Andrew Wommack - Effortless Change - Part 2

Welcome to our Tuesday’s broadcast of the gospel truth. Today I’m continuing to talk about a subject that I’ve entitled Effortless Change. That sounds impossible, but it is possible if you will do it God’s way, and God’s way is to change through the Word of God. The Word of God will change you effortlessly, if you will just go to the effort of putting God’s word in your heart. Man, that is powerful, and let me mention again, you know, I’ve got the book on Effortless Change, a study guide, DVDs and CDs on Effortless Change, and I tell you, that is powerful, but I’ve also got this special thing, the living commentary, which is a Bible program that has my commentary on over 18,000 verses in the Bible, old and New Testament.

I tell you, it’s powerful. I wished I had time to just really explain all of this to you, but we have produced a special place on our web site, AWMI.net and we have a special place there that is called, the inside story, and during this month of January I’ve gone and I just detailed some of the benefits of this, and I tell you, this is the best study guide for scripture that I’ve ever had. This has got, you know, 45 years' worth of my seeking the Lord in these footnotes. I wished I had time to just share it with you, but take my word for it, it’s great, or go to that web site and look up the inside story, and listen to this, and I tell you, it is powerful, and we are making a special offer.

You know, this living commentary is $120. There’s a reason for that because I have two or three employees that this is primarily their number one job, and it’s called the living commentary because I add to it every month. Last night, I bet you, I probably wrote another 50 or 60 footnotes as I was studying, and so every time you go on our web site, you update this and you get the newest notes that I’ve written, or revised notes that I’ve written, and so it takes employees to do this. We have to keep our web site maintained and things like this, but if you were to get this, you will not only get this, but you will also get our book entitled, Effortless Change, as a free gift, and also this Bible reading guide as a free gift. So, our announcer will be giving you all of that information.

So, I’ve been talking about that the very first step in change is to recognize that change doesn’t come by just changing your circumstances, it’s not outside. Change begins in your heart with the way you think. Proverbs 23:7, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. You know, let me use this verse out of the book of Joshua, chapter 1, and Joshua took over the reins of running the nation of Israel for Moses. You know, Moses was a hard act to follow. How do you follow a guy who brings ten plagues on the land of Egypt and delivers all the Israelites and then splits the Red Sea and does all of these kind of things.

Man, you could have been intimidated. You could have been really sweating. How am I going to ever follow in the footsteps of Moses? Well, the Lord appeared to Joshua in the first chapter of Joshua and told him many things, but here’s a verse that I want to point out, in Joshua, chapter 1, in verse 8 it says, this book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth: but thou shalt meditate therein: day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then shalt thou make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Man, that’s powerful right there. He said, you will make your way prosperous and have good success when you meditate in this book of the law day and night and don’t let it depart from your mouth.

Now, most people want to have good success and to make their way prosperous, but they just ignore the first part of this verse. This prosperity and success is dependent upon meditating in this book of the law day and night. Now at this time, all they had was the first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, numbers and Deuteronomy, because Moses had written them. So, all he had was the Old Testament law, what’s called the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, but today we have the entire Bible, so I think it would be appropriate for us to say that if we want to have good success and make our way prosperous, then we don’t need to let the Word of God depart out of our mouth.

We need to meditate in the Bible day and night and then we will make our way prosperous and then we will have good success. There’s probably not a person watching this program who doesn’t want prosperity and good success. And yet, I’m saying this in love, I’m not trying to condemn, I’m just trying to point out what the problem is, so that we can fix it. Probably every one of you want prosperity and good success, and yet there is a minuscule amount of people watching this program who meditate in the Word of God day and night, and it says, you meditate in the word day and night, you will… it didn’t say, you might or you could or some people will, the majority will, no, it just is a promise.

You meditate in this book of the law, don’t let it depart from your mouth, you meditate in it day and night and you will, it’s a promise, make your way prosperous, and you will have good success, period, end of discussion, that’s it. If you want to prosper, put God’s word in your heart. Meditate in it day and night. Now, that needs a little bit of explanation because this says you have to meditate in it. You know, there’s a lot of people that just read scripture. Now, I’ve got this Bible reading guide, and I’m encouraging people to read through the Bible. I’m praying that you will make this year the year of the Bible in your life and that you will meditate in it, but just reading the scripture isn’t the same as meditating in it.

Now, you can’t meditate in something that you haven’t already thought and that you haven’t read and put this information on the inside. So, you need to read through the Bible. You can’t meditate on something that you’ve never read. So, the first step is you’ve got to know what the Bible says, but this says that you have to meditate in it. You know, meditation, I’ve heard people describe it like this. I think it was Charles capps that said, meditation is like a cow chewing it’s cud. In other words, you swallow it and then you spit it back up and you just go over and over and over. That’s kind of a gross comparison, but in other words, it’s just going over and over something, not just one time.

Here’s a way that I have of describing it, and that is that meditation is exactly the same thing as worry. Worry is nothing but meditation on something negative and every one of us has worried over things. I can guarantee you that there are people who you may sit there and say, but I don’t have time to meditate in the word day and night. But you’ve gone to work and you’ve been worried about finances, or maybe you’ve been worried about your health or you’ve been worried about a family member, a kid that’s in rebellion or something that’s going on, and you are able to go to work, you’re able to do your job, and yet you never, your mind was never off of whatever your problem was.

You were worrying about it. You were thinking, how am I ever going to do this? How am I ever going to live? How am I ever going to get this money? How am I ever going to turn this situation around? You were able to function and you were doing other things, but your mind was still focused on your problem. You were worrying about it day and night. The same part of you that worries is the same part of you that meditates. Meditation is just worrying, or worrying is not the right word, but it’s focusing upon things that are positive, the Word of God instead of the negative things. If you can worry all day long, you can meditate all day long.

You know, recently I was studying 2 Chronicles, chapter 20, and this is where Jehoshaphat, a king of Israel, had three different nations come together and pool their armies together and come into his territory and they came to defeat him, and when this happened, 2 Chronicles, chapter 20, Jehoshaphat gathered all of the Israelites together and they prayed and they said to the Lord that, God, we don’t have any power. We can’t overcome these people, they’re mightier than we are, but our eyes are upon you, and as he was praying, a prophet came up and gave a prophecy and said, you aren’t even going to have to fight in this battle. God is going to fight for you.

Don’t worry, and so the next day they assembled to go out and fight this battle and Jehoshaphat stood up and he says, believe the Lord’s prophets, so shall ye prosper. Believe the word, and so shall you be established, and he stood in faith and he put the singers in the front of this battle. You know, it’s amazing how when we read the Bible many times, we don’t treat it like it’s real, but if this was you and if you had three armies, maybe a million people coming out against you and there was no way for you to win, how many of you would put the choir in the front and send them out?

Let me ask you this, if you were in the choir, how many of you would go out front, amen, to go face these armies? But it was a step of faith. He believed this prophecy that they wouldn’t even have to fight, and so he put the choir in the front and they went out singing, praise the Lord, for his mercy endures forever. They not only believed it, but they believed it so strongly they were willing to put their lives on the line and they went out to fight this force that was much larger than them, there was no way that they could win. They didn’t even put the soldiers in the front, they put the choir in the front, and when they crested this hill and looked, these three armies had turned on each other.

Two of the armies agreed to wipe out one army and take their spoil, and then after they had annihilated one of these armies, then they turned on each other, and down to the last two people, the last two people fought and killed each other and as the Israelites came over the hill, all they saw was dead bodies and it took them three days, an entire nation, three days to go strip the bodies of all of the spoil, the silver, the gold, the raiment, all of their weapons and things like this.

Something that was meant for their destruction turned around and to be something that just, I mean, it replenished the temple, all of the things that had been plundered from the temple, it replenished all of their coffers, it gave them wealth and it did all of these positive things, and see, I took that, I read those passages of scripture, and for the last few days I’ve done nothing but just meditate on that and think about this, and you know, there’s things in my life that could potentially stop me and hinder me and I look at that and I remember what God did for Jehoshaphat and I think, God’s no respecter of persons, and I’m thinking about this.

I’m focused upon it. I’m meditating in it all day long and I apply those same principles to my situations every time I come into a hardship, every time I need something, I think about God did this for Jehoshaphat, he does it for me. See what that is, that’s meditation. In other words, I don’t just read something and then let it go and then I get absolved or excuse me, absorbed into my problem and just focused on it and acting like what I read, like, if I read the scripture that I can do all things through Christ, and then I go through my day and I face some circumstance and immediately I begin to think, there’s nothing I can do about this, well see, that’s completely contrary to what I just read. But if I was meditating on it, if I was still focused on that, it would affect the way that I respond to negative circumstances that come against me.

When the doctor says you’re going to die, I would sit there and say, nope, the Bible says, by his stripes I was healed. He heals all of my sickness, who heals all of my diseases, Psalms 103, et cetera, and see, if I was meditating in the word, it would affect the way I respond to all of these things that happen to me. So, this is how you meditate. This promise in Joshua, chapter 1, verse 8, is to those who meditate in the Word of God day and night. Did you know, when you do something day and night, that doesn’t leave any time for anything else.

In other words, you are absolutely fanatical, focused on the Word of God. You do that, you will make your way prosperous, and you will have good success, or you could say this, that you meditate in this word day and night and you speak it out of your mouth and you will have change. Whatever it is that you desire, whatever the good results is that you need in your life, it will change, it will come to pass, if you meditate in the word day and night. It is that simple. This is a promise from the Word of God. But again, the majority of people watching this program are not experiencing what this verse is promising, not because the promise isn’t there, but because it’s conditional upon you meditating in the Word of God day and night, and the vast majority of people do not do that.

You know, I commend you in the fact that you’re sitting here watching a television program and you’re listening to a guy, you know, probably one of the most common comments that I get, people say that they passed by my program for years because I was so boring, I was just sitting here talking. I wasn’t screaming, I wasn’t dancing, I wasn’t going through all of the stuff that typical preachers do and people think it’s boring and so they just pass through it, but then something happened. I had one lady recently tell me that she was fixing her hair and that she couldn’t walk away from her, you know, her curling iron and so she had to leave the TV on and she accidentally got to listening to what I was saying.

I had another woman who was shelling peas one time and she had her apron totally full of peas and all of these things and she couldn’t get up to change the channel and she just had to listen, but anyway, my point is, after they get to hearing the Word of God, then they liked it. But see, there are some of you that you watch my program and even though I’m not the most dynamic or exciting speaker on TV, the very fact that you’re taking the time to watch this program, you probably have more of an interest in the Word of God than the average person, but that still doesn’t mean that you’re meditating in it day and night. It’s one thing to hear these truths, but then do you go out and meditate in this all day?

You know, let me just help you to meditate on this. I’ve been using Joshua, chapter 1, verse 8, and it says, this book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth. That means you need to be talking about it. You need to be speaking these truths. But you shall meditate therein day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then, when you meditate in it day and night and speak it out of your mouth, then shall you make your way prosperous, and then shall you have good success.

So, the way that you ought to do this today, as you’re watching this program, you ought to respond and say, father, I am committing myself to meditating in the Word of God day and night. You can’t just keep it, you can’t keep your nose in the word constantly. If you’re a mother and you’ve got three or four kids, you know what, you need to take care of those kids. You don’t need to just turn them loose and let them go run and play in the street or swallow something that they shouldn’t. They’re going to demand some of your time, but you know what? You can be meditating in the Word of God as you do it.

Man, praise God for DVDs and television and things like this today. You could have the Word of God playing: you could keep your mind stayed on the things of God. If you go to work, you can still keep your mind stayed on the Word of God as you go to work and do this, and so what you should do is to take these things and say, I am going to keep my attention focused on the things of God. I’m going to meditate in this and I am going to be prosperous and I will have good success, and then, after you get through watching this program, if you go to work and somebody starts talking about the recession and saying, man, it’s hard.

I don’t know how we’re ever going to make it, well then, you need to out of your mouth say, I’m going to be prosperous. I will have good success, and I can guarantee you, they may think you’re crazy, they may criticize you, but see, you’re meditating in the word. You need to be speaking it out of your mouth. When people say, oh man, we’re all going to be laid off, I don’t know if anybody’s going to get a raise this year, I don’t know what’s going to happen, and they go to speaking negative, with your mouth you need to speak things that go along with this verse and you need to say, man, if anybody prospers, it’s going to be me. If anybody avoids being laid off, it will be me because I am blessed, I am prosperous.

You could say things like, if we do get laid off, God’s going to have something better for me. I’m going to prosper because I’m meditating in the Word of God day and night. See, that’s taking it out of the realm of just reading a scripture and then you go the rest of your day and don’t ever think about it, you don’t ever apply these truths to your situation. That’s what a lot of people do sadly, but if you meditate in this word, you can get to a place to where it just literally becomes a part of you. The Word of God becomes more real to you than what people are saying to you, than what circumstances are saying, than what the doctor or the lawyer or the banker has to say. You can get to where the Word of God literally dominates and controls you, and brothers and sisters: I’m saying that when you do that, you will make your way prosperous, you will have good success. I believe that with all of my heart.

You know, I encountered the Lord, March the 23rd, 1968. Most of you have heard me talk about that, and I mean, it changed my life, but then the Lord began to start showing me some things. He showed me he called me into the ministry and I was an introvert and I couldn’t talk to people. He showed me I was going to be impacting the entire world. It’s just a dream, a desire that I had in my heart, but it was so strong and it was so contrary to anything I had ever thought before that I really believed it was God was going to use me to reach the world and to share these truths, so I kind of saw a goal.

I saw what God wanted to accomplish in my life, but I was an introvert. I couldn’t even look at a person in the face and talk to them. There was just no way, there was no way in the natural for me to see how to get from where I was to where God wanted me to go, and I remember one time kneeling around my bed. I was just 18 years old, I might have been 19 at this time. It was a short time after this experience, and I remember kneeling around my bed and I had my Bible open, I had been reading the Bible, and I had my Bible laying on my bed and I was just praying and saying, God, how do I get from here to there? How do I get from where I am to what I know that you’re telling me that you want to accomplish in my life, and I just felt overwhelmed.

And as I was praying, I was kneeling beside my bed and I remember opening my eyes and when I opened my eyes, I saw my Bible laying on my bed and I heard the Lord speak to me in my heart and he says, you just take my word and put it in your heart and it will do everything else that you need done. Now, that was really simple. To some people, that’s an over simplification, but I took that as a word from God, and I mean, from that time on, I began to start meditating in the word day and night. This is back before I was married, and I mean, I would spend sometimes 15-16 hours a day just studying the word. I just meditated in it and even the times that I wasn’t reading the word, then I would be thinking about it and I would be going over and over and over the things that I had read, and I can tell you, here I am nearly 46 years later and any good thing that’s ever happened in my life, it’s because of God’s word. I’m not smart enough to do what God’s done in my life.

Some of you have heard me tell this story, but before my mother died, I was telling her about the ministry and how it was touching people all over the world and she was really blessed by it, but she pointed her finger right at me in my face and she said, andy, you know that’s God, and I said, yes ma’am, I know that’s God, and she says, you aren’t smart enough to do this. I tell you, there’s nothing like your mother to put you into your place, amen, and I agreed and I said, I know it, and it’s absolutely true. You know, I didn’t have a 20 year plan and sit down and write out and say, God, in 20 years I want to be building a Bible college and doing all of this and building a campus and doing all of these things and have all of this. I didn’t do any of that stuff. I’m not a goal setter. I haven’t sat down and made things come to pass.

It is not my smarts, it is not my ability, it is not my charisma. I can tell you that the Word of God has changed my life, and God has just supernaturally led me to do things that in retrospect it’s smart, but at the time I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just following the leading of the Lord. You meditate in the word, it’ll cause you to have a relationship with God and God’ll speak to you and God has told me to do things that are so smart it makes me look good, but it’s just me meditating in the word and God’ll speak something to me through the word and it has changed my life, and I’m sharing this to say for you, that if you want change, if you want Effortless Change, it’s as simple as this: don’t ever let the word depart from your mouth. Meditate in it day and night to do what it says and then you will make your way prosperous and you will have good success. It’s guaranteed.