Andrew Wommack - Effortless Change - Part 11
Welcome to our Monday’s broadcast of the gospel truth. This is the beginning of my third week of teaching on effortless change and I tell you, this is something that has just transformed my life and today I’m coming to the teaching that is probably the most exciting to me in this whole thing that I’ve been talking about, effortless change, and we’re going to start talking about the parable of the sower sowing the seed. This has just become a anchor in my life, one of the most important things that God has ever shown me.
You know before we get back into that, let me just mention that this coming Wednesday, I believe it is, is the 41st anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade where they legalized abortion and since that time, you know, it depends on which figures you see, but I know that there is well over 50 million children that have been aborted in just the United States alone and of course, around the world it’s much, much higher. Many of the, oh, I don’t know what you call them, but these charities that you support, that they say that they’re for children and they’re there to help children and you give them your change and do these kind of things. What they actually do, they fund abortions. They are some of the largest abortionists in the entire world and they say they’re helping children by killing them so that they don’t ever come into this world and have to suffer all these things.
I’m telling you, it’s a plague among us today and I just want to in honor of this Roe v. Wade decision, the 41st anniversary of this, I want to play a little piece that my television department put together about a woman named Minka and she is now 102 years old and I think her birthday is November of, what would that be? It would be 1901? It that right? No, 1911 I guess it was is when she was born and anyway this woman was raped and back in the day that this happened to her, they didn’t have abortion available and she put her child up for adoption, was reunited when she was 95 years old and I tell you it is a tremendous testimony about choosing life over a death, over death and I believe that this will bless you. It’s just about three minutes long. I would like for you to watch that and then I’ll come right back and continue to share the word.
Just think that if abortion would have been available to Minka and she had aborted her daughter, then we wouldn’t have had an astronaut. We wouldn’t have had all of these people. She wouldn’t have had the joy of being reunited with her daughter and I tell you every person who considers abortion, that child is a viable human being from the time of conception. I’m not going to preach on that but the Bible makes it very clear that from the time of conception, they are an individual. They are not a fetus, some unnamed hunk of flesh. It is a living person. Psalms 139, in Luke, chapter 2, and other places make that very clear.
So I just want to mention at the anniversary of this Roe v. Wade that we are still fighting a battle to get rid of this and if you are a true born again Christian, if you believe the Word of God, there can be no other stance on this except that abortion is wrong. It is not about the convenience of the mother and whether this interrupts your lifestyle or anything like that. It is alive human being. It’s not your own body. You do not have the right to kill another person and I know many people disagree with that, but that’s the truth! That’s what the Bible says and I’m not ashamed to say it! And I’m telling you if you claim to be a Christian, you ought to re-evaluate your position if it’s contrary to that because this is what the Word of God teaches.
Let me get back into Mark, chapter 4 teaching about this parable of the sower sowing the word and in Mark, chapter 4, in verse 3 Jesus said, «Hearken: behold, there went out a sower to sow: and it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth: and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: but when the sun was up, it was scorched: and because it had no root, it withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased: and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred. And he said unto them, he that hath ears to hear, let him hear».
And so this is the parable of the sower sowing the seed! Now the Lord does give an interpretation of it and this is what I’m going to focus on mainly starting in verse 14 of this chapter. But after he had spoken this parable, look at the disciples' reaction. In verse 10 it says, and when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable. And he said unto them, unto you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God: but unto them which are without, all these things are done in parables: that seeing they may see, and not perceive: and hearing they may hear, and not understand: lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. And he said unto them, now this is really important right here that you get this, verse 13. He said unto them, know ye not this parable? And how then will you know all parables?
Now, this is a major statement right here! Jesus is basically saying if you don’t understand this parable and the points that it’s getting across, you can’t understand any of his parables. This is the key to unlocking all of the parables of the Lord. It’s like the Rosetta stone! You know today people think the Rosetta stone is some way to learn a foreign language and it is that. There is a program called that, but the Rosetta stone originally was a tablet that was found and it had three different languages inscribed on this stone, all the exact same message printed in three different languages. One of those languages was hieroglyphics and they had tremendous amount of hieroglyphics but nobody could read it.
But these other two languages that were on the Rosetta stone were known languages and so when they found this stone that had the same message printed in these three languages, the two known languages were the key to unlocking hieroglyphics and now all of the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians we have access to understand and read them because of this Rosetta stone. Well this parable is like the Rosetta stone. It is the key to understanding all of the teachings of Jesus. Now that is really significant. That puts an importance upon this. This in my opinion is like the primo parable that Jesus gave because if you can’t understand this parable, you can’t understand any of his parables, so that is really, really important. I just want to impress on you.
As I go through this, this is one of the most important things that God has ever spoken to me. These truths have literally changed my life and if this parable of the sower sowing the seed is not one of the most important passages of scripture to you and if this isn’t one of those passages that I mean you just hinge, you hang a lot of things on this. It bears the weight because it is just so important. If that’s not the way that it is to you, then you need to pray and get a Revelation of these passages because Jesus himself said if you don’t get this parable, you won’t be able to understand any of the rest!
So I encourage you. You know, today I’m going to begin into this but I’m certainly not going to get it all covered today. I’m going to be on this for a couple of weeks and as we go through this, I encourage you to pray and ask God to help you because if you get this teaching, it will just unlock the teachings of Jesus to you. It will increase your Revelation exponentially. It’s really, really important that you get this and so he said this, that it, this is the key to understanding all of his parables and then in verse 14 he begins to give the interpretation of this parable.
Verse 14 says, the sower sows the word. So even though he’s using an illustration about a man who’s taken seed and just broadcasting it. They didn’t plant it the way we do today where you dig a furrow and then you space your seed out and things like this. This was talking about a man who just, you know, wore a s, like some kind of a sack or bag on his side and he reached in and grabbed the seed and just threw it and it fell everywhere and it fell on four different types of ground and I’ve already said some of these things. I’ve made some reference to it, but I need to emphasize this again, that this is not about just planting seed. It’s not teaching you how to be a farmer but it’s taking a lesson on something that everybody understood. In those days people understood this clearly because everybody had to plant seed and grow food and do things like this.
Today we’re further removed from our food than that. People raise it and bring it to the store and some of you may think that all of these vegetables and fruit and everything come from the grocery store, but they really don’t! They have to be grown by seed and everybody was aware of this principle and what he’s doing is making a comparison, an analogy that in the same way that everything that grows, every plant, every animal, every person comes from a seed and unless there is a seed sown there can be no growth and there can be no harvest and in the natural, people understand that. But in the spiritual realm it’s amazing how people just ignore this principle and they think God, I’m praying and I’m begging you and I’m asking you to heal me, to prosper me, to do these things.
How come you haven’t done anything? Have you taken the seed, the healing seed and planted it in your life? Have you taken the prosperity seed and planted it in your life? Have you taken the joy, the peace seed and whatever else it is? The Word of God is like a seed and if you are going to get a crop, you’ve got to plant a seed. If you want to receive from God, you need to start taking God’s word and planting it in your heart and meditating on it day and night and it will produce fruit! That is profound and I think I said these things before. I teach in so many different places and say this stuff so often. I forget exactly where I said what, but I believe that the reason that the Lord used a seed to illustrate this instead of some social system. Like he didn’t teach about you know that the Kingdom of God is like school and if you’ll study and do this, then you will prosper because you can beat a social system.
A man-made system can be circumvented. It can be beaten. For instance, you could cram for a test and you can stay up all night long and you can study facts and put it in your short term memory and you could pass a test, but then it never goes into your mind. It never goes into your heart and you still don’t know it and you know, I shouldn’t have to say much. Most of us are well aware of that some of us skated through school and we passed tests and today you couldn’t pass the test that you passed back then because you never really learned it. You just got it in your short term memory but it never was really a part of you and today you would flunk the very test that you crammed for! You can beat an exam. You can cram for a test, but you can’t cram for a harvest and I think that’s the reason that God used a natural system instead of a social system because you cannot cram for a harvest.
You can’t just sit there and goof off and not do anything and then the night before you need a harvest, go out and just stay up all night long and plant it and tend it and water it and fertilize it. No, there is a, there’s the law of seed, time and harvest and I think that’s the reason that he used this example of a seed. It is a great example of how the word works. There are laws that govern how the word works. You can’t just wait until you’re in trouble and then go to, to the Word of God and in one night times try and get your whole life transformed.
This parable teaches a bunch of things but one of them is it teaches that there is time and that there is growth and that there’s things, opposition, that comes against the seed and you have to do things to protect the seed, to nurture the seed, to weed it and get rid of all of the weeds that would sap the nourishment and this is a great example of how the Kingdom of God operates. The Word of God is the seed and the seed has to be planted in the ground, before it starts germinating and releasing its power. You know over these weeks that I’ve been teaching on this, I have really tried to emphasize how powerful the word is and I know that there is a lot of people that just look at this book and they think that somehow or another I’m saying that this physical book is somehow or another powerful.
I remember going over to a woman’s house one time and she brought me some tea and I set this saucer on top of the family Bible and when I did, you would thought that I cussed, that I did something terrible. She just awwww, you can’t put that on top of this Bible and man, I immediately grabbed it and moved it and set it someplace else and you could see the little ring around where the bottom of it was, where the dust on the Bible had come off and she just honored the book, but she never took those words and put them in her heart! That’s not what I’m talking about! When I’m talking about the power of the seed, the Word of God is a living thing.
Hebrews, chapter 4, verse 12, the Word of God is quick, and powerful, that means alive and powerful. It’s alive! I believe that this Bible is a perfect representation of what God wanted to say, not only the original writings but he preserved it in the translation. You know when Jesus quoted from the Bible, when he quoted from Old Testament scriptures he wasn’t quoting from the original Hebrew text. He quoted the Greek septuagint. He quoted a translation and he called it scripture and he even went down to the very last word of, I mean, you know, whether it’s a, excuse me, letter of a word is what I was trying to say. He even talked about when God said, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Jesus said, he was making a statement right then that he was alive. I am the God of those people. They were still alive. They weren’t alive in their physical body. He did say I «Was» the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. «I am»! They were still alive and he used just a two-letter word and made a major point out of it and it was a translation. It wasn’t the original language. So I believe that this Bible and even the translation is preserved and I believe that this Bible is accurate. I honor it in that sense and I honor the people who gave their lives to produce it and put it into our hands today!
But did you know what? You could take this Bible. You can set a coffee cup on top of it and it doesn’t desecrate the word! You could take a page out of your Bible and tear it and it doesn’t desecrate the word! You can write in your Bible and it is not unholy and irreverent. The word, this is a perfect representation but the word itself is living and it is life. It is a seed and it has to come off of this page and get planted in your heart before it comes alive and begins to release that power.
There are many of you watching this program right now that you have multiple copies of the Bible but you don’t read it. You don’t put it in your heart. You may read some but you don’t study it. You don’t meditate in it. It’s not a part of you. You know I heard a man one time. He was trying to talk on the importance of the Word of God and he said I would rather leave home without my pants than I had without my Bible. He said if I had my Bible I could believe for another pair of pants and what he was trying to do was to emphasize how important the Word of God is and I agreed with the point he was making but technically speaking it doesn’t work that way!
If you went outside without your trousers on and yet if you had your Bible and if you had to go look it up and say let’s see. Someplace in here it says, my God will supply all of my need according to his riches in glory. Someplace it says something about that if we seek first the kingdom and his righteousness he’ll add these things, talking about what you’re clothed with. If you had to go look this up in the Bible, if you hadn’t had any more interaction with the scriptures than that, I can guarantee you, it would not get you a pair of trousers in a short term. It’s only the word that’s in your heart, it’s only when the seed gets out of this book and gets into your heart that it begins to germinate and release its power.
Boy, that is a huge statement right there! And so I’m saying this in love to many of you, but you have copies of the Bible. You may read a portion of scripture, but you’ve got to meditate in it. You’ve got to make it your necessary meat, your desire, and when you put God’s word first, then this word begins to start germinating in your life and releasing the power of God, releasing the healing of God, the prosperity of God, the joy of God, the wisdom of God, all of these things. But it’s got to get into your life!
God’s word is like a seed and that’s what this entire parable is all about is how the Word of God will work in your life, but how you’ve got to get it below the surface and into your heart. And I’m just about out of time today and all I’ve done is kind of give a brief introduction to this parable. But this parable of the sower sowing the seed has revolutionized my life. It’s one of the most important things that God has ever spoken to me and I guarantee you, it would make a difference in your life if you would take heed to this parable and live it!