How

Andrew Wommack Changed My Life

By Kevin Fontaine
 All Rights Reserved © 2012 Kevin Fontaine

All scripture notations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

This book was not prepared, approved, or endorsed by Andrew Wommack
Ministries, Inc.
 Contents
Who is Andrew Wommack?
Preface
Chapter 1: Fear and Living Up to “The Standard”
Chapter 2: The Sovereignty of God
Chapter 3: We Are Three: Spirit, Soul, and Body
Chapter 4: Not of works, least any man should boast
Chapter 5: What is the Exceeding Greatness of His Power Toward Us Who
Believe
Chapter 6: Be Transformed by the Renewing of your Mind
Chapter 7: Change Comes From the Inside
Chapter 8: Only by Pride Cometh Contention
Chapter 9: According to the Power that Worketh in Us
Chapter 10: Thanks Andrew!
My Favorite “Wommackisms”
Resources
Just who is Andrew Wommack?
For over 30 years Andrew Wommack and his ministry have focused on teaching
about the grace and unconditional love of God as revealed in the Gospels. He
emphasizes the simplicity of the Word of God and the profound longing God has
for relationship with us. He reaches millions of people each day with his Gospel
Truth television and radio programs. He has also produced hundreds of hours of
teachings on topics such as balancing grace and faith, harnessing your emotions,
hardness of heart, eternal life, and the effects of praise, and spends hundreds of
thousands of dollars each year giving his teaching materials away for free to
those who cannot afford them.
In 1994, he founded the Charis Bible College in Colorado Springs, which has
extension schools throughout the United States (Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas,
Jacksonville, Kansas City) and the World (England, Russia, Northern Ireland,
Belize, India, The Netherlands, South Africa and Uganda).

Preface
It’s funny how certain events occur in life that, at the time, seem trivial but turn
out to take on an importance that you never could have imagined. For example,
you meet someone in line at the grocery store, strike up a conversation, and that
person eventually becomes your best friend, or your wife, or both. In my case,
the seemingly trivial event was flipping through the channels early one weekday
morning in late February, 2011 as I waited for my son Joshua to get dressed so I
could take him to school. Suddenly, appearing on the screen was this rather
mild-mannered looking man sitting on a chair staring back at me, his angular
face and serious looking demeanor filling the screen. His hairstyle was from the
1950’s and his voice twanged with an accent that suggested that he was not from
my neck of the woods; the northeastern United States. My first inkling of
recognition was that he sounded like former President George W. Bush, whose
rich and droning Texas dialect drew unrelenting ire from the media which loved
to portray him as a dumb and incoherent speaker. The man on the TV screen
wore a cranberry colored dress shirt and was looking right at me, his eyes
virtually boring holes into mine. I couldn’t really understand what he was
saying, something about how much God loved me and that God wasn’t mad at
me. Stunned, I quickly turned the channel to ESPN so I could get the latest
scores and highlights.
This ritual went on for several days. I’d flip on the channel, watch this guy
Andrew Wommack for a few seconds, and then switch to another channel.
However, each day, I stayed with Andrew a little longer because I’d never heard
the kinds of things he was saying. I was raised Catholic. I went to a Catholic
grammar school, high school, and graduate school. I’d never ever heard about
God’s unconditional love, grace, and mercy. The nuns who’d formed my
religious identity always focused on how inadequate I was, how I was always
falling short of God’s standard and how all of my sins were sure to bring eternal
suffering and damnation. But, as an 8 year-old, I never questioned what they
were saying. The nuns kept stressing to us kids that all we could do was go to
church, confess our sins, and keep all of the strictures of the Catholic faith and
then, and only then, might we be able to barely squeeze our way into heaven. In
other words, God was angry at us because we were so dreadful but we might be
able to earn our way into eternal life by performing all of the rituals and trying as
best we could not to sin and offend God. I remember thinking that God was like
a school principal and that the best way to behave was not to do anything that
would draw His attention. That was kind of hard to do, however, because the
nuns said that God knew everything we ever did, thought, or said. If that’s true, I
thought, I’m doomed.
Almost every Friday afternoon we would amble over to the church across the
schoolyard and line up to take confession. We must have looked like a bunch of
death row inmates waiting to be executed. I remember the darkness, the smell of
burning candles, the somber looking statues, and the nuns policing our behavior
with stern looks and the occasional slap on the forearm. We’d each go in, one
by one, confess all of the sins that had piled up since our last confession, come
out of the confessional, and kneel by the alter and do our penance (the standard
penalty for our transgressions was five Our Father’s and five Hail Mary’s).
Given the sorry state of my soul and my inability to avoid sinning, for most of
my adult life, I’d pretty much given up on trying to live up to the standard that
was drilled into me as a kid. I didn’t pray, didn’t go to church, and figured that I
would just try to do my best and hope that God would conclude that I was fair-
to-middling, better than some, worse than some, and give me a break and let me
join Him when I died. Although, over the years, I’d made a few attempts to re-
connect with my Catholic faith they were always short-lived as I knew that I just
couldn’t meet the lofty standards. Who wants to be constantly plagued by the
guilt of being inadequate? Who wants to keep being reminded of their failures?
But what this guy Andrew Wommack was saying, and backing up with
Scriptures, which appeared on the screen, was the exact opposite of what I’d
been taught, raised in, and always failed to aspire to. I began to realize that in all
my years of Catholic religious education, we almost never opened the Bible.
They just made us memorize a bunch of prayers and tested us to make sure we
knew about all of the rituals (sacraments, holydays) and the organizational
hierarchy of the Catholic Church.
So, at the age of 46, I started watching the entire 30-minute show The Gospel
Truth with Andrew Wommack each weekday morning. It took some time, but
slowly and steadily my tendency to feel doomed began to melt away and I
started to think that there might still be hope for me. If Andrew was right and
that God longed to have a close personal relationship with me and that He wasn’t
angry with me for my innumerable transgressions, then maybe I was onto
something.
I purchased and read all of Andrew’s books and have watched or listened to
hundreds of hours of his teachings, available, free of charge, online
(www.awmi.net). To say that his teachings have changed my life does not do
justice to how much my life has been transformed. Even though, to quote
Andrew, “I haven’t arrived yet but I’ve left,” I now have an evolving and
increasingly intimate relationship with Our Lord. I’ve seen dramatic, and I mean
DRAMATIC, changes in my personality and in the way I perceive the things
that go on in my life. I’m more stable, less prone to be plagued by the extreme
emotions such as anger and impatience. I’m also better able to handle stress and
my relationships with my wife and son have improved beyond measure. It
certainly takes effort to make God the priority and to let Him speak to you as
you spend time reading and studying his Word, but all of this has come as the
result of flicking through the channels on a cold February morning in 2011.
My purpose for writing How Andrew Wommack Changed My Life is to share
some of the most important things I’ve learned from Andrew’s teachings. I will
not attempt to “bootleg the revelations” that Andrew has gleaned from his over
40 years of studying the Word, rather, I hope to show you how his teachings
have helped me to free myself from the sense of condemnation that came from
my religious upbringing. I suspect that many people are in the situation that I
was in, unable to break away from the paralyzing doctrines of their faith so that
they can develop a rich, personal relationship with God, a relationship that can
bring a victorious life; one of joy, peace, vibrant health, prosperity, and endless
possibilities.
The 10 brief chapters are arranged in order based on the progression of my
understanding as set in motion by Andrew. For example, the first “ah ha”
experience for me was Andrew’s teachings on how religious doctrines make the
mistaken claim that you must earn your way to salvation by your performance (a
doctrine that was drilled into my mind from about the age of 5). So the first
chapter focuses on the “performance mentality” because it was essential for me
to deal with this issue in order to create the necessary foundation to be ready to
get the most from his teachings on grace, the sovereignty of God, spirit, soul,
and body, renewing the mind, and so on. My hope is that, if you are new to
Andrew’s ministry, reading this short book will whet your appetite so that you
will take a closer look at his vast collection of teachings and educational
materials. I also hope that, in some small way, what I have written will help you
to begin to change the way you think about and relate to God. Andrew is right;
there is nothing more exciting or more rewarding than spending time in the
presence of the Lord.

Chapter 1: Fear and Living Up to “The Standard”
“God loves you. He even likes you. He’s not mad at you. He’s not even
disappointed in you.” With those words, Andrew Wommack threw a monkey
wrench into my theology. I half expected him to then say to me through the
television, “Only kidding. Actually God demands perfection from you.
Anything less and you can expect eternal damnation in the lake of fire. So you’d
better order your asbestos swimsuit.” But he didn’t. He just kept talking about
the love of God and that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). He also said that all of our
sins, past, present and even future ones, were already paid for by the blood of
Christ (Hebrews 9:12, 9:28, and 10:14). The debt was paid and paid in full. For
someone born and bred in Catholicism, this was like saying that pink elephants
were falling from the sky.
I panicked, but, at the same time, I felt a sense of relief, as if someone had
loosened the noose from around my neck that had been choking me. But the
questions flooded into my mind: What am I to make of this Andrew Wommack?
Is he right? What about the nuns of my childhood who said that we had to
always strive to overcome our sinful nature so that we can earn salvation? I was
frozen with confusion but also intrigued by this guy with the Texas twang whose
face was filling my television screen.
For the first 46 years of my life I had no sense of the depth of God’s love for
me. You’d think that 14 years of education in Catholic schools would have
given me such a sense. Well, it did. But it was a distorted sense, a sense that
God’s love for me was conditional, based solely on whether I was able to
perform and measure up to an unattainable standard of conduct. So, there was
no joy and no peace in my life, only torment. How could there be joy when
you’ve been led to believe that you always fall short, always fail in some way to
meet “the standard?” The nuns, God bless them, we just doing their job, what
they were trained to do. They did a good job with me as I was living with guilt,
condemnation, and never being satisfied that I’d done my best, never being good
enough. These feelings of inadequacy have gnawed at me for most of my life. I
remember, even as a 7 year-old, being struck by how unhappy the nuns looked.
Stern, never smiling, quick to anger, and beyond impatient, they were always on
guard to make sure that we weren’t doing something, like talking, roughhousing,
or laughing in class for instance, that would set us on a course to go straight to
hell. The nuns themselves must have been drowning under the unrelenting
pressure to keep our little souls from the clutches of the devil. They were the
soldiers, the front line troops, fighting a war that, it turns out, didn’t need to be
fought.
Andrew helped me to realize that my religious upbringing was based on the
faulty doctrine that I needed to earn my way to salvation based on my own
performance. This meant that my Catholic faith, so skillfully taught and
exemplified by the good sisters who forged my Christian identity, was based on
the covenant found in the Old Testament. It was as if they disregarded the entire
New Testament and the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Though still skeptical,
after all, 14 years of having the performance mentality drilled into your brain is
not easy to dislodge, I had this inkling of a revelation but I realized that I needed
to learn more. So I read Andrew’s books, The True Nature of God and The War
is Over and listened to his audio teachings of the same name.
I was astonished. Andrew’s scriptural references and explanations made it so
clear. How could the people of my Catholic faith have missed it? The emphasis
on performance and on strict adherence to lofty standards to earn your ticket to
salvation died on the cross with Jesus. Indeed, the strict and intrusive laws, there
were literally thousands of them in the Old Testament, were given by God to
show us that we could NEVER be good enough, never live up to a standard that
would enable us to earn salvation. As Andrew says, “Living the Christian life is
not hard, it’s impossible.” So the law was given precisely to show us that we
couldn’t do it ourselves, that we needed a savior, someone who was not only was
capable of living up to the law, but who also gave himself for us, paid for our
sins, for our inability to atone with God. When it says in Luke’s Gospel
concerning the birth of Jesus, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,
good will toward men” (2:14), it does not refer to peace between men, but peace
between God and men. It foreshadows that Jesus, the savior, was born and that
He who would justify us, would pay for our transgressions and give us the
gateway to eternal life and intimate relationship with God.
For me, eternal life meant only forgiveness of sins and a place in paradise for
eternity. But Andrew helped me to realize that eternal life actually begins on
this earth when you become born-again (John 3:3-5) and begin to know and
interact with God in an intimate way. I’ve learned that if I open my heart and
begin to saturate my mind with God’s Word, He will become your best friend,
your mentor, your confidant; He will become more important to you than anyone
or anything in this life. As I continue to grow and to come to understand that the
greatest gift is not forgiveness of sins but access to God on a personal one-to-one
basis, life changes in countless ways. Worry fizzles out. Bitterness and anger
melt. Impatience and self-centeredness recede. Your health shines. Each day
becomes a fascinating adventure as I pursue God ever more intimately and look
forward to working toward accomplishing His will for me. Life becomes joyous
and peace abounds!
Perhaps I shouldn’t be too hard on those who instructed me during my
religious formation because, even in the aftermath of Jesus’ death and
resurrection, Paul had to admonish the “foolish Galatians” (Galatians 3:1). For
they too were trapped in the view that Jesus, though the sacrificial lamb and the
subject of hundreds of prophecies in the Old Testament, was not enough, that we
also had to live up to rigorous standards of conduct in order to “earn our keep”
and be accepted by God. So it was the combination of Jesus’ sacrifice and our
own conduct meaning that God only favors us in proportion to how good we
are. If we are good, we get the benefits like wealth, abundant health, loving
families but, if we are bad, we get things like financial ruin, disease, addiction,
and tragedy. Of course, if this is true, that Jesus’ suffering and death on the
cross were insufficient, then we are doomed because we cannot do enough to be
good enough consistently enough to atone for our own sins (James 2:10).
Fortunately for us, Jesus’ sacrifice was more than sufficient. According to Isaiah
(40:1-2) Jesus’ suffering and death paid more than twice over for the sins of the
human race. So the debt has been paid and then some. “Christ hath redeemed us
from the curse of the law” (Galatians 3:13).
It’s hard to convey just how liberating this revelation was for me. When the
burden of trying to be good enough, while knowing that you could never be
good enough, is lifted, it frees you up from the guilt and struggle and allows you
to relate to God in a personal way. The barrier between you and God is removed
by the blood of Jesus. You now have access to God. He becomes the father
who was, for so long, estranged from you because of your feelings of
unworthiness.
I think that one of the reasons my Catholic faith could never get its head
around the notion that Jesus’ sacrifice was more than enough, that we don’t have
to be plagued by trying to live up to the unreachable standard, was because of
the mistaken notion that it might led people to continue, or to even increase, their
sinning because they’d know that, no matter what they did, they were already
forgiven. Paul had to face this very issue and responded to it several times in his
epistles (for example Romans 6; Galatians 1-3).
From a practical perspective, sinning is stupid and illogical. Lying, stealing,
and the like make you an unpopular person. It strains, if not severs,
relationships. It breeds resentment and anger and brings you into conflict with
society (at the extreme, it might even get you incarcerated). Of course, sinning
also opens the floodgates for the devil. He will have free reign over you and you
will pay a steep price (John 10:10). So, even though God loves you whether you
go on sinning or not, sinning makes life dreadful.
 As Paul emphasized, when you become born-again, you change from the
inside. You literally take on the Spirit of God. Ephesians 4:24 puts it this way,
“And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness
and true holiness.” In other words, your “old man,” your sinful nature, has died
and you now have Jesus living on the inside of you (“because as he [Jesus] is, so
are we in this world.” 1 John 4:17). This means that you have a new nature, a
nature that is sanctified and perfected forever (Hebrews 10:10, 14). Because of
this, you are no longer driven to sinning and to ungodliness. Of course, you still
can and will sin, but your sin nature, your old man, no longer has free reign the
way he did before you were saved. Having Christ on the inside means that you
are no longer a natural born sinner. As Andrew says, “Once you understand this,
you will live holier by accident than you ever could do on purpose.”
The primary challenge for the Christian is figuring out how to bring the Spirit
of God that lives on the inside of us out so that it steers our thoughts, actions,
and emotions. “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye
in him” (Colossians 2:6). Walking in Him requires renewing your mind to
God’s Word. Though hard work is required to renew our minds, isn’t it great
just to know that our sin nature is no longer an impediment and that God doesn’t
judge us based on our performance? He loves us and wants us to experience
“the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:18). How
liberating!

Chapter 2: The Sovereignty of God
The view that God is sovereign, that He controls everything, that nothing can
happen without his consent and approval, is interwoven with the performance-
based mentality that was presented in Chapter 1 to create a very pessimistic and
destructive package. This was a central part of the theology that was taught to
me and I have lived most of my life from within this view that nothing can
happen unless God deems it to be so. Practically, the linking of performance
with sovereignty means that if you fail to live up to the standard, God will
simply drop some tragedy into your life as a punishment or as a way to teach you
that you need to change. This perspective paints the picture that God is like
some sort of sadistic puppeteer pulling the strings and molding every
circumstance in our lives in such a way as to manipulate and torture us into
submission. Life becomes a constant battle between you and God, a battle we
can never win. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
Andrew helped me to understand that God does not control everything.
Although He has the power to do so, He’s left it to us to orchestrate our lives as
we see fit. If this were not so, then man would never have fallen because Adam
and Eve would never have eaten the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil (Genesis 3). God created us with infinite possibilities and then left us to
figure out how to live our own lives. Although He wants us to develop and
intimate, personal relationship with Him, He will not force us to do so. He
remains “hands off” unless and until we realize that we cannot do it ourselves,
that we need a savior and fully submitting our lives to Him as a “living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1).
Even then, He will not control us, but rather, through thoughts and inklings that
mysteriously come to us, He leads us to a path that, not only fulfills His will for
us, but also provides the direction that makes our lives more satisfying and
fulfilling than we could ever do for ourselves. He leads us to our purpose and
finding and living our purpose makes us abound in peace and joy.
It’s wonderful though a little scary to know that God is not sovereign
because this means that it’s up to us. We have the responsibility to determine
what becomes of us. We can access His guidance but, ultimately, He will not
force us to conform to where He’d like us to go. He’s delighted to contribute but
each of us is the author of our own life. I agree with Andrew that it’s easier for
us to live under the illusion that God is sovereign because it provides a ready-
made excuse for staying passive and living a life where we are waiting for things
to happen instead of making them happen. It keeps us a victim and being a
victim insulates us from responsibility. In today’s culture “victimhood” is
rampant, as people blame everything imaginable (such as their skin color, their
parents, their genes, their education, their spouse, their employer, their children)
for the problems in their lives and their inability to thrive. Even though
ultimately it’s destructive to live life believing you are a victim, it’s still very
seductive to blame God and His sovereignty for our problems and our inability
to improve our lot in life.
I continue to have a hard time getting my head around the notion that God is
not sovereign. My religious upbringing told me that He was sovereign and I still
find myself falling into this mode of thinking. We someone dies, for example,
my first thought is, “Well, their time was up.” Andrew, especially in his
teaching entitled, Living in the Balance of Grace and Faith, makes it clear that
God doesn’t have the lifespan of each person mapped out and pre-determined.
God doesn’t kill people. People die as a consequence of our fallen world. Bad
things happen. Circumstances occur that put people in the wrong place at the
wrong time. But God doesn’t make it happen. Just as a parent cannot control
the behavior of their adult children, God doesn’t micro-manage our lives. In a
sense, God gives us the keys to the car, this life, and lets us drive in any direction
we wish. Some of those directions are better than others. Some of those
directions may get us killed.
Again, it’s tempting to view God as sovereign because it allows us to blame
someone other than the person who may have been doing reckless things that,
eventually, got them killed. This is even more of an issue when a loved one
gets a terminal illness. Surely they did nothing to contribute to the development
of their illness, so, “Why them?” “Why did they get sick when millions of other
people, who do horrible things, do not get sick?” In the absence of answers, it is
easy just to blame God and say that He has some reason for making someone
sick. Blaming God also makes us feel better, feel that we can make sense of
situations that have no rational explanation. It absolves us from any sense of
responsibility or from the anxiety and fear that comes from the realization that
life is sometimes tragic and that bad things can, and do, happen for no reason.
 Instead of blaming God and focusing on the mistaken notion that He is
sovereign, maybe it would be better to blame the devil for mishaps and tragedies
and to take our God-given authority over the events and circumstances where we
can exercise control (Ephesians 6:12). “The thief cometh not, but for to steal,
and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they
might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10), or, as Andrew puts it, “If it’s good
it’s God, if it’s bad it’s the devil.”
It’s been quite an adjustment for me to realize that God is not sovereign and
that I have far more control and authority over my life than I’d previously
thought. Although it is sometimes difficult to swallow, especially when things
are not going well, it is also energizing to know that God has given me great
authority over the circumstances of my life. And it’s comforting to know that I
can draw upon His wisdom and counsel, through prayer and through meditating
on His Word, to help me figure out the best way to handle what’s going on in my
life. This means that I can draw upon His wisdom and guidance, not only for the
big decisions such as “should I take this new job?” but also with little things like,
“should I buy this book?” So God doesn’t control everything but as we continue
to develop an increasingly intimate relationship with Him, we can become more
and more confident that, if we are receptive to His leadings, He will show the
best path for us to follow to make our lives spectacular.

Chapter 3: We Are Three: Spirit, Soul, and Body
Growing up Catholic, we learned about the Holy Spirit as part of the trinity:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I was scared of the Holy Spirit, especially if the
nuns used the term “Holy Ghost,” because he was said to be the part of the
trinity that condemned us whenever we failed to meet the standard of living a
sin-free life. He was our conscience and he was ruthless. He was the drill
sergeant who knew everything we ever did or even thought. He demanded
perfection and tortured us mercilessly with feelings of inadequacy and
paralyzing guilt whenever we failed, which was almost constantly. The Holy
Spirit, the nuns told us, was only looking out for us. He was grieving for us so
He had to be hard and demanding because His job was to save our soul by
helping us to realize how far short we are from living up to the standard. His
“tough love” was necessary because the stakes were so high. So, He couldn’t
fool around; He had to do whatever it took to get us to live a Godly life. Living
with a constant sense of guilt and anxiety was a small price to pay, so we were
told, in order to reap the benefits of an eternity in heaven. It reminded me of the
television commercial from Fram, the auto parts manufacturer, when the
spokesman said, “You can pay me now or you can pay me later.” The Holy
Spirit wanted us to pay now with feelings of guilt and inadequacy so that we
would change our character and behavior so that we wouldn’t have to pay later
by suffering eternal damnation and separation from God.
But hold on! As Andrew notes, in scripture, the Holy Spirit is not portrayed
as the ultra-strict character assassin that goes about injecting guilt and
condemnation into people’s lives. Rather, to the believer, the Holy Spirit is the
comforter, the counselor, the supporter. “But the Comforter, which is the Holy
Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and
bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John
14:26). He wants to help us to take full advantage of our inheritance by assisting
us in acquiring and using the gifts that come to us we are born-again. As is
written in John 16:13-15, “Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He
will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever
He shall hear, that shall He speak: and He will shew you things to come. He
shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. All
things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine,
and shall shew it unto you.” So, the Holy Spirit is our wise friend and mentor, as
well as the manifestation of the power of God living on the inside of us.
When the Spirit of the living God resides in us, we have the potential to have
His love, goodness, kindness, patience (the fruit of the spirit found in Galatians
5:22-23) working in our lives. I say potential because it is not automatic. It
requires that we harmonize the three components of who we are: spirit, soul, and
body (1 Thessalonians 5:23). When we become born-again, our spirit takes on,
or embodies, Jesus Christ. So it’s our spirit that changes. It becomes righteous
and truly holy (Ephesians 4:24). We become one spirit with God (1 Corinthians
6:17). Wow!
And, if that weren’t enough, the scripture also says that we have the mind of
Christ living in our spirit (1 Corinhians 2:16) but it will not manifest in our lives,
in the physical realm, until we get our soul (our mentality and emotions) to begin
to operate in the confidence and conviction that our spirit has been sanctified and
perfected forever (Hebrews 10:10, 14). It’s like we have a vault full of treasures
(love, faith, prosperity, joy, peace etc.) in our spirit but we need to unlock and
open the vault by renewing our mind (the soul) to what we have. Studying the
Word and renewing our mind allows us to believe and learn about what we have,
as well as teach us how to take what’s in our spirit and activate it in the physical
world. So, far from being a strict taskmaster, the spirit is the limitless potential
on the inside of us to live a victorious Christian life and to do the very same
things that Jesus did while He lived physically on the earth (Matthew 10:8). The
reason most of us fail to live up to the potential that resides in our spirit is
because we do not make God and His Word the priority in our lives. Instead, we
become caught up in worldly things and this dulls or deadens our ability to make
manifest the vast storehouse of endless abilities we have in Christ. God speaks to
our born-again spirit through His Word (John 6:63). You can’t “feel” your
spirit, so the only way to know it’s there and to begin letting it operate in your
life is by taking the Word of God and meditating on it day and night (Joshua 1:8-
9). Renew your mind to God’s Word in order to activate your spirit and see it
manifest in the physical realm.
Andrew’s teaching Spirit, Soul, and Body made me see that, even though I
continue to sin and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), my born-again
spirit makes me a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17). In the spirit, I am perfect
and incorruptible (Ephesians 1:13). My spirit is identical to Jesus. I still have a
corruptible body and soul, but I can work to reduce their level of corruption by
studying God’s Word and renewing my mind so that it recognizes and believes
what I am and have in Christ. So the more time and energy I invest in getting to
know the potential that is in my spirit, the more I can begin to experience “what
are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:18). I am
a joint-heir with Christ (Romans 8:17). And, if you are born-again, so are you!

Chapter 4: Not of works, least any man should boast
The scripture that I learned from watching and listening to Andrew’s teachings
that, more than any other has transformed my life is Ephesians 2:8-9. It reads,
“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift
of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” To me, the entire New
Testament is encapsulated by those 27 words! It astounds me how anyone could
read Ephesians 2:8-9 and still claim that we need to earn our way into salvation
through our performance. I can only conclude that the words, “not of works, lest
any man should boast” somehow got ignored by the nuns and Jesuits and who
formed my religious education.
At one time or another we all fall prey to thinking that we are something
special, that we are good enough, that we don’t need God’s grace, that we can
make it on our own. If we serve enough, do enough, donate enough, and try
hard enough, we reason, we will be accepted by God. My Catholic faith
exemplified this view. In all my years subjected to Catholicism, the main focus
was always on doing things. This is what Andrew calls the performance
mentality. It’s not that serving or performing is wrong, it certainly is not!
However, it’s the motivation behind the service that is the key. If you’re doing
all of these wonderful things to earn favor with God, you’ve tainted what service
is really all about. You shouldn’t be doing it to earn favor, you should be doing
it because you love God and what to show that love. True service has no strings
attached, no thought in your mind that “God ought to give me what I want
because I’m doing such and such.” Service needs to be unconditional, like
God’s love for us. Any thought that you will get something in return negates
what service really is. It removes its anointing and its power to affect others in a
meaningful way.
What we are really talking about here is self-righteousness. In many respects,
self-righteousness, the idea that you can earn your way into heaven by your own
conduct, is the only unpardonable sin there is. This is because it completely
disregards the grace of God, exemplified in the crucifixion, in the sacrifice of
His son for our inherited sin nature. Jesus died for us so that we could have
access, through the atonement, to the Father and to a victorious life. We
certainly don’t deserve it, no matter how good our conduct is or could ever be.
We simply must accept God’s grace as a gift, humble ourselves and realize that
we are incapable of ever being good enough. In other words, we have to
abandon the idea that we can save ourselves and, instead, embrace God’s grace.
We need to make Him the Lord of our life.
So just what do we mean by God’s grace? There are a great many
complicated doctrinal definitions of the term “grace” but, for my money,
Andrew’s definition beats them all. Andrew says that grace is simply “the
unmerited, undeserved favor of God.” That’s it, it’s a gift! But the implications
of this definition are profound and shed a great deal of light on why trying to
earn God’s favor is the path toward being plagued by self-righteousness. If it’s
undeserved and unmerited, this means that it’s independent of us. Indeed, as
Andrew says, God’s grace was available to me and to you before we were ever
born, before we ever existed. So how could it be something we need to work for
and to earn? God’s grace is ours to partake in no matter how disgraceful or
defective we are! It doesn’t matter what we’ve done or what we will ever do, we
have access to this underserved favor. We merely need to, “…confess with thy
mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him
from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto
righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans
10:9-10).
 Andrew help me to realize that the salvation that comes from humbling
oneself and accepting God’s grace as a gift is far more than simply obtaining the
forgiveness of sins and a place with him in eternity; it’s also gives us access to,
for example, healing, deliverance, prosperity, and peace. It gives us everything
we could ever need, want, or desire in this life. This was new to me as my
religious background said that you basically had to plod your way through life as
best you can, always looking forward to the great abundance when you die and
go to heaven. So you have 60 or 70 or 80 years of struggling and suffering in
this life until you get your reward in heaven. Andrew’s teaching set this
perspective on its head by convincing me that we can, and should, experience
abundance in this life. The Gospel, what Andrew often calls “the nearly too
good to be true news,” is all about God’s great love for us and His desire for us
to draw upon all of the gifts He desires for us in this life, right now, today! How
do we draw upon this? I’m glad you asked.
Read Ephesians 2:8-9 again, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and
that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should
boast.” This verse says that we are saved by the combination of grace and
faith. We must have faith in God’s grace. Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as, “the
substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” So faith is hope
based for things that have not yet appeared. But where does the faith come
from? This verse suggests that the faith, as well as the grace, to make the
decision to be born-again come to us as gifts from God. This is consistent with
Romans 12:3 which said that, “God hath dealt to every man the measure of
faith.” However, once we are born-again, we must continually renew our minds
to God’s Word so that we can learn to operate effectively in that “measure of
faith.” Romans 10:17 says, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the
Word of God.”

We must “exercise” and build up faith in our lives so that it becomes
something we can draw upon and rely on when things in the natural world
appear bleak for us. Another powerful way to develop our faith is by praising
and thanking God (Colossians 2:7). Andrew defines faith as our positive
response to what God has already provided by grace. It takes effort and practice
to have faith, especially in a world and culture where things are degenerating so
rapidly and where people are skeptical and cynical and constantly complaining.
But when we become born-again, God gives us a jump start with his
supernatural faith. We must take that faith and learn to apply it consistently so
that we can manifest the potential for total victory that God has bestowed upon
us. Of course, even if we are never able to get any of this victory to occur in our
lives, God still loves us and His grace abounds. He doesn’t withdraw His love
no matter what we do. That revelation alone should be enough to keep us full of
joy and to motivate us to dive into the Word full bore so we can let God speak to
our hearts and claim our full inheritance.

Chapter 5: What is the Exceeding Greatness of His Power Toward Us Who
Believe
Andrew repeatedly says on his radio and television shows and in his audio
teachings that when you become born-again, you literally have Christ living on
the inside of you. If you sit back and think for a moment, the implications of
this are staggering! For as a man, Christ was the most complete human being to
ever walk upon the earth. Having fulfilled every stricture of the law of the Old
Testament, He was the perfection of humanity. So having Christ living on the
inside of us means that we can think and behave like Christ. When I first heard
Andrew speak on this, it seemed ridiculous to me. I remember thinking, “Wait a
second. Just hold on. How can I be like Christ when I’m choc-full of less than
flattering thoughts, emotions, and desires?”
Fortunately, before I decided to dismiss Andrew as a nut job, he quickly
clarified that I was Christ-like in my born-again spirit, not in my soul or body
(collectively called the flesh). My flesh was still prone to all of the corruptions
that come from living in an imperfect world, but, in my spirit, I am identical to
Jesus. As it says in First John 4:17, “Herein is our love made perfect, that we
may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this
world.” Right now, for the born-again believer, in this world, we are like Jesus
in our spirit. This means that we have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16),
the faith of Christ (Romans 12:3), and the character of Christ (Galatians 5:22-
23). Andrew puts it this way, “Ounce for ounce and molecule to molecule, if
there is such a thing in the spiritual realm, we are identical to Jesus.” We are
identical to Jesus! Let that soak in for a moment.
Of course, having Jesus living on the inside of us is one thing, a fantastic
thing, but getting to where Jesus manifests in our day-to-day life is another thing
entirely. In other words, it’s not automatic. It takes consistent and persistent
effort to embrace and believe what the Word says we have in Christ However,
the gospel is clear; when we are “in Christ” we are new creations, a new species
of being. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are
passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). When we
become born-again (John 3:3-6) our old, ineffective, and sin drenched nature is
immediately changed in our spirit. Our “old man,” our sin nature, is dead and
we now have the “new man,” the divine nature of Jesus, living on the inside of
us. Ephesians 4:24 puts it this way, “And that ye put on the new man, which
after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” So believers literally
have Christ residing on the inside of them. As Andrew says, “God expressed
His love to us by giving His only begotten Son as total payment for our sins so
we could receive His life. If we could truly understand what this means, it would
change everything.” After all, how could you be despondent or lonely or
depressed or stressed or discouraged when you have Jesus living on the inside of
you? Just knowing He’s there should give you great solace and should provide
you with all the motivation you could ever need to learn more about what you
have and how to go about operating in Christ.

Chapter 6: Be Transformed by the Renewing of your Mind
Our minds are corrupted. There, I said it. We live in a world where what is
considered “normal” changes, and degenerates, frequently. When I was a kid
(not really all that long ago) there was no profanity or nudity allowed on
television. Today, it is routine for even supposedly family-oriented sitcoms to
be saturated with filthy language and, if not outright nudity, sexual innuendo and
saucy content that, in years past, could only be found, if at all, on very late night
TV. And that doesn’t even include reality TV which is basically glorifying the
worse aspects of human nature (anger, deception, debauchery, vindictiveness,
infidelity, gutter language, selfishness, and raw stupidity). Then there is the
internet. The seemingly infinite world of cyber-space which provides so much
potential to improve our lives, but also serves to feed our insatiable tendency
toward the baser aspects of our humanity. These coarse and unrelenting
influences that are eroding our culture may eventually make Sodom and
Gomorrah look like a monastery by comparison.
Our decline reminds me of the Bizarro World of DC Comics where
everything was upside down. The Bizarro Code stated, "Us do opposite of all
Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything
perfect on Bizarro World!" Spend 10 minutes flipping through the channels
available on your television and you will conclude that we now live by the
Bizzaro Code! The way our world is falling apart seems to support that we may
be nearing the end of the age. As it says in 2 Timothy 3:1-4, “This know also,
that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their
own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents,
unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers,
incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded,
lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” Yikes!
Against the backdrop of a culture that is in tatters, we must embrace, more
strongly than ever, God’s Word. For God speaks to us through His Word. In
order to gain some immunity from the diseased culture we live in, we must make
God’s Word the absolute and undisputed priority in our lives (Romans 3:4).
Andrew really struck a chord in me when he said, “What you focus on you
become sensitive to and what you do not focus on you become hardened to.”
This is consistent with Proverbs 23:7, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
If you continually expose yourself to the garbage of our culture, eventually it
will infect you and you will struggle with all forms of ungodliness. The junk
will begin to influence you and will begin to dominate your thoughts and maybe
even your actions. The infection may be slow and insidious at first but, soon,
you’ll find that it takes over. When that happens temptations will abound and
your thoughts will seem to take on a life of their own. You will come to believe
that you are powerless over them. But you are not. You must counteract the
destructiveness by not allowing it to take even the slightest foothold over you.
The best way you do this is to harden your hearts to the things of this world by
renewing your mind to God’s Word (Romans 12:2). If you do not “consider”,
scripture refers to it as “conforming to”, the myriad of cultural influences that
invade your life virtually every moment, then you won’t be led by them and they
won’t take root in your life. This is easier said than done, but it can be done.
Like most things that are worth doing, it takes effort and it takes commitment to
saturate your mind in the Word so that it can fortify and protect you from our
degenerate world.
Before we go any further, let me give you a little warning based on my
experience. Spending a few minutes in the morning and evening reading a
devotional will not renew your mind. Prior to discovering Andrew’s teachings, I
had done this for years but it had virtually no effect on me. Sure, it made me
feel good that I was devoting a bit of time to God, but it’s real value was just
reducing the guilt I felt from not going to church. In other words, it didn’t really
bring me closer to God or help me to understand the full measure of God’s grace
in my life. It was religious ritual, pure and simple. I know this is true because
five minutes after I finished reading the devotional, I couldn’t even remember
what I’d read! So it didn’t influence my thoughts, actions, or circumstances, it
was simply an exercise to manage guilt. No, devotionals won’t do it. You’ve
got to dive into the Word, ponder it, consider it, study it, and let it saturate into
the core of your being, your spirit. The only way to truly do this is to make time
in the Word a commitment, a priority.
This doesn’t mean that you have to lock yourself away and read the Bible
from cover to cover and ignore your day-to-day responsibilities. One of the
important insights I gained from Andrew is that you can “be in the Word” even
when you don’t have your eyes on the pages of the Bible. You can meditate on
the Word as you go about your normal daily life. Of course, you will have to
have done some reading in order to have some material to work with, but you
can think on and ponder passages of scripture as you work through your day. In
many ways, this is better than spending a great deal of time in the Word and then
forgetting about it for the rest of the day. Meditating on the Word and letting it
soak in and work in your life as you go about your business means that you are
interacting with God on a moment-to-moment basis. You are spending time in
His presence. This, perhaps more than anything else, is how to renew your
mind. As you meditate on the Word, God will speak to your spirit and you will
gain innumerable benefits from it. In a sense, after you read God’s Word, God’s
Word begins to read you and to penetrate and interact with your spirit. This is
where real progress and victory comes from. As it says in Joshua 1:8, “This
book of the law [the Bible] 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 thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then
thou shalt have good success.”
I cannot begin to tell you how much mediating on the Word over the normal
course of the day has changed my life. It keeps God front and center in my life
and helps me to draw upon His wisdom as events unfold in my life. For
example, if I am being hammered by a stressful situation, thinking on Isaiah 26:3
(“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he
trusteth in thee”) helps me to settle down and to figure out the best way to handle
what’s going on. Apart from the practical value of, as Andrew says, “having a
scripture to stand on” in the midst of a pressure situation, meditating on passages
of scripture allows me to interact with God spirit to born-again spirit on a
continuous basis. Over time, as you keep at it, you will find that the corruption
and filth that used to influence you in negative and destructive ways now
bounces off of you because have fortified yourself in the Word of God. St. Paul
says it better than I ever could, “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye
transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good,
and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2).
To the extent that you can renew your mind, you move yourself away from
the garbage of our declining culture and closer and closer to finding out and
working God’s good and acceptable and perfect will for your life. Renewing
the mind is simple but not easy. It takes effort and a consistent commitment
because there are many things that compete for our time and attention (in my
case, reading magazines and watching sports and news programs on television).
One thing I know for sure, there is nothing you could ever do that will be more
valuable than immersing yourself in God’s Word. You’ll never regret it.

Chapter 7: Change Comes From the Inside
“Changing your thoughts and behaviors so they become more Christ-like is the
fruit, not the root, of salvation.” This seemingly innocent comment from
Andrew’s teachings sent me into a tailspin. For it means that we cannot change
on our own; change must come from the inside, not the outside. We typically try
to force a change by the strength of our will but it never lasts for very long.
Sure, we might be able to diet or get off drugs or stop our drinking or become
more patient, but these changes will not last for very long if they are not the
result of a change on the inside. In other words, you cannot truly change on your
own. Change must come from letting Christ live in you and through you. You
must change your heart and the only way to do this is to plant the Word of God
into your heart, nurture it, and let it grow and produce in your life (Mark 4;
Matthew 13; Luke 8).
Of course, this relates, as most things in the Christian life do, to the renewing
of your mind. Our thinking drives our experience (Proverbs 23:7) so altering our
thinking is the only real way to produce positive and enduring change in our
lives. But a change in thinking cannot be random or haphazard or based on the
latest self-help book; it must be based on the Word of God. To see real change,
the type of change that stays with us and that produces a better life, requires that
we become spiritually minded. As Romans 8:6-7 says, “For to be carnally
minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the
carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither
indeed can be.” Since our normal thinking is carnal (of the things of this world)
it cannot produce true lasting change as it is incapable of being modified and
molded by God. In fact, according to this scripture, carnal mindedness produces
death (death here refers to not only literal physical death, but things like
sickness, depression, discouragement, low self-esteem, and poverty). The
genesis of these forms of “death” is the result of the spiritual death that we
inherited from our first parents (Adam and Eve). So it is the tyranny of our sin
nature that draws us toward carnal mindedness. Being born-again gives us a
new spirit, thereby giving us the possibility of overcoming these forms of death.
But merely being born-again is no guarantee since we must constantly renew our
mind to what we have in Christ in order to overcome the sin of our minds which
are programmed by the things of this corrupted world. That’s why you cannot
produce a real and lasting change by the force of your will (just making yourself
do it) because such a change arises out of carnal mindedness or an un-renewed
mind. At best, it will be temporary so it will leave you discouraged when the
change doesn’t last. This leads most people to shrug their shoulders and just
give up.
I’ve always had difficulty with patience. I’ve tried to become more patient by
taking a deep breath when, for example, I am waiting in line at the supermarket
while the customer in front of me discusses who she thinks is going to win
American Idol with the cashier. It will work for a while and in some
circumstances but eventually I become sarcastic if not downright angry, making
a fool of myself.
I’ve also been plagued by lusts of various types over the years such as desires
for fame, wealth, pornography, impulsive spending, and golf. These “lusts of
the flesh” move me toward increasing carnality which means that I get further
and further away from the spiritual inheritance I have in Christ. As it says in
Galatians 5:16-17, “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the
lust of the flesh; for the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the
flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things
that ye would.” Again, it’s about our thoughts.
Andrew helped me to understand that lusts just don’t arise out of thin air but
they occur as the result of what we are thinking about. As Andrew is fond of
saying, “You can’t be tempted by anything you don’t think on.” This means that
our thoughts; what we consider and focus on, leads us toward lustful
temptations. For example, especially before I learned from Andrew about the
relationship between thoughts and lusts, if I was to see an attractive woman, my
mind would immediately conjure up unseemly thoughts and images. If left
unchecked, this could evolve into a pre-occupation. Although I have never acted
upon these lusts, they still are very disruptive and put carnality in the driver’s
seat which is not a good place for it to be. At one time, I would attribute these
temptations to God, thinking that He is testing me, testing my resolve and
commitment to my marriage. Now, thanks to Andrew, I know better. As it says
in James 1:13-14, “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for
God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: but each one is
tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.” It’s our
own carnal thoughts, what we choose to focus on, that drives lust. I have found
that renewing my mind to God’s Word and focusing on molding my emotions,
thoughts, and personality so that they are more in accord with my born-again
spirit is the only real and lasting way to produce change. Don’t get me wrong, I
often still struggle with lusts, but I know that if I keep at it, if I spend time in the
Word and meditate on the truths embedded in it, I will continue to see carnality
operate less and less in my life.
Andrew says it well, “The influence of God’s Word in our lives is a luxury
we cannot do without. We must let the light of His Word illuminate our path.” I
speak from firsthand experience when I say that Andrew is absolutely correct;
the Word is the only way out of the preoccupation with “the cares of this world,
and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things” (Mark 4:19). We
must harden our hearts to the things of this world by mediating on the Word and
letting it penetrate us so that our born-again spirit can manifest itself into the
physical realm. When this happens we become sensitive to God and this
produces life and peace. There’s no other way.

Chapter 8: Only by Pride Cometh Contention
Growing up, I was the shyest person you could ever imagine. I kept my head
down and talked to no one. I went through high school literally talking to only a
handful of classmates, classmates that I’d known since the age of 5. A face full
of acne and coke bottle eyeglasses only accentuated my pathological shyness. I
was so shy that people were afraid of me. I was given the nickname Sid Vicious
because I seemed to be in my own world, pre-occupied, unpredictable, and
perhaps just on the verge of exploding with violence.
Looking back on it in the light of Andrew’s teachings I was pre-occupied
with self. I never thought that my extreme introversion, my shyness, was a
manifestation of pride. But Andrew, who was also an introvert, convinced me
that it was. Although shyness is the polar opposite of arrogance, both are
extreme examples of self-centeredness. Focusing on the self is perhaps the
chronic disease of our culture. Indeed, these days self-centeredness is seen as a
positive trait and self-promotion is considered a necessary skill to be successful
(“You have to blow your own horn because no one else will.”). People with a
particular talent for self-promotion, people like Donald Trump, are revered and
envied. However, self-centeredness in any form leads to pride and, as the Bible
says, “Only by pride cometh contention pride” (Proverbs 13:10).
Pride is perhaps the greatest source feeding all of the evils present in our
world. It leads to conflicts between individuals, between families, between
tribes, and even between countries. Virtually every major conflict or battle in
human history can be traced back to pride, to selfishness and an excessive focus
on meeting one’s own needs at the expense of others. At the level of the
individual, the pride which breeds self-centeredness, produces destructive
emotions (anger, impatience, depression) that make life a constant striving to
obtain this or that. Sadly, because pride and self-centeredness can never be
satisfied, the individual has to keep striving in an effort to stay one step ahead of
feelings of discontentment and dissatisfaction. Never being satisfied leads to a
life of misery because whatever you have obtained or accomplished is never
enough, never sufficient. You are always living with the gnawing sensation that
you must have more to finally be satisfied. But you never get there.
This “more” can be in the form of wealth, intelligence, prestige, fame, world
records, number of friends, trophies, acclaim, fancy cars, lavish homes, number
of sexual partners, and so on. It doesn’t really matter what it is you need more
of the point is that self-centeredness, driven by pride, is insatiable so it must be
constantly fed. As an example, the late John D. Rockefeller the oil baron and
industrialist and philanthropist considered to be one of the richest men in history,
with an estimated wealth of $663 billion dollars, was once asked, “How much
money is enough?” His answer was, “A dime more than I have now.” I’m not
picking on Mr. Rockefeller. He has left a great legacy in that a great deal of the
wealth he accumulated continues to be used for noble purposes (art, science,
medical research). So it’s not that seeking to obtain an increase in wealth and
power is a bad thing, but if it’s being driven solely by pride, it’s ultimately
destructive as it makes self the center of our lives; not God and others.
As Jesus said, as recorded in Mark 8:34-36, “Whosoever will come after me,
let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me; For whosoever will
save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the
gospel's, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the
whole world, and lose his own soul?”
Although this passage refers primarily to denying the self in the service of
spreading the gospel, I believe it can also be applied to the broader issue of pride
and self-centeredness. Specifically, denying self not only reduces pride, but it
also allows us to live more in accord with the way Jesus lived when He roamed
the earth. If anyone had cause to be prideful and self-centered it was Jesus.
After all, He was all things and could do all things (John 1:1-4). Yet He came
and served humanity, both through His earthly example and ministry and His
death on the cross. So when Jesus said that we must deny ourselves and carry
the cross, He is telling us that we must reduce, being imperfect humans, we can
never eliminate; our pride and self-centeredness. Of course, we cannot become
less self-centered of our own power, especially in our culture which encourages
and rewards excessive self-focus. Nonetheless, Jesus would not have told us to
do this if we were incapable of doing so. The way we begin to tackle the self and
bring it into submission is by; you guessed it, renewing the mind to God’s
Word. By mediating on scriptures, studying the life of Jesus, and asking the
Holy Spirit for revelations of the truths that are embedded in God’s Word, we
can begin the process, the lifelong process, of gaining greater and greater control
over our self-centeredness.

Chapter 9: According to the Power that Worketh in Us
Though God will not impose His will upon us, His desire is for us to live a full
abundant and joyful life. To help us to do so, He has given us the same anointing
power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead (Ephesians 1:19-20). As Andrew is
fond of saying, “The key to the Christian life is to learn how to use the power
we’ve been given in our Spirit so that it can manifest in the physical realm.”
The essential first step in learning to harness this power is to acknowledge and
truly believe that you’ve actually got it! Once you accept that the power is
already in you, you’re well on your way to figuring out what you need to do to
make it leap into the physical realm. The problem, of course, is coming to truly
believe that you have what the gospel says you have.
In my case, growing up Catholic, we were never ever taught anything about
the born-again experience. I don’t ever remember the words “born” and “again”
being uttered in the same sentence. As a consequence, the idea that we could
ever have the same anointing power as Jesus was never taught, let alone even
contemplated. Basically, we were taught that we were worker bees whose job
was to soldier on and do the best that we could, armed only with our own limited
ability and personal will to do the right thing. In other words, we had no real
authority over what happened to us. All we could do was try our best to live up
to God’s standard and then to beg and plead with God, asking Him to grant us
favor. So it was all about earning brownie points with God through performance
in the hope that He would give us things like health and prosperity, or at least
NOT giving us things like illness or tragedy or addiction. In a nutshell, we were
told that God could do anything, but that He would do nothing unless we
impressed Him enough by living up to His standards. That bleak outlook was
planted in my brain such a long time ago, that it’s understandable why I still
struggle to acknowledge, understand, and take my authority as a believer!
Andrew’s use of the electric company as an example of the relation between
God and the believer has helped me to learn how to begin to believe so that I can
take my authority. The electric company gives us a constant and limitless supply
of power, but we have to believe that the power is there so that we will flip on
the switch to activate that power and put it to use. If we don’t believe that the
power is there, we won’t turn on the switch and all of the power that is at our
disposal will be of no use to us. Likewise, God has given us all of the power we
could ever need, power for health and prosperity and deliverance and joy and
peace, but we need to believe this in our hearts and then take our authority and
flip the switch on. It’s still sometimes hard for me to grasp and truly believe that
God has given me, as Andrew says, “the same power that raised Jesus Christ
from the dead.” I think my struggle comes from being stuck and limited by the
physical realm. In other words, my senses do not perceive this anointing power
so this makes it hard to believe in order to flip the switch (Andrew’s teaching,
Spirit, Soul and Body has helped me a great deal to begin to address this issue).
Again, it comes down to renewing your mind to God’s Word so that you
come to believe what God’s Word says (Romans 3:4) so that what’s in your
born-again spirit can begin to find its way into the physical realm. This is a
process and I am just beginning. For me, the first step has been to wash out all
of the residual effects of my Catholic upbringing. This has been more difficult
than I expected because I didn’t realize how deeply entrenched the Catholic
perspective was in my heart. Although I’ve started to get a revelation of God’s
unconditional and passionate love for me, Satan still tries to derail my progress
(John 10:10, 1 Peter 5:8) and keep me trapped in the performance mentality.

Despite my struggle to believe “the nearly too good to be true news,” the
gospels are clear, born-again believers have been given the same authority and
anointing power that raised Jesus from the dead (Ephesians 1:20). Jesus said to
His disciples, “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils:
freely ye have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8). As Andrew says, Jesus
would not have told us to do anything that we were incapable of doing. This
gives me encouragement. For I know that as I continue to renew my mind and
make God’s Word the priority in my life, it will become easier and more natural
to take my authority and see the manifestation of Jesus’ anointing power in my
life. Retraining the heart until I’m absolutely convinced that I have what God’s
Word says I have takes time, but time spent soaking in God’s Word is the
greatest pleasure of this life. Thanks to Andrew, I’m beginning to take my
authority by spending time in God’s Word, speaking my faith and using the
power of my own words to change my situation.

Chapter 10: Thanks Andrew!
As the previous pages have shown, Andrew Wommack has absolutely
devastated the religious doctrine that steered the first 46 years of my life. And I
thank him for it. His simple, straightforward teaching has provided me with a
completely new set of fundamentals derived directly from the Word of God. By
no longer relying upon my own efforts, my self-righteousness, I have developed
a depth of relationship with Jesus that would not have been possible otherwise.
Because I am no longer condemned for my less than perfect conduct, I am no
longer motivated by fear, so I’m free to let Jesus into my life and to live through
me. This not only produces a better “me” but it also, paradoxically, moves me
away from excessively focusing on myself. As Paul put it, “I am crucified with
Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I
now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and
gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Or, as Andrew says, “The beginning of
God is the end of you.” By becoming progressively deadened to self, I am
getting better at serving God and others. The byproduct of this is that my
thoughts, behaviors, and outlook are far more positive and loving now than when
I tried, through force of will, to live up to the standards of my Catholic faith.
This doesn’t mean that it is always smooth sailing. In my case, the self, with its
carnality, is always trying to intrude and take over. When that happens, I move
away from joy and peace and experience things like discouragement, lust,
anxiety, and self-consciousness.
To remedy this, I go to the Word. Whether it’s praising God, reading
scripture, mediating on selected passages (such as Romans 12:2, Galatians 4:6,
Isaiah 23:6) or listening to one of Andrew’s teachings, it helps me to set my
mind straight and focus on the abundance that is in my born-again spirit. A few,
“doses of the Gos-pill,” as Andrew puts it, renews my mind to what I possess in
Christ and this rejuvenates me!
So the key to the Christian life is fellowship, intimacy, and friendship with
God. In other words, Christianity is about eternal life in the presence of God,
both in this world and that which is to come. As John 17:3 puts it, “And this is
life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ,
whom thou hast sent.” A strong, solid, loving relationship with God, the sort of
relationship that preoccupies your life, is what it’s all about. Make God the
center of your life; pure and simple. Prayer, studying the Word, and hanging out
with other believers are really the tools that help you to develop a closer and
more intimate relationship with God. You’ll never regret the concerted effort it
takes to focus like a laser beam on your relationship with God. As Andrew says,
“The most important thing is to know God.”
I cannot thank Andrew enough for his teaching ministry. His simple
presentation of the Gospel and what it says about God’s unconditional love and
grace, has changed me, encouraged me, and set me free to develop a strong and
ever-improving bond with God. Right now I’m crawling and trying to learn how
to stand up as I’m still living off of Andrew’s revelations of the gospel.
However, using Andrew’s teachings as a starting point has me moving in the
right direction. I now have a map and a set of directions for my journey into an
increasingly close relationship with the Lord. My hope is that you to will open
your minds and hearts to Andrew’s teachings and experience the same journey
that I have embarked upon.

My Favorite “Wommackisms”
Andrew Wommack has a unique way with words. Below are some of my
favorite phrases that Andrew frequently uses in his teachings.

“If you let him, the devil will eat your lunch and pop the bag.”

“God loves you. He even likes you. He has a picture of you in His wallet.”

“This is so simple you have to have someone help you to misunderstand it.”

“I’ve preached myself happy. I don’t know about you.”

“God is never ever ever the problem.”

“God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“God’s always transmitting. It’s our receivers that are broken.”

“Heal the sick, raise the dead and you’ll have all of the revival you could ever
handle.”

“The world’s principle is, ‘Get all you can get, can all you get and sit on your
can’ God’s Principle is, ‘Give and it will be given to you and you are blessed to
be a Blessing’.”

“If you catch fire for God, the whole world will come and watch you burn.”

“If you don’t keep yourself stirred up, you’re going to settle to the bottom.”

“If you are all wrapped up in yourself, you make a very small package.”

“Without Jesus, I’m a zero with the rim knocked off. But I’m not without
Jesus!”

“If the Word’s not working in your life, it’s because you aren’t believing.”

“If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.”

“Some of you think I’m weird, but I think you’re weird.”

“Most people spend more time in the light of their TV than in the light of God’s
Word.”

“Believe and receive or doubt and go without.”

“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice.”


Resources
Andrew Wommack ministries: http://www.awmi.net

Summary of Andrew’s Teachings: http://awmi.net/sharper_than_sword

Free audio downloads: http://www.awmi.net/extra/audio

Conference downloads: http://www.awmi.net/extra/conference_videos

Bookstore (US): http://www.awmi.net/store/usa/books

Email devotional: http://www.awmi.net/email_devotion

Foreign language resources: http://www.awmi.net/foreign_language

Charis Bible College: http://charisbiblecollege.org/