[CHAPTER 8] THE BELIEVER’S AUTHORITY BY ANDREW WOMMACK

Chapter 8
Is This the One?
When Jamie and I first started out in the ministry, we really struggled
financially. Occasionally, I’d work odd jobs to help make ends meet. One day I
came home from a painting job feeling so sick that I could hardly stand up. I just
wanted to lie down on the couch and rest. Jamie was in the kitchen fixing me
lunch. When she saw me on the couch, she asked, “What are you doing?”
“I feel sick. I don’t know if I can eat anything.”
We had already been teaching other believers these same truths we’ve
mentioned so far: “You have to use your body to quit yielding to the devil. Don’t
cooperate with him. Do the very thing that you don’t feel like doing. Resist the
devil, and fight against him with your physical actions.” (James 4:7.)
Jamie came right over and got me up off of that couch. She put my arm
around her shoulder and started dragging me through the house, saying, “We need this money. You will go back to that job. You’re healed!” She made me get
up and start acting healed. She just forced me to practice what I’d been
preaching.
Praise God, in ten minutes I was over it and felt well again. I went back to
work and got paid that day.

“ACT ON THE WORD!”
The night before I was to be ordained into the ministry, I hurt my back
opening our broken garage door. We were living in Seagoville, Texas, at the
time. As I bent over and started lifting up the garage door, it got caught and
something just popped in my back. The pain that immediately shot through my
body was so excruciating that it knocked me to the ground.

My one-year-old son had been watching me. I told him, “Go tell Mommy,”
but he just sat there jabbering at me. Eventually, he wandered into the house and brought Jamie out. When she saw me lying there, I hurt so bad that all I could do was whisper, “I hurt my back.”
“Well then, get up.” Jamie pulled me up, prayed over me, and said, “Now,
you act on the Word of God!” Again, we needed me to be able to work, so she
cut me no slack.

I started doing things with my physical body. My shoulder blades were back
so far they were touching each other. The pain was excruciating, but I forced
myself to do things I didn’t feel like doing. Finally, over a day’s period of time, I got to where I could do sit-ups and other things. Although my movement had returned, my shoulders were still pulled back.
I went to bed that night and woke up on the day I was scheduled to be
ordained. My shoulders were still pulled back, but I just kept fighting it all day
long. Right before I went to my ordination service, I declared, “I am going to act healed. I am going there, and I will be ordained.” By the time I arrived at church,
I was healed. My actions played a major part in receiving and manifesting that
healing.
You can’t lie in bed acting sick and at the same time release the supernatural
power of God. You must learn how to use your physical body to resist the devil
and cooperate with the Lord. If you don’t step out in faith and act on the Word,
you’ll limit God. (James 2:20.)
WE CAN LIMIT GOD
We’ve seen that God is a Spirit and that He gave dominion over this earth to
physical human beings. (Gen. 1:26-28.) In doing so, He limited His own
dominion and authority. If we don’t cooperate with God, we can limit Him.
Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.
PSALM 78:41
Yes, we can limit God. Jesus dealt with this in His own hometown.
He could there do no mighty work.. .because of their unbelief.
MARK 6:5,6
It’s not that Jesus didn’t want to; He couldn’t do any mighty work because of
their unbelief. Even the Lord Jesus Christ had to have cooperation from people
to release His power into their lives.
Religion says, “God is sovereign. He controls everything.” No, He doesn’t.
God is sovereign, in the sense that He’s King of kings, but He doesn’t control
everything that happens on the earth. God isn’t limited in the sense that He
doesn’t have the power. He has the power, but He gave dominion over this earth to physical human beings. Because of His own integrity, He will not overstep
that authority and violate His own Word.
Therefore, God has limited His own sovereignty, His own ability to
intervene in the affairs of man here on earth. Until He became a physical being
Himself, He didn’t have the authority to come down to this earth and straighten
out the mess man had created.
For additional study on this topic, I recommend, The Sovereignty of God,
Taking the Limits Off God, and Spiritual Authority. They all go into further
detail than I can right here.
EARN THE RIGHT
God Himself operates within these laws of authority. He will not violate His own Word.
Because we live in a culture today where authority isn’t a big issue, these
truths can be hard to comprehend. People basically don’t submit themselves to
authority. They only do what they are forced and demanded to do, but they don’t
recognize authority. People violate authority all the time.
I don’t mean this in a critical way, but the younger generation as a whole
doesn’t respect authority the way the older generation does. They’ve been raised
in such a way that they believe they can get away with anything. They see little
wrong with cheating. They aren’t submitted to authority. They think as long as
they don’t get caught, everything is fine. That’s absolutely wrong. All of life is
based on authority.
I teach our Charis Bible College students that you have to earn the right to
speak into someone’s life. You have to gain their respect before they’ll let you
minister to their heart. This works on every level.
One reason so much of what’s called “evangelism” today isn’t very effective
is that it’s disrespectful and offensive. Some Christians just walk up to a stranger,
stick a religious tract in their face, and say, “You’re going to hell. Repent!” Then
they try to coerce that person to submit to them, and “pray a prayer,” however,
they haven’t even had the common courtesy
to introduce themselves or ask, “How are you? How’s your day going?”
These so-called “evangelists” just come up and get right in people’s faces. That is
absolutely wrong!
“WHO ARE YOU?”
While in Kansas City once, a guy came up to me after a meeting and started
railing on my wife. He said, “If you were a man of God, you’d straighten this
out. You’d make her do this and that and this other thing.” Then he started
criticizing and giving me all of his opinions about how my wife should dress.
If you knew Jamie, you’d know that my wife is a very conservative dresser.
She never wears anything inappropriate. There was nothing wrong with her. This
guy just had a bunch of legalistic, religious opinions about jewelry, makeup, and hairstyles that he was trying to force on us.
Basically, I stopped him right in the middle of his tirade, asking, “Who are
you?” He told me his name and I said, “No, I mean who gave you the right to
speak to us this way? You have no dominion, no right, and no authority over my wife.
God did not die and appoint you to take His place. You’re nobody. I don’t
care what your opinion is!”
Of course, this guy was highly offended. His attitude was “How dare you
speak to me that way.” But since he had the audacity to confront me, rail on my

wife, and tell me what to do, I just decided to respond in kind. “Mister, you have
no authority in my life.”
I would never just walk in and start telling the President of the United States
what to do. It’s not because I feel inferior. It’s not because I don’t believe God
has given me some valuable things to say. I just recognize that I’d have to earn
that right.
He would have to request it. I’m not his superior. I can’t just force my way in
and start spouting opinions.
It’s the same for a mail clerk in a business. You may have some ideas that
would work, but you can’t just barge into the CEO’s office and start telling them
what to do. You must remain under authority. Now, if they’re a good CEO,
they’d encourage your feedback. They’d even occasionally go to the hourly
workers and ask, “What do you think?” But really, it’s his choice to ask for input.
You don’t have the right—the authority—to just go up to the CEO and start
spouting off.
I would never go up to one of the ministers I see on television or hear on the
radio and just start rebuking them and telling them things that I disagree with
them about. I’ve listened to some of them, and they are absolutely wrong on
some points. God has shown me some truths in His Word that could help them,
but I respect them enough to wait to be invited in. I’m not their supervisor. They
don’t submit to me. We don’t have that kind of rapport built up. I’d never do such a thing.
NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS
However, every day someone does that to me. Whether it be in a letter, a
phone call, an email, or in person, someone who considers themselves to be the official standard of what’s right and wrong reams me up one side and down the other. They’ve never witnessed to anyone, never seen someone set free, never done anything for the Lord, and yet they think that they know it all.
If they just understood authority, they would stop these kinds of abuses and
realize that they have to earn the right to speak into someone’s life.
I’ve told my Bible school students before, “There are some things I know
about some of you sitting here right now, problems in your life, however, these
problems are outside of school and you haven’t come to me about them. If we
haven’t built a rapport to where I feel like you’ve opened up to me and given me the freedom to candidly speak to you, then I won’t come to you and talk to you
about those kinds of things.” It’s not my place. It’s none of my business.
I’ll deal with things that affect people while they’re at school, but I’m not
going to pry into their personal life. Some folks think, Well, that’s wrong. You
ought to get more involved. No, I believe it’s wrong for you to stick your nose into other people’s business. It really does come down to authority.
DEFEATED
God is a God of authority. He set structure in place, and He’s not going to
circumvent it. When one of my employees disagrees with a superior, I tell the person, “Go to your superior and talk to them about it. Don’t circumvent the superior by coming to me and trying to get me to counter their opinion.” It works better this way. That’s how God is. He established authority, and we need to
recognize that God Himself obeys it. He would not intervene in the affairs of
men until He became a Man. Once He took upon Himself the form of flesh, then
He had the authority to take it to the devil. That’s good news.

Satan didn’t get his authority directly from God. He doesn’t have a superior
angelic power that he uses over the human race. The devil was stripped of all his angelic power and authority. The power and authority that Satan has used to rule this earth has been mankind’s authority that God gave them and they then turned over to Satan.
Understanding that Satan can do nothing in your life without your consent
and cooperation puts him down on a plane to where he isn’t a superior foe. As a master deceiver, he’s still a threat because he can lie to you. You must know the truth and be on guard, but you can resist him.

I know I can win this battle. I can take the power and authority that God has
given me, and confront the devil. I’m not ignorant of him, but I’m no longer
afraid of him either. I’ve seen awesome things happen just because I recognize
that Satan has been defeated.
GRANDMA’S ROOM
Like most people who were raised in typical America, I honestly didn’t think
about demons. I’d read about them in the Bible, but I thought all the demons
were overseas in some third world country. I didn’t think there were demons here, or that we could physically encounter them. Then I got turned on to the Lord and began to look more closely at the Bible. I recognized that the spirit
realm is as real today as it was two thousand years ago. I realized that many
different things were demonic, including sicknesses. My friends and I began
casting demons out of people and seeing miraculous things happen.
My grandmother raised me until I was about six years old, then she became
senile, and eventually died when I was eight. When she died, she left some
demons behind in the room she occupied in our house. Right after she passed on,
I moved out of the room I was sharing with my brother and into what had been
grandmother’s room. We had a picture of her sitting on the dresser, and at night
it would come alive. Her image would come out of the frame and walk around
the room.

Since I was only eight years old, that scared the fire out of me.
I knew this was strange, and it wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, but I
was afraid to tell my mother and father because they would have thought I was
crazy. So I just didn’t say anything about it, but as soon as possible, I moved out
of that room and back in with my brother. He thought, Well then, I’ll take that
other room, and moved in there. It wasn’t a month before he moved back in with
me. Then my sister took that room. It wasn’t a month before she moved back out
of there too.
For the next twelve years, we kept that room in our house locked up. Nobody
ever said anything, but nobody liked being in there. My older sister brought her newborn daughter home when I was fourteen years old. She’d be sound asleep, but if they walked into that room, she would wake up crying. Then they’d walk out and she’d be okay. Walk in and she’d cry, walk out and she was okay. When I had Bible studies, people would go all over the house to pray with others, but nobody would go in that room. After awhile, my lightning fast mind began to
figure out that something was wrong in there.
Not long after I became aware that demons were real and they did exercise
influence, I decided to go in that room and cast them out of our house. We
always kept the door to that room closed, so I went in and shut the door behind
me. I started rebuking and binding and doing everything I could think of. All the
hair on the back of my neck stood up. I was afraid and had goose bumps all over
me.
In the midst of all this, I remember thinking, Oh God, I’m so glad I can’t see
into the spirit realm right now. If I could, I’d see these huge demons towering
over me with fangs and claws. I was envisioning these monstrous demonic
powers that were inches away from devouring me, and it was only the name of Jesus that was holding them at bay. I remember praying, “Oh God, thank You
that I can’t see what’s going on in the spirit realm.”
Immediately, the Lord spoke to my heart, saying, “Andrew, if I were to show
you the spirit realm, instead of seeing these huge powerful demons with fangs
and claws, you’d see tiny little imps. You’d be amazed. They’re nothing. They
just have big mouths. They know how to scream loud and intimidate. They boast
of great things, but they can’t deliver.” As soon as the Lord changed that image
from towering demons to tiny little imps who had no power or authority, faith
rose up in my heart. Instead of fear, I felt like the Incredible Hulk. A spirit of
might and boldness came over me, and I got rid of those demons in no time flat.
You might think, That was all in your mind. Well, I didn’t tell a single
person, but the next time we had a Bible study, people went right into that room
without thinking anything about it. There was definitely a difference.

SATAN’S ONLY POWER
After the devil made all his prideful boasts in Isaiah 14:12—14 saying, “I
will do this and I will do that,” this passage of scripture goes on to say:
Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that
see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the
man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; that made
the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not
the house of his prisoners?
ISAIAH 14:15-17
This passage prophesied how people would eventually respond to Satan. Of
course, all this has come to pass now that Jesus has literally destroyed the devil
through His death, burial, and resurrection. When we see Satan as he really is,
we’ll say, “Is this the one who intimidated me? Is this the one I allowed to ruin
my life? Is this the one I let keep me in bondage—this nothing, this zero?” That’s
how Satan is. He doesn’t have all this power the church has attributed to him.
The only power Satan has came from man.
Mankind made Satan. We are the ones who empowered him. God created
Lucifer—a ministering spirit, an angelic being. Mankind yielded our God-given
dominion, and it’s this human authority and power Satan uses. That’s why he has
to have a body to possess. That’s why a pig has more power and authority on this earth than a disembodied demon. Satan is a factor, but only because people yield to him. If you know the truth, the truth will make you free. (John 8:32.) Now that’s good news!