Andrew Wommack - Effortless Change - Part 15
Welcome to our Friday’s broadcast of the gospel truth. Today’s the end of my third week of teaching on a subject that I call effortless change, and I tell you, I’m just talking about how that the Word of God, if you will put it in your life, it’s like a seed and it will begin to germinate, it will release power and it will just change you effortlessly, automatically. The only effort is just to go to the effort of putting God’s word in your heart and then you have to protect it, but the Word of God will just change you. It will cause you to grow and mature effortlessly.
That is a great truth and I’ve been using this parable from Mark, chapter 4 and there’s four different types of people’s hearts represented by this parable, and the Word of God is like a seed and it was, it’s, it’s teaching the way that the word interacts with people’s hearts. If a person’s heart is just totally closed and hardened, the word never penetrates in, past their understanding and into their heart, well then satan just steals these truths from them and it has no effect on them.
The second type of person that it’s talking about is what I’ve been talking about for the last day or two, and it’s in Mark, chapter 4, verses 16 and 17, and this is where it talks about a person who gets excited over the Word of God, they see its potential, they’re excited, but they don’t go to the effort, take the time to let it get rooted in their heart, and so because of that, it just isn’t able to withstand the criticism and the opposition that comes against the word. Boy, this is important, and I was sharing some instances about when the Lord first spoke this passage to me and my wife, we were in the Baptist church.
I’m not against the Baptists. I got born again in the Baptist, they did some good things, but they certainly weren’t receptive to some of the things that God was showing me through the word, and when I began to start talking about grace and righteousness and the baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues and miracles and stuff like this, they asked me to leave and we got criticized a bunch because it wasn’t following the Baptist denominational lines, and because of this, it was making me waiver and I was receiving Revelation from other people and I would preach it and see some good things happen, but when I got criticized over it, I would just lose it and the Lord spoke to me and told me it was because I was preaching somebody else’s Revelation, it wasn’t my Revelation.
It wasn’t rooted in me and that’s the reason that it couldn’t withstand the opposition, and so Jamie and I made a decision. We prayed and we said, never again am I going to have to quote somebody else and say, this is what they said. It’s going to be, this is what God told me. I may hear another person say it, but it’s going to become my Revelation. I’m going to meditate on it until it takes root on the inside of me, and so that was on a Saturday night. The very next day we went back to our Baptist church.
This lady who was like a spiritual mother to us, very influential in our life, she thought that I was getting off track because I was getting away from the Baptist doctrine and she got really concerned and she took Jamie aside and pulled her into another room and told her that Andrew’s about to go off the deep end. He is really losing it. You’re the only one that can stop him, and she started trying to influence Jamie to stop me and Jamie and I had just made this decision and Jamie stood up and says, that’s my husband and it’s not just his Revelation, it’s my Revelation. We agree on this.
This is what God is showing us, and she says, I reject this, and she walked out on that woman, and you know, when a, when a little tree is young like this, you put it in a green house. You have to put it in a protective environment because it can’t withstand a winter or a storm or a flood because it just hasn’t got the root. It’s not grown and mature, and likewise, when you first receive a Revelation from God, you aren’t able to stand all of this criticism. You need to be in kind of a green house, in a hot house environment, and because of all of this, Jamie and I just walked out of that church, walked out of these people’s lives who had been so influential in us, and I’m not sure that we did it the best way possible.
You know, now I’m a lot more mature, I’m a lot more secure, and I think I probably could have done things better, but at the time I just wasn’t able, I didn’t have the ability to counter all of the opposition and the criticism and so God just told me to leave, and we walked out of that church, out of these people’s lives who had been so influential on us, not because we didn’t love them, but because we were just not going to let anybody take the word away from us. Anybody who’s telling my wife that they need, that she needs to stop me and that she needs to keep me from going too far in this, that wasn’t healthy for us, and we walked away from it.
It’s a long story, but the Lord did restore the relationship. I was able to minister to this couple, still friends with them today, and God’s done some great things, but I’m saying, it was all based on this right here. This made a, this made a choice for me. I was actually in that church the next day and I was sitting there and there were some things being done that just grated on me. They were saying and doing things that were so contrary to scripture that I just couldn’t tolerate it and it was like, God, I’ve got to have something, and I, this is not the best way to do it.
I’m not saying you should do this, but praise God for mercy, and sometimes God will just meet you where you are and I was at a desperate place and I said, God, I need a word, and I just flopped my Bible open and you know, closed my eyes and put my finger on a scripture and I came up with the verse that says, cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causes you to err from the words of knowledge, and that’s exactly what I was praying about, and I said, that’s God, and we got up and walked out of that church, and you know what? It was one of the best things we ever did. I’m not against any denomination. I’m not against the Baptists. I have thousands, maybe tens of thousands of Baptists who receive from me on a regular basis. I love them, I minister to them.
I’m not prejudiced against the Baptists anymore than the Catholic, than anybody else. I love everybody, but I’m just saying that in that church there was things that, it was affliction and persecution coming to steal the word and I had to make a decision that God’s word was going to trump everything. It was going to dominate, even over relationships that I had had for years. The Word of God will cost you some friends. The Word of God will cost you some people. It might cost you some, some, you know, times getting together with your relatives where, man, they aren’t receptive to some of the things that you’re saying and believing and it may cause some hard times.
I’ve been through all of that, but you know what? The Word of God works, and some of the very people who have criticized me and have told me that I was wrong, now come and ask me for prayer and they see that the word is working and they’re receiving from it. I’m not saying that God, that you’re just going to lose all relationships and everything’s going to go bad, but I’m saying the potential is there and you have to be committed to the Word of God more than you are anything else. The word has to take root in you and it’s got to, it, you’ve got to protect it because afflictions and persecutions are going to come against you for the word.
Somebody’s watching this program and saying, well, I don’t have anybody criticize me. You know, the Bible says, 2 Timothy, chapter 3, verse 12, all who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. If you aren’t suffering persecution, it’s because you aren’t living godly, amen. That’s about as simple as I can make it. I’m not saying that to criticize you or hurt you, but I’m saying that if you start standing for the Word of God, it will cost you some things. You will suffer persecution. All who live godly will suffer persecution.
If you aren’t bumping into the devil, it’s because you’re both headed in the same direction. You turn around and start going against the flow and I guarantee you, you’re going to meet some opposition. A dead fish can float down stream, but it takes something that’s alive with a little bit of backbone to start going upstream and going against the flow, and I tell you, our world today is not in, in harmony with the Word of God, they aren’t speaking the Word of God, and if you start speaking it, it’s going to make you stand out like a healed thumb.
People are going to recognize something’s wrong with you. You know, I go out and buy gas and do different things and stuff like that and people are always saying, how are you? And I say, oh, I’m blessed, and I guarantee you, just that little statement, I’m not sitting here just preaching to people, passing out tracts to everybody. I’m not against doing that, but I’m saying, I’m not trying to get in your face and offend people, but me just saying, I’m blessed, I’ve had people look at me and say, well, what does that mean? And I get an opportunity to share with them and not everybody likes it. Some do, some don’t.
Just, I guarantee you, if you start living for God, if you start praising God when everybody else is down in the mouth and griping and complaining, somebody’s going to take offense at you and say, this isn’t right. You should be miserable like all the rest of us. If you start prospering when everybody else is suffering financially, there’s people that will take offense and they will try and go out of their way to cause problems. Most people, rather than repent, they will sit there and try and discredit the witness that is causing them this conviction.
You know, it’s like in a court of law, if you have a witness come to the stand who gives a condemning testimony to the defendant, then what the defense will try and do is get up and discredit the witness. They will slander you, and if they can prove that your word is no good, that somehow or another you perjured yourself before, they can basically throw your testimony out. Even though it might have been correct, if they can discredit you, then everybody else will just ignore your testimony because you’ve been proven that you aren’t trustworthy.
Well likewise, when people hear the Word of God and they begin to start seeing you prosper in the Word of God: most people are not willing to change because it takes effort. It takes effort, you know, I’m teaching on effortless change, it takes the effort of putting the word in your heart and protecting it and then the word just effortlessly, automatically produces it, but you do have to stand there, you have to commit yourself to the word, you have to be willing to suffer some persecution and rejection, and because of that, there’s a lot of people that just won’t do that. They won’t put themself in that position, and so the easiest way to overcome this conviction that they’re feeling from what you’re saying is to discredit you and they will attack you and they’ll go to speaking against you, and the purpose of it is to get you off track.
You know, some of you’ve heard me give this testimony, but this was a significant thing in my life. During this exact period of time that I was talking about when I was in the Baptist church, God was showing me this, people were criticizing me and these very best friends of ours wanted Jamie to try and stop me and keep me from going off the deep end.
During this exact period of time I went over to a friend’s meeting and he was holding a meeting and there was 200 or 300 people in this thing and he called me out, out of that whole group and he called me up and he said, Andy, he says, I see you like a runner on a track, and he said, you’re running and you’re leading the pack. You’re winning the race, but there are people in the grandstands who are yelling at you and telling you that you’re doing it all wrong, and you, he said, I see you getting off of this track and running up into the grandstands and arguing with the spectators trying to convince them that you’re right, and he said, even if you win the argument, you’re going to lose the race. He says, stay on track. Don’t get up into the grandstands. Don’t try and justify yourself, and I tell you, that was such a supernatural word.
It’s exactly what this is talking about. The purpose of affliction and persecution is to get you off of the word, to get you over there arguing with people, trying to justify yourself, trying to prove that you’re right. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong. You just need to take the Word of God and put it in your heart. You know, I’ve used this example before, but we have hundreds, thousands of blogs written against me, and my staff brought me some of them, showed me some. I was kind of blessed by them, because even though they would sit there and say I was a cult and one says I’m the most dangerous man in America and different things like this, they would start off by complementing me and they would say, he’s not like the typical faith preacher or charismatic or name it claim it, blab it grab it, prosperity preacher. They call you all these things, and they said, they aren’t like the typical person.
He doesn’t live in a mansion, he doesn’t drive real fancy cars, he gives his tapes away, and they would sit there and make all of these complements, and then they would say, but he believes in speaking in tongues, he’s of the devil, and on and on. And so anyway, when they brought all of these criticisms to me, I was kind of blessed by them because even my critics were complementing me to some degree, but then they said, we’ve got to do something and stop this, and I used this exact passage of scripture. I said, you know what? If satan can get me up into the grandstands arguing with the people and trying to defend myself, then even if I win the argument, I’m going to lose the race.
I said, God has called me to preach his word, not to sit there and justify myself, and I said, I don’t want any of my resources going towards trying to justify me and excuse me and answer all of these criticisms that people have against me. See, I, this is what satan is trying to do. He’s trying to take your attention away from the word and what the word is saying and the vision and the goals and the things that God is leading you to do and he’s trying to get you over here to where you argue with people and try and justify yourself, and even if you were to convince people, satan has won because you’re no longer preaching the word. You’re now promoting yourself and you’re now vindicating yourself.
I tell you, this is a word from God through me to many people right now, that you have received Revelation, you’ve said what you believe God wants you to do, you’re speaking forth the Revelation that God’s given you, you’re getting criticized for it, and you are in a position where you are wanting to try and justify yourself, you’re spending time praying about it, thinking about it, that time that could have been spent in the Word of God, and you know what? Even if you convinced your critics, satan has won because you aren’t taking that time to meditate in the word day and night. You’re sitting there thinking about justifying yourself.
I tell you, this is a word from God for many of you right now, and you just need to receive this and you need to cast your care about it over on the Lord. I could give you dozens and dozens of testimonies of people that have just been violently against me. I’ve had one person that for the last 30 years has told people that I was of the devil, that I was the slickest cult since Jim Jones, made people in their church burn my materials, and you know what? I have just loved this person. I’ve never said a word against them. I’ve sent them money when they needed money, I’ve helped them, I’ve ministered with them before, and it’s just been in the last few months that we have reconnected.
We were on a television program together on a network’s program, and we reconnected. They said they watch me every day on television, they invited me out to eat, we’ve become good friends, we’ve swapped phone numbers, and I’m now a friend of this person who 30 years ago told everybody I was of the devil, amen. I tell you what, it’s turned around and I didn’t have to justify myself and I didn’t have to win them over. You know, I don’t understand everything about it: I’m just enjoying the benefits right now. But I’m telling you, brothers and sisters, that you have to take a stand for the Word of God, you have to let it stay rooted and every time somebody comes against the word and criticizes it, you’ve got to deal with it right then.
Over in Isaiah, chapter 54, verse 17 it says, no weapon that is formed against you shall prosper: and every tongue that rises against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, thus saith the Lord. That passage right there says, no weapon formed against you will prosper, and then the very next phrase says, and every tongue that rises against you in judgment you shall condemn. I believe that there’s a linkage there. Words spoken against you are weapons.
Proverbs 18:21, «Death and life are in the power of the tongue». Words are weapons, and when you stand up and say something like, I’m healed in the name of Jesus, and then somebody comes up and says, oh, that’s silly. God doesn’t heal today, or you’re in foolishness. You are going to die if you don’t sit there and do something else. Those are weapons that are formed against you, and they shall not prosper, but it says, you have to condemn those words. That means, you have to void them, you have to reject those words and refuse to hold onto it.
Did you know just earlier in this week we played the Trover’s story about the couple that their baby was diagnosed with down syndrome in the womb and they prayed, and when they went back for a checkup, you know, there were all of these negative things being spoken, but they specifically said that the man walked in and canceled that diagnosis, canceled those words that were being said.
See, that’s exactly what Isaiah 54:17 is talking about. Words can be weapons that come against you trying to steal the Word of God out of your heart, and when words come against you, I found out that if I counter them right then at that exact moment, then they never generate, they never germinate, they never start releasing any power. But if I’m trying to appease people and I don’t want people to think I’m angry or bitter or I don’t want to receive any rejection and if I don’t say anything and I just go home and then an hour or two later try and get rid of those thoughts, it’s hard to do because they’ve already started germinating and releasing the power in those negative words, so I have just developed a, an attitude or a personality when something is said to me that is contrary to God’s word, I counter it right then. I mean, boom, right then I counter it.
Somebody will come up and say, man, it doesn’t look like you’re going to make it financially. I’ll say, no, in the name of Jesus. My God supplies all of my need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Somebody sees something that I’m going through and they say, man, you must be depressed and discouraged. No, I’m not depressed. No, I’m praising God at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. I’m blessed, and I’ll immediately start countering things, and this is what you’ve got to do to let the Word of God take root on the inside of you. You have to sit there and commit yourself to it, stand upon it. When words come against it, people come against it, you have to resist.
You know, I often liken it to this that if I’m standing there and if a person just comes up and barely touches me: it doesn’t take much to withstand that. I can just stand there and it’s not a problem, but if a person starts shoving me, I may have to brace myself and push back and if they run and take a running start and try and knock me over, I may have to fight and push against them. The force that’s exerted against me will determine how much force I push back with.
If a person just says something that, you know, is innocent, they don’t know what they’re saying, and it wasn’t malicious or something like that, I can usually just deflect those things in a way that most people don’t even realize what I’m doing, but I’m countering it and I’m saying, no, I won’t receive it. But if a person starts attacking me and if a person gets vicious and they come out against me, I guarantee you, I’ll push back with an equal force. I don’t try and hurt anybody, but I am not going to let people sit here and counter the Word of God and take away from me what God has given to me, and I believe that all of this is in these passages of scripture.
You cannot let somebody come and dig up the truth that God has revealed to you. You have to hold onto that truth and it will offend some people and you might lose some friends over it. I believe if you stick with it, God will even cause them to come back around. He’ll give you more friends. It says over in Mark, chapter 10 that no man has left house, or father, mother, brother, sister, or lands, but what they shall receive a hundredfold in this life, and in the life to, with persecutions: and in the world to come everlasting life. You will receive a hundredfold. Whoever you lose in this life, God will give it back to you a hundred times.
You know, that’s happened to me. I’ve lost some friends because of the stand that I’ve taken for the Word of God, but I have received back well over a hundred times, probably a thousand times or ten thousand times as many people who love me now as ever rejected me. I’m telling you that the word works, but you’ve got to stand and you’ve got to let the word take root in your heart.
Satan is coming with afflictions and persecutions trying to get you off of the word and get you to where you’re more concerned about what somebody else thinks about you than you are what the Word of God has to say, and if you are going to see the word produce in you effortlessly and just bring forth this change, then you have to go to the effort of protecting this word and standing on it, but then, if you’ll do that, I guarantee you, this seed will germinate and start releasing the supernatural power of God in your life. Man, this is great news. This is awesome.