Andrew Wommack - God Wants You Well - Part 27
Welcome to our Tuesday’s broadcast of The Gospel Truth. Today I’m into my sixth week of teaching on the subject of God wants you well. I tell you, I believe that with all of my heart and we have been getting awesome testimonies. We’ve had a huge response on our phones. You know, one of the things that’s happening is, we’re offering this little pamphlet. I don’t know where it went, here it is, and this little booklet has testimonies and teaching in here about healing, plus on the back it has every time in the gospels that Jesus healed a person.
It’s just a powerful thing and this is a freebie. If you’ll call, we’ll send this to you, but then we have this mp3 USB thing that you stick in your computer and it’s got over 40 hours' worth of teaching on it and we also have a book on the subject of God wants you well, DVDs, CDs, a study guide, and then we have four of these DVDs that just have testimonies on here. I’ve been playing a lot of these testimonies, and I tell you, they’ve been powerful. So, we’ve got a huge amount of resources here on the subject of healing and there really is no reason for you to be sick. I know that there’s some of you that think, well, you just don’t understand, the doctor says this.
I’m telling you that the Word of God says, he heals all of our sickness and all of our infirmities, by the stripes of Jesus you were healed, that God wishes above all things that you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers and if you can believe and receive it, you can be healed, it doesn’t matter what your situation is. I believe that with all of my heart. Praise God. I know that there’s people watching this program that don’t believe that. There’s probably a lot of people who just turned this program off because they just can’t believe in a God that’s willing to heal everybody, but that is the truth. Jesus was a perfect representation of God the Father. He says, I only do what I see my father do, and he went about healing all that were oppressed of the devil: for God was with him, Acts 10:38.
So, we’ve been talking about, well that if all of this is true, then why isn’t everybody healed? One reason is because they don’t believe. You can’t believe if you haven’t heard the word. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. There’s people that don’t believe because they’ve been taught wrong. They’ve been taught that it’s of the devil to believe that God heals. I think I used this example, but we just had an article written about us in the paper as we’ve moved up to our new facility in Woodland park and they quoted the previous mayor as saying, we don’t need these kind of people in our community. They believe that you can lay hands on the sick and they shall recover, and he just thought that that was terrible. There’s lots of people like that that don’t believe in healing, believe that this is bad stuff.
You know, I don’t agree with that, certainly, I don’t even understand exactly why people are so set against it, but there are people that are. So, if you don’t believe, you won’t receive, but it’s possible to believe and at the same time have unbelief and that unbelief will cancel out or negate your faith, and this is what Jesus said in Matthew, chapter 17, verse 20, his disciples says, why couldn’t we cast him out? And he says 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.
So, I’ve spent a number of days trying to show that you can negate your faith through unbelief. You can be believing God and if you didn’t have any unbelief, it would be sufficient to get healed, but unbelief can counter that and sometimes it’s the unbelief of people around you and their negativism and people won’t counter it because they don’t want to offend people. Sometimes it’s your own unbelief, it’s your own fears and stuff, but you can believe and disbelieve, so what you’ve got to do is to get rid of that unbelief. Now, how do you do that? Look at this in Matthew, chapter 17, verse 21. After he had said, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, it can cast him out and into the sea, he said, «Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting».
Did you know, I’ve heard people teach on this and they always say it’s talking about this kind of demon and they come up with these beliefs that there are certain demons that are stronger than others and some demons won’t respond to just faith in the name of Jesus and using your authority, that you’ve also got to fast and pray in order to get rid of these demons. That’s not true. If you were to ever encounter a demon that wouldn’t bow the knee to the name of Jesus and faith in his name, well then your fasting and prayer is not going to get rid of him either. The truth is, nothing is greater than the name of Jesus and faith in his name. If you speak to any demon, I don’t care if it’s satan himself, in the name of Jesus and put faith in that, satan has to bow the knee.
This isn’t talking about that certain types of demon only go out by prayer and fasting, the subject of the sentence up here in verse 20 was unbelief. The problem was unbelief, and how do you get rid of this kind of unbelief? That kind of unbelief only comes out through fasting and prayer. Now that’s big, because again, I’ve been involved in some of this stuff where there was a lot of deliverance type stuff and they make certain demons harder than others and stuff and it leads into all kinds of abuses and weirdness and all kinds of junk. You know, I’m not glorifying this at all and I’m not saying this to be critical of other people because I’ve done this, but when I first became aware that there were demons, I got into some strange, strange things and it was weird and we saw some people set free, but it was weird and there was also, it’s like playing with fire.
There was some potential damage and I had satan attack me and I had a lot of things happen, I won’t spend time on that, but I’ve learned a better way. I now realize that satan is a zero with the rim knocked off. He’s nothing unless I empower him through my fear or unbelief and I now see demons cast out of people, but it’s really simple compared to what it used to be. I don’t have to spend months prepping them, I don’t have to get five or six people together, we don’t have to get them to go back into their mother’s womb and deal with these hurts and pains and find out how all of this stuff happened.
I tell you, there’s a lot of weirdness in these areas. You have authority over the devil and there is no demon that won’t respond to the name of Jesus and faith in his name. But your unbelief, your fear about things can hinder your faith from working and how do you get rid of that kind of unbelief? That’s what Jesus was talking about. Let me also say this. I’m not against anybody. You know, if you’re reading the NIV, praise God that you’re reading, so I’m not 100% against that, but I’ve already made this point.
In the 20th verse, the NIV says, it’s your little faith which is definitely not what Matthew, chapter 17, verse 20 is saying, and then the NIV doesn’t even have the 21st verse in it. They just chose to exclude that and this is one of the major points right here. So, if you’ve got one of those NIV’s, I suggest that you get a real Bible, amen. Again, I’m not totally against it. Sometimes I’ll quote from the NIV, but if you want to be accurate, you need to get a better translation than that. There’s at least four, five, six verses that I’ve found that they just took out of the Bible because it didn’t fit their theology. You need to get you a whole Bible, and I’m telling you that this is a major point right here. It says, howbeit this kind, talking about this kind of unbelief only goes out by prayer and fasting.
So, here is another Andrewism. You know, I can’t show you a scripture that says this concisely, but my study of the word and the things that God has led me, I can categorize unbelief into three major categories, and again, this is just andyology. I can’t show you a verse, but I believe that these things are true, and for the purpose of discussion, it will help you to understand what it’s talking about. It says, «This kind», talking about unbelief, goeth not out but by prayer and fasting, so apparently, there’s different kinds of unbelief and I’ve put them into three categories. The first one is just an unbelief that comes through ignorance, or in our politically correct, touchy feely world, unbelief that comes through a lack of knowledge.
You know, if my using the word «Ignorance» is offensive to you, just get over it, amen. I don’t mean anything by it, but it’s just plain. It’s just, you know, we’re ignorant of things. Before I understood about healing, I never got healed. You aren’t going to get healed accidentally. If you don’t pursue it, you won’t get it. You can pray and say, God, if it’s your will, heal me. You’ll never get healed. You’re going to have to know that it’s God’s will and then you’re going to have to pursue it and you’re going to have to stand against some things, some unbelief, and if you don’t do it, it won’t work, but see, before you understood these things, it just doesn’t happen unless you believe for it and receive it.
So, there is unbelief about spiritual things because of people’s ignorance. Most people do not know what the Word of God says, they do not base their life on what the word says, they’ve been brought up to believe a certain way and they just accept it blindly and they’re just ignorant or they have a lack of knowledge. If you don’t know what the truth of God’s word says, there is going to be a natural resistance or what the Bible would call unbelief towards those things. How do you overcome that type of unbelief? Well, it’s real simple. It says, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free, John, chapter 8, verse 32. Only the truth that you know can set you free, but if you are ignorant, if you are uninformed, well, all you’ve got to do to counter that type of unbelief is tell a person the truth and once they hear the truth, they aren’t ignorant anymore.
Now, they still have to accept it and embrace it, but the way you counter an unbelief that comes through just ignorance is that you tell a person the truth, and they shall know the truth and the truth shall make them free. So, the antidote, the cure for that is, you just tell a person the truth and if their heart is open, well then they can get rid of this kind of unbelief, but this is not the kind of unbelief that Jesus was talking about here. There’s a second type of unbelief that again, these are just totally my terminologies, but there’s a second type of unbelief that I call disbelief or it’s actually faith, but it’s faith in the wrong thing. You’ve been taught the wrong thing. For instance, in the context of what I’ve been talking about with healing, most of the denominations teach against healing.
Some of them will say, oh yeah, God is sovereign. He can do whatever he wants to, it’s possible to be healed. If a person got healed, they wouldn’t necessarily reject it, but they teach that you certainly can’t expect it, you can’t believe for it, it’s just up to God, que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be. You have no control over it, so you just ask and then wait and see. See, that’s unbelief. That is wrong teaching. That is not what the Word of God teaches and if you’ve been taught wrong, then you have faith but you’re believing in the wrong way. I believe that all unbelief is is faith in the wrong thing. For instance, if a person is struggling to believe, God, do you really want me to be healed? It’s because you’ve been taught wrong. You’ve been taught that God doesn’t get that involved in our normal everyday affairs, God doesn’t do this, God is detached from us.
Some people have even been taught, God’s the source of that and God puts this sickness on people to teach them things and stuff. If you’ve been taught that stuff, you’re believing but you’re just believing the wrong thing. That’s what unbelief is. Your faith is going in the wrong direction. If this direction over here is healing and towards God, you’re going in this direction because you’ve been taught the wrong thing. How do you get rid of that kind of unbelief? Well basically, it’s the same answer as the first type of an unbelief that comes through ignorance. The second type of unbelief where you’ve been taught the wrong thing, it’s the same thing.
You tell a person the truth and then they renew their mind and they can get rid of that unbelief. But it’s harder because in a sense, it’s like if you were in a classroom and if you had a blackboard up there, it would be, you know, if you had that blackboard written on it and it was just totally filled with all of this wrong stuff, well, for you to write anything else on it, you have to first of all erase what is already there and clean it off so that you could write the new stuff on it. If you have ignorance and that’s the source of your unbelief, you’re like a blank board. You haven’t had anything written on it. It’s relatively easy to tell a person the truth and get them to accept that, but if a person has been taught wrongly, well then see, you’ve got to somehow or another counter all of that unbelief and all of this wrong stuff that they’ve been taught and you’ve got to just by point by point go through and counter all of these things that they’ve been taught and erase that stuff before you can write faith on there, and so it’s the same principle.
You tell a person the truth, and the truth will make you free, but you’ve got to counter all of this wrong thinking, all of this wrong believing. But the first two types of unbelief, an unbelief that comes through ignorance and an unbelief that is because of wrong teaching, the antidote, the answer is the same thing. You tell a person the truth, and with varying degrees of effort, if that person will apply themself, they can receive that truth and it’ll get rid of that unbelief and then they start operating in faith and their little bit of faith works. But there’s a third type of unbelief and this is what I believe Jesus was referring to here and this type of unbelief is what I call a natural unbelief.
It’s not through ignorance, you’ve heard the truth, it’s not because you’ve been taught and are believing the wrong thing, you’ve had your mind renewed, but I believe that there is just an unbelief that comes naturally that you have to deal with, and in this instance, I’ve already turned over to Mark, chapter 9 and read this same story out of Mark, chapter 9 I won’t take time to turn back there, but if you turn over to Mark, chapter 9, it says that when this boy who had this lunatic spirit was brought to Jesus, that he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming. I don’t know if any of you have ever seen a person have an epileptic seizure. I don’t know for sure that that’s exactly the same thing, but most scholars believe that this was something like a seizure, and over there in Mark, chapter 9 as it describes what happened, it says that he fell on the ground, and wallowed and foamed at the mouth.
It’s very similar to an epileptic seizure, and if you’ve ever seen a person have that, I guarantee you, it is a frightful thing. The first time I ever saw this was when I was in high school and we were on risers, I was in the choir, and we were on these risers at a high school assembly and the girl in front of me, we went to church together, she had an epileptic seizure and she turned around and looked at me and fell into my arms and she was foaming at the mouth, she had bit her tongue, and she was having this seizure, and I guarantee you, it liked to have scared everything out of me. The hair on the back of my neck was standing up. I had never seen that before.
If you’ve ever seen this, this is a big deal, and when you see something like that, did you know it just naturally causes fear and unbelief and things like this, especially for these disciples. It says that this boy was brought to the disciples and they tried to cast the demon out, but they couldn’t, and I’m reading a little bit between the lines, but when this boy was brought to Jesus, the spirit tore him and he had a seizure. I believe that same thing happened with the disciples and what I think happened was, they had cast demons out before, you can read about that in the 10th chapter of the book of Matthew, and they had had success before, but apparently this time when they went to cast the demons out of this boy, this demon manifested, this boy fell on the ground and started having a seizure, was foaming at the mouth, and what they saw with their eyes did not match what they were believing for with their heart and when you have that happen, when your experience doesn’t match up with what you’re praying and believing for, then you are susceptible to just a natural form of unbelief.
It’s not necessarily demonic, it’s not because you’re ignorant, it’s not because you’ve been taught the wrong thing, it’s just that you see something contrary to what you believe and if you aren’t strong in faith, then you are naturally going to have thoughts of unbelief. If you pray for a person to be healed and if they fall over dead, you’re naturally going to think, it didn’t work. Now, that’s contrary to what God’s word says. God’s word says, you lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover, but just because you are believing and acting on the Word of God, everything’s not going to just line up perfectly. Satan will resist you. It happened with Jesus. They brought this demon possessed boy to Jesus and the demon took over and he fell on the ground and it looked worse. It looked like they had died, so much so that many people thought he was dead and yet Jesus would lift him up. He wasn’t moved by what he saw. He knew that he had spoken, he believed, he trusted his father, and he refused to be moved by what he saw.
So see, being moved by what you see, letting circumstances dominate you more than what God’s word says is not necessarily ignorance, it’s not necessarily wrong teaching, it’s just natural. You see something with your eyes contrary to what you believe for: you’re naturally going to have thoughts of unbelief. If you pray for something and hear something contrary to what you believe for, you are naturally going to have thoughts of unbelief. If you pray for a healing in your own body and yet if you still feel pain, you are naturally going to feel unbelief, you are going to have thoughts of unbelief. So, there is a natural unbelief. How do you overcome that? How do you overcome this natural unbelief? The first two types of unbelief, you overcome ignorance and wrong teaching by the Word of God, but how do you get to where when you pray for something and if you don’t see the physical results, it doesn’t move you, it doesn’t affect you, you still believe what you prayed and you are not moved by what you see? How do you do that?
Jesus said, this kind, I believe talking about this natural type of unbelief, can only come out by prayer and fasting. Now, that is major. Let me just say that fasting and prayer are very effective at breaking the control of just natural things over you. It’s very important in bringing your body and your emotions and your senses under the control of the Holy Spirit. I’ll be explaining this in more detail on our program tomorrow, but let me just say, first of all, that if you aren’t denying yourself: if you never deny your own impulses and your own desires: if you never discipline yourself by fasting, rejecting your flesh and praying: if you don’t spend lots of time praying and in prayer, you are going to be controlled by the physical natural realm. We live in a physical world. You’ve got these five senses. You’ve got, what I believe is a sixth sense, which is faith, and you can walk by faith.
2 Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 7 says that, we walk by faith, and not by sight. Now, that’s supposed to be the normal Christian life, but sadly most Christians walk by sight and not by faith because they don’t spend time praying, they don’t spend time focused on the Lord, they don’t spend time rejecting their flesh and denying themself and they just indulge every appetite, every feeling and emotion that they have and because of it, they’re what the Bible calls, sensual or carnal. They’re controlled and dominated by this carnal realm, and we’ve got to discipline ourself. The apostle Paul says, I keep under my own body, I discipline myself, I deny myself lest while I’ve preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. Paul disciplined himself. You need to live a life of discipline. You need to live a life where you do not just indulge every whim, every feeling, every lust, every appetite, and by doing so, you break the control of this natural unbelief over you.