How to Keep God's Word in View When Circumstances Speak Loudly

What happens when you believe God, act on what you believe, and the result looks nothing like you expected? Fear, embarrassment, criticism, and the urge to explain yourself can crowd out what God has said.

Andrew Wommack faced that pressure in Omaha, Nebraska. He had recently seen a man raised from the dead, so when he pulled a quadriplegic man from his wheelchair, he expected him to walk. The man fell face-first, and Andrew's attention shifted to the crowd, his embarrassment, and the thought that the man might sue him. “When Your Faith Doesn't Work” tells the full Omaha account; here, the question is where attention goes when the result is painful and public.

Andrew came to see that a hardened heart responds more readily to the natural realm and other people's opinions than to God's Word. Faith can be present while fear of people still shapes the response. Keeping God's Word in view means letting what He says carry more weight than what the moment seems to prove.

What does a hardened heart respond to?

Mark 6 describes the disciples straining against the wind after Jesus had fed thousands with a few loaves and fish. They had seen His power up close. When Jesus came to them walking on the water, they were astonished. Mark 6:52 explains why: “For they had not understood about the loaves, because their heart was hardened.”

They had witnessed a miracle, but it had not changed what they expected in the next crisis. Hardness of heart means relating more to the natural realm than to the supernatural. The disciples weren't engaged in some scandalous sin in the boat. They were consumed with the storm and everything they could think of to save their lives. Their attention had settled on the natural evidence in front of them.

In Mark 8, Jesus asks the disciples whether their hearts are still hardened. He points to their failure to perceive, understand, and remember. What we focus on stays with us. A person may say Scripture is hard to remember while readily recalling sports statistics, movie details, and other subjects that hold their interest. The issue is not a special memory. The heart is sensitive to what it attends to and insensitive to what it neglects.

Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” When every quiet moment is filled with a phone or another distraction, there is little room to attend to God and remember His Word. Scripture can be familiar without shaping our response if our attention is continually elsewhere.

What does faith do when people criticize?

Andrew compares the Omaha experience with a story he read in a book by Smith Wigglesworth's son-in-law. Wigglesworth typically began his meetings by saying the first person who came to the platform would be healed. Two women brought their elderly, frail friend, who had a stomach tumor that made her look nine months pregnant. She was so weak she couldn't stand without their support.

When Wigglesworth told the women to let her go, they said they couldn't because she couldn't stand on her own. He raised his voice and told them again. They let go, and she fell onto the tumor and moaned. The audience groaned. Wigglesworth told the women to pick her up, then told them to let her go again. She fell a second time. He had them lift her once more and told them to let go a third time. They refused. A man in the audience shouted, “You brute, leave that poor woman alone.” Wigglesworth turned to him and answered, “You mind your business. I know my business.” The women let her go, the tumor fell out of her dress onto the platform, and she walked off healed.

The first attempt didn't produce the result. Andrew says he and Wigglesworth both acted in faith, but their responses differed when the result wasn't immediate. In Omaha, Andrew became sensitive to what people would think, whether the man might sue him, and the shame of the moment. Wigglesworth stayed focused on what he believed God had said, even while the audience criticized him.

Jesus asked, “How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44, NKJV). The desire for approval can make a person back away from following God when the response is unpopular. Faith seeks God's approval and gives His Word more weight than rejection or criticism.

What did the treadmill test tell Andrew?

Andrew recounts a treadmill test he took for a key-man insurance policy, shortly after his son had been raised from the dead in 2001. Around eleven or twelve minutes in, he was sweating and the electrodes began falling off. He finished the fifteen-minute test holding two of them while the nurse and the doctor each held two. The doctor read the printout and told him he had a serious problem: they would put him in the hospital and probably perform open-heart surgery before the day was over.

Andrew had finished the test feeling fine, and he told the doctor he didn't accept that report. Pressed on what the paper actually showed, the doctor said Andrew had been off by one-hundredth of a percent at one point and should get more testing. Later, Andrew's board doctor in Shreveport, Louisiana, ran another treadmill test with dye and told him, “You got the heart of a 17-year-old.” Andrew believes the first result was off because the electrodes were falling off.

God's Word must be more real to us than what we see or hear, including a doctor's words. Andrew asks, “Now, am I saying that you ignore doctors and stuff?” and answers, “That's not what I'm saying.” A report or someone's opinion should not become more authoritative than God's Word. First Peter 2:24 says, “by whose stripes you were healed.” That promise shaped how Andrew responded to what the first doctor said.

How do you keep God's Word before you?

When something contrary to faith happens, attention can move quickly to the natural evidence, the crowd's reaction, or a frightening report. God's Word gives a believer something firmer to stand on. Jesus said, “they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:18, NKJV). Andrew holds to that Word when circumstances say something different. (The previous post shows how to keep your heart sensitive to that Word.)

Let God's promises dominate what you see and experience, so that even a troubling report doesn't become more real than the Word of God.

This post draws from Hardness of Heart, Episode 5 by Andrew Wommack. Watch the full teaching on YouTube.