You Can't Fulfill God's Will Without This - Andrew Wommack - Charis Daily - Season 12 Ep. 24

On today's Karis Daily Bible Study I'm going to be talking about how you fulfill God's will in your life. It's one thing to find God's will, then to follow it, but you've got to fulfill it and that cannot be done unless you get in God's Word. So stay tuned. Welcome to another Karis Daily Bible Study. I'm Andrew Womack and this is going to be my last time this month to teach on how to find, follow, and fulfill God's will. If you're watching this for the first time or if you haven't heard us say this, we teach on the exact same subject for an entire month and we have different instructors from our Karis Bible College that teach the same thing just from their own perspective from the scriptures that the Lord has used in their life. And we're offering you this little booklet entitled How to Find, Follow, and Fulfill God's Will. I have a larger teaching. Actually I used to teach this in different stages. I actually would teach for like six days on how to find God's will and then six days on how to follow and then six more days on how to fulfill. But we combined them all into one book. This is a brief summary of the entire teaching and you can get a free copy of this if you will go to karisdailytv.com and give us your information. We'll send this to you if you want to give and help us because we will put out thousands and thousands of these. And we couldn't do that if people didn't help us financially. When I say that we send it free, some people think we don't want your money. If nobody gave, we couldn't do that. And so I would encourage you to give. You can go to gtntv.com slash give and you can become a partner with us or you can give a one-time gift. And if you give more than what it costs to send out just your material, then you're paying it forward and helping us reach someone else. And I'd encourage you to do that. And so I've already talked about how to find God's will. I can't go back through that. How to follow God's will. It's not enough to find God's will. You have to find out how God wants to get it done. You can mess up the whole thing. You can delay God's will. And I think that this happens a lot, that people do have enough commitment and they walk with the Lord enough to find out what direction he wants them to go. But then the sad fact is many times we just mess up God's plan because we think we know more than God and we try and do things our own way and it hinders the will of God in your life. So what I want to do in this final session for me this month, talking about how to find, follow and fulfill, I want to talk about how do you fulfill? There's a scripture in Ecclesiastes that says, better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof. And some people may question what that's talking about. A person who crosses the finish line is a person who is better than a person who just crosses the starting line. There's a lot of people that start a race, but they don't all finish. Or if they finish, they don't finish the winner. It's how you finish that really determines whether or not you win. And so it's important to find out that God has a will for your life. It's important to find out how to follow it and how to do it, but it's important to cross the finish line and to get it done. Man, that's important. And the apostle Paul said, I have finished my race. I have run the course. And there is set up in heaven for me, a crown and for all of those who love his appearing. And so anybody can start, but not everybody finishes. How do you finish? Well, let me go back to a passage of scripture that I've already used. Romans chapter 12, verses one and two are the verses that the Lord used to start me in really seeking to find, follow and fulfill his will. And I've already dealt with Romans chapter 12, verse one, that that's where you have to become a living sacrifice. That is God's will for your life. That's the starting place. And if you become a living sacrifice, that's not all there is to it. The second verse says, and be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Did you know the word transform right there is the Greek word metamorphosis. It's the word we get metamorphosis from. And it's like a caterpillar spins a cocoon and comes out a butterfly. Did you know when a caterpillar spins that cocoon, that their body literally begins to start disintegrating. It turns into this fluid thing, and then it re-emerges as a butterfly. There is a death of the caterpillar and a rebirth of the butterfly. And that's the exact words that's used right here. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed like a moth or a caterpillar. What was I thinking of? A caterpillar becomes a butterfly. If you want to be changed like that from something that's earth bound and creepy and crawly. And if you want to be something that's beautiful and they can fly, it comes through being a living sacrifice. But then you've got to renew your mind, be transformed through the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the good, the acceptable and the perfect will of God. And let me just give you some personal examples on this that I've mentioned this before, but I had an experience with the Lord March the 23rd, 1968. And I made this commitment to be a living sacrifice. I haven't done it perfectly, but I've never changed in my commitment. That's been my commitment. And every time I see that I haven't been the person that God wants me to be, I repent and get back up on that altar. And it has been a living commitment, a living sacrifice to be totally yielded to God now for 57 years. So I made that commitment, but did you know, I nearly got killed because of that commitment. And what I mean by that is that I was willing to do anything to be anything. I was willing to be nothing. If that's what God wanted me to be, I was willing to do anything. And if you come to this place that God, I'll do anything and I'll suffer anything. I'll do whatever you want me to do. That's good, but it needs to have balanced with it. The second verse where you renew your mind through the word of God. And if you don't, Satan can take advantage of that. And so like I had friends, people that I led into the baptism of the Holy spirit, a man who is a assistant pastor in the church that I was going to, and I led him into the baptism of the Holy spirit. But did you know, he didn't renew his mind from the Baptist doctrine that we had. And he believed that God's sovereignly controlled everything. And so if you have anything happened to you, it's God that's doing it to you. And I could spend a lot of time explaining this, but because of that, this man submitted to sickness and the things that wasn't from God. I tried to talk to him, but see, he didn't renew his mind and Satan took advantage of him. And he said, no, this has to be God's will. And he had already made the decision to be a living sacrifice. And so if sickness, if poverty, if losing his church and all of these things was God's will, then he submitted to it. And he yielded to things like that instead of resisting the devil. And because of it, he died a terrible death and he died a premature death and it stopped God's will for his life. And this same thing nearly happened to me. When I got back from Vietnam, I still didn't understand a lot of the things that I know. Now I had already had this commitment in 1968. And when I got back to the United States in 1971, so that's three years later, I was just beginning to see some things, but I was still in the Baptist church and they taught that God would hurt you and that God would do things to break you. And that it was through sickness and disease and poverty that God molded you into the person you were supposed to be. That's not true, but that's what the Baptist taught. And I had two dreams. I'm going to go through this really quickly. Matter of fact, I've got a little booklet that goes along with this entitled, My Appointment with God, that will share some of these things, if you'd like to get further explanation. But I actually had two dreams and in these dreams, I had Satan attacking me and he was going to kill me. And I woke up and I rejected both of these dreams. One of them, I actually was bloody and I don't believe it was only a dream. I believe that there was a demonic power attacking me. This is before I was married to Jamie. And so I rejected these things because they were negative and I didn't think that that was what God wanted. And then I was like 200 miles from home in a Dairy Queen in Nacogdoches, Texas. And so I was 200 miles from my home and a woman from Houston, which was probably a hundred and something to 200 miles from her home. I saw her in the Dairy Queen. I'd never seen her before. And she just walks up to me out of the blue. And he says, God speaks once, yea, twice in dreams and visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon people. And she quoted part of the book of Job. And she says, you thought those dreams were from the devil, but they're from God. All the hair on the back of my neck stood up like, man, what is happening? And because I didn't know the word very much, I thought, well, that must mean that these dreams about me dying or something, that this is from God. And because I was a living sacrifice, if that's what God wanted, I was willing to submit to it. Now it wasn't what God wanted, but I didn't know enough of the word. See, I was still conformed to the world. I was still conformed to these religious doctrines. And then on top of all of that, during that period of time, man, I could just, I could spend hours on this, but I heard a man teach that Satan is God's messenger boy. And he said, Satan is like a dog on a leash. He can only go as far as God allows him to. And so because of that teaching, he says, if Satan is bothering you, if he's fighting against you, God is the one who sicced him on you. And God is trying to teach you something. And did you know, I brought that teaching back. This is before I went to Vietnam. I heard this man. I brought that teaching back and I gave it to a girl that I was engaged to. And on this tape, he gave a testimony about a boy who was so introverted that he had trouble witnessing to his football friends in high school. And so he, under this false doctrine that God puts sickness on you and kills people for his glory, under this false teaching, he prayed and asked God to give him a cancer so that when he died of cancer, he would glorify God. I know some of you think I'm making these things up, but you can't make this up. This actually happened. And so the boy prayed for a cancer. He got a cancer. And because he wasn't afraid to die and he kept glorifying God at his funeral, four people got born again. So I brought that teaching back. This is before I went to Vietnam. I was drafted, but I hadn't gone to Vietnam yet. I brought it back and gave it to this girl that I was engaged to. And because she had made this commitment to be a living sacrifice, I mean, she was submitted to God with everything she had, but she didn't know the word of God. We hadn't learned those things yet. And because of that, she took that teaching and she prayed for a cancer so that she could glorify God. The next morning, she woke up with leukemia, acute leukemia. And I actually got an emergency leave from Vietnam while I was there to come back. And I was with her when she started hemorrhaging and choked on her own blood and died. And at her funeral, four people got born again. And so I had been taught that all of this was God. Then I had these dreams about me dying. And then a woman I'd never seen came up and said, those dreams are from God. And the man who taught that about Satan being God's messenger boy, he came back to our Baptist church after I got out of the army. This was in 1972. It was right before Jamie and I got married about three years, I think, after this first girl I was talking about that I was engaged to. And Jamie was a good friend of hers. And anyway, we were engaged and it was the week before we were going to be married. I went and you had to get a physical back then and get your blood tested to get a marriage license. And they found out I had yellow jaundice, which isn't life threatening, but you have to lay flat of your back for a month. And I was one week away from getting married and I wasn't going to do it. And they said, if you don't do it, you could go into a coma. You could possibly even die. So all of these things were happening. Then this man who taught that stuff came to our church and he singled me out and he says, God is prophesying that you are going to go into a coma for eight years and you're going to be in this coma for eight years. And God is using this to destroy you and to change you and to break your heart and to make you into the person that he wants you to be. And because I'd already become a living sacrifice, I was willing to accept that if that was God's will. I know a lot of people watching this would have just rejected it out of kind. But what I'm trying to do is to say that being a living sacrifice is essential, but it's not all that there is. You've also got to renew your mind. You've also got to be changed by the word of God and get the proper doctrine, because if you don't, Satan can take advantage of you if you're willing to suffer, if you're willing to do all of these things. And so this guy started prophesying to me about me being a living sacrifice and me being in a vegetative state for eight years. And I remember going out with him and the pastor of the church, Jamie and I were there and there was a bunch of our friends. There was about 12 people at this table and he was sitting right across the table and he was just pouring it on me. You are going to have this happen to you. He reminded me of the prophecies, the dreams I'd had, the woman who said that those dreams were from God. And he was bringing all of these things to bear. And I was just sitting there crying and thinking, God, if this is your will for me, I accept it. And the devil always overplays his hand. If he would have stopped right there, the devil would have killed me and you'd have never heard anything from me. None of these things would have ever happened. But he just kept pouring it on. And finally, he says, and the worst part of all of this is that God for eight years has told me that I can't open the Bible. I can't read the Bible. I can't study the Bible. He was a preacher. And he said, the only time I ever opened the Bible is when I preach. But God has put me on an eight year fast from the word of God. Now, see, I didn't know much, but I knew enough to know that, man, you have to meditate in the word of God day and night. Psalms chapter one, Joshua chapter one, this book of the law shall not depart out of that from before your eyes, but you meditate in it day and night that you make your way prosperous and have good success. Joshua one, eight, that God's word, I esteem the word more than my necessary food. And on and on I can go about how important the word of God is. I didn't know a lot of stuff, but I had grown to a place that when he said that God told him to go on an eight year fast, I said, that is not God. And I stood up with Jamie in front of the pastor of the church, in front of this evangelist, in front of all of my friends. And I stood up in this restaurant and I rebuked this guy. And I said, I renounce every curse, every negative thing that you've put on me. And we walked out of that restaurant. We walked out of that church and we didn't let the door hit us on the way out. And it was because I was being transformed through the renewing of my mind. I didn't understand much, but I understood enough to know that was wrong. And if I hadn't have received the truth, Satan would have killed me. So what I'm saying here is how to find, follow and fulfill. I spent two weeks talking about how to find. I spent one week talking about how to follow. And if you're going to fulfill God's will, you're going to have to get to where the word of God becomes more important to you than the word of anybody else. The doctor, the lawyer, your friends, your pastor, the evangelist that comes along, more important than your own thoughts. You're going to have to get to where the word of God dominates you. And so you have to couple these things together. You have to be a living sacrifice, but you also have to be so committed to the word of God that Satan can't push something across on you. You know, the scripture says that Satan loves to disguise himself as an angel of light. If the Lord came to us with horns and red suit and pitchfork and a fork and tail, everybody would reject him. Nobody would submit to that. But no, he will come through like the evangelist that comes. He will come through a friend that comes and prophesize things over you. And they may mean good, but there's a lot of people that will say things to you that are contrary to the word of God. And if you value them, and if you can't distinguish between right and wrong, which is what the word of God does. Hebrews chapter four, verse 12, the word of God is alive, quick and powerful, sharper than any two edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and joint and Mara and is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. The second Thessalonians chapter two, the scripture says in verse nine, it's talking about the Antichrist. And it says, even him who's coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders. And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness to in them that perish. And here's the reason that they perish is because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. And for this cause, God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie. The greatest antidote you have against the Antichrist, against deception, against these lying signs and wonders is a love of the truth. Jesus said in John 17, 17, sanctify them through that truth. Thy word is truth. If you have an emotion, if you have an experience that violates the word of God, this is truth. And like it says in Romans chapter three, verse four, let God be true. And every man lie, you let God's word be true. And you, you reject your own thoughts. You reject your own feelings. You reject what friends, what people are saying, you reject what circumstances are trying to force you into. You reject anything that's violates what God's word says about you. And if you don't do that, well, then you are conformed to this world and you will not be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And you will not prove the good, the acceptable and the perfect will of God. I'm telling you, this is essential. What I'm saying, you need to become a living sacrifice, but just being God saying, God, I love you and I want you. And I want you above everything else. That's absolutely essential. It's foundational, but it will kill you if you don't grab hold of the truth and God's word is truth. You got to hold these two things in agreement. And I see, as I travel around, I see people that tend to go one way or the other. There are a lot of people that are just so much into loving the Lord and experiencing God and they're into worship and pageantry and things like that, but they don't know the word of God. And because of it, Satan takes advantage of. I see other people that are strong in the word of God, but they don't really fellowship with the Lord and they don't enjoy worshiping him. They're just legalist and they take the word of God like a club and beat other people and beat themselves. You have to have these things in balance. You have to take the word of God, but it's the spirit and the word that sets you free. And so you got to combine these things. So I've been talking about how to find, follow and fulfill. If you want to finish your course, if you want to win, I can guarantee you the greater responsibility that God gives you, the greater things he's wanting to accomplish in your life, you will endure greater fight, greater attacks from the devil. The moment you get committed to God, it's just like you put a huge target on you and you attract Satan's attention and he's going to come against you. And if you don't know the word of God, you will be deceived by the lies. You will fall into the deception and Satan will destroy you. You know, there's a lot of people, I've been in ministry now for 57 years and I have seen a lot of people come and go. A lot of people that were at the time, the hottest thing in the body of Christ. I mean, everybody was excited about them, but I've seen a lot of those people that either didn't have the commitment to the Lord, they weren't truly a living sacrifice. And so their maturity level, their character level was small. And because of it, they fell into sin or I've seen other people that because they didn't know the truth, they got off on a tangent and they got into these weird doctrines, which if they had been a living sacrifice and really into the word, it would have countered it. But nonetheless, they got off course. And I've seen many, many people who I knew personally, and people who loved God and had a call of God on their life. And yet they never crossed the finish line. If I was to call the names of some of the people that back 30 and 40 years ago were the ones that were on all the television programs and making the circuits. And if I was to call their names to you, most of you would have never heard of. Anybody can be a 90 day wonder until the bills come due. But did you know for you to stay in ministry a long time or whatever it is that God called you to do and to cross the finish line and be able to say like the apostle Paul, that I have run the race. I have finished my course. And there is a crown laid up for me for you to finish. Well, it takes effort and it takes being a living sacrifice, and it takes a constant renewing of your mind. There is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end of that kind of thinking is a way of death. And if you just do things in your own, I can guarantee you, Satan is going to destroy you. And some people may think, boy, this isn't blessing me. Well, sometimes you got to be warned. Sometimes you got to tell people that there's a bridge out up ahead instead of just not wanting to offend anybody. And so you let them just keep on going. I'm saying these things to you. I've learned it the hard way. I've seen people that I love die, killed because of false doctrine. And they were committed to God. They loved God with all their heart, but they didn't know the truth. And because of it, Satan was able to kill us, able to destroy things. I tell you, we are in a battle. And if you don't want to acknowledge that the battle is existing, that doesn't mean that it's not a battle. It just means that you're going to lose because you aren't on guard. You're just goofing off. You're just somehow or another not realizing the danger of what's happening. I guarantee you, the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And if you aren't aware of that, and you're just going through your life as if there is no enemy, that just guarantees him success. So you've got to not only find, but then follow, and then go to the effort of fulfilling God's will. And let me just say that God wants to show you what his will is. He wants to help you follow and do it his way. And he wants to help you cross the finish line and enter into eternity a victor instead of a victim more than you want it. And so if you'll just cooperate with God, this really isn't hard. It's serious. I don't take back anything I've been saying. It's serious. We are in a battle, but it's not hard. If you put first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, all of these things will come unto you. It's really that simple, but it's not necessarily easy. One of the hardest things you'll ever do in your life is to keep your focus on God and not go to the right or to the left, not be pulled off track, not get into just being hurt and selfish and stuff. But it takes effort. It's not hard. Well, let me rephrase that. It's simple, but it is hard for you to go against the flow. A dead fish can float downstream, but I can guarantee you whatever God's calling you to do, you're going to have to turn around and swim upstream. You're going to have to go against the current. People don't float to the top of the mountain. You have to climb there. It takes effort. It's easier to go down than it is up. And yet God is calling every one of us to rise up higher and to be the person that he wants us to be. And so I encourage you to please take advantage of this. This little booklet that I've got would be a blessing to you. I put all of these things I've been talking about in here in an abbreviated form. And if you go to KarisDailyGTN.com and give us your information, we'll send this little booklet to you free and postpaid. If you want to give and be a part of what we're doing, you can go to GTNTV.com slash give, and there's a place there that you can give. And if this has stirred you up today, and if you need somebody to pray with you, we've got people at our phones 24-7, and they are there just to minister to you at 719-635-1111. And these are anointed prayer ministers. We've seen great things, seen people raised from the dead through praying with their relatives over the phone. We see a lot of great things happen. So again, please get the materials, please give and be a part of what we're doing. And if there's any way we can help you, please call and let our prayer ministers minister to you. I tell you, God loves you, and God has a great plan for your life, but it's not going to come to pass automatically. If you don't pursue it, you won't get it. So I encourage you to get these materials, pursue God, become a living sacrifice, renew your mind, and you will prove the good, the acceptable, and the perfect will of God. Man, that's awesome. So remember that we do this every single day, have our Karis Daily Bible Study, different instructors from the Bible College. So thank you for joining us today. Join us again as we continue our Karis Daily Bible Studies.