Andrew Wommack - Effortless Change - Part 12
Welcome to our Tuesday’s broadcast of the gospel truth. Today I’m continuing my teaching on effortless change and I’m going to be back on that in just a few moments but again this week is the 41st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court where they legalized abortion and since that time there was been well over 50 million children murdered in the United States and it’s really more than that because New York and California aren’t required to report all abortions. Those are just the ones that are reported and so this is a major tragedy and I know that there’s people watching this program who think that I just need to stick with the word and quit being political.
I tell you, this is the word! I can teach on this and I know that there’s people watching this program that say but, you know, you don’t understand. Sometimes there’s the, there, there’s these other circumstances and what if the woman doesn’t have the money to take care, well then, put it up for adoption! Well, you know what if the baby has some kind of a birth defect or something like that, just because a person has some birth defect is not a justification for killing them! That would be like you going up to a person who’s in a wheelchair and because they can’t walk around, you just decide that they aren’t a viable human being and you kill them. You do not have the right to kill a person. Plus with, with the Lord, God can heal a person.
You know what I want to do today, tomorrow is this 41st anniversary and I want a play a testimony of the Trover family who as this woman was pregnant, she went and got, I guess a sonogram, I’m not sure exactly, but the doctor determined that this baby out of like 21 markers that showed that a baby had down syndrome, this baby had 20 of those 21 markers. It was like a 99% chance that this baby was going to be born down syndrome, but they chose life and they chose to have this baby and they prayed and God healed the baby and the baby was born perfectly normal! I think that it will really bless you and it will make a statement that you know whether the Lord heals the child or not, that that is not a justification for killing a child just because it isn’t the way that you think it should be. Watch this testimony and then I’ll come back at the end of this program.
Man, isn’t that powerful! Praise God for Jesus and people who trust Jesus because God can turn any situation around. I know that there’s some people watching this that you may be one of those that’s been influenced by others to say but you know your child could have a birth defect. The fact that it could have a birth defect is not going to mean that it is going to have a birth defect. If you would pray and believe God you could see that situation change, but even if the child was born with some birth defect, that’s still not a justification for just out and out murdering that child!
You know Sarah Palin who was the vice president, presidential candidate on the republican party with McCain, she has a child that is down syndrome and it wasn’t healed and it has down syndrome but yet she loves that child and that is a special child. I know a number of people that have down syndrome and that doesn’t make them less of a person. I’m telling you that our, our justification, the way we rationalize things, that this person might be brought up in poverty, so let’s just kill it, so that it will never know poverty, that’s just crazy!
Again, I could spend the entire program talking about that, but I just want to emphasize that this is wrong and as we come up on this anniversary, I would like to use the influence that God has given me to stand up and to say that God ordained life and it is wrong for a person to kill a child, especially in their mother’s womb, the most, you know, sacred place. If you ever were going to be protected, it ought to be in your own mother’s womb and to think that the mother would just turn around and kill that child is wrong! Amen!
I know that there are some of you that really dislike me making those statements, but I am 100% consistent with the Word of God in what I’m saying and people who want to just departmentalize our life and let’s say well, let’s talk about heaven and hell issues or let’s talk about how to have peace and joy, but don’t get off unto anything that’s going to influence your lifestyle and let’s not talk about that. That’s not consistent with the word. The Word of God has a lot of instructions about how we’re supposed to live, so I am not apologizing for making these statements at all.
Back to Mark, chapter 4, in verse 15, Jesus was giving the interpretation of this parable of the sower sowing the seed and in verse 15 he said, these are they by the way side, where the word is sown: but when they have heard, satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts. Now there are four different types of soil spoken about in this parable and again this is really not talking about farming. It’s using the truths in farming to illustrate spiritual principles. The word, the seed is representing the word. The ground is representing the condition of our hearts and there are four different types of ground in this parable and they illustrate four different conditions of people’s hearts and you know, I’m not going to have time to make all of these points and so I’ll just present this as Andyology.
You can take it or leave it, but if you would study this out, I think you would find it to be true that they’re, there are four progressive steps in people’s hearts. I don’t think anybody’s heart becomes good ground for the Word of God just automatically. We have to till that ground, just like you know, if you go out and plant a seed, usually you have to till up the ground. You have to soften it up. You have to start pulling out the weeds. You have to make furrows. You have to prepare the ground.
There are things that have to be done for ground, just natural ground, to become good ground where it will produce a hundredfold return. There’s things that you have to do to make that happen and likewise our hearts don’t just instantly begin to start producing all of the good things that God’s word wants to produce in our life.
We have to prepare our heart and so I believe that this parable as it goes through four different types of ground, it’s actually talking about four different stages in hearing the Word of God. Now, that’s really important and I pro, believe that they’re progressive stages. It starts from the type of ground that was the least productive to the type of ground that was the most productive and it shows you how to travel from one, from the least productive, to the most productive. It shows you how to make these steps and changes.
So here it says that this first type of ground was where the seed just fell by the way side and the way side here is describing where there was a path where people were walking through and the ground was so hard packed that it never got below the surface. It was just laying on the surface and I said this on the program yesterday, but this isn’t talking about planting seed the way we do it today, where you dig a furrow and plant the seed and space it. But he’s talking about a person that just scattered the seed. They took it out of the bag and just threw it and it fell on these four different types of ground and this way side here is describing a path that was so hard packed that the seed just sat on the surface and the birds were able to come and eat the seed.
It never did get in the ground. It never released its potential. It was like, you know, it’s like a person who just hears the word and it’s in one ear and out the other. It had no impact on them whatsoever! That’s the first type of person. Let me turn back over to Matthew, chapter 13 and read this parable to you from Matthew’s account. It’s the exact same parable but it’s stated a little differently in Matthew 13:19. It says, «When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side».
So in Matthew’s account it specifically says that this first type of person or first type of heart was a person that didn’t understand and so therefore satan was able to come and just steal the word away from them. So here’s a really important point. To get the Word of God working in your life, it must be understood! It has to be presented simply. It has to be understood! This is why that when we have church, we have children’s church, youth ministries and things like this, or let me rephrase that. That’s why we should have it.
I think sometimes those things are nothing but babysitting type of things, but it should be that we are taking the exact same truths. You don’t change the message but you just put it into terms that a child can understand. Like for instance, if I’m talking about satan coming against you with afflictions and persecutions and if I’m talking to adults, I might be talking about some of the problems that you have in marriage or that you have in work or something like that. But if I’m talking to a child, they don’t understand marriage and work and so you talk to them about you know, this may be what happens when you are on the playground and somebody comes up and you’re, you’re trying to treat somebody with love and they’re trying to be mean and you use some kind of an example, see, that would relate to the child.
They have to understand it. You don’t change the message. You say, you know, turn the other cheek. Do good unto those that do bad to you, but you just change the illustrations. You make it so that a person can understand. I tell you, this is one of the things that I try and go to great effort to accomplish. I don’t know if I accomplish it perfectly or not, but I try and make things so simple that you have to have somebody to help you to misunderstand it. I can stand for a person to reject me, but I can’t stand for a person to ignore me like it just went in one ear and out the other. I want to make things so simple, so clear, that people understand what I’m talking about.
I’ve heard some ministers that actually, they like to use these words that you have to have a dictionary in front of you to be able to read it and understand what they’re trying to communicate and they think this is really great communication. I think that a great communicator is not one that talks over the heads of people but I think you’re talking so that every single person can get exactly what you’re saying! The first step in getting the word to work in your life is you’ve got to understand it.
If you don’t understand the word, then satan just comes immediately and takes it away from you and I tell you, I think that this is one of the problems in the body of Christ worldwide that people are speaking of things that are just right over the heads of most people. They are using all of these terms.
I just starting reading a book last night and I saw words in there that I had to go look them up and study. They’re religious words and I understand them after I think about it for a while but as you listen to the person talk or if you read the book and if you don’t take the time to look it up and study, it just, it doesn’t communicate. You don’t understand! You’ve got to present truth in a way that people can understand what you’re talking about. If you don’t, the fowls of this air, the devil, just comes and steals away the word that’s been sown in your heart, and I tell you, this is where a lot of people in the body of Christ are. We need to make it so simple that you have to have somebody to help you to misunderstand what the word says.