Andrew Wommack - Effortless Change - Part 4

Welcome to our Thursday’s broadcast of the gospel truth. Today I’m continuing my teaching that I’ve entitled Effortless Change and I tell you, I am very excited about this. This has literally changed my life and I believe that it has the potential of changing every one of your lives. You know when I travel to our meetings, we always advertise our Bible college and one of the ways that I do this, I’ll say how many of you know that there’s more? How many of you realize that you need to change, that something in your life needs to change? And it’s not unusual to get 80% to 90% of the people to raise their hands and say man, I know that there’s more, and then I’ll say alright, how many of you are willing to do something different?

And immediately there is less people responding, that people resist change and then I’ll tell them that I think it was Einstein that said it’s a definition of insanity to do the same things and expect different results and yet there’s people who are praying for change, but they aren’t going to do anything different. They like the security. They may be in a job that they aren’t satisfied with. They get up and it’s miserable to go to work. They talk about blue Monday and then TGIF (thank God it’s Friday) and they’re excited to get off work.

They aren’t enjoying what they do but they won’t, they’re afraid to change because they’re afraid that they may not get something else and stuff and so people resist this change and yet I’m telling you that you’ve got to do something to change and what I’m trying to get across is that the number one thing to affect spiritual and physical change in your life is to get into the Word of God and change the way you think, the way you see yourself, the way you relate to God, and if you will do that, if you will go to the effort of just getting into the Word of God, then God’s word will change your thinking and therefore as a man thinks in his heart, that’s the way that your life will be, Proverbs, chapter 23, verse 7.

Man, it’s that simple! And let me just mention this. You know, I am really excited about this living commentary. There was many years ago I put out a study Bible and we called it life for today and it took me around an hour to two hours to do every verse because I put references with it, Greek and Hebrew words defined. I wrote commentary and I organized all of the gospels into a chronological way of studying through it, and it was just a huge process and when I started on television in 2000, I actually ran out of time to be able to spend that much time developing this hard copy of the scriptures, but I kept studying and what I did I had a computer program and I would just write my own footnotes and I would write my own notes for my own benefit.

You know like there’s one scripture that says those that curse their father or mother, that the birds of the air will pluck out their eyes and I remember one of the notes that I wrote, this is before I ever realized I would ever publish these things. I said oh God, have mercy on my kids because they’ve said some bad things! And so anyway, it was those kind of things and I would just write these notes and then after about six or seven years I had accumulated thousands and thousands of these notes that were just powerful and I went to my computer department, and I said, is there a way to take what we had in this life for today Bible and combine it with my own personal Bible study that I have on this computer and so they put together something we call the living commentary and I encourage you to please take advantage of that. It could change your life.

Let me use today, today’s going to be my last day to teach on the first teaching in this series on Effortless Change, transformed by the word, and I want to just go over and there’s a lot of places that I could use. Maybe I’ll refer to more than one, but I want to specifically look at Gideon and the way that God used Gideon and this is an illustration of what I’ve been talking about. I’ve been trying to say that change doesn’t come by you just praying and asking God to do something and God changes your circumstances, but change actually comes through you. It doesn’t happen to you from the outside. It comes from the inside out, godly change, and you have to first of all change the way that you see yourself before you can change the circumstances that you live in. It starts with a heart attitude as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

And so here it is illustrated in the life of Gideon. In judges, chapter 6, verse 7 it says, «And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord because of the Midianites, that the Lord sent a prophet unto the children of Israel, which said unto them, thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the house of bondage: and I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all that oppressed you, and drove them out from before you, and gave you their land: and I said unto you, I am the Lord your God: fear not the Gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but ye have not obeyed my voice».

And so this prophet issued a rebuke to them, and basically said that the situation you find yourself in is because you didn’t cooperate with God! And without me going into all of the details, they were oppressed by the Midianites and the Midianites had conquered them so much so that every time they tried to thresh their wheat and you know, process their grapes and make wine or do anything, the Midianites came down and were stealing all of their food, all of their produce from them, and so they were really impoverished and it was a terrible situation and so in verse 11 it says, «And there came an angel of the Lord, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the abiezrite: and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites».

See, this right here illustrates what I was talking about that they grew wheat but when they went to harvest it and thresh it and make, you know, grain for themselves, the Midianites would come and steal it, so Gideon was hiding from the Midianites. Man, this is just, this is an oppressive situation. They couldn’t even reap their crops. You know, it was a hard enough time to make a living growing crops and if you didn’t have anybody to oppress you, but then to have somebody come and just steal all of your crops from you and leave you with nothing is a terrible situation and in verse 12 it says, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him, unto Gideon, and said unto him, the Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor.

Now get this picture. Here’s Gideon beside this winepress, threshing his wheat hiding and an angel comes and says you’re a mighty man of valor. Well if he’s a mighty man of valor, well then why is he hiding? Why is he having to do this in secret? You know, it didn’t look, this was not what the outward situation looked like and yet this is what God said to him, called him a mighty man of valor. And Gideon said unto him, «Oh my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? And where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites».

And you know in a sense that was true because as this prophesy said that I read earlier it was because they disobeyed God and they rebelled at him that God did withdraw his protection and the Midianites had oppressed them and it says in verse 14, the Lord looked upon him, and said, go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee? You know, on the surface this looks a little confusing because here’s God saying you’re a mighty man of valor and Gideon is sitting here hiding, threshing his wheat in secret, and he says if I’m a mighty man of valor, then why are we oppressed? What happened to all of these miracles that our fathers have told us about where you came out of the land of Egypt and you went through the Red Sea and you were providing miracles?

You know, it looks like that he was in total disagreement with the Lord, but personally. And I could spend more time on this. I haven’t got it today, but personally I believe that he had been longing to see these things. He was dissatisfied with his situation. He recognized that what they were experiencing was not consistent with what the Israelites had experienced in the past and what the promises of God were. In other words, he was sick and tired of this whole situation and he was angry about it!

Now, if you stop right there, that’s not good! But you know what, in a sense you have to come to the end of yourself and to the end of your acceptance with things as normal before you can ever begin to see things change. You have to become sick and tired of being sick and tired before you can ever get over being sick and tired! You have to get to where you aren’t complacent about it anymore and I believe that this is what Gideon was saying. Gideon was just angry because he knew that this wasn’t right. He knew that there was something more and he was wanting change but he didn’t know how to get there and this angel appeared unto him and called him a mighty man of valor.

You know, here’s another great lesson to learn from that and that is that God sees you and me differently than we see ourselves. You know that’s a huge statement right there. Sadly most of us go by what we see in the mirror. We go by what we’ve been told, negative things spoken over us, curses that have been spoken over us, and we let these physical, natural things dominate us more than what God says but God said Gideon was a mighty man of valor. He wasn’t a weakling. He wasn’t somebody who was being oppressed by the Midianites. He was a mighty man of valor. That was God’s opinion and so he said go, in this thy might, in other words, his unaccepting or I don’t know what the right way to say this, his lack of acceptance for this oppression and this negative situation that his hatred for it was actually a good thing.

There are some of you watching this program right now that you are just miserable. You don’t like your job. You don’t like the way your life is going and yet you’re secure. You’re making a living. You’ve got a guaranteed income. You’ve got a pension. You’ve got retirement and you’re just sitting there treading water. You aren’t enjoying what you’re doing and you are complacent. That’s terrible. That’s terrible, and the way that most of us adjust to that is we just look around and think well, this is what everybody else is doing and we’re about as miserable as what everybody else is, and so we just kind of numb ourself to it and we’ve become friends with mediocrity. But I tell you what! God didn’t make a single one of you to be a failure. God’s never made a dud! God has an awesome plan for every one of our lives. God’s got a different plan for us.

Not everybody is supposed to be on television doing what I’m doing. Not everybody is supposed to be a president. Not everybody is supposed to be an astronaut, a doctor, a lawyer. But God has a plan for your life that is awesome and I tell you, if you don’t wake up in the morning excited about what you’re doing and about the opportunities that God has given you, you aren’t doing what God has called you to do. When you find God’s will, it will be exciting. It will be challenging. It will not be boring! If you’re bored, you aren’t doing what God has called you to do. You missed it someplace. I think that this attitude of Gideon to where he says I’m sick and tired of this. I don’t like it. This is not right. There is something more.

You’ve got to reach that place and some of you that are right now angry and dissatisfied and bitter and you saying that man, this is not the way that my life is supposed to be going. If you cannot stop there, but use that as a stepping stone to say I am going to change, I’m going to do something different. I’m going to step out. I’m going to get out of the boat.

You know, one of the scriptures that really blesses me is where these lepers were sitting at the gate of Samaria totally surrounded by the Syrians and they had besieged the thing and because of it they were starving to death. People were actually eating animal dung and selling it for expensive prices and there was actually an instance where a woman ate her own child. They were cannibalizing their own children and eating animal dung. It was a dire situation and these four lepers were sitting outside of the city at the gate and they were experiencing the same starvation as everybody else and these lepers got to talking among themselves and they said, how long are we going to sit here? Until we die? If we stay here, we’re going to die. If we go into the city, the famine’s in the city, we’re going to die! Let’s go out and expose ourselves to the Syrians and says the worst they can do is kill us, but it’s possible that they might let us live.

I think that is an awesome attitude! You know, they could have just stayed there and it says but if we were running a risk of dying, if we go out to the Syrians, but out of all of their choices they had, the best choice was to go out to the Syrians. There was a risk of being put to death, but they were guaranteed that they were going to die if they stayed where they were. How long are we going to sit here? Until we die?

And the story goes that they went out and God had caused the Syrians to hear a noise that they thought was an invading army and they fled in terror. They left all of their food still cooking. They left all of their animals there, their tents there, their gold, their silver, their extra changes of raiment. They had everything! They just fled in fear for their life and when these lepers got out to the camp of the Syrians, they found food in an abundance. They were able to feed themself. They found gold and silver and raiments. They took it and buried it and hid it and eventually they went back and became the heroes because they told the people in Samaria what had happened and they became the heroes of everybody and all of that happened because they got sick and tired of being sick and tired and they said we’re going to do something!

If we don’t do something, we’re going to die, and so they did something that was risky, that possibly could have cost them their life, but it was the best chance of success that they had. And I really believe that I’m speaking to some people today that you’re miserable. You know there’s something more. You know that you are not experiencing the abundant life that God has for you and yet you’re afraid to do something different. You’re afraid to get out of the boat. You’re afraid to risk failure and you know what? By doing that, you’re already a failure. You’re miserable! I’m telling you, this is not the way God made you to be.

This is exactly where Gideon was and the Lord told him he was a mighty man of valor and you know what? The rest of this story, I’m not going to have time to read all of it today, but if you go through the next few chapters, there are five different times that God had to convince Gideon that what he had said about him was true instead of what he could see. Gideon was miserable. He wanted to change, but he was fearful about going out and fighting the Midians because the Midianites were as numerous as, you know, it says the grasshoppers. There was millions and millions of Midianites and Gideon only had a handful of men and so God had to do things to convince Gideon.

First of all, Gideon said «God, if you’re really with me, well then I’m going to put this fleece out on the ground and let the ground be wet with dew but let the fleece be dry». In other words, that’s not normal. If there would have been a dew, it would have been on the fleece the same as the ground, so he put a fleece out to test God. He woke up in the morning and the fleece was totally dry and he thought «Well, maybe this was, you know, just maybe this was unusual. It was a phenomenon. Maybe it wasn’t really God», so he says «Let’s do it the opposite way». Next morning, «Let there be dew on the fleece and let the ground be dry». He woke up. The ground was totally dry and he went and rung out an entire bowl full of water from the fleece.

That was to convince him that God was with him and he just kept doing these things. God kept proving himself. Finally he got down to where he only had 300 or 700 men and God, he was going to go down and fight this huge company of the Midianites and the Lord told him, he says, «If you are still hesitant, if you still aren’t confident that I am really going to be with you and help you, then go down to the camp of the Midianites and sneak up to one of their tents and listen», and so Gideon did this. He came to a tent and it just so happened that the two guys inside of the tent were talking about a dream that he had and in this dream, he saw all of the Midianites camped in this valley, like millions of them, and then he saw this huge loaf of barley bread come rolling down the mountains and it just flattened all of the Midianites and killed all of them.

Now that’s a strange dream, but it’s even stranger that the guy who was listening to this, he says this is the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. You know, it’s one thing to see, have this dream, but for the other guy, an unbeliever, a Midianite, to interpret this that this is Gideon that’s going to defeat them, I mean it was supernatural and Gideon just happened to be listening outside of the tent and this gave him the assurance that he needed and he went and he saw this outward change and he saw God deliver the Israelites, and sure enough the Midians were completely defeated by just this small group of people that didn’t even have swords. All they had was a light inside of a pitcher and it broke the pitchers and saw this miracle.

But anyway, my reason for sharing all of this is that see, Gideon wanted a change in his circumstances. He wanted to free from the oppression of the Midianites and he had been praying and he had been asking God for intervention, but how did God deliver him? Did he just all of a sudden cause the Midianites to somehow or another all die off and the thing be gone? No, he started the change with him! He called him a mighty man of valor and he had to do five different things to prove to Gideon that he was with him, that God was going to supernaturally sustain him and give him victory over these Midianites and so the change that he wanted outwardly started with him first of all seeing that things have to change.

He got dissatisfied with an intolerable situation while there was lots of other people that were satisfied with it. They didn’t like it, but they had just adjusted and Gideon, he says, go in this thy might. It’s a strong thing. It’s a point of strength and might in your life if you can get dissatisfied with being mediocre. That’s a good thing! That’s a strong point and God took this and proved to Gideon that he was with him and you could just go through person after person after person after person that this same thing happened.

Saul, the very first king of Israel was very little in his own eyes. He was a huge man, taller than anybody else in the nation, but he was so introverted that when they went to anoint him as king, he was hiding in a basket. He couldn’t stand, he just couldn’t stand the thought of him being king. He couldn’t see himself as being king but Samuel prophesied over him and says God is going to give you a new heart and when he turned to walk away from Samuel, God gave him a new heart and all of a sudden, he saw himself as king and God changed the outward circumstances by first of all changing the way that he viewed himself.

Same thing happened with Daniel and you can just go through person after person after person, that this has to happen to every single person. You know in my own life, I was an introvert. I couldn’t see myself doing what I’m doing today but God changed me on the inside, told me to take the word and through the word I learned what caused my being introverted and shy. Proverbs, chapter 13, verse 10 just radically transformed my life and through the Word of God, he changed me on the inside and now everything on the outside has changed.