Andrew Wommack - How to Become a Water Walker - Part 5
Welcome to our Friday’s broadcast of the gospel truth. Today I’m continuing a series that I started talking about how to become a water walker and today is going to be my last day. This is kind of an anomaly for me to go through an entire series, this was only a three part series, but I went through it in one week. Normally I can spend a week on one teaching, but what I’ve done is just kind of condense and summarize some things said here about Peter walking on the water, and because this is my last day, I’m not going to take time to go back through everything I’ve already said, but there’s some really, really major points.
Yesterday, I was in Matthew, chapter 14, and in verse 29, Jesus said unto Peter, come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus, and yesterday I spent the whole day talking about that before you can walk on the water you’ve got to get out of the boat and what I was trying to get across there is that you’ve got to take a risk. People are afraid to stretch themself. They want to just stay in relative security of all of these things, and yet they aren’t satisfied, it’s not giving them a quality of life, but they’re just afraid to try something new.
If you’re going to walk on the water, you’ve got to get out of the boat, you’ve got to leave security, you’ve got to take a risk. I’m telling you, nobody at the end of their life ever says, I wish I’d have played it safer. Everybody’s always saying, I wish I’d have taken more risk, I wish I’d have gone for it, I wish I’d have done what was in my heart. I believe that by the grace of God, if he doesn’t come back in my lifetime and if I die and go on to be with the Lord, I’m believing I won’t have any regrets. I’ll say, man, I went for it. I did everything that I knew to do. I believe that would be really satisfying. So, Peter came down out of the ship and he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. Man, this is awesome, and then in verse 30 it says, «But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid: and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me».
Now, this is really interesting. Peter walked on the water and regardless of whatever failures he’s had, he’s done something that most of us have never done and that is he walked on the water. He did believe God and he saw miraculous results, but he took his eyes off of Jesus. It says, when he saw the wind and the waves boisterous, he was afraid, and began to sink, and you know what this is? This is showing you that, just like it says over in Hebrews, chapter 12, that we are supposed to look unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. As long as he kept his attention on Jesus, as long as his focus was on Jesus, he had faith and he walked on the water. But when he took his eyes off of Jesus and he looked at just the wind and the waves, he wasn’t looking at pornographic images, he wasn’t doing something that was sin, but he just took his eyes off of Jesus and got to looking at the natural, faith doesn’t come by looking at the natural.
Faith doesn’t come by just assessing the situation and getting the opinion of all of the doctors and the lawyers and everything else. I’m not saying that these things are wrong. They aren’t sin anymore than the wind and the waves were sin, but when you take your attention off of Jesus and you go to listening to everybody else, faith doesn’t come by the council of the ungodly and by listening to what the common sense and the wisdom of the world is, faith comes by hearing the word. You’ve got to keep your attention focused upon the Lord, and as long as you’re focused on the word and standing on those promises, then you’ll be able to supernaturally overcome things, poverty, depression, hurt and pain and sickness or whatever it is. You can overcome them, if you’ll keep your eyes on Jesus.
Let me just present this to you. What did the wind and the waves have to do with Peter walking on the water? Peter couldn’t have walked on the water if it had been a perfectly calm day. Did you know, it wasn’t the wind and the waves that made him sink, it was the fact that he took his attention off of Jesus and he just began to look at the natural. You don’t have to be a sinful person. You don’t have to be a person in rebellion to God, just be a natural person, just be a carnal person, a person that’s living only by what you can see, taste, hear, smell and feel, your five senses, just live in the natural and you’ll be a sweet, kind, dead, lifeless, powerless person.
I’m telling you, if you want to see the supernatural power of God operate in your life, you are going to have to get fixated, focused on Jesus, not to where you just, you know, one hour a week go to church and think about him or have a devotion and stuff and then the rest of your life you live exactly like everybody else, you’re going to have to get to where your life is centered around Jesus. As it says over in Colossians, chapter 3, verse 1, if you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. Set your affection on things above, and not on things of this earth because you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
If you are going to walk on water, if you are going to walk on top of your problems instead of letting them tread upon you, then you are going to have to get focused upon Jesus to where you keep your mind stayed upon him, and Isaiah, chapter 26, verse 3 it says, the Lord will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed upon him because he trusts in him. The vast majority of people today don’t have peace because they’re looking at all of the natural things, they’re listening to the news, they’re listening to all the commentators, but if you keep your mind stayed upon the Lord, you’ll be in perfect peace, but you’ve got to be focused on him. When Peter took his eyes off of Jesus and saw the wind and the waves, all that did was just take his focus off of Jesus, and when you quit looking at Jesus, he began to sink.
Notice the wording right here. This is really interesting to me. In verse 30 it says, when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid: and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. I’ve never seen anybody begin to sink in my life. You know what, if you step off of a pier onto the water, you just sink all at once. But the way that this is stated, he began to sink.
So, there’s significance here. As long as he had his attention on Jesus, as long as he was walking in faith, he was walking on top of the water, but when he took his attention off of Jesus, he didn’t just sink all at once, he didn’t just plop down, but he began to sink. He just slowly began to go down, and here’s a point that I’ve gotten out of this, and that is that you know what? You don’t get out of faith all at once. It’s something that comes gradually. You don’t get into faith all at once. It’s not just like all of a sudden you go from total unbelief to total belief. It’s something that you have to cultivate, you have to build, you have to sow for this, and like the teaching that I’ve done recently about the Word of God being like a seed and there’s seed, time and harvest, and it takes a while for the word to begin to produce, it takes a while for you to get into faith, and likewise, it takes a while to come out of faith.
Now, here’s the significance of that, that there are signs when we begin to start losing our faith, when we begin to start being more controlled by our senses than we are by our faith. It doesn’t just happen all at once, it comes in steps and stages, and if you will recognize the signs of this, you can stop this process before you’re just totally sunk, before you’re over here drowning. You know what, you can see these telltale signs. Like for me, there’s a lot of things. I’ve already used this verse out of Isaiah 26:3, the Lord will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed upon him. When I am focused on the Lord and when I’m in communion with the Lord the way that I need to be, you know what, I have a perfect peace, and the scripture says, Colossians 3:15, let the peace of God rule in your heart, let it be like a king, a dictator, let it control your heart.
Anytime I begin to start losing my peace and I just become agitated about. You know, things, whether it’s important or not or whatever it is, if I lose my peace, I guarantee you, I know that I am not keeping my mind stayed upon God the way that I should. I’m not looking at Jesus, the author and the finisher of my faith. So, when I begin to be agitated or worry about something, immediately I adjust and immediately I will stop something, I’ll separate myself, I’ll go study the word, I’ll pray, I’ll get my mind back on the Lord, and because of it, you know what, I don’t believe that I just go from walking on the water to being below the surface and then I get back up. You know, I just see myself beginning to sink, I see the slightest signs of me not focusing on the Lord the way that I should, and when I see that, I deal with it and I get back on top.
Now, that is really significant and I think that this, like I said, I’ve never seen anybody beginning to sink. This is amazing the way that it was stated and I think it was stated this way for our benefit so that we could learn that you know what? You just don’t ever fall away from trusting God and believing God all at once. There’s steps and stages. We had a situation here in this town where one of the leading pastors fell into sexual sin and he had spoken at our Bible school before. He was very prominent and because of this, I knew that the students were concerned about it. Everybody was saying, how could this have happened?
And I got up, and I didn’t know any of the details, but based on this principle, and of course there’s many other scriptures that support this, but based on this I told them, I said, look, this didn’t happen all at once. I said, I don’t know any details, I don’t know that he’s ever, you know, been doing anything or leading a double life behind the scenes, but I said, you just, you know, sin doesn’t come on you like a seizure. It has to be conceived. I said, in his heart, he didn’t just do this, wake up one day and fail God. He’s been walking away for a long time, and as it turns out, I’m privy to some things behind the scenes, it turns out that this minister for over 20 years had been living a double life and this had been conceived and acted out, and if he would have dealt with these duplicities in his life the very first time that they started to happen, he could have dealt with this, he wouldn’t have sunk, he wouldn’t have lost his church, he wouldn’t have lost his ministry, he wouldn’t have become an enigma and a laughing stock among many people, he could have dealt with it, same thing with all of us.
I’m telling you, you just don’t fail all at once. There are signs and if we would just make the commitment that, God, I’m going to keep my eyes focused on you, and when you begin to sense that your peace is leaving, when your joy is leaving, and on and on you could go, there’s many different things, if you just would start seeing these variations in your life and when you see them, you would deal with them and say, I’m not going there, and you get your attention back on Jesus, you wouldn’t ever sink, you wouldn’t ever have these things overwhelm you. Man, that is a powerful truth right there, and so it says that beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.
And look at this in verse 31, «And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, o thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt»? Now, notice what it didn’t say here. It did not say that Jesus ran and grabbed him and lifted him up and then said these things. It just says that Jesus immediately stretched forth his hand. The way that it’s stated, this implies that Peter was probably right there in front of Jesus, and here is another great truth that I’ve learned.
That is that when you are out in the middle of a storm and I mean, it’s just taking a miracle for you to stay above the storm and stay afloat, most people will focus on God in a crisis situation like that, but when Peter got right up to Jesus, when it looked like he had obtained his goal and he had done this, then he took his attention off of Jesus and saw the wind and the waves, and that’s when he began to sink, and here’s a lesson that I’ve learned and that is that actually, the most critical time or the time that you’re most receptive to unbelief and failure is not in a crisis time but it’s in a good time.
Most people who have even a nominal commitment to the Lord will seek the Lord as long as they are in a crisis situation and if they don’t get a miracle from God, they’re going to die, well then, they’ll seek God, but when everything is going relatively good and that you don’t see any problems on the horizon, that’s when most people take their eyes off of Jesus and look at these other things and begin to sink.
Now, that is a huge piece of information. I’ve seen placards, I’ve heard songs before about how that you know, it’s when you get squeezed, that that really, you know, releases what’s on the inside of you, you can tell what a person’s made of when they’re under pressure, et cetera. I believe it’s just the opposite. You can really tell where a person’s heart is when everything is good because when everything is good, most people will tend to not seek the Lord. Their heart isn’t truly after the Lord, and you are actually more susceptible to failure in good times than you are in bad times. History of the church shows that in prosperity the church tends to fail and go into apostate. When they are persecuted and when hard times come, people, man, all of a sudden their priorities get straight, they quit seeking all of these other things and they put God first and they begin to prosper.
So, this is one of the things you can see, that Peter, as long as he was out there, I mean, just had to have a miracle or he was going to drown, well then he kept his eyes stayed on Jesus. But when he got right in front of him, Jesus didn’t have to run and catch him, he was right there, then he felt like he had obtained his goal, everything was cool, and he took his eyes off of Jesus and that’s when he began to sink. So man, we need to take a lesson from this and never take our eyes off of Jesus, not until we go to be with him. We need to be seeking the Lord with our whole heart until the day we die or until the day that he comes back for us, and look at how Jesus responded. It says, immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, o thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?
Boy, there’s a lot in this verse. I could spend days on this, but as I’ve said, today’s going to be my last day. I’m going to have to say this quickly and you’re just going to have to listen quick or either get some of my other teachings to get the full manifestation or the full detail of this. But first of all, he called him a man of little faith. He didn’t have huge faith, and yet he walked on water. Now see, this dispels some belief of people. Some people think, man, if you’re going to really see a miracle of God in your life, you’ve got to have this huge faith. That’s not so. You don’t need big faith.
Matter of fact, there are just many scriptures: Mark 11:23, whosoever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, he shall have whatsoever he saith. There are scriptures that say, if you only have faith as a grain of mustard seed, Matthew, chapter 17, verse 20, that you can say unto this mountain, be removed, and it will remove, and you don’t have to have huge faith. It just takes a little mustard seed amount of faith to do that if you doubt not. The Lord didn’t say it’s because your faith isn’t big enough. He had little faith and yet he had walked on the water.
The problem was, he says, wherefore did you doubt? It’s not faith that was the problem, it was doubt, and this is a point that most people don’t understand. I’ve got a teaching entitled, hardness of heart, and the last teaching in that series is entitled, unbelief, and how to deal with unbelief, that unbelief is the problem, and this is taken from Matthew 17:20, where Jesus told his disciples, the reason you couldn’t cast the demon out was because of your unbelief. He didn’t say, because of your little faith.
Now, I will acknowledge that the NIV Bible says, it’s because of your little faith, but that is not accurate. Matter of fact, the rest of that verse, Matthew 17:20, goes on to say, for if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you may say unto this mountain be removed, be thou cast into the sea: and it shall obey you, and so right there he says you don’t need huge faith. The whole point that he’s making is, you don’t need this gigantic faith. You don’t have to be a faith giant, a little bit of faith allowed Peter to walk on the water. It’s just, you can’t have it mixed with any unbelief. It can’t be polluted or diluted with unbelief. So, unbelief is really the problem, not faith.
Let me just make a statement right here that is going to shock some of you, but you really don’t have a faith problem. If you’ve been born again and if you truly have committed your life to the Lord, then the scripture teaches that you do have the faith of the Son of God. You’ve got two problems. One of them is a knowledge problem: we don’t know what we have. In Philemon, chapter 1, verse 6, Paul said, I pray that the communication of your faith becomes effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you. So really, we’ve got a knowledge problem. Most of us don’t know what we have, so there’s a knowledge problem and then, the second thing is, it’s an unbelief problem. You do have faith.
If you’ve been born again, you’ve got a desire and an ability to believe God, but we don’t know what we have, we haven’t heard the truth, and we have an unbelief problem. Unbelief comes similar to the way that faith comes. Romans, chapter 10, verse 17 says, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Well, unbelief also comes by hearing, but not the Word of God, it’s by hearing all of the things that are contrary to the word. It’s the same principle, but it’s like in a different direction. Faith comes when we listen to the word, when we focus on God. Unbelief comes when we are focused on anything that is contrary to the truth of God’s word, and so the real problem with believers isn’t that we don’t have faith, it’s the fact that we’ve got all of this unbelief because we are so plugged in to the things of this world.
Now, I don’t know if that helps you, but what this Revelation has done for me is to show me that it’s not hard to trust God and believe God and see miraculous things happen. The only thing that makes it hard is the lifestyle that most of us live to where we are so plugged in to this world and fed a constant diet of doubt and unbelief and that unbelief is negating our faith, it’s diluting our faith, it cancels our faith. So, the real problem isn’t that we’ve got to get more faith: the real problem is we need less unbelief. We need less exposure to all of this stuff. Some of you, this will shock you too, and you may not agree with this, but I really believe this, that the culture we live in is just riddled with unbelief. We are baptized in unbelief. We are completely immersed in it.
You know, there’s just a spirit of anti-Christ that is dominating politics and media and things like this. It is all political correctness. They do not stand for the Word of God and it is being just crammed down our throat every minute of every day. We are the information generation and I tell you, we now have all of the unbelief and the problems and the bad news of the world piped into our house. We pay to have it done and we are exposed to unbelief as no other group of people on the history of the planet have ever been exposed to unbelief, and it’s this unbelief that is hindering our faith.
Our faith, if it was just the size of a mustard seed, it doesn’t have to be big, if it was just pure, if it wasn’t contaminated with unbelief, we would be able to walk on the water. We would be able to overcome these problems. This is what Jesus was saying to Peter. He says, «O thou of little faith, why did you doubt»? And obviously he’s saying that «Peter, if you hadn’t have doubted, if you hadn’t have taken your attention off of me and looked at the wind and the waves and have gone to relating to the fact that, 'man, I’m out here in the middle of this lake. There’s wind and there waves, this is crazy. I shouldn’t be here'».
If he hadn’t have thought that way, if he had just kept his attention on Jesus and been watching the one who was overcoming these problems and walking on water, then he could have continued to do it. He didn’t have to sink. You don’t have to fail. I admit people do fail, I’m not condemning anybody who does fail, but I’m saying, we don’t have to do that.
The reason we fail isn’t because God wills it and desires it and somehow it makes us better, the reason we fail is because we take our attention off of Jesus because we are allowing this filth, this trash, the sewage of the world to flow through our minds and our hearts and it’s corrupting us, and so if you want to be a water walker, you need to do what Peter didn’t do and that is, you need to keep your attention focused on Jesus, the author and the finisher of your faith, and never take your attention off of him. Don’t ever go to looking at things just in the natural, but look at the supernatural Jesus, and follow his example. And if you do that, you can become a water walker.