“Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise” (John 5:19).
Jesus said He could do nothing of Himself. He did not try. He did not even want to do anything of Himself. He did only what He saw the Father do.
In John 5:30 Jesus said it again:
I am able to do nothing from Myself—independently, of My own accord—but as I am taught by God and as I get His orders. [I decide as I am bidden to decide. As the voice comes to Me, so I give a decision.] Even as I hear, I judge and My judgment is right (just, righteous), because I do not seek or consult My own will—I have no desire to do what is pleasing to Myself, My own aim, My own purpose—but only the will and pleasure of the Father Who sent Me (The Amplified Bible).
Jesus obeyed the Father. He did not make His own decisions, but lived absolutely obedient to the voice of God. He was totally submitted to His Father.
You see, Jesus understood the difference between following after the soul (mind, will, emotions) and following after the spirit. He could have followed after His soul, but He counted that as nothing. Compared to walking after the spirit, that is exactly what walking after the soul is—nothing. You and I just do not know enough to walk after our natural thinking. That is why God gave us His Holy Spirit—to teach us to think like He thinks, to reveal His Word to us (Isaiah 55:7-11; John 14:26).
Jesus knew the written statutes and ordinances of the scriptures, but He also knew and operated by the voice of the Lord. He spent time in prayer with the Father: “What shall I do? What shall I say?” He always obeyed the Father’s direction. “Not my will be done but yours, O Lord.”
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
If you want to walk in obedience and receive God’s goodness, I have good news for you. God wants to be God to you in a very personal and intimate way. He wants to be God in the Church. He wants to be God in your individual life. But He can only be God to you as far as you will follow Him.
As we have already learned God waited and waited for a people who would be obedient to Him, so that He could be God to them, manifesting His presence and glory. Finally, in the New Testament, one man fulfilled His call. One man was absolutely obedient. His Name is Jesus.
Jesus, the Son of God, came into the world to fulfill the perfect will of God. He stripped Himself of His heavenly privileges and was born of a woman. He took upon Himself flesh. The Holy Spirit hovered over Mary and conceived in her a holy thing. Because God was His Father, and not man, Jesus was born without sin.
The life of God was in Him instead of spiritual death. But Jesus did not just come into this world saying, “Look at Me—I’m the Son of Almighty God,” and then live anyway He wanted. The thing that set Jesus apart and qualified Him to pay the price was His living as a man without sin. Yet when the time came, He was willing to lay down His own life and take sin into Himself for you and me. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Had Jesus lived in the earth after His own will, He would never have gone to the cross. But Jesus did not live in the earth after His own will. When faced with death—separation from God—He changed His will in the Garden of Gethsemane to agree with God’s will. Why? Because He knew the scriptures. He knew the Spirit of God. He knew His Father. He had the knowledge of God Who said, “Keep My statutes and ordinances. Keep My Word and obey My voice.”
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Once your focus and your fellowship is in place, press. To press means “to act with steady force or weight; to be insistent about; to exert pressure.” It means “to go forward with energetic or determined effort.”
Paul said, “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14).
To be a winner, you press. You press in to what God has called you to do. You don’t float into it. You press forward by faith, believing the Word of God and not what natural circumstances say.
No matter where you are today in your spiritual growth, you won’t progress without pressing. Remember what I said about those Olympic athletes? They know what it means to press toward a goal. They know what it means to put everything else aside and live like winners.
If natural people with natural discipline and desire to reach a goal can do that, certainly you and I can do it in the Spirit! We can do it with the power of the Holy Ghost in us and the Word of God in our hearts and in our mouths. We can press until we finish the race God has called us to run.
Remember, the natural world will always tell you that you can’t do it—it’s too big for you. You’re too foolish. You’re too weak. But God just says, Do it, and I’ll make up the difference.
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
We are to be conformed to the very attitude
of God. We are to take His innermost feelings,
place them in our hearts and cause our wills and
attitudes to conform to His. But the only way we
will get them is by acting on the Word. This is a
much higher calling and a greater form of life
than just submitting ourselves to God. We are to
have our attitudes changed to completely and
absolutely conform to the Son of the Living God.
The Word says we are predestined to be
conformed to His very image. It says we are
one with Him—one spirit with Him. It says we
have the mind of Christ, and we are bone of
His bone. Thank God, we’re connected to
Jesus—spirit, soul and body—through the
Holy Spirit and by His Word. We are completely
and totally ONE with Him, so let’s put ourselves
in God’s position for a moment.
Is there any part of your life God can’t handle?
Certainly not!
Have you ever caught God asleep? No, the
Bible says He never slumbers.
Have you ever gone to Jesus with a problem
He didn’t know how to solve? No.
Have you ever heard Jesus say, “Well, I
thought I had overcome the world, but evidently,
I haven’t.” No, you have not!
Well, we’re one with Him. If that’s His attitude,
then praise God, it should be our attitude.
We are overcomers with Him!
Jesus said in Matthew 19:26, “All things
are possible with God,” everyone would smile
and quickly agree, but the same Bible, the
same Jesus, the same Word of God says, “All
things are possible to him that believes”
(Mark 9:23). If you believe the first statement,
then you have to believe the second.
You and I need to change our perspective
in all of this. We are one with Him, so we need
to set our attitude to match His attitude. If we
are one with Him in the spirit, one with Him
in mind, and one with Him in body, then we
ought to be one with Him in attitude as well!
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Let’s consider this question again. This is
what we must grasp. Who is he that overcomes
the world? He who believes that Jesus is
the Christ. Do you believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of the Living God? If so, then
you have committed yourself to overcoming
the world. If you believe the Word of God,
then your attitude should be, “Well, praise
God, I’m an overcomer!” This should be your
attitude regardless of what comes against you.
Jesus said in John 16:33:
These things I have spoken unto
you, that in me ye might have peace.
In the world ye shall have tribulation:
but be of good cheer; I have overcome
the world.
In other words, Jesus is saying, “The world
will come at you with everything it has to offer,
but don’t worry about it—I’ve already beaten
it—I’ve already overcome the world.” Jesus was
not referring to just 99 percent of the world.
He said, “I have overcome the world.” One
hundred percent of it! It makes no difference
what the world throws at you, you can turn to
Jesus because He has already overcome it.
Now notice He said, “that in me ye might
have peace.” Jesus was teaching here about
being one with Him and being one with the
Father. He was telling His disciples that soon
the Holy Spirit would come and do things they
could not then understand. They couldn’t
grasp what it meant to be “in Him.” Without
the Holy Spirit today, none of us could understand
this. It takes the Holy Spirit to reveal
these things—particularly the reality of being
born again. Jesus told Nicodemus about it, but
he could only think of a man going back into
his mother’s womb. Jesus told him, “I’m speaking
of heavenly things, and you don’t even
understand earthly things” (John 3:13).
These men had no concept of what Jesus
was about to do at Calvary. They had no idea
that through His death and Resurrection, He
was to become the firstborn from the dead and
issue forth a new race of men who are, in God,
born again and filled with the mighty Spirit of
God Himself. They could not conceive this
when He was on the Cross, nor even after He
was raised from the dead. Only after the Holy
Spirit came on the Day of Pentecost could they
see what Jesus had been saying. Then Peter
stood up and boldly preached the Word of
God by revelation of the Holy Ghost. Can you
see the change in his life?
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
