Andrew Wommack - God Wants You Well - Part 21
Welcome to our Monday’s broadcast of The Gospel Truth. Today is the beginning of my fifth week of teaching on the subject of God wants you well, and I tell you, this has been powerful. I believe in my heart that there are thousands of people all over the world who’ve been encouraged and have received their healing, and I just believe there’s miracles taking place, and we’ve still got a lot more to go. You know, I’ve been sharing a lot of things from scripture on this, and I just want to again, mention that I have all of these materials. There is no way I can cover everything that God has shown me on the subject of healing. This is now the beginning of my fifth week of teaching and I’ve really just scratched the surface in a lot of ways.
So, that’s the reason that I’m promoting all of these materials that we’ve got. I encourage you at the end of our program to listen because we want to help you be healed. God wants you well, I believe that with all of my heart and I believe that these programs are going to make a difference, that there’s going to be many people, hopefully thousands, hundreds of thousands of people healed and people come to the Lord as they discover that God is a real God and he’s alive and he’s touching people’s lives and changing people today. You know, I was making this point last week that there has to be faith present on the part of the person who is receiving the healing.
Now, that’s a huge statement right there and I know that there’s all kinds of criticism from all directions, and I’ve already dealt with a lot of these things. I haven’t got time to go back and do it, but I was making this point that there are what i, and this is totally me that has made this distinction, but there’s what I call, two different types of faith. There’s an aggressive faith or a strong faith that just reaches out and takes what God has available and then there is a weak or a passive faith that can’t reach out and get it on their own, but it has to have at least this minimum level of faith to where when somebody else brings healing to you through their faith and through their anointing, you receive it by faith.
So, there has to be at least this passive, receptive faith even if you don’t have a strong faith, and I want to illustrate that to you from these scriptures in John, chapter 9. Now, it says in John, chapter 9, verse 1, «And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind»? Now, I dealt with these verses last week, I’m not going to go through all of this, but he’s not saying that this man nor his parents had ever sinned, because Romans 3:23 says, all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God, he was just saying that it wasn’t their individual sin that caused this thing.
You know, I really do believe that there are some birth defects and things that are caused by sin. People have just given themselves over to the devil and satan comes at them and afflicts their body and it could even affect the child that’s born, but then there are some things that just happen. There are some people that are born with problems. This person was born blind and Jesus said it wasn’t his sin or his parents' sin that caused this, and he goes on to say in verse 3, he says, «Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be manifest in him. I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world».
I’ve heard people try and take these verses and say that God put this blindness upon this man so that he could be glorified. Well first of all, Jesus said that I am going to work the work of God, so he made it very clear that it is the work of God to heal this, and to me, if God was to make you sick so that he could turn around and heal you and get glory out of it, that’s double minded. That’s not what this is saying. This isn’t saying that God put this sickness on this man so that, you know, 40 years later he could turn around and heal him. God didn’t make this man suffer with blindness his whole life until this time just so that Jesus could get glory out of it. That’s not what he’s saying. He’s just simply saying that it wasn’t caused by sin, but God is going to get glory out of this, and then he says, «I must work the works of him that sent me».
Jesus showed that it was God’s will to heal. He wouldn’t leave this man the way that he was, and in verse 6 it says, when he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and said unto him, go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, sent.) he went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing. So, here was a blind man and he was pointed out by Jesus' disciples. They asked this theological question, who sinned? Who caused this? It must be God’s punishment or sin that made this man blind. That is not true. There’s some things that just happen naturally and Jesus said, nobody caused this by their sin, but then he went ahead and healed this man, and notice that he spit on the ground and then used his spit to form the dust into clay and then he put this on the man’s eyes and told him to go to the pool of Siloam and wash.
Now, a lot of people don’t think about these kind of things, but I’m using this to illustrate what I was saying, that there has to be some degree of faith on the person’s part who is receiving this miracle. There were other, there was two blind men that came to Jesus and they cried out and Jesus ignored them for a while and other people told them, you know, to be quiet. Don’t trouble the master, and they just kept crying out, thou son of David, have mercy on us. Finally he stopped, called these men, and he says, what is it that you want? And they said that we might receive our sight, and he said, so be it unto you, according to your faith.
Now see, these people were aggressive. When everybody was telling them to be quiet and don’t bother the Lord, you’re making a scene, they would not take no for an answer and they were aggressive, and Jesus said, your faith hath made you whole. But this man had not reached out to Jesus. This man in John, chapter 9 he was just, the disciples saw him and the disciples pointed him out. This man didn’t come to Jesus. There was no action of faith. You know, it says over in James, chapter 2 that faith without works is dead. Faith has to be activated, it has to be acted upon, and if there is no action, then faith is dead.
Now, these other two men in the book of Matthew, see, they did act. They cried out and when other people told them to be quiet, they wouldn’t be quiet. They just kept reaching out. That’s an aggressive, active faith, a strong faith, but this man had done nothing. He didn’t ask for healing, he didn’t approach Jesus, there had been zero action, and faith without works is dead. So, Jesus did something to cause this man to act, he spit on the ground, he made clay out of that spit and put it on the man’s eyes and told him to go to the pool of Siloam.
You know, this is as he was coming out of the temple, and the pool of Siloam, if you were to take a map of Jerusalem and find this pool of Siloam and you know, find out how far it is from the temple to the pool of Siloam, it was about three fourths of a mile. I’ve been to Jerusalem and I’ve been through those city streets and I tell you what, it is just wall to wall people and this is just with people. Back in these days they had donkeys, they had camels, they had all kinds of things. I mean, for a man who was blind to go three fourths of a mile in the Jerusalem city to this pool of Siloam and wash, this was some effort on his part. If this man had not have believed, if he didn’t really believe that something was happening, you know what, he could have just wiped this spit off of his eyes and have sat down and says, why are you telling me to do this?
This is a lot of effort, I’m not going anywhere, I’m just staying right here. If he didn’t expect something to happen, he wouldn’t have gone to all of this effort and I believe that this is exactly why Jesus did this. You know, people look at scriptures and they just think that Jesus did things just to throw you off, just so that you wouldn’t form formulas, so that you know, he did things differently every time and told different people to do different things, and just because he’s weird. You know, the God who created this universe that is so complex and it is so perfect that you can go back 10,000 years and find out exactly where this was and that was, or you can go forward five years and find out exactly where this planet’s going to be, where this asteroid is going to be, God who created such order and such detail himself cannot be erratic and just totally unpredictable.
There’s reasons why Jesus did things and I really believe that the reason he did this, because this man had not reached out, he had not acted on his faith, he hadn’t done anything, and faith without works is dead, so Jesus needed to get this man in agreement and that’s the reason that he put this clay on this man’s eyes and told him to go to the pool of Siloam because it took some effort on his part, which he would not have gone to that effort if he didn’t expect to get good results, in other words, faith. He was believing God, and the Lord gave him something to act on. This is the reason that Jesus told lots of people, you know, there was a man in the synagogue that had a withered hand. We don’t know exactly what that was, but it was some type of paralysis and I’ve seen people before that you know, they are shriveled up and they can’t stretch their arm out.
Jesus had this man stand up in front of the whole group, which again, if this man was not receptive to what Jesus was doing, he would have said, I’m not doing this, you aren’t going to point me out, you aren’t going to make a spectacle out of me. The very fact that he stood up was a degree of faith, and then Jesus told him to do something that he couldn’t do. He said, stretch out your hand. He couldn’t stretch out his hand, it was paralyzed, it was withered, and yet Jesus told him to do what he couldn’t do.
You know why? Because he needed to act in faith, and I believe that this man started trying to move his hand and as he did, as he did what little he could do, he might have only moved it just an inch or something, but as he did what he could do, as he acted in faith, then the power of God began to flow, and his hand was restored and it was as perfect as the next one, and you can just go right on through and every single time that Jesus performed miracles, he asked for some type of action on that person’s part. The only time that you won’t see this happening is when a person with this strong aggressive faith came to Jesus and they were so strong and believing that the Lord would just say, according to your faith be it done unto you. He told the centurion, I’ve never seen so great a faith. Your servant is healed because of his faith.
People with aggressive faith, he didn’t ask them to do anything, but when people were brought to him and they had had no action on their part, he would always do something like this and do something to cause them to act. Now, if we are imitating Jesus, which is a great way to minister healing, I think we ought to be more like this. We ought to be telling people, do something. You know, I remember, I’ve used this example already, but I haven’t made this application with it, but there was a man in Seagoville, Texas, who was paralyzed, he was in a wheelchair. He was paralyzed from the waist down. I prayed for him and he had had no feeling and hadn’t been able to move his legs, but I prayed for him and immediately his feeling came back and he started kicking his legs, and I said, get out of that wheelchair, and he said, nope.
I’ve got this, he had a gall bladder surgery and he had had a bag put on and a tube in where it was draining fluids from this surgery and he says, if I stand up, you know this, they put this tube in based on him sitting down, and he says, if I stand up, it’ll pull this tube out, and this was when I first got started in ministry and I just wasn’t very aggressive and I said, well, you wait until you get your surger, I mean, this tube out and the surgery’s over and then you stand up. Well anyway, after two or three weeks, he went back and I went over to see him and this guy was paralyzed again, and he had had the tube out, but he now said he couldn’t stand and things like this and I kept working with him and I would pray with him, and again, he would be able to move his legs, but within a week or so he would be back the way he was.
Finally, I had another minister come over who was stronger in the Lord, further along than what I was, and this man discerned that this guy was not receiving. See, it was all, in my mind, it was all about me giving. I believed that it was God’s will for him to heal and I was just praying and I was seeing results of the healing based on my faith, but I wasn’t encouraging this guy to believe at all. This other minister who was more mature than i, he recognized the problem was, this guy wasn’t believing, and so he just told this man, he says, I can guarantee you, you come to church tonight, you will get out of that wheelchair and you will walk, and the man says, but you know, I’m here by myself, my wife, I forgot the situation, he says, I can’t get there.
He says, I just can’t do it, and this man says, you can do it. He says, if there was a doctor who could guarantee you that you’d be healed, you would rent an ambulance, you would do what you would have to, you would get there. He says, if you want to be healed, you do something. You come to church tonight and we’ll pray for you and you will be healed and you’ll get out of that wheelchair, and the guy said, okay, I’ll do it. Anyway, he never showed up at church, so the next day I went over and because he didn’t come, I really began to wonder, is this guy really believing God? Does he really want this healing? And so instead of me going over the next day and trying to force it on him again and, because I was believing, I started asking him questions.
You know, what’s going on with you? Why are you the way that you are? And it turned out that this man: he had been shot in the back. He was the sheriff, he had been shot in the spine and he had a bullet lodged in his spine and that’s the reason that he was paralyzed and he was on disability and he was the hero because he had been shot in the line of duty, and this man finally broke down and he says, I don’t know how to do anything but be a sheriff, and it was 20 years that he had been in this wheelchair and he says, there’s no way I could ever become a sheriff again, I would lose all of this money, how would I survive?
People think I’m a hero, if I get healed, they’re going to think I faked this thing, and anyway, this man because of financial things and because of what people thought and he didn’t know, he had adjusted to life in the wheelchair, he didn’t know how to be healed, he didn’t want to be healed. He was not believing God, and that’s the reason that this healing would come when I would pray, but then it would leave when I was gone because he wasn’t believing, and I learned a lesson through that, that you know what? People have to believe. They may not have this aggressive faith that reaches out and takes it, but they do have to receive, and I began to learn this.
I put this into practice, a few years later I was in Childress, Texas, and I went over to Estelline, Texas, and there was a woman there that I had never met. She had never been to my Bible studies or anything, but somebody told me about her. So, I went over to her house and she had had cancer and she had these huge tumors that were about this big around, they were probably four inches in diameter and she had one on her back shoulder and one on her side under her arm and one on the inside of her leg. She had these three huge tumors and the doctors had tried everything that they could and they said that there was no hope, they sent her home to die, and these tumors were, the blood vessels were exposed and they were literally squirting blood, she was losing, I mean, she had on these huge bandages and she was in a bed, basically unable to move, just barely alive when I met her and I started talking to her and I put these things into practice.
I said, you need to, and I told her about God wanted her well, she began to start believing and hoping, but she hadn’t done anything, and rather than pray for her that day, I said, if you’re believing God, then you come to my Bible study tonight. I had a Bible study in Childress, Texas, it was 13 miles away, and she says, I’m in this condition, I can hardly move, I can’t get out of bed. She says, how am I going to get over there? And I said, I don’t know, but you need to do something. I said, you haven’t done a thing. She had received what I said pretty well, but she hadn’t done anything, and I said, you need to act. I said, if you have to, rent an ambulance. I said, if they could take you to Amarillo and somebody could guarantee that you would be well, you would rent an ambulance if you had to, and she said, yes, I would, and I said, well I can guarantee you, you come over to this Bible study, you will be healed.
Do something, act on your faith, and so anyway, later that night, they got a friend who had a station wagon and they put a mattress in the back and they put her in there and they brought her to this Bible study and got her out and put her in a wheelchair and she came in, and anyway, I prayed for her, and I think it was either two or three days later, these huge tumors that were four and five inches in diameter had shrunk to where they were the size of a quarter and they were no longer bleeding. This woman was up and around, and I mean, it was absolutely miraculous what happened to her, and it happened because I made her do something.
Again, if I had time, you could go through every single healing that Jesus ministered to a person and he would tell people to do something. He would have them do something, and it’s not because Jesus is weird and just wants to do things in a weird way and so that you can’t predict him. The God who created all of this order in the universe is himself orderly. There are reasons why he did it, and if you would take these few things that I’ve talked about on today’s program and just go to the New Testament, to these gospel accounts and read the instances of Jesus healing, you can see that in every single instance either the person was so aggressive with their faith that they just reached out and he said, it’s your faith that healed you, or if they were passive in their faith, he would do something to have them act on their faith.
You know, this is actually an area that I don’t do well in right now. When I was pastoring churches, when I was ministering on my own, I did this nearly exclusively. I would make people act on their faith. I remember in Childress, Texas, a man came to me, he was a Mexican guy, could just barely speak English, and I never will forget, he said to me, he says, I came back from Paducah today not to feeling real good, and this guy had had his teeth pulled and he had bruises on his face, black and blue, and it was all swollen and he could just barely talk and I talked to him about healing, but then I said, you’re going to act on your faith.
I said, after I pray for you, I said, I’m going to punch you in the jaw, and he says, okay, and see, he was willing to act on it, and so I prayed for him and then I slapped him upside the head, and did you know in front of my eyes, I saw that jaw just go down and this black and blue leave just within seconds, and when I was pastoring, we made people act on it. If they had a cast, we would make them get up and act on it and cut that cast off, you know, on and on I could go. I used to do this a lot, but now that we have so many people coming to our meetings and before a meeting, I’ll have a hundred people lined up, I just haven’t got time to deal with every person, and so I don’t do as well at this as I used to because there’s just such a volume of people.
I don’t have time to explain to people, I don’t have time to do it, and so I wind up praying for a lot of people without making them do anything that would correspond to faith, and I really don’t believe that that’s the best way to do it, I just haven’t figured out how to do it differently. But you look at the ministry of Jesus, and I guarantee you, this was consistent, either the person would get healed totally off of their faith, or if their faith was weak, Jesus would give them something to do, and I think that it would be much more effective if I and other people were to take this into account and recognize that there does have to be faith present, an action of faith. They have to do something to act on their faith because faith without works is dead, and so as we talk about reasons why people aren’t healed, this is one reason is because a lot of people have never acted on their faith, they aren’t believing God and you can’t get healing without faith being present. Man, that is major what I’ve talked about today.