Andrew Wommack - God Wants You Well - Part 25
Welcome to our Friday’s broadcast of The Gospel Truth. Today is the end of my fifth week of teaching on the subject of God wants you well, and I tell you, it has been powerful. These testimonies that I’ve been playing, the people that have been miraculously healed, I tell you, it’s just, I don’t know how somebody can watch this and not believe in healing. You would just have to sit there and say, these people are lying, this stuff is not the truth, but you know, we’ve had some of these that have had doctors on there, verifying the healings.
It’s just amazing to me, but there’s a lot of people that just do not want to believe that God heals, because if he does, well then that means that they are living a substandard life, that they have let people around them suffer and even die, that they could have done something about and rather than admit that they’re wrong and change, it’s easier just to sit there and condemn anybody who believes in healing, and I’m telling you, I don’t know how people get around it. We have shared some powerful, powerful testimonies about how people are getting free and plus, I’ve been teaching on the Word of God. I’ve been teaching on reasons why people are not healed, and of course, this is after I’ve already established that it is God’s will to heal every single person. It’s a part of the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s not optional.
Now, you aren’t forced to accept it, there are good Christian people who die and go to heaven because they didn’t believe in healing and I’m not saying that it’s, you know, you aren’t saved if you don’t believe in it, but you have to appropriate your healing by faith the same way that you did your salvation. It isn’t automatic, and we’ve been talking about reasons why people aren’t healed. One of them is because people haven’t been taught the truth. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, and there are people that are sick and dying and suffering because they don’t know the truth. I’m trying to deal with that by proclaiming the truth on these television programs and playing these testimonies, but that’s not the only reason.
You can believe and yet disbelieve or have doubt, which the Bible calls, wavering, like in James, chapter 1, verses 5 through 7, and it says, if you waver, you aren’t going to receive anything from the Lord, and so it’s possible to believe and disbelieve. This is what Jesus was talking about here in Matthew, chapter 17, and in verse 20. Verse 19, his disciples says, why couldn’t we cast these demons out? And he said, it’s because of your unbelief, not because of your little faith. It’s because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed you shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place: and it shall remove: and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
You know, on our last program I was sharing an example, a personal example, where I had seen a person raised from the dead. Because of that, I was just absolutely confident that if I could see a person raised from the dead, I could also see a person come out of a wheelchair, so I was in Omaha, Nebraska, I preached, I grabbed this man by the hand, lifted him out of the wheelchair and he fell right over on his face, and when that happened, people panicked, people, you could feel the unbelief and I had fear and unbelief and shame and embarrassment come on me and I just put this guy back at his chair and let him go and I was really perplexed because I knew I believed God.
You don’t pull a person out of a wheelchair if you aren’t believing God, so I knew I was believing God and yet I didn’t see the right results, and it was many years later, I think it was either two or three years later, I was reading a book about Smith Wigglesworth and he was an Englishman who operated real strong in the healing ministry and he saw lots, lots of miracles happen, and anyway, this book was written by his son-in-law and it was telling different stories about what happened, and as I was reading this book, it told about that Smith Wigglesworth would always start his meetings by saying, the very first person to come up here on the stage will be healed of whatever you’ve got wrong with you, and he would minister to them, he would see them healed.
And then he would preach on how faith works, how healing works and all of this, and at the end he would give his invitation and he would minister to hundreds of people, but this is the way that he typically ministered and so because of it, there were these ladies that had a friend and this woman was an elderly woman, she had a tumor in her stomach, made her look like she was nine months pregnant and she was so weak she couldn’t even sit up by herself. So these two friends brought her, they were sitting on the front row, one on each side holding her up, and when Smith Wigglesworth said, the first person to come up here will be healed of whatever you’ve got, well they immediately grabbed this woman and stuck her on the stage, and so here were these three women, the woman with the tumor and a friend on each side holding her up and Smith ministered to this woman and the way he did it, he says, let her go, and these women began to explain that, you know, we can’t let her go.
She’s too weak to stand up, and Smith said, let her go, so they let her go and this woman fell right over on her face, landed on top of this tumor and you know, let out a moan, groan and you could just feel all of the unbelief, it was exactly the same as what happened to me when I pulled a man out of the wheelchair and everybody just responded, you could hear the gasps, the unbelief, the fear, you know, all of these feelings. How did I respond? Well see, I was bothered by it. I was thinking, what’s everybody going to think of me?
I was thinking, what’s happened to this guy and I was responding to all of these negative things. You know, before I finish this testimony, let me just use a passage of scripture over here in John, chapter 5, verse 44, and Jesus said, how can you believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only? Man, this is a powerful passage of scripture and it shows that if you are seeking honor that comes from people, or another way of saying this is, if you are moved by people’s opinion, then how can you believe? True faith has to be so focused on God that you don’t respond to what people say, circumstances say. You aren’t moved off track.
You know, Peter, when he walked on the water, as long as he was focused on Jesus, he was able to stay on top of that water, but when he took his eyes off of Jesus and began to look elsewhere, he began to sink. Jesus is the author and the finisher of our faith, Hebrews, chapter 12, and you have to keep focused on Jesus. If you respond to people and what they say and their criticisms, then you cannot believe. How can you believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that comes from God only?
And see, this is the reason that I didn’t see this man who was in the wheelchair healed. I had faith and I acted in faith, but when I didn’t see the right results, I immediately began to respond to people around me. I was affected by what I saw, by what people were thinking, and that hinders your faith. It’s unbelief, and it negated, it diluted, it counterbalanced my faith. Well, Smith Wigglesworth didn’t see any better results than I did the first time he ministered to that woman. She fell on her stomach. People gasped. There was all of these reactions, but how did Smith respond? He just said, pick her up.
So, these women helped up their friend and they were standing there holding her and he said the second time, he says, let her go, and they said, we can’t let her go, and he yelled at them, I said, let her go, and they let her go, and boom! Here she falls on her stomach again. How did Smith respond? He said, pick her up, so they picked her up. The third time he says, let her go, and these women says, we will not let her go, and he said, I said, let her go, and a man in the audience stood up and he said, you beast! Leave that poor woman alone, and Smith told him, he says, you mind your own business. I know my business, and then he yelled at these women and he said, let her go, and they let her go and this tumor fell right out of her dress on the platform and she walked out completely healed of this cancer.
Let me just tell you that what God has shown me is that Smith didn’t have one ounce more faith than I had. The difference was he wasn’t responsive to unbelief, criticism, the fear of other people. The problem with me wasn’t that I didn’t have faith. I know I had faith. The problem was I responded to the unbelief around me. Now, that’s huge, and there’s people see, that believe that it’s God’s will for them to be healed, they’re praying and they really do believe that God wants them well, but they respond to unbelief. It could be the unbelief of other people: it could be their own unbelief. They could have fears about it, well, what’s going to happen? Am I using wisdom? And you just get to thinking all of these other things instead of only believing.
I’m telling you, if you are going to see healing operate in your life on a consistent basis, you’re going to have to get fanatical. You can’t just say, well, I believe it’s God’s will to heal, but then you are so concerned about trying to please everybody and you don’t want to ruffle anybody’s feathers. You know, by me teaching on healing, I am absolutely convinced that there are tens of thousands of people that are receiving, the Holy Spirit is speaking to them, healings are happening, good things are happening, but I can also guarantee you, there are thousands of people who are really upset with me because this is taking God out of eternity and putting him into our life and saying that there are things available to us and if you’re sick and if you’re diseased and if you’re dying and if you’re suffering, you don’t have to be that way and there are going to be many people who get upset with me because they want to be in that situation.
You know, doesn’t sound right, but it’s true. I know some of you think, no, everybody wants to be healed. Not everybody wants to be healed supernaturally by God. If there was an ointment or a cream or a pill or a surgery who would do it: they might go that route, but to just believe that God can supernaturally heal you, this is so contrary to many people’s theology and they will fight me over it and they will fight for this right to be sick. I know some of you think, well that’s not true. Well, you just haven’t tried to minister healing to very many people. I have and I can guarantee you, there has been a lot of criticism and this criticism, there’s people that know God can heal, that God even wants to heal, but they are so receptive to what everybody else thinks.
There are some of you that are in dead churches and you may have some kind of a sickness or something that you’re fighting and you’re willing to stand and you’re willing to believe God and trust God, but everybody around you thinks you’re absolutely crazy and if you aren’t willing to stand the criticism and stand up for what you believe, you’ll die.
You know, I ministered to a man recently over in England and this man had a cancer and it was just all through his body and he was in a wheelchair. He was so weak he couldn’t stand. He had been a missionary, I don’t know the exact details, but I know it was decades in some foreign country, and anyway, he had come back, he had retired, he was an older man and he had retired and then this cancer afflicted him, but he was going to a church that there were good people in it and they loved God and these people had supported him for 20 or 30 or 40 years, whatever it was, on the missions field, they were the ones that enabled him to do what he had done and so because of it, he was going to that church, but they did not believe in healing and they thought that he was absolutely crazy to try and pray and believe for his healing.
Many of them were saying, no, God made you this way. This is God’s blessing in your life. God controls everything. You couldn’t have had this if it wasn’t God’s will. He came to me, he had been watching me on television, I was ministering to him about all of these things trying to get him into a position of faith and he was in agreement with what I was saying and he was trying to believe God, and yet there was zero evidence of it in his life and I said, well, there has to be some systemic problem. If you’re believing all of these things and if you’re confessing and if you’re resisting this and doing these things, then there has to be some systemic problem, some, it’s like a plant, you know, you cut it off at the ground level, but there’s roots or something there that are feeding this thing, and so I said, let’s pray, and as we started praying, I mean, in just seconds, the Lord showed me.
What kind of church do you go to? What about your friends? What about the people around you? What are they believing? What are they saying? And this is when this man began to tell me, they had been his partners, they’re the ones that supported him for all of these years and they weren’t believing in healing. As a matter of fact, they were critical of him and criticizing him because he believed in healing and he says, I just can’t say anything because I don’t want to offend anybody. You know what that is? That’s unbelief. It’s unbelief from other people and this man was receptive to their unbelief, not because he agreed with them, but he didn’t want to rock the boat, he didn’t think that they would understand, and so he would let them speak things over him that, you know, you’re going to die soon.
Well, God, you know, trusts you with this sickness and it’s because you’re such a great Christian that God has done this to you and he didn’t believe that, but he wouldn’t counter it. Over in Isaiah, chapter 54, verse 17 it says, no weapon 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 verse right there says there are weapons that come against us and then it mentions words. Words are weapons.
«Death and life are in the power of the tongue», Proverbs, chapter 18, verse 21. It didn’t say just life, but also death. Death and life, and if you allow people to speak death over you and if you don’t counter those things, those weapons will have an effect on you, and it says, again, Isaiah 54:17, that when these weapons come out against you, when words are spoken against you, you must condemn. You have to counter it. You know, I’ve taught on this before, but words are like seeds, and not only your words, but every word that you hear and if somebody goes to speaking negative things over you, that thing will instantly start germinating and start bringing forth unbelief, if it was negative things that were said, and the only way you can keep that process from happening is, when you hear negative words, you have to counter them, you have to condemn them, is what it says in Isaiah 54:17, or you have to negate them by countering them with your faith.
You know, I’ve had doctors speak over me that I had a heart problem, I was going to have to get open heart surgery, and I just condemned it right then. I said, that’s a lie. I don’t believe it. Did you know, most people would not say that to a doctor because you know what? We respect a doctor and we revere them and stuff. Well, I didn’t disrespect the doctor, but I just respect God’s word so much more and I said, I reject this, this is a lie, and that guy just kicked me out of his office. I had to go someplace else to get this insurance thing that I was trying to get and they did a different test, turned out there was nothing wrong with me, but I’m saying, most people wouldn’t have done that.
They just sit there and let people speak negative things over them, and you know what that is? That’s unbelief, and that unbelief will counter balance, it will negate, it’ll weaken your faith. It’s not that you aren’t believing God, but it’s that you let all of this other stuff come at you. I had an instance where there was a man who lived close to where I did: we went to the same church together. I had never even met the man, but we had gone to church, he knew who I was, and he had some kind of an eating disorder, and about every six months or so he would have to go into the hospital and they would have to give him IV’s because he couldn’t eat and keep anything down, he was losing weight and the guy would have died if they hadn’t have been able to, you know, give him some nutrients through IV’s.
And so this had happened multiple times, and finally, one of those times when he was in the hospital, he was praying about it and the Lord spoke to him and said, if you will call Andrew Wommack, he’ll come over to your house and he’ll tell you what’s wrong with you and you’ll be healed. So, when this guy got out of the hospital, he called me, I went over to his house and as I was entering his house, his mother-in-law was leaving, I said hi to her, and I went in and sat down. He told me this story and he says, so, here I am, tell me what’s wrong, and I said, well, I don’t know what’s wrong. He knew it was God’s will to heal, he knew about speaking forth the word, he knew a lot of things and everything I could tell sounded good, and I said, I don’t know what the problem is, and I said, let’s just pray.
So, we all stood around and we joined hands and I mean, within seconds of praying, the Lord brought his mother-in-law back to my remembrance and I said, what’s the relationship with your mother-in-law? And when I said that, you could tell you hit a nerve and they just immediately said, oh, it’s not been good. They said, we were in a cult before and now our mother-in-law thinks I’m in a cult again and she just criticizes us, she says we’re crazy, she ridicules us, makes fun of us and says, every time she comes over the kids get sick and stuff, and after she leaves we have to pray to get them healed, and says, we just can’t share anything with her, and they loved their mother-in-law and so they didn’t want to offend her, and anyway, they were relating this story to me and I told him, I said, that right there is the problem.
I said, satan is coming at you through that doubt and unbelief that that woman is speaking and because she is a mother-in-law and you don’t want to offend her, I said, you will not counter it, you won’t stand up against it, and I said, you’re believing God and typically your faith would be sufficient to get you healed, but this unbelief is coming at you. I likened it, I said, it’s just like you’ve got a hose or something. If you could imagine in the spiritual realm that a hose was coming right out of that woman and into you and her unbelief and her negativity is just being dumped into you and you won’t counter it because you don’t want to offend her, and I said, I can understand exactly where you are, but I’m telling you, that is the problem right there and unless you’re willing to cut this hose, cut this umbilical cord, not allow her to speak her unbelief in your life, then your faith is going to continue to be negated and you aren’t going to see this healing come to pass.
They bore witness with it, we prayed, anyway, it’s a long story, but over the next week or two, they prayed, they countered the mother-in-law, she got mad at them, for a period of time the relationship was broken off, and I know that there’s many of you think, well, I would never do that. Well then, just die, just be sick. I’m not telling you that this is going to be the easiest thing, but I am saying that there’s people that respond to the unbelief of other people and because they don’t want to offend somebody, they won’t say anything and that’s the reason you stay sick. These people broke that connection and when the mother-in-law started countering their faith, they would stand and do it in as much love as they could, but they refused to bow, they stood for the Word of God, and guess what? He got healed and he never went back into the hospital, he didn’t have this eating disorder anymore and he was fine.
I’m telling you, there’s people watching this program that you’ve got faith and if it wasn’t for all of the unbelief coming at you, you would be able to overcome and see the healing manifest, but you are allowing the unbelief of other people, just like when I pulled that man out of the wheelchair, I let the feelings and the opinions of other people get into me and affect me.
Smith Wigglesworth wouldn’t do it and because of that he stood strong and saw that woman healed. He didn’t have one ounce more faith than I had, but he had a lot less unbelief. He didn’t care what people thought about him, and there are some of you that people are speaking negative over you, they may be well meaning people, people that love you or whatever, I’m not saying it’s malicious, but nonetheless, they’re speaking death, they’re planning on your funeral, they’re talking about how you just need to accept your fate, you need to adjust to it. That’s unbelief, it’s counter to what you’re saying, and if you’re going to walk in healing, you’re going to have to stop that unbelief. You’re going to have to condemn those words. It’s not that you don’t have faith, it’s that you’ve got all of this unbelief from other people that you are refusing to sever and it’s negating your faith.
I tell you, these are powerful things that I’m saying and most people haven’t seen this, but this is exactly what Jesus was saying in Matthew, chapter 17. Why couldn’t we cast them out? He says, it’s because of your unbelief, because if your faith was only as big as a mustard seed, if you have tiny, tiny, tiny faith, that’s enough, if you don’t have any unbelief to counter it, to negate it. Man, that’s huge. I believe that some of you today have had an answer from the Lord: you know you’re believing God, why isn’t it working? Right here is an answer. If you’ll act on these things, pray and let God show you, he will show you ways that you are responding to other people and like John, chapter 5, verse 44 says, you can’t believe if you are seeking the honor that comes from people. You need to get to where you seek the honor that comes from God alone.