Andrew Wommack and Faith Like A Grain of Mustard Seed

My husband and I have been followers of Andrew Wommack for several years.  It is apparently not popular to follow him and I get some hate emails from even mentioning him in my blog!  However, that won’t deter me from speaking about him.  I have found his teachings to be simple and provide a wealth of information.  While I’m still a fairly new Christian, the things that Andrew Wommack teaches were even unknown to my husband who has been a Christian for over 4 decades.  Andrew’s simple teachings have opened our eyes to the TRUTH that the devil has wanted to remain hidden for so long.

But make no mistake, even now we struggle with some of the teachings.  What we are finding is this;   Andrew is here to teach the simplest form of these truths.  He is a good place to start;  a sort of “jumping off” point.  Christians should always study the Bible on their own and with others.  And while the new information Andrew has shown us is invaluable, there is still  more to the story.  Do I doubt the Lord answers every prayer, every time as Andrew says?  NOPE.  I believe that 100%.  Then WHY are all my prayers not being answered?  Andrew says it’s “unbelief” or maybe because an improper request was made, or maybe even something else that can’t be guessed.  But whatever the reason, he is right.  There IS more… there IS something else.  And only the Lord can tell us what or why.

We have believed, and seen our prayer answered just hours later.  We were having a less than normal month in our otherwise successful business.  Our business is such that certain months are slower than others.  So we prayed for grocery money.  It was an actual “need”.  My husband was heading off to a meeting and they were doing a raffle.  And a couple hours later, he came home with money in his pocket.  He had 2 winnings actually, which more showed the Lord’s hand in it!  He first won a “draw” and then when he drew, he won the pot!  Glory to God!  We praised and praised.  But truth be told, we both somehow knew he was coming home with that money.  We felt it in our spirits.  But this does not happen every time we make a request to God.  We KNOW that we have faith and belief and do not waver from it.  We KNOW that, just as Andrew Wommack teaches, the Lord DOES answer every prayer, every time, so long as it is appropriate.  But something else is keeping prayers from being answered.  I have asked the Lord about this and been receiving some answers just recently.  

I’ve been wanting to know why the healing I am trying to get is not happening.  I have struggled with obesity for many years.  I am more active than most women I know and eat normal meals.  I don’t sit my butt on a sofa all day or eat enough food for 7 people.  I KNOW in my spirit this is a metabolism or similarly related health issue I inherited through iniquity (my mother has it, other women in the family too.)  And the Lord showed me it was because of my heart-attitude.  I’ve long wanted healing from obesity.  The Lord showed me that the healing I wanted was for my outward appearance and not because of medical issues.  And He is right!  I care more about how I look and how others see me, and the health needs are secondary at best.  I need to get my heart right and THEN the healing will come.  The Lord SHOWED me this.  That isn’t something Andrew Wommack can teach you.  Andrew teaches that there are reasons you aren’t getting your healing, but he can’t show you every possible scenario.  Only the LORD can show you what is preventing your prayer from being answered!  And I suspect that oftentimes, it is because of demonic intervention.

I can give you a perfect example on this from Daniel.  In Daniel 9:20-21, Daniel says specifically that while he was STILL in the middle of his prayer, an angel of the Lord, Gabriel, showed up with an answer to it.  He had not even finished praying and it was answered.  However, then in Daniel 10:12-14, his prayer request comes about very differently.  He waits 3 weeks for it to be answered.  The angel then comes and says that he was detained by the “King of Persia” and another angel, Michael, had to come and help him.  If you’ve been studying your Bible you know that “King of Persia” is a reference used for a demon or the devil himself.  In effect, the devil kept the prayer from being answered.  The Bible does not tell us why.  It would seem that when the devil believes he can keep a prayer from being answered, he will.  The verse also states that the angel said “Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard.”  It’s clear that the angel is saying that from the second He heard the prayer, the Lord answered it and it was only delayed because of demonic intervention.  And that the angel dispatched by God had to fight with this demon for so long that another angel had to jump in and help.  Clearly, there is MUCH going on “behind the scenes” that we will never see while on this planet.  This is another area where FAITH comes in!

The bottom line is that if you don’t know why your prayers are not being answered, you have to look to the Lord for the answers.

I’ll give you another example the Lord shared with me recently.  I speak to the planet and other things quite often.  I have FAITH that what I command will be done.  I believe the Bible where Jesus says:  “…Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”   ~Matthew 17:20

I have a couple examples of this.  I have a terrible fear of wasps and they seek me out in their demonic-like fashion.  When doing yard work, I am harassed to an extent that isn’t normal.  So when I walk out the door, I always speak to the bugs and tell them that they WILL stay away from me.  Whatever they need to do, they can do away from me and my yard.  Without fail, they do exactly as I say.  One day, I saw something like a large hornet coming at me at top speed and without even thinking, I started speaking in tongues straight at it and just before it ran directly into me, it veered off in a most unearthly manner and disappeared.  I use this command of the planet, so to speak, in other ways as well.  About a month ago, I spoke to the Earth and told it to snow.  We haven’t seen much snow this season and it’s something I love and was really missing it!  The snow came but not exactly as I spoke it.  When I thought on it, the Lord put it on my heart that the reason it didn’t happen the way I commanded was that my request was self-serving.  He reminded me of the stray cats we feed and asked what I thought of them having to walk a long way in cold, wet snow to get to the food.  And what about people that have car or personal accidents due to snow?  His communication was simple;  my request for snow was selfish and served no godly purpose.   Boy, did I feel dumb after that, albeit wiser now. 

In conclusion, I believe that Andrew Wommack is NOT wrong.  The advice he gives and his interpretations of the Bible are spot on.  In my opinion and my own experience, Andrew is trying to get people on the right path.  He’s giving advice that IS simple.  Now, that being said, it’s NOT ALWAYS *that* simple.  Sometimes there is demonic intervention or a prayer that was ungodly, or maybe an open door in your life due to sin.  There are too many reasons to count as to why your specific prayer may not be answered.  But just as Andrew says, if your prayer is not answered, there’s a reason for it.  It’s up to YOU to find the reason, and NOT up to the Lord to work around it!

Politics and Religion… Hypocrisy and Integrity

My grandfather used to say “don’t talk about religion or politics unless you WANT to start a fight with somebody.” I talk about religion all the time and my husband talks politics all the time, so I guess we’ve got the taboo topics well covered. You already know we are Christian, the title of the blog gives that away, but we are also Conservative. You might think the title gives that away too, but you can’t be really be sure.  I’ll talk more about that later…

I have, for years now, seen my husband talking in political forums on the Internet, and fighting with others about his political beliefs. I also have been telling him, for years, that it’s a waste of his time. All it does is get him worked up, angry and upset, over nothing. He hasn’t ‘converted’ anyone to his way of thinking. Everyone just fights and tries to get others to change to his/her point of view, and none do. All he did was hurt himself by letting the devil get under his skin to the point of anger.

One day recently, I was just standing in the kitchen and he had just commented on someone’s post in the forum, and I was suddenly hit with the truth. I said, “the Lord just informed me that you are wasting your time because it’s not really about politics, it’s really about religion.”  The Lord basically said that if you can bring someone to Jesus, thus changing their religious views, then their politics will change too.  He wanted me to remind my husband, yet again, that his time is better spent talking about the Lord with others, than talking about their politics.  And it makes perfect sense considering you’d be hard-pressed to find an atheist or buddhist, etc. that has a Conservative way of thinking because they are not Christian.

Now, before a bunch of you start writing me and proving me wrong, I admit that everything has variables. There are always some that ‘don’t fit the mold’ and I acknowledge that. BUT… and this is a BIG BUT… Hypocrisy plays a huge role here as well. Let me explain…

I know some people who claim to be Christian and also say they are Democrats. Sounds like they ‘don’t fit the mold’ of the Conservative Christian,right?  Well, that is, until you go deeper and find out that they rarely attend church, they don’t talk about the Bible at home or even read it. And if you ask them questions about the Bible, you’ll find they don’t really know it at all, and couldn’t tell you the last time they actually sat down to read it! I was raised ‘Christian’ but I knew less than 1% of what the Bible was actually about, we never went to church, never talked about the Lord at home, etc. Some say just believing in Jesus and God makes you a Christian, but I say, No.. it really doesn’t. So now those ‘Christian Democrats’ I just mentioned, don’t appear very Christian at all. If you aren’t ‘practicing’, then what are you really? Can I just ‘say’ I am a Christian and be one without doing anything else? Nope. I can ‘say’ I am a man but if I’m sitting here, a woman just like God made me, then I am NOT a man at all. Just SAYING something doesn’t make it so;  Your ACTIONS have to back it up. Just like those that say they are on the side of a certain political party, but they never vote. Can I just say I am a Conservative, but I never vote in any elections or share my Conservative opinions with others? I don’t think so. If you are not actively participating in your chosen Religion or Political party, then what are you really?

Answer:  a HYPOCRITE. The more I think on it, the more I think Jesus would say these types of people fall into the category of hypocrite because they are not practicing what they preach. The very definition of hypocrisy tells us that it is a DECEPTION or LIE.  And in Matthew 23, we see several examples of what Jesus thought of hypocrites:

Matthew 23:13 – “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.”

Matthew 23:14 – “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.”

Matthew 23:23 – “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.”

Matthew 23:27 – “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”

Jesus, clearly and plainly, pointed out to them the many ways they were hypocrites, and in the process, showed us all the EVIL of it. These are also clear examples of a lack of INTEGRITY. If one is a constant flip-flopper on your morals, ideals, opinions, etc. then they lack integrity. If you’ve been reading your BIBLE, you know then that integrity is spoken of often as being something that is GODLY:

Proverbs 11:3 “The integrity of the upright shall guide them: but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them.”

Proverbs 20:7  “The just man walketh in his integrity: his children are blessed after him.”

Proverbs 19:1 “Better is the poor that walketh in his integrity, than he that is perverse in his lips, and is a fool.”

The true point I am trying to make is that even some people who claim to be Christian are not really Christian.  You have to talk about the Lord, read your Bible, speak with others about the Lord, have an intimate relationship with the Lord, and do godly things to be a true Christian.  Just saying you are one and doing nothing else but praying once in awhile, does not make you a true Christian.  It does, however, make you a hypocrite.

The same is to be said of politics.  If you say you are for a certain political party but you never vote, do not speak to others about your opinions, and just basically don’t get involved at all, then what are you really?  Your actions have to back up your beliefs or you are nothing more than a hypocrite.

What the Lord was telling me, in essence, is that true Christians don’t have to be convinced to be for any certain political party.  Once they are brought into a true intimate relationship with the Lord and true godly living… they will change their political thinking automatically.