Andrew Wommack - God Wants You Well - Part 13
Welcome to our Wednesday’s broadcast of The Gospel Truth. Today I’m continuing my teaching on the subject of, God wants you well, and I tell you, this has been powerful. I believe that a lot of people are receiving the miraculous power of God, and if you’ll receive and be healed, not only will it bless you and increase your relationship with God, but what a testimony it would be to other people. You know, I remember a friend of mine, Cecil Paxton, he used to run our phone center and now he’s branched off and has his own ministry and he ministers on the subject of healing a lot and he sees lots and lots of healings, and anyway, Cecil and Lisa Paxton are a great testimony themself.
Lisa was born without oxygen for eight minutes or so and anyway, it left her in this state and she was crippled and they said she would never make it to a teenager, and long story, but she had this miraculous testimony. I mean, it’s awesome: we ought to get it on tape. It’s a great testimony, but she’s been healed and they travel and they minister in the subject of healing, and Cecil was ministering to a woman one time with macular degeneration and he prayed with her. She was an older lady, he prayed with her and there wasn’t any physical manifestation, so he was praying and asking God what the hindrance was, and he just felt like that this woman really didn’t care whether she got healed or not so he just stopped and asked her and he says, do you believe God wants to heal you? And she said, no, I’m too old, and she said, this is just part of growing old, and I can live with it.
It’s not a big thing, and she just wasn’t motivated to be healed, and so the approach that Cecil took with her, he says, but don’t you have influence with other people? Aren’t there younger people that you know that if God was to heal you that it would be a testimony to them and it would really increase their faith, plus it would show people that you just don’t have to deteriorate and fall apart the older you get? And as he presented these things to her, she says, you know, that’s right, this could glorify God, and so then she wanted to be healed, started believing and exerting her faith and he prayed for her again, and this time her eyesight was totally restored.
So anyway, my point in telling that is, that see, there are reasons why people don’t get healed and they are multitudes of reasons, but it could be that a person just thinks, well, I’ve lived a good life, I’m getting old and they’re just accepting of it, or there are people that are taught that God does this to you to teach you something, there’s some people that don’t feel worthy of it, there’s just a multitude of things going on. But it is never God who doesn’t want to heal you, there’s always something else besides God’s will involved. God’s will, like it said in 3 John, chapter 1, verse 2, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospers. God always wants you well, but there are other things that enter in.
So, what I’m going to do is start teaching on reasons why people aren’t healed, and let me just say up front that I could probably name a hundred things that God has shown me that have been hindrances to people and I’ve seen demonstration of, as I minister to these things people get healed, but I’m not going to have time to name all of this stuff. I’m just going to hit some of the big categories, put things in major categories and deal with it, but if you can understand this, it will really, really help you. The very first thing I want to deal with, this sounds so simple that some of you may think, you don’t even need to say this, but one reason that people aren’t healed is because they don’t believe.
But I’m going to explain that, but before I explain it, let me just say this, that’s not the only reason and this is very important because in the past, if you start teaching that it’s God’s will to be healed, there’s going to be somebody who says, well, what about so and so, who believed and prayed and they didn’t get healed and they died, or there will be an individual who’s still struggling to receive their healing and they’re believing God with everything they know and if you just come across with this simplistic answer that it’s just because you don’t believe, and if that’s the only reason you give why people are not healed, then there’s going to be a lot of people offended because they do believe. There’s more to it than that and I’m going to be dealing with this in more detail.
So, let me just say that this is not the only reason people don’t get healed, but it’s one reason and it’s a big reason. If you don’t believe, you won’t receive. You have to believe and there are just a multitude of scriptures. One of the ones off the top of my head, Mark 11:23, whosoever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, be thou cast into the sea: and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass: he shall have whatsoever he saith. There’s an emphasis put on and doubt not in your heart, and then the very next verse says, whatsoever things therefore you desire, when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you shall have them. Both of those verses emphasize that you do have to believe.
When it comes to salvation, Romans, chapter 10, verse 9 says that if you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God hath raised him from the dead you shall be saved. See, right there there’s a condition that you’ve got to believe. In Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 8, by grace are you saved through faith. If it was just God’s grace, if it was just what God has done, every one of us would receive because God’s grace is the same towards everybody, that’s what makes it grace: but we have to put faith in what God has done. If there isn’t faith present, it keeps it from working. Hebrews, chapter 4, verse 2 says, the word preached unto them did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. You have to believe.
You know, I was actually in Betws-y-Coed, Wales, one time and I was there on a missions trip and we had some people with us. There was this one guy who was very, very zealous and he just witnessed to a fence post. He would talk to anybody about the Lord and he would just kind of force people and then, you know, walk away with their scalp and claim that man, I led so many people to the Lord, and it wasn’t really, a concern of his whether they truly got changed and encountered the Lord or not. He was just trying to get people to repeat after him, and I was sitting there.
Don Francisco was actually playing the guitar and singing to draw a crowd and then some of our people were walking among the crowd and asking people about their relationship with the Lord, and this one guy was talking to a woman right behind me so I could hear what he was saying, and he encouraged her to pray this prayer with him and so he started leading her through a prayer and it was based on Romans, chapter 10, verse 9, and so he said, father, I’m sorry for my sins. I make Jesus the Lord of my life, and she was repeating this after him, and then he got to the part and he said, I believe that Jesus is raised from the dead, and the woman stopped and said, I can’t pray that. He says, why not?
And she says, I don’t believe it: I believe Jesus was just a man. I believe he’s dead. I believe he died. I don’t believe he rose from the dead, and this guy said, you don’t have to believe it, just say it, and he tried to get this woman to repeat after him and anyway, I turned around and I said, no, that’s not right. You do have to believe it, and I think everybody understands that. When it comes to committing your life to the Lord, if you don’t believe, you won’t receive, there’s just many scriptures. Well, the same thing is true of healing. You have to have faith. Now, that’s not the only reason, I believe you can believe and still not see a total healing come to pass because of other reasons and I’m going to go on and talk about that, but faith does have to be present. It’s the building block, the foundation of everything else and if you don’t believe, you can’t receive.
Now, I have had some other people who are just, I mean, fanatic about healing and they believe in healing, that it’s Gods will to heal everyone and I’ve had some of those people approach me and say that a person doesn’t have to believe at all. It doesn’t take any faith on the person’s part receiving the miracle, but it’s all about the person ministering healing and if you believe strong enough, you can get a person healed off of your faith. I don’t believe that that’s so. I would like to believe that that’s so, I really would, and I do believe that I can influence a person and I believe that in a lot of situations I can actually draw faith out of that person and I can encourage them, but if a person just digs in their heal and says, I’m not going to believe, I don’t want to receive, I reject all of this, I’m not going to overcome their unbelief, and here are some of the reasons that I believe that.
Look at these passages in Mark, chapter 6. In verse 1 it says, and he went out from thence, and came into his own country: and his disciples follow him. And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, from whence hath this man these things? And what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the mother of James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. Did you know, they jumped to a conclusion here thinking that he was only the son of Mary and that these were his physical brothers and sisters? They were like half brothers and sisters because Joseph wasn’t the father, God was the father: Mary was just the woman that God used to bring this birth, and they saw some things here but it led them to wrong conclusions.
There’s a lot of people that do the same thing today and they just jump to conclusions, they make quick judgments and they don’t understand. These people did not understand who Jesus really was. They were looking at him in just the physical, natural realm and they didn’t honor him. They looked at him as being just a man. They didn’t see him as the Son of God and because of it it says, they were offended at him, and in verse 4 it says, Jesus said unto them, a prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. And look at verse 5, he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching.
So, notice in verse 5 it says, he could there do no mighty work. It didn’t say that he wouldn’t do it: it said that he couldn’t do it. The Lord was prohibited in releasing the power of God that was on the inside of him because of these people’s unbelief. Now, this exact same story is recorded over in Matthew, chapter 13, but there’s just a tiny bit difference in the way it’s worded and you need to put these two together in order to be able to get the full story. Let me just jump into the part where it says in Matthew 13:57 they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house. And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.
So, Matthew 13:58 clearly links his lack of doing all of these mighty works to their unbelief. When you read it in Mark it says here, he could do no mighty work. Now, that’s a little different than the way it’s phrased in Matthew, and so you put these two together and what you come up with is, he wanted to minister, he wanted to release the healing power of God, but he could not do it because of their unbelief. Now, I don’t believe that Jesus laid hands on somebody and tried to heal them and he couldn’t get them healed, but I believe he was sensitive enough to the Holy Spirit to just recognize that this person isn’t believing, there isn’t any faith: instead, there’s resistance, there’s offense, they don’t honor me, they don’t respect me, they see me as only a mere man and he didn’t even minister to them because they wouldn’t receive.
But this shows you Jesus was operating in the power of God perfectly, there was no sin in him, there was no failure in him. Jesus operated 100%. He was hitting on all cylinders, he was at 100% efficiency and yet Jesus could not heal people because of their unbelief. If Jesus couldn’t do it, I guarantee you, you can’t do it, nor can i. We’ve got to take into account that the other person has a part to play in this, and many times we just judge on the outside. It says over in 1 Samuel 16:7, man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. We look at people and they may be having their hands raised and they may be saying, oh, I believe in God, and I’m trusting God, and we judge things on a superficial level. You don’t always know people’s hearts, but I can guarantee you, it does take some faith on these people’s part in order to be able to receive from God.
It may not be obvious to you, but you have to take that into account, and I’ve got some people that I know, people that I would consider a friend that teach, no, they have nothing to do with it, it’s all up to me, and if I’m operating in faith, then they’ll get healed. I would love to believe that that’s so. If that was so, man, I would just get so strong in the Holy Ghost that I could just bulldoze anybody’s unbelief, overcome their unbelief and minister healing and I guarantee you, I would go for that because I desire to see healing manifest that much, but based on this scripture, and there’s other scriptures, there’s many scriptures where he told people, he says, according to your faith be it done unto you. It wasn’t just his faith, it was their faith.
People have to believe. Sometimes it’s subtle. Sometimes it’s not real obvious what the faith is and how it’s manifest, but I guarantee you, it’s always there. I think it’s in Luke, chapter 7, let me see if I can find this passage of scripture where Jesus went and raised the widow’s son from the dead. He was coming to the city of Nain and there was a widow there and this was her only son and he was dead. They were carrying the casket and Jesus walked up to her and says, woman weep not. Now, you’ve got to, I’ve had people use that story before to say, now, what faith did this boy have who was dead? He couldn’t operate in faith, it was only the faith of Jesus, and so they say it takes no faith on the part of the person receiving this.
But let me just analyze this for a moment. If all it took was Jesus and him just using his faith, well then why did he go up to the mother of this boy and say, weep not? If he wanted her to quit weeping, why didn’t he just go up to the casket and raise the boy from the dead and I guarantee you, she wouldn’t have been weeping anymore. She would have been rejoicing. Why did he go and tell this woman to quit weeping? That’s illogical, it’s not accurate to tell a woman who’s lost her only son to quit weeping. Why did he do this? And I believe it’s this principle that I’m talking about that you have to have faith. There has to be some measure of faith present for a person to receive healing and that’s the reason he went up and told her to not weep.
Again, if all he wanted to do was stop her weeping and if he was able, he could have just raised the boy from the dead and that would have stopped it, but see, he needed somebody that was involved in this situation to exercise some faith, to use some faith, and that’s the reason he spoke to this woman. You’ve also got to realize that in the Jewish culture they showed respect and grief for the dead by how they wailed and travailed. They actually hired mourners, you can read about that in the fifth chapter of the book of Mark and others that they had these professional mourners that would come and family members would pay them to wail and travail and cry out and show their respect.
You can still see this in the Arab cultures in the Middle East today that if you see these terrorist things and they’ll show somebody was killed and they’ll show a funeral procession, you’ll see these women just wailing and are falling on the floor and crying and it’s their custom to show grief like that. To go up to a person who is mourning the death of their son and who feels like that they are honoring the memory of their son by wailing and travailing, and you walk up to them and say, woman, quit crying, you know what, that’s radical. Some of you don’t fully appreciate this because you’ve never been in a situation like this, but I’ve been in situations where you just don’t mess with people’s grief.
I won’t go into the long story, but I had a boy die who said that if he ever died, I would raise him from the dead. We had seen a man raised from the dead, he was aware of it, and he said, if he died, I would raise him from the dead. I didn’t say that. God didn’t tell me that, but that’s what he told everybody, so at his funeral in a little tiny town that normally would have drawn 100 people maximum, there was like 400 people there.
All of these people from my different Bible studies and things were there to watch this boy get raised from the dead, and the grandmother of this boy did not want me Messing with her funeral. She didn’t believe in the stuff that I believed in. She was actually a witch, a practicing witch, and she hated God and hated me and anyway, her sister was coming to pick us up and take us to this funeral, and the sister, she picked us up and when she got out to the main road, instead of turning left to go to the funeral, she went the other direction, drove out in a field and took her keys and threw them out the window and we said, what are you doing? And it turned out that the grandmother, this woman who was a practicing witch, threatened to disinherit her, she could lose five sections of land.
There’s about six hundred and forty acres per section and she was standing to lose five or whatever sections of land if she let me come to that funeral, and so they kidnapped me and kept me from going to the funeral so I wouldn’t mess with the funeral. The reason for me bringing that up is to say, some of you think, well, you know, what’s the big deal about him going and saying to a woman, weep not? Boy, this is the way that they showed respect, and for him to do that, it was radical and the scripture doesn’t say what her response was, but I personally believe it was positive because if she would have just gotten offended by this and saying, who are you?
This is my only son, how dare you come against me, and if she would have started wailing and travailing and expressing her grief, I believe that all of those people that were in the funeral procession would have tried to stone Jesus the way they did in Luke, chapter 4, and other places. The very fact that nothing happened and that Jesus had the freedom to go up and speak to this boy, shows that this woman responded in faith.
Now, it may not have been a huge faith. She didn’t seek Jesus out or bring her son to Jesus and say, you can heal him, but when it was presented to her, she responded in faith. We don’t know if she had heard about Jesus. Probably she had because Jesus certainly was dominant in those days. Everybody had heard about what he had done. She may have heard about him and when he came to her personally, she may have thought, man, this is awesome. Maybe he’ll raise my son from the dead. Or it could have just been the anointing and the love that was in his voice that spoke to her right at that moment, but however it was, there was a positive response to what Jesus said on this woman’s part or you would have read about it in scripture. And then after that he went and spoke to the boy and the boy came back from the dead.
So, for a person to say, see, that boy had no faith. You can’t say that: there was faith involved on the part of the mother, it was an intercessor, and also, here’s another thought. Some of you just think that if a person is dead, they don’t have any part to play in this, they don’t have any faith, they don’t have to believe. You’re assuming that when a person is dead that they just cease to exist, that they don’t have a choice, that there is nothing involved and that’s very short sighted and that shows our carnality, how that we’re only looking at things from a human, natural standpoint.
But the scriptures teach us that when a person dies, they don’t cease to exist, it’s just a separation of their soul and their body, of their spirit and soul from their body, but they’re still alive and I can’t prove to you that a person who is dead physically still has a choice and still has an option to operate in faith or not, but you can’t disprove it. So, I think it’s wrong to assume that a person that’s dead doesn’t have a choice. I think that they do.
I’ve actually known people who’ve been raised from the dead and they had a choice. The Lord says, are you ready to go back? These people are calling you back and they had a choice involved. I can’t prove that, you can’t disprove it, but I can say for sure that this boy’s mother had to operate in faith. That’s the reason Jesus went to her and instead of just raising her son and stopping her from weeping, he told her not to weep before he raised her son because he needed somebody with faith. You put that together with Mark, chapter 6, verse 5, he could do no mighty works because of their unbelief. You do have to believe in order to receive. That is really, really simple and yet, it’s amazing how people miss this point.