Strongholds Part 1

As part of our current sermon series on spiritual warfare this week I will be putting on my blog a few reflections on the area of spiritual strongholds. I touched on this on Sunday (16.10.11) but wanted to have a space to say a few other things that I didn’t have time for within the sermon. I particularly wanted to do this because strongholds are very rarely discussed and yet are such a powerful weapon of the enemy.

"We do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." 2 Cor. 10:3

I described strongholds as patterns of wrong thinking, and therefore wrong behaving, that have become deeply engrained within us. They are recurring or repeating thoughts that are not in line with the truth that God has given us in scripture. Wrong thinking can dramatically and negatively affect the course and quality of our lives. Strongholds have the power to influence individuals, churches, communities, cities and nations.

They are created by wrong teaching, consistently giving in to temptation, others people’s wrong attitudes and behaviour towards us, the pressure of the culture around us and a variety of other ways. Through these the enemy seeks to create sustained ways of thinking that are detrimental to our relationship with God or to the quality of our lives. Wherever the enemy gains ground in your life he will seek to make it permanent by establishing a stronghold around that area.

For instance, a simple example would be someone hurts you and you feel bitterness towards them. You decide not to work through the process of forgiving them and so the bitterness grows. It would be really easy for the enemy to capitalise on that bitterness and so the enemy says ‘You can’t let anyone else get close to you, they may hurt you as well’ or ‘Why should you forgive them, don’t let them off the hook’ or ‘Why is it always you that gets hurt?’ From a point of giving in to temptation (choosing not to forgive) strongholds of isolation, anger or self-pity can develop and become thoughts that start to shape how we live, relate to people and even how we feel about God.

The good news is that we can find freedom from strongholds, as Pauls says we have weapons that ‘have divine power to demolish strongholds’. Over the next few days I will be sharing some thoughts about strongholds, both personal and cultural, and looking for clues in scripture that point to the weapons we have to tear them down.