Andrew Wommack - Effortless Change - Part 19
Welcome to our Thursday’s broadcast of the gospel truth. Today I’m continuing a series on effortless change. Tomorrow’s going to be my last day to teach on this on television, so I encourage you to please get these materials that we’re offering. I tell you, this truth is just essential. It is a life changing truth. It’s one of the most fundamental, foundational things that God has ever taught me. It would change your life. I really believe that. Many of you have heard the programs and you say, well, I’ve heard them. What do I need these materials for? Because you need to be reminded of this, this.
This is completely contrary to the stuff that you’re hearing in the world every single day. You need to hear this and be able to go over it, plus, it’s a great way to share these truths with somebody else. Plus, let me just mention some of our special offers. This living commentary is where I ha, it’s a digital computer program where I have written commentary on over 18,000 verses in the Bible, and I tell you, there is a wealth of information here. I mean, everything that God has been showing me for the last 46 years is in here and this would help you get into the Word of God.
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Now, I’ve been talking about the sower sowing the seed from Mark, chapter 4, verses 14 through 20 and I’ve spent quite a bit of time on just the first two types of people that the Word of God came to and these are people that just didn’t have a heart for it, their heart was hardened, and so it never got past their mind, it never got down on the inside of them, and satan just stole the word away. They didn’t understand it. The second type of person is a person who did get excited about the Word of God, but they didn’t take time to let it take root in their heart.
In other words, it was just a superficial commitment to the word. It was below the surface, but it wasn’t rooted and established, and so afflictions and persecutions came and stole the word away from this person and it didn’t produce fruit. The third type of person that receives the word is listed in verses 18 and 19. This is Mark 4:18 and 19, it says, «And these are they which are sown among thorns: such as hear the word, and the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful».
Now this is a big deal right here. This, in a way, is probably the most dangerous situation of all because it’s subtle. You know, I’ve said this before, but I believe that these four types of people who heard the word, I believe it’s also descriptive of progressive steps. In other words, nobody starts out being fertile ground. We all start out being hard hearted and our hearts are hardened and satan just steals things from us because we don’t understand and we have to go past that, and then the second type of person is a person who did embrace the word, they did get it below the surface, satan didn’t have total access to it, but they didn’t commit themself and get grounded in it and so they lost it.
Satan came against with afflictions and persecutions and they lost it. This third type of person is a person who, they had a root, they were committed to the Word of God. The Word of God was beginning to work in their life, but they got distracted by the cares of this life, the deceitfulness of riches and the lust of other things entered in and it choked the word. The word picture here is like a seed. If you plant it and that plant begins to start growing, well then that’s good, but the soil only has so much nutrients and moisture and if you allow weeds to grow up, those weeds will take nourishment and moisture that was intended for the seeds you want and it will decrease the yield.
It will hamper the growth of the plant that you want because the ground only has so much nourishment to give and if it’s spread out among all of these other plants, well then you are going to have a deformed or a dwarfed or a diminished harvest from the seed that you want. Well in, likewise, your heart only has so much that it can give. You know, one of the things that’s a pet peeve with me, I’ll probably get criticized over this. It seems like I always do, but you know, people today are really bragging about being able to multi-task, and yet I believe one of the principles in the Bible is, like in Philippians, chapter 3 Paul said, this one thing I do. I believe if you are really going to reach your full potential, you’ve got to do one thing. Multi-tasking just means, from my perspective, I know that not everybody agrees.
My wife doesn’t like this when I say it, but multi-tasking just means, you do multiple things poorly, amen. You might be better than I am and you might be able to do two and three things and juggle other stuff, but nobody is going to reach your full potential, your maximum potential with your vision split and your attention split. You know, the guy who helped me start our Bible college here, one of his favorite sayings was that if you want to kill a man’s vision, give him two, and that’s really true. It’s like Paul said, this one thing I do. For you to reach your maximum potential, you’ve got to be single focused. For a seed to grow to its maximum potential, you’ve got to weed out other things, weeds and all of these things and take them away, so that that one plant gets the maximum nutrients and moisture out of that ground.
If you allow other things to come up, all it’s going to do, you might still get a plant that will produce fruit but it’s going to be diminished, it won’t be as big, it won’t be as nice as the, as the seed that doesn’t have any competition for the nutrients that’s in that soil. Likewise, your heart can only give so much to something. You only have so much that you can give, so much attention, so much time, so much passion, and if you allow other things to come in, it will choke the word and it will diminish the results, and I think that this is probably one of the most subtle things that can happen, and you know, it doesn’t have to be bad things.
Like with me, I believe that there’s a progression. You start out, the word is not working. Then you get excited that it begins to produce, but you don’t have a deep enough root, and then this comes along and I actually believe, I still deal with this third type of situation that this parable is talking about, but it’s not, you know, pornography that distracts me and it’s not going out and lying and stealing and committing adultery, those aren’t the things that are trying to choke the word in my life, but you know, I can, I have a lot that I have to do to run this ministry.
Now, God has given me some awesome people. Praise God for the people that God has given me and they have taken a huge load off of my shoulders, but still there’s just a lot of stuff that I have to do to run this ministry and to make decisions and I’m saying that I can get bogged down in the details of this ministry in a way that it would choke the Word of God. This is exactly what the disciples were talking about in acts, chapter 6. They had, you know, all of the people, all of the believers in the first century church was together and they sold their individual possessions and they were living in, nearly in a communal system. I’m not saying that that’s what we should do because later Paul had to take up a collection for the poor church that was in Jerusalem.
I don’t believe that that communal system worked, but it was admirable in the sense that they were so excited about God and they thought that he was going to just, Jesus was going to return immediately, that man, they just committed everything they had to it, and they had this communal system, and part of the deal was that there were widows, and of course, in that day women basically didn’t have careers and they didn’t have access to jobs and stuff. You know, some did, but I mean, as a whole, women were dependent upon their husbands for their livelihood and there were widows that didn’t have husbands, there wasn’t a welfare system and because of it these people were dependent upon the church, and so the church was neglecting certain widows.
They were favoring the ones that were the Jewish widows and neglecting the Grecian or the non-Jew widows, and because of this a criticism came up and the disciples here, look at this in acts, chapter 6, and in verse 1, it says, in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, it is not reason that we should leave the Word of God, and serve tables. Wherefore look you out among yourselves seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.
And so this is what they did and this is where the deacons were instituted and put into place. But the point is, see, they were operating in this same principle that I’m talking about over here in Mark, chapter 4. They recognized that for the word to have its maximum impact in their life, they could not be concerned with all of the details of this daily, you know, the details of having all of these believers together and ministering to the widows and making sure that the food was distributed and everybody was taken care of, and so they raised up deacons to deal with these details, and they said, but we are going to give ourselves continually to the word, to the ministry of the word and to prayer, and because of it, man, these twelve disciples, by this time there was only eleven because Judas had hung himself, but these disciples of the Lord Jesus went out and they literally turned the world upside down and it’s because they were completely focused on it.
You know, this is the logic behind a minister, a pastor of a church or a traveling minister or whatever, being full time in ministry. It’s not that it’s sin to go work and to have a job, but a minister should be spending much of their time, I mean, focused on the Word of God and getting the maximum benefit from the word, so that they can feed the people that come to them and are needing their instruction, and I still have to deal with this because in our ministry there are just so many things. There, if I allowed myself, I could have meetings from morning until night every single day, and you know what, I, i, even though there’s nothing sinful about that, it’s really good that we’re dealing with all of these things, I have to establish priorities and there’s times that I have to withdraw myself from things that I would like to be doing in order to focus on the Word of God.
So, my point is, if I can have the ministry and the details of running this ministry and reaching people all over the world, if those things can choke the Word of God, so that the word isn’t having its maximum impact in my life, if that can happen with things that are good and things that need to be done, well then certainly it can happen with other things. You know, this can happen with family. You can get so busy with your family that you don’t have time for the Word of God. Am I saying that family is wrong? No, I’m not saying that. I’m not saying that the ministry is wrong. There’s things that need to be done, but you know what? I have to establish priorities and I can’t let even good things divert my attention away from the Word of God.
There’s a balance between this. It’s not an extreme. It’s not either all just totally stayed in the Word of God or all totally focused on these natural things. There’s a balance and you have to do some of each and I don’t have a formula where you just say that you, this is how many hours you spend doing this. You know, I don’t have a formula, I don’t live my life by formulas, but I do have these priorities, that I’ve got to give priority to the Word of God. Sometimes I get up really early in the morning. Sometimes I stay up really late at night because that’s the only time I can really focus on it. I’ve got other things that are occupying my attention, and this is true of you.
I know that when our kids were little, Jamie stayed at home and she raised our kids and she put her whole life into our family and in, into her, our kids and even though, you know, I, you could go from morning to night, people who think that a woman who stays home and doesn’t work, that you know, you don’t have a job, you don’t work, huh? Boy, I guarantee you, you just, you aren’t taking care of your family because I would a lot rather do what I do than to stay home and you know, do everything that Jamie did. That’s hard work.
There’s a lot of work an, and a woman who is staying at home and devoting herself to raising kids, taking care of the family and doing all the things that are involved, I mean, it is a lot of work, and Jamie could have been busy from daylight until dark or even beyond dark every single day, but she intentionally, because of this truth right here, about just letting life getting in the way and being so busy with life that you don’t have time to, for God, because of these truths, Jamie would always make our kids, when they were little, before they went to school, take a nap every day, an hour, I forget what it was now, an hour or two hour nap, and of course, they resisted doing it, and so she says, alright, you’ve got to lay there and be still and just look at one of your books, but you, you’ve got to lay in bed and be still, and 99% of the time if they would lay in bed and be still, they would take a nap and it made the rest of the day much better, and during this time that our kids were taking a nap, it would have been easy for Jamie to try and go get something done.
You know, if she was making bread, if she was cleaning the house, if she was doing something, she could have got it done much better without two little kids underfoot or getting in the way or you know, needing something or all of this stuff, but Jamie intentionally would take that time that they took a nap and used that to study the word and to pray, so she had at least an hour or two hours a day that she just devoted to this. Now, she could have occupied herself with doing something else, but she chose to put the priority on the Word of God, and I’m saying that this is the kind of thing you’ve got to do. It doesn’t have to be something that’s sinful that hardens us and keeps the word from working in our life.
This is saying just the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in and it chokes the word the way that the same way that a weed chokes a seed in a garden. You, anything can choke the word. You can get to where your kids are going to soccer practice and band practice, and you know, whatever else and all of these things and you’re shuttling people and you’ve got so much going that honestly, you don’t have time for anything, and am I saying that band is wrong? Am I saying that soccer or football, you know, basketball, whatever it is, is wrong? No, there’s nothing wrong with any of those things in their place, but your life can become so busy, you can multi-task so much, you can get to where you’re juggling so much that it literally burns you out and it chokes the Word of God out of your life.
You know, another instance of this is that one time I was in Phoenix, Arizona, and I had just come from another meeting and I was teaching three times a day, morning, noon and night, and I was traveling, and during the times that I wasn’t teaching, I was either eating or sleeping, and I mean, I was worn out physically and emotionally, and I remember being at a hotel in Phoenix, Arizona, and I lit, I was teaching on the book of Romans, and I remember being just, I had given out so much and I hadn’t filled myself back up. I was so bored with the whole thing that even though there was hundreds of people there, I remember thinking, if I wasn’t the one teaching, I would leave. I just was, I had given out all I had to give.
There wasn’t anything left, and the point I’m making is, you know what? I let the ministry, I have in the past at this instance and at other times, I have let the ministry choke the word in my life. I can get so busy ministering to people that I don’t have any time for God to minister to me through his word, and you know what, the ministry can choke the word. Now, if that can happen with the ministry, I guarantee you, it can happen with your job, it can happen with your family, it can happen with your hobbies, it can happen with the shows that you watch. It can happen with anything. It doesn’t have to be something sinful, but you just have to establish priorities and keep focused on the Word of God.
Now, you also have to, you know, function in this life. You’ve got to work a job. If you don’t work, you don’t eat. You’ve got to do certain things. You’ve got to take care of your kids and your family. You’ve got to think about other people. I’m not saying that you just go into a monastery and lock yourself away, that, I don’t believe that that’s the right approach. For salt to have its effect, you’ve got to get out of the salt shaker. I don’t think we ought to just build walls and try and keep the world out, but we do have to establish priorities and you do need to recognize that the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things, can choke the word so that it becomes unfruitful and you’ve got to establish priorities.
You know, I was teaching on this exact thing, I can’t remember the exact time, but I know it’s over 30 years ago, it could have been 30 or 40 years ago to a ministers' group, and I was talking to these ministers, this group of friends that were ministers and I was talking about how that the ministry can impose upon our relationship with the Lord, and I believe in a way, ministers probably fail at this more than nearly anybody else because our job is, is serving God and serving people.
Man I mean, those are the two greatest things that you could ever do, and so people sometimes get it confused and think, I just have to be on call 24 hours a day. I’ve actually known pastors before that haven’t taken a vacation in seven years and they committed to taking one and as they were locking the door and their family was in the car and they were ready to drive off the phone rang, and the wife begged the husband not to answer the phone, but he answered and it turned out it was one of the elders had died and they, family needed him and so after not having a vacation in seven years they had to cancel it because of the needs of people.
Did you know, if your job made that kind of a demand on you, you wouldn’t put up with it. If you were on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all of the time, and you, just whenever they needed you, you were always at their disposal, most of you, there wouldn’t be enough money to pay you to do that, and yet, this is where most ministers live and so because of it, ministers can let the ministry literally choke the Word of God so that it doesn’t work in their life, and I was talking about these things and one of my friends really took it to heart and he went to his church the next Sunday and he says, from now on, he says, Saturday is the day I prepare for Sunday, and so he says, I don’t have time off normally.
I’m taking Monday off, and he says, if you get sick and need me to come and minister to you, if somebody dies or whatever, they’re going to have to do it on some other day than Monday because I’m taking Monday off. He says, we’ve got other people on staff that will fill in for me, but I’ve got to have time for my family and for my personal relationship with God, and when the pastor made this announcement, a woman came up after the service was over and she scolded him and said, pastor, the devil never takes a day off, and she was trying to condemn him, and praise God, he had a supernatural word from God. He says, well then, if I don’t take a day off, I’m going to be just like the devil, amen, and so he wound up taking Mondays off. But I’m saying, see, this same principle applies.
If, if a minister can do this, ministering to people, praying for people, doing good things, things that we should be doing, if good things can choke the Word of God, well then, certainly bad things can choke the Word of God, and we just need to make this decision and come to realize that this is probably the most subtle trick of all is if satan can’t keep you from serving God, then he’ll try and push you so hard into serving God that you have no time left for God. He may try and keep you out of church, but if he can’t do that, then he’ll try and get you so involved in church that you don’t have a life outside of church, and that’s not good.
Everything needs to be in balance. You need to recognize that for the seed to reach its maximum potential, it’s got to be the single focus of all of that earth that it’s planted in, and likewise, just like Paul said, this one thing I do, if you’re receiving this teaching that I’ve been giving about how you can change effortlessly and if you want to get the maximum change in your life, if you want to see the Word of God truly produce a person that is hitting on all cylinders and flowing with the power of the Holy Spirit, then to do it, you’ve got to become single minded. You’ve got to establish priorities, and it may cost you a hobby, it may cost you something that you’ve been doing, but I tell you what, it’s well, well worth it.