of directors.”

If you believed that person was telling the truth, you’d have goose bumps climbing on top of goose bumps. Your hair would be standing straight up with excitement. You’d be so thrilled you couldn’t wait to call all your friends and relatives to tell them the good news. Even though you hadn’t seen a dime of the money yet, if you were confident of that person’s word, you’d be rejoicing in hope.

We ought to be the same way about the promises of God. When we read that God will meet all our needs according to His riches in glory (Philippians 4:19)…or that THE BLESSING of Abraham is ours in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:14)…or that in Christ we’ve been blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places (Ephesians 1:3), if we really believed it, we’d whoop and holler with joy. But most of the time, we don’t.

Instead, we just ho-hum our way through those promises. We say like one fellow said, “Yeah, well, praise God…I’ll put it on my Sears bill and see how far it will go. Ha, ha, ha.”

Why is that? Why does the natural promise of $5 million from a man excite us so much more than the supernatural, limitless promise of our Almighty God?

The first one is received by our natural, carnal mind. It comes to us from the outside in, through our natural, physical senses. If we have enough evidence to back it up, a natural promise requires no faith to believe. So our mind and emotions just respond and start doing back flips.

The revelation of God’s Word, on the other hand, comes to us through our spirit. It comes to us from the inside out. Before our mind can fully take hold of it and start rejoicing over it, that Word has to become strong enough in us to overcome the outward evidence to the contrary, and take over our entire being.

For that to happen, we must meditate on the Word. We must feed on it and stir ourselves up on purpose with the truth of it. We must spend time developing our faith.

#4 – Develop Your Faith in the Gospel

If you’ll do that, one of these days the reality of the gospel will hit you. It will spill out of your spirit over into your soul (your mind, will and emotions) and when it does you’ll take off like your coattail is on fire.

Faith will take hold in you and you’ll start rejoicing in hope. Once you start rejoicing in hope, it won’t be long until the Word of God is made flesh in your life.

That’s how the power of the gospel always works. It becomes a reality first on the inside of you. The external manifestation always begins with an inner revelation. That’s why Hebrews 4:2 says, “For unto us was the gospel preached….” We must hear and receive the gospel in our hearts before it can show up in our lives.

“But what does the gospel have to do with my healing and my finances?” someone might ask.

Everything—because the gospel isn’t just the good news that through Jesus we can go to heaven when we die. Let’s read Galatians 3:8: “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.”

Do you see that? Praise God. It’s the glorious truth that: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Galatians 3:13-14).

The gospel is the good news that THE BLESSING God preached to Abraham, which is the same blessing He gave to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, now belongs to us as born-again believers. Certainly, heaven is included in that blessing, but so are healing, prosperity and every other good thing God has to give.

Again! Was there any sickness in that Garden? No! Was there any poverty or oppression in that Garden? No!

The Garden of Eden was a dream place—a little heaven on earth. It was a perfect manifestation of the goodness and love of God, and that’s what THE BLESSING produces. As we confess it with confidence and give our High Priest the opportunity to administer it, it turns our lives into a God-given dream come true! He is Lord over the curse. He is high priest over THE BLESSING!

#5 – Start Building

“But I don’t have any dreams, Brother Copeland.”
Then open your Bible and get yourself some!

Read and meditate on God’s promises. Build your faith in His goodness and the integrity of His covenant Book until you begin to see a picture of your life that lines up with it. If you’ve been plagued with sickness, build a dream of health and strength and long life. If you’ve been dogged by financial lack, build a dream of abundance. Stay in the Word of God until you see yourself “always having all sufficiency in all things,” so that you “may abound to every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).

Real Bible hope is a God-ordained dream. So build yourself a dream from the Scriptures and start rejoicing over it.

In the initial stages, it will be a dream without substance, but if you’ll keep feeding it…and feeding it with the Word, your faith for it will start to grow. Then that faith will begin to draw the reality of that dream out of your spirit and it will begin to manifest in your life. It will flow out from inside you and start healing your flesh, bringing you finances and making your dreams come true.

I know from experience just how true that is. I’ve been watching it happen in my life and ministry for more than 40 years now, and so have my children. Years ago, for example, when my son, John, who is grown now, was just a little boy, our whole family developed a God-given dream for a station wagon. The car we’d been driving just wasn’t big enough to carry all the stuff for our meetings, so we all started confessing the Word over the situation.

We didn’t cry and moan and say, “God, can’t You see we need a new car? Why don’t You give us a car? Why don’t You give us the station wagon we need?”

No, our High Priest couldn’t have done anything with those words. So we said, “Our God meets our needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. We have our station wagon, in Jesus’ Name!” Then we sowed seed toward it—both word seed and financial seed.

Eventually, it got so real inside me that I quit saying much about it. It was mine. I could see it with the eyes of my spirit.

One day, I realized John could too. We were driving down the road and he said, “Daddy, we got our station wagon! It’s ours, right?”

“Yes, that’s right, John,” I answered.
“Why don’t we go get it?”

It was so real to him he couldn’t figure out why we weren’t already driving it. The reason in the natural was $3,000. In John’s spirit and mine, it was finished.

Sure enough, within a few days a fellow called me, weeping. “Brother Copeland,” he said, “please forgive me. Some time ago the Lord told me to send you some money and I haven’t done it. But I’m sending it to you now.”
The money was just the amount we needed to buy the station wagon of our dreams.

If you’ll put the Word of God in your heart and in your mouth, your High Priest will do the same kind of thing for you. He’ll perform His Word on your behalf.

#6 – Start Confessing

So get rid of those old, unbelieving prayers and confessions. Replace them with words Jesus can work with. Spend time in the Bible and develop some God-given dreams. Keep meditating the Word and feeding your heart with it until those dreams become real to you and you have such confidence in them that you are rejoicing in hope.

If you’ll dare to do it, I can promise you on the authority of God’s Word, you’ll never be disappointed. For you have a High Priest who is anointed to make your God-given dreams come true.