Andrew Wommack - God Wants You Well - Part 23

Welcome to The Gospel Truth broadcast. This is our Wednesday’s edition and I’m now into the middle of my fifth week of teaching on God wants you well. I tell you, this has been powerful. We’ve been playing a lot of DVDs, testimonies, I’ve been doing a lot of teaching, just trying to get this across every way at my disposal to try and convince you that God wants you well. Now, what I’ve been dealing with for about the last week and a half is reasons why people aren’t healed, and the very first thing I’ve talked about is, it’s because people don’t believe.

Now, that’s not the only reason, but that is a prerequisite, there has to be some degree of faith. There’s what I call an active faith that reaches out and takes it, but at the very minimum, you have to have a passive faith that will receive it if somebody else helps you and ministers to you. So, this is very important, and I’ve spent over a week dealing with that. Today I want to move on to the second reason, and again, these are just things that I’m coming up with, I can’t show you a scripture that says the first reason is that people don’t believe, the second reason is this, et cetera. These are just ways that I’ve categorized this in an attempt to try and organize this and make a clear presentation, but the second reason that people aren’t healed is found right here in Matthew, chapter 17.

I’ve already used these verses leading up to this passage, but the second reason that people aren’t healed is because of unbelief. Now, a lot of people are going to be confused here because it is typically thought that if you are in faith, that means you don’t have any unbelief, and if you have any unbelief, that means you don’t have any faith. Most people think that faith and unbelief are mutually exclusive, but that’s not true, and Jesus here, I want to turn to this example.

I’ve already used portions of these scriptures, but this is where a man had a son who the King James calls, lunatic, it was some type of seizures, and he asked Jesus' disciples to heal him and they couldn’t do it, and so he finally came to Jesus and he says, your disciples couldn’t do this, so Jesus went ahead and cast the demon out of this boy and this boy was totally cured of these seizures, and after all of this was over, it says in Matthew, chapter 17, and verse 19, «Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, why could not we cast him out»?

Now, before I get into Jesus' answer, it’s very important here to understand some things. In the tenth chapter of the book of Matthew, Jesus had given his disciples, these exact people, authority over all sickness, over all disease and over all demons to cast them out, and they had gone out and ministered and they came back and didn’t have a single question, not recorded in scripture, so that implies that they had used this power and they had seen results. So, these weren’t novices, these weren’t people who had never seen a person healed, these weren’t people who didn’t believe in healing. If they didn’t believe that it was going to work, they wouldn’t have ever asked this question, why didn’t it work for us, because they would have known, well, I didn’t believe it.

And let me just make a point here, did you know that the people who struggle with, why isn’t everyone healed, are the people who believe it’s God’s will to heal. The people who have rejected that God heals today and that miracles happen, they don’t ever ask these questions. They just look at people that are born with deformities, they look at people that die, they look at people that are living a life and they’re suffering, and they don’t ever ask these questions because they believe it’s God’s will for all of these things to happen.

So, people who don’t believe in healing don’t have these questions. Now, that’s important and I say that because, for the very fact that these disciples came and said, why couldn’t we cast him out, shows that there was faith present. They were believing God, they had seen it work in the past and yet, this time they did the exact same thing that they had done before and this time they didn’t see the right results, and so I think it’s important for you to recognize that you can have faith and you can be believing and still not see the right results.

Now, it shouldn’t stay that way and I’m going to share some things with you that will help you to be able to go beyond that and to see things happen, but it’s important to recognize that it’s not so simple to say, that if a person doesn’t receive their healing, if a person dies from their sickness and stuff, it’s just because they didn’t believe, it’s not that simple. These disciples were believing and that’s the reason they asked this question, why didn’t it work, because they had applied their faith, they had used their faith, it had worked in the past, but it didn’t work this time and they were perplexed. Why didn’t it work for us? And look at Jesus' answer.

This is in Matthew, chapter 17, in verse 20, Jesus said unto them, because of your unbelief. Why couldn’t we cast these demons out? Because of your unbelief. Now, let me tell you what this didn’t say. It didn’t say, it’s because your faith is too small, it’s because you only had a little faith. I will acknowledge this, I know that some of you watching this program, you use the NIV or there are some other versions that quote it right here as Jesus saying, it’s because of your little faith. That is absolutely wrong. That is not a correct translation, because if you go on and read the rest of this verse, look at this again, in verse 20, Jesus said unto them, because of your unbelief, and then there’s a colon here, for verily I say unto you, that means, truly.

This is the truth, I’m telling you that if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place: and it shall remove: and nothing shall be impossible unto you. So Jesus goes on to say in this very verse, if your faith is as tiny as a mustard seed. I don’t know how many of you have seen a mustard seed, but it’s tiny. It’s one of the smallest seeds that there is. You know, these little poppy seeds that are sometimes on muffins or what do you call them, cupcakes and different things like this and stuff, it’s about that size, it’s just tiny, tiny, tiny, so the whole point that he’s making is, if your faith is minute, if it’s as small as a mustard seed, that’s enough to see a mountain removed and cast into the sea, if you don’t doubt in your heart.

So, if you were to adopt what the NIV says, that it’s because of your little faith, then the rest of this verse is counter-productive to that. The rest of this verse is saying, it’s not this huge faith, if your faith is tiny like a mustard seed, it’s enough to cast a mountain into the sea. It is just absolutely wrong that the NIV has translated this, it’s because of your little faith. It’s because of the unbelief, and again, I bring up that a lot of people think that, well, faith and unbelief are mutually exclusive and so if you say you’ve got unbelief, that means you aren’t believing God, and if you are believing God, that means you have no unbelief. Let me present a thought to you that is going to be radical to some of you, but this is really important when it comes to healing. You can believe and disbelieve at the same time. You can have faith and yet have unbelief at the same time.

Now, I know that that’s a new wrinkle in some people’s brains. They’ve never thought this before, but you know, in this very instance, Matthew, chapter 17, it’s recorded over here in Mark’s gospel, Mark recorded this same thing, and let me read to you what happened in Mark, chapter 9, and this is where Jesus was casting the demon out of this boy, and let me just read a few of these verses. In verse 20 it says, and they brought him, talking about this demon possessed boy, unto Jesus: and when he saw him, straightway the spirit tare him: and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming. And he said unto his father, how long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, of a child. And often times it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us.

Now, this father of this child had had faith and he acted on his faith by bringing his son to Jesus and to his disciples, so there was faith present, but when the disciples couldn’t cast the demon out of this boy, this father’s faith began to waver, and I’ve already quoted these verses over in James, chapter 1 that if you ask, you have to believe without wavering. If you waver, you’re like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. But this man’s faith had begun to waver and you can see it right here because he says, but if you can do anything, have compassion on us, and help us.

See, that’s not a strong faith. His faith was wavering because of circumstances. He didn’t see what it was that he wanted and he began to express his doubt. If you can do something, please help us, and Jesus said unto him, if you can believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. See, Jesus wasn’t going to accept total responsibility for this deliverance. He told this dad, you have to believe. If you can believe, he wasn’t about to just let him throw all of the responsibility on over to him. See, this goes along with the points that I’ve been making during this last week that there has to be some degree of faith. If not the active faith, at least a passive faith that will receive healing when it comes, and this father was beginning to waver and throwing all of this back on Jesus.

Oh Jesus, if you can do anything, you just do it for us, and Jesus said, no, if you can believe, all things are possible. He kept this father’s feet to the fire. He said, you have to believe, and look at this father’s response, it says, straightway the father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe: help thou my unbelief. Now see, if believing automatically excluded unbelieving or unbelief, well then Jesus probably would have said something to this father like, well that’s not true. If you’ve got any unbelief, then you weren’t believing God, but he didn’t rebuke him, he didn’t criticize him, he just went ahead and released the power of God and saw this boy healed. He didn’t reprove this man for it.

In other words, I believe it’s possible to believe, just like this man said, Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. He had faith, but he was wavering, he was beginning to consider circumstances and he had dealt with discouragement and he had, I’m sure, prayed many, many times for his son to be healed, and he wasn’t healed. This is also why Jesus asked this father, he says, how long is it ago since this came unto him? What does that have to do with anything? I believe it’s because when people have been sick for a long time, the sickness not only gets in their body, it gets in their mind, it gets in their thinking. Their emotions, they think sick, they expect sick.

You know, I prayed with a woman just a couple of days ago who had migraine headaches and I prayed with her and she was having a migraine headache the moment I prayed with her and I prayed and the pain instantly was gone, and she started praising God, but I didn’t quit right there. I went on to say, now, you’ve got to get this out of your mind. You have adapted your life to migraines, you avoid certain circumstances and things and your whole life is built around, you think, sick. You think like a person with migraines. I said, your body is healed, now your mind needs to be healed, and this is what it is. When a person has been sick for a long time, not only is their body sick, but they dream sick, they think sick, they plan sick, and this is what Jesus was referring to. It wasn’t hard to get the demon out of this boy, but he was dealing with, how long have you been dealing with this, because that makes a difference in the way you minister to people.

So anyway, there had to be faith present, but this man said, I believe, but Lord, help my unbelief. You know, here’s another passage of scripture over in Mark, chapter 5, I’m going to deal with this next week some time, but in Mark, chapter 5, Jairus had asked Jesus to come heal his daughter, she was at the point of death. Jesus got side tracked by ministering to a woman who had an issue of blood, and because of the delay, one of the messengers from Jairus’s house came and said, your little girl is dead, don’t trouble the master anymore, and here’s how Jesus responded. As soon as he heard this it says in, this is Mark 5:36, «As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, be not afraid, only believe».

He said, don’t be afraid, only believe. Why didn’t he say, just believe? Because you can believe and yet disbelieve at the same time, you can believe and waver in your faith and if that happens, you won’t get anything, but when you see results, you’ve got to only believe. This is really significant right here, and then there’s another example over in Mark, chapter 11, verse 23, where Jesus was teaching about how he cursed this fig tree and how all that came to pass, and he said, whosoever shall 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 saith.

See, Jesus, right there, it’s obvious that he was talking about, you have to believe and say this in faith, but then he added, and don’t doubt. Now, if faith automatically excluded doubt, why would he even mention this? It would be unnecessary. So, here’s three examples and there’s others that I could give you, but these are three examples of how you can believe and disbelieve at the same time, and see, a lot of people don’t understand this. They don’t have this concept and this is why sometimes, if you see a person who’s trying to believe for healing and you know that this person, man, is believing God, you’ve seen evidence of their faith, you may have even seen other people healed and stuff, and yet, here they are struggling, and you just, if you don’t understand that you can believe and disbelieve at the same time or waver in that faith and have unbelief coming against you, then you’ll just sit here and say, well, I know this person’s got faith, so that is not the key.

You do not have to believe because this person is believing God and it’s not working. Well, you can believe and disbelieve at the same time. Here’s another way of expressing it, that if you had some kind of a weight right here in front of me and if you hooked a team of horses up to it or you know, anything with power. You could hook a car up to it, a tractor up to it or whatever, but if you hook some kind of power source to this weight and then, you know, hit the horses, turned on the car, whatever, and if you started exerting that power, it would drag the weight, it would move the weight, but if you had an equal source of power hooked up in the other direction pulling at the same time, you could have these huge horses pulling power or you could have a tractor or a car or whatever exerting all of this power, but if they were in opposite directions, it would counter balance each other, it would negate the other source and the net effect on the weight would be zero.

See, this is the way it is with faith. Faith, a little tiny mustard seed amount of faith is enough to see a mountain cast into the sea if it’s not opposed by unbelief pulling in the other direction. Now see, this is a concept that most people don’t have. They think, well, I believe in God and so why isn’t this working? Well, are you only believing God? Or is there doubt and unbelief that comes against you, and you know, this can be subtle. I’m going to be giving you a lot of experiences and talking about things that will explain this.

Let me just give you a personal example that when I saw the first person raised from the dead, this was in Pritchett, Colorado, and not long after I had seen this man raised from the dead, I went to minister in Omaha, Nebraska, and there was a man sitting down on my left, you know, as I was on the stage facing the people, he was on the front row on the left and he was in a wheelchair and he was paralyzed, and man, I had just come from seeing a man raised from the dead and my reasoning was that if I can believe God and see a person raised from the dead, well then, I can see a person who’s paralyzed healed, I can see a blind person healed, I can see a deaf person healed. I mean, if you can see a person raised from the dead, you can do anything.

So, I was really excited and I was watching this guy and I could hardly wait on me to get through preaching so that I could go down and minister to this guy and I was going to see this man who was paralyzed healed. So, I got through and I went right down to this man and I said, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, you’re healed, and I grabbed this man’s hand, and I just yanked him out of this wheelchair, and he was a big guy. He just came up like this and right over on his face, and because he was paralyzed he couldn’t even catch himself. He just hit the floor, and when that happened, I guarantee you, everybody in there was shocked.

You know, they nearly sucked all of the air out of that room like people, like that, and I mean, when it happened, I heard the reaction of the people, I thought, what are people going to think? Look what I’ve done to this guy, and I thought all kinds of things. I was thinking, lawsuit, I just had all kinds of stuff happen, and you know what I did? I actually got on my hands and knees and grabbed this guy, hugged him, put him back in his wheelchair, said, depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled, and yet I didn’t give him what he needed, and he left paralyzed, and when I went to the hotel room that night, I was confused because you know what? I believed God, and some people think, oh no, you weren’t really believing God.

Well, let me ask you this. How many of you have yanked somebody out of a wheelchair? You know what, you don’t do stuff like that unless you believe, I was believing to see this man walk. I had faith. If you try and tell me, you just didn’t believe God, you’re just barking up the wrong tree. I was believing God. I can guarantee you, you don’t pull somebody out of a wheelchair if you weren’t believing God, and because I knew faith was present and because I had seen my faith work previously even to the point of seeing a man raised from the dead, it really confused me, and I was exactly like these disciples, Lord, why didn’t it work?

Now, if I hadn’t have believed God, if I didn’t believe anything was going to happen, I wouldn’t have been confused. I would have known because I didn’t believe for it. I was believing and I know that there are some of you right now who are believing God and yet you aren’t seeing the right results and because of that, you’re confused because you know it does take faith, but you are believing God. Why aren’t you seeing the right results? It’s exactly what Jesus said right here. It’s not because you didn’t have faith, but you had unbelief that negated. It was an opposing force and it canceled out your faith, it negated your faith, it counter balanced your faith, and see, most people don’t even take this into consideration.

If they say, I know I’m believing God, they really don’t even pay much attention to unbelief, but the truth is, we live in a unbelieving society. We live in a corrupted world, and even the church world is full of unbelief. I encounter as much unbelief in the church as I do in unbelievers. Matter of fact, sometimes there’s more unbelief in the church because of all the wrong doctrine and the teaching against things. I’m telling, there is a huge amount of unbelief and most people don’t even think about that, they just think, well I believe it’s God’s will for me to be well, how come I’m not well? Well, have you dealt with all of the unbelief, all of the negative words, all of the criticism? Are you wavering in your faith?

This is what Jesus said the problem is, not the fact that you had little faith. Little faith is all you need. You don’t need big faith, you just need little faith. You need a pure faith that isn’t counter balanced or negated by unbelief, and most people don’t even think this way, so if they’ve got faith, they just are perplexed and then they enter into discouragement, despondency, because, well, I know I’m believing God, why isn’t it working? It’s because you can believe and disbelieve at the same time. As Jesus said, you have to only believe, only believe. Believe that you receive and doubt not in your heart.