Andrew Wommack - God Wants You Well - Part 29

Welcome to our Thursday’s broadcast of The Gospel Truth. Today I’m nearing the end of my sixth week of teaching on the subject of God wants you well, and I know that many of you have been watching this and it seems like it’s a long series and I guess it is compared to what I’ve done in the past, but there is just a huge amount of material on this, plus we’ve been playing these testimonies that my television department has put together and I think that they are powerful. I’ve really been blessed by it. You know, it blesses me to see in the word and to get this revelation, but then to see it actually happen and change a person’s life, that’s just awesome, so anyway, it’s been a lengthy series and I’m not through yet.

I think I’m going to go into next week teaching on God wants you well, but we are drawing to a close in this third teaching that’s in this series. If you were to get my CD or DVD set, there’s a total of four teachings in here and the third one is entitled, why isn’t everyone healed? And I am drawing to a close, I think tomorrow will be my last day to teach on that subject. So, we’ve already talked about that people aren’t healed because they don’t believe, that you have to have faith. There has to be some degree of faith present in order for a person to be healed. I know that that’s kind of a controversial statement and many of you may think, well that’s not so.

I’ve dealt with a lot of scriptures on this. I haven’t got time to go back through it, so if you didn’t hear that, if it doesn’t seem like that’s right to you, I encourage you to please get these materials and check it out before you reject it. To me that is non-negotiable. You’ve got to believe that healing is a part of the atonement of the Lord Jesus or satan will talk you out of it, he’ll convince you that you’re the one that God’s not going to heal, that maybe God wanted you to have this to humble you or break you, or et cetera.

So, we’ve taught on that, and then I’ve been talking about well, why isn’t everybody healed? And it’s because they don’t have faith, number one, and then the second thing right here in Matthew, chapter 17, and verse 20, Jesus told his disciples the reason they couldn’t affect this cure on the boy who had seizures was because of their unbelief, not because they didn’t have faith, but because they had unbelief, and I’ve spent a number of days illustrating this as well as some personal testimonies trying to show you that you can believe and disbelieve at the same time and your disbelief will cancel or negate your faith, and so how do you get rid of unbelief?

He goes on to say in Matthew 17:21, «Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting», and what he was talking about is this kind of unbelief. That was the subject of the previous verse. Unbelief was the problem, and this kind of unbelief only goes out by prayer and fasting. So, apparently there’s different kinds of unbelief and I was talking about this yesterday, there is an unbelief that comes through just ignorance. You don’t know what the Word of God says and you can’t believe something that you haven’t heard. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, so if a person has never heard the word, there is going to be an instant unbelief, resistance towards it just because they’ve never heard.

So, that’s one form of unbelief. You overcome that by telling a person the truth and then they aren’t ignorant anymore. The second type of unbelief is an unbelief that comes because of wrong teaching. It’s not that you don’t know something: it’s that you’ve got the wrong information. The answer for that is the same as the first one. You tell a person the truth and if they will receive it, they can erase all that wrong information and write the right stuff on their life. But then there’s a third type of unbelief and this is what I’ve been focusing on yesterday and I want to continue today, and that is that this third type of unbelief is what I call, a natural unbelief, that if you pray for something and don’t see the physical results, you are naturally going to think it didn’t work.

Now, that’s unbelief because the Bible says that whosoever will 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 says. That’s what Mark 11:23 says, and so you’ve got to believe, and the next verse, verse 24 says, whatsoever things you desire, when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you shall have them, future tense. You’ve got to believe you receive, when you pray, and then you shall, future tense, have it. What do you do in between the time when you say «Amen» and «There it is»? How do you respond?

Well, if you don’t see visible results, the tendency is to just think, well, nothing’s happened, it didn’t work. But you’ve got to believe that you receive, when you pray, not when you see it, when you pray, and then you shall see it later. How do you do that? Well, you have to be able to overcome this natural kind of unbelief just that comes by what you see, what you feel, what you hear doesn’t match up with what you believe. How do you deal with your emotions? How do you handle this? Jesus said that it happens, you deal with this kind of unbelief, you get rid of it through prayer and fasting.

Now, I could probably spend more time on this than what I’m going to spend here on television, but real quickly, let me just try and summarize this, why does prayer and fasting affect this natural type of unbelief? I believe it’s because when you pray, you are praying to a God that you can’t see. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this, but you can’t see God and so you’re talking to someone that you can’t see, and if you’re praying accurately, you’re in communication. It’s not just a one way deal where you’re just talking to God, but he talks back to you, so you’re hearing from a person that you can’t see and you can’t hear them with your physical ears, but you’re hearing in your heart.

You know what you’re doing? You’re training your senses that there is more than just this physical, natural world. There’s more than what you can see with your eyes. You can see God with your heart. You’re training yourself that you can hear God in your heart and not just with your physical ears, and what you’re doing, you are teaching your physical senses that there is more to reality than just what you can see, taste, hear, smell and feel.

Let me use this passage of scripture over in Hebrews, chapter 5, and in verse 14, he said, «But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil», and so this right here says that maturity, is what he’s talking about, people that can take strong meat, maturity belongs to those who by reason of use have their senses, that’s talking about what you see, taste, hear, smell and feel, your five senses, they have been exercised, and the very use of this word «Exercised» is really important because you know, when you exercise, you can’t just go out and one day a week just, you know, go run 20-30 miles or lift all of this weight at one time.

That doesn’t build your body up: it’ll actually tear it down to do it that way. Exercise has to be done little by little. It is a consistent process. You can’t just cram everything into one time: you can’t cram exercise into one time. So, this is talking about that strong meat belongs to those who by reason of use have their senses exercised, over a period of time, just consistently over and over, to discern both good and evil. What this is saying is, that your senses, sometimes Christians will go to thinking that what I feel and what I see is all bad and it’s wrong. It’s really not.

Your five senses are just feeding you information from the surroundings that you live in. Like if I was with you right now, if I was sitting wherever you are in your home or wherever it is and if I said, are you hot or are you cold? You wouldn’t have to sit there and go study or go look something up or say, well, let me pray about it and I’ll come back to you tomorrow. You know, your senses just constantly are monitoring the environment you’re in and they’re telling you, it’s either hot or it’s cold. They’ll tell you that you are either having pain or you aren’t having pain. You open up your eyes and look and you just automatically know what’s going on around you. These five senses aren’t bad. God gave them to us to use.

You know what, I don’t want you to be where you are totally without your five senses. Like if you were going to drive me to the airport, I don’t want you to close your eyes or put a bag over your head and say, I’m going to drive by faith. Man, I want you to use your five senses. You need to use your hearing and your sight and stuff, they aren’t evil, but they can become tools of the devil if you are limited to them and don’t realize that there is more to this world than just what you can see, taste, hear, smell and feel. When it comes to healing and you pray for something, you’ve got to believe that you receive, when you pray, and if you open your eyes up and you don’t see that problem gone, if you don’t feel the pain gone, if you aren’t careful, you will be dominated by these senses and they will just feed you unbelief.

How do you get them to where they aren’t controlling you? Well, it’s through fasting and prayer. You exercise them and see, when you’re praying, you’re talking to someone that you can’t see and you train your sight. Your sight knows that there’s more going on than just what you can see. You know, in the natural realm we do this to a degree like, if you’re watching this television program, it’s coming over a satellite to many of you or it’s coming to some, you can’t see those signals and yet you know that there’s things that exist that you can’t see. If I was in a room with you somewhere, we could turn a television set on, plug it in, turn it on, and when you see the picture is not when the station starts broadcasting.

Those signals are already in the room, but you just can’t take advantage of them because they’re in an unseen realm: it’s in a realm that you can’t perceive with your five senses. But we’ve educated ourself that there are radio and television signals and we know that they exist and we use them for our benefit, but you can’t see them until some receiver takes that and rebroadcasts it. But see, we’ve educated ourself, and because of it, we don’t struggle with that anymore. Well, you can do the same thing in the spiritual realm. You can say that, I believe I received when I prayed. I don’t see it yet, my body still hurts, I still look sick, I still see a tumor, but you know what, there’s more than what I can see.

There’s an unseen realm and God is working, and through exercise, through doing this over and over and over you can educate yourself and you can actually submit these senses to where they realize that there is an unseen realm and there’s things going on in the unseen realm. By prayer, see, this is one of the ways you do it because if you were to spend, I’m just picking a figure here, but if you were to spend two hours a day praying and talking to God and focusing on a God that you can’t see and then having God speak back to you and you start seeing visible results, he starts giving you direction and your business prospers and different things happen and you have all of these supernatural things happen, after a while your senses, your eyes, your ears and all of this, realizes that, hey, there’s something going on here that I can’t perceive, that this is not all that there is.

There’s also an unseen realm, and if you were to spend time in prayer like that, lots of time in prayer, then when you pray for something and don’t see it happen immediately, your senses think, oh, this must be one of those things, like when he’s praying and stuff, God’s moving, I can’t see it, but I will see it. I’ve just got to be patient, and you have exercised yourself and brought these senses under control, and see, fasting does the same thing. Matter of fact, fasting is one of the most important things that you can do. It’s one of the quickest things you can do to bring your carnal senses into subjection and under obedience to God. Your sense of appetite is a strong drive.

People have killed other people, cannibalized people because of a desire for food, and you know, your hunger is one of the easiest of your senses to agitate. With most people, they can’t go more than four or five hours without eating, I mean, and if they were to miss a meal, most people just go into a tail spin and they just are addicted to food. Now, we do need food, but I’m saying that most of us actually eat more than what our body needs, that’s all that being overweight is, is eating more and wrong kinds of food than what your body needs. That’s the only way you get overweight, and so most of us are not controlling our weight the way that we should, but instead it controls us, and so if we were to go on a fast and say, I’m going to fast all day long and I’m going to spend that time praying and seeking God and I’m going to be so focused on God that I’m not even going to eat, I guarantee you, your appetite will rebel. It will be really upset.

I don’t know if all of you watching this have tried fasting, but you ought to do it. You’ll think that by noon on the first day that you’re about to die. Some people will start experiencing, you know, a headaches and they’ll get irritable and all this kind of stuff and things and they think, man, I thought this fast was going to be a glorious experience. I haven’t got time to turn over there and read it, but if you were to turn to Isaiah 58, it talks about what a godly fast is and it is not, you know, a television moment where you’re giving this great testimony, it’s not all seeing angels and having visions and things like that. A true fast is a day to afflict yourself and to deny yourself and when you start denying your flesh, your desires, your carnal body, your natural self is going to rebel at this and it’s going to hate it and instead of you just having all of these wonderful emotions, a true fast is where, man, it’s tough, it’s hard.

You’re denying yourself and it’s not fun, but what you’re doing is saying, body, I am teaching you that there is more than just this physical realm. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Today, instead of eating food, we’re going to devour the Word of God. I’m going to let God supernaturally sustain me, and I can guarantee you, your body will rebel at it and when things get bad and when it seems like you’re irritable and man, you’re cranky and it seems like you’re more carnal than you’ve ever been and you say, boy, this isn’t what I thought this fast was going to be, that’s exactly what a fast is for, it’s to flush all of this carnality to the surface so that you can deal with it, and so you sit there and your body starts saying, I’m dying, feed me, and you say, nope, we’re going all day long and I’m not eating anything, and your body will say, I’m going to die for sure, and it’ll just pitch a fit.

It’s like a spoiled brat trying to get its own way and if you say, nope, I’m going all day, and it says, I’ll be dead by night, well then you say, alright, we’ll go two days. Your body will respond by saying, I can’t make it. I’ll starve, I’ll be gone for sure in two days, and you say, alright, three days, and you know what’ll happen? Your flesh, this carnal part of you will realize that, hey, if I’m going to survive this thing, I better shut up, I better submit, and I don’t know how many of you have been on a fast, but if you go over, it depends how often you do this, but if you aren’t used to fasting, usually within two to three days, it’s like you lose your appetite.

You no longer seem to be dominated by this and you actually reach a place where it doesn’t seem like it’s bothering you at all and stuff, and it just takes a while to subdue your flesh. If you fast more often, you can get to where it’s no big deal. You can miss a meal, you can miss an entire day or something and it’s no problem, but your body will submit if you fast and you will literally start living off of the energy and the power that God’s spirit provides and you are training your body that hey, there is more to life than food, than just physical things. I can draw energy directly from the Lord. God can sustain me.

I pray that you’re getting this, so this is the reason that he said that fasting and prayer will break this kind of unbelief because if you were the kind that you pray for something, then you open up your eyes and there’s your problem still staring you in the face, if you are a carnal person, that means a person that’s controlled by what you see, taste, hear, smell and feel, then this natural type of unbelief is going to negate your faith, and even though you believed and it released your faith, because you don’t see what you’re believing for it will just negate, it will destroy, invalidate, void your faith.

So, the way you overcome that is you start spending time in prayer. You educate your mind, your senses, that there are things that I can’t see and yet they’re real. You hear God speak to you, you see visible results, you fast, you deny yourself, your body learns that it doesn’t have to just be fed all of the time, and so when you feel something different than what you were praying for, you prayed and believed that you were healed and that this pain would leave, but then as soon as your prayer’s over, you still have the pain, instead of you immediately thinking unbelief that is going to cancel out your faith, you’ve trained yourself and you say, you know what? It’s coming.

I got it when I prayed and it may take a brief period of time, but it’s done, and you are able to just literally suppress this feeling and thoughts of unbelief because you’ve spent time in the presence of God praying and fasting. But see, if you haven’t done that and all of a sudden you’ve just indulged yourself and you pray and you say, in the name of Jesus, I believe that my pain is gone, and then your prayer is over, and amen, and you still feel the pain, and you say, body, in the name of Jesus, you line up, pain you leave, I’m not going by what I feel, and if you haven’t ever disciplined yourself, your body, in a sense, will be saying, who are you to tell me to not go by what I feel.

I tell you what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat. It’s been 20-30-40-50 years since you have given me any instructions, I’m calling the shots, and your sense knowledge will, in a sense, rebel and what you see and feel will dominate you instead of what you believe. But if you’ve spent time fasting and praying and denying yourself, then when you pray and don’t see a visible result, you can take authority and your body will say, oh yeah, this is like that prayer, this is like that fasting, and it will submit and your senses don’t just war against you.

You know, that is really simple. Like I said, I could teach on this in more detail, but in a nutshell, I believe that that’s why fasting and prayer will cast out this type of unbelief because you’ve just spent so much time in the spirit realm that the spirit realm is just as real to you as the physical realm, and I know what I’m saying to some of you just sounds like it’s a foreign language. It’s like, I can’t believe this, and yet there’s many scriptures. In 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 18, it says that we are looking at things that can’t be seen.

You know, a carnal person will say, you can’t look at something if it can’t be seen. That’s because they are only operating in the physical, but once you get into the spiritual realm, you can look at things with your spiritual eyes, your heart, that you can’t see with your physical eyes and you can train yourself and get to where that’s just as real to you as anything else.

You know, we’ve just completed this building up in Woodland park, the first of two buildings that we’re building on a Charis Bible College campus, and I saw these things in my heart years ago. I began to confess it. I told people we were going to get this done debt free and here we are about two years, $32 million later, and it’s debt free and we’re meeting in this facility, and I saw it with my heart long before I saw it with my eyes, and when we had the dedication, honestly, in a sense, it’s anti-climatic because I’d already been there. I’d already seen it, and I know some of you think, well, that’s weird. Well, I think you’re weird. This is normal Christian life.

Again, 2 Corinthians 4:18, we are looking at things that can’t be seen, and then in 2 Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 7 it says, we walk by faith, and not by sight. This shouldn’t be abnormal for a Christian, but the truth is, most of us live more in the physical world, we think and move in the physical more than we live in the spiritual and because of it we just aren’t able to overcome this natural type of unbelief that comes through our senses. You can change that by prayer and fasting.