How To Defeat A Spiritual Stronghold (Part Two)
We have seen that a spiritual stronghold begins with a wrong
thought or belief, which allows our enemy to have hold or sway over us. Let’s review the definition:
Strongholds
(3794) [ochyrōma] – a castle or
fortress; anything on which one relies; of
the arguments and reasonings by which a disputant endeavors to fortify his
opinion and defend it against his opponent. It is a derivative of the Greek word echo
(2192) which means “to have or hold, to own or possess.”
We can picture it as our enemy’s argument or reasoning by
which he convinces us of his opinion. It
is an opportunity for us to be held captive, or influenced, even without our
knowing it. We need to remember that
strongholds are spiritual in nature.
They can manifest themselves in physical ways, for instance, a wrong
understanding of our identity in Christ can lead us to act in sinful ways. But I believe strongholds are primarily
influential in our mind and heart. It is
within our thought-life and belief system that spiritual warfare takes place.
The Bible has MUCH to say about our mind. We could write a book on just that
topic! (Maybe one day…!) For today, let’s consider two scriptures to
begin our study. In the Old Testament “heart”
and “mind” are often used interchangeably, referring to the inner man, that
part of us that makes up our thoughts, our emotions, our will and our
affections.
Proverbs 4:20-23 – My son,
give attention to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your sight; keep
them in the midst of your heart. For
they are life to those who find them and health to all their body. Watch over your heart with all diligence, for
from it flows the springs of life.
Proverbs 23:7 – For as
he thinks within himself, so he is.
We see that the mind is powerful. What we think is really who we are, and what
goes into our mind and heart flows out into our life.
Let’s look at our key passage, 2 Corinthians 10:3-6. In 2 Corinthians 10, Paul is describing
himself, and his own ministry to the church.
Because of sin and dissensions in the church, his first letter had been
very bold. Now he is telling them in
this second letter that he had delayed his coming so that they would have time
to repent and put things right, before he came in his apostolic authority and
duty to discipline them, and excommunicate those who were in disobedience. In describing for us his own way of dealing
with the spiritual strongholds within the church, Paul gives us wisdom in how
to defeat spiritual strongholds in our personal life.
Note the terms that Paul uses: war,
weapons, destruction, destroying, taking captive. This is spiritual
warfare.
1. Get prepared: Ask for God’s help to empower your spiritual
weapons!
2 Corinthians 10:3-4
– For though we walk in the flesh, we do
not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the
flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.
We cannot defeat a spiritual stronghold by our physical flesh!
We are unable in our physical, human strength to defeat a
spiritual enemy. We can try, and most
certainly all of us at one time or another do try, to change our circumstance
or thought patterns by thinking positive thoughts, changing our environment or
circle of influence, breaking bad habits and trying to form new ones; but these
activities will only be short-term, and will only affect us outwardly. In order to be transformed inwardly, we need
the spiritual power that comes from the Spirit of God. We must recognize our own inadequacy first,
and ask for God’s help. God has provided
“spiritual armor” for spiritual warfare (see Ephesians 6 – topic of our next
blog!).
2. Go on the offense: Destroy wrong thoughts!
2 Corinthians 10:4-5 – For
the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction
of fortresses. We are destroying
speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God…
Destruction (pulling
down/KJV) (2506) [kathairesis] –
NOUN, demolition; a taking down, or casting down
Destroying (casting down/KJV) (2507) [kathaireō] – VERB, to take down,
cast down, demolish; literally (kata, "down," haireo,
"to take"), and is also used as to depose (take down off a throne)
In order to take
away the influential power of our enemy, we must demolish the stronghold of
wrong thoughts. What are we to
destroy? Speculations and lofty things
raised up against the knowledge of God.
Any idea or belief that we have that is not in perfect harmony with
scripture must be cast out of our life, our mind, and our heart. We must be willing to let go of our ideas and
opinions, of our strongly-held beliefs that may be wrong, of our passions and desires
that do not glorify God. We do this by
submitting to the authority of scripture, laying all of our wrong ideas and
thoughts down at the foot of the cross, repenting of them, and turning away
from them. Practically, as we study
scripture, God will reveal places in our life where our thinking is wrong. We must confront it with the truth, and
destroy it. We must turn away from it.
We do not have the
spiritual power in our flesh to change our thinking. If we truly desire to destroy the strongholds
of our enemy in our mind and heart, we must saturate ourselves with God’s Word,
allowing God’s Spirit to do His supernatural work in us.
Hebrews 4:12 – For
the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and
piercing even as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and
marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
3. Get defensive: Take
every thought captive!
2 Corinthians 10:5 – We
are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the
knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of
Christ.
Taking captive (bringing
into captivity/KJV) (163) [aichmalōtizō] - denotes either "to lead away captive," or "to
subjugate, to bring under control"
Recognize that every thought that comes into your mind has
an influence over your belief system.
There is no way practically that you can stop and consider every single
thought that comes into your mind. But
we should have an awareness that every idea, every visual, every phrase in a
song, every article in a magazine, every comedy routine on television,
EVERYTHING that comes into our mind through our eyes or our ears, has the
capacity to influence us.
Paul tells us to take every thought captive, to the
obedience of Christ. This means that
essentially we should evaluate every thought, holding it up against the truth
of scripture, to see whether or not it exalts itself against God, or bows in
obedience to God. If it exalts itself
against God, we know that it is not spiritually healthy, and we must reject it. The best offense against spiritual
strongholds, is to defend our mind from accepting the lies of the enemy in the
first place.
I love that the definition of captivity is two-fold. If the thought is from the “enemy”, we are to
take it captive – capture it, and put it away for life, or execute it! But…if the thought is one that leads to
obedience of Christ, we are to “capture” it –we make it our captive, so to
speak. We keep it close to us, guard it,
protect it. The key is to determine the
source of the thought or idea.
Practically, how does this work? Ask yourself:
What am I believing that is not true? Examine your thoughts. Hold them up against scripture. If you’re not sure if something is true, dig
into God’s word and see. If you need
help, ask a trusted spiritual mentor.
4. Finish the assault: Obey God completely!
2 Corinthians 10:6 - …and
we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.
Here we see Paul’s heart of grace. He knows that there will be some members of
the church who will refuse to repent, and will end up being disciplined. But he is counting on many of them to turn
away from their sin, back to an obedient life.
From this we learn…obedience is key to defeating spiritual
strongholds. When God reveals something
to us, an area where we have been believing a lie, or avoiding the truth, we
must be willing to abandon any sinful actions so that He can restore us and
defeat the spiritual stronghold.
Scripture confirms scripture. I worked on this blog yesterday, and as it
would happen, I woke up early this morning with this scripture in my mind. I knew that the blog post wasn’t “complete”…it
felt like I had missed something. When I
woke up, I realized that I had completely missed the part of scripture about
demolishing and destroying wrong thoughts.
I love that God is so attentive to my heart, that He cared enough to
wake me up and remind me of what I’d missed!
If that wasn’t confirmation enough that He was speaking, as
I began to write this morning, I opened up the Bible Gateway website to find a
reference of a verse that came to mind.
And right there, was the verse of the day (highlighted in bold):
Isaiah 55:6-9 - Seek
the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let
the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let
him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and
to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My
ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My
thoughts than your thoughts.”
This passage completely confirms what 2 Corinthians 10
teaches us:
·
Seek the Lord…call upon Him – Ask for help!
·
Forsake unrighteous ways and thoughts – Destroy wrong
thoughts, take captive all thoughts!
·
Return to the Lord – Repent and obey!
We must accept that our human minds are not going to think
thoughts worthy of God. The only way our
mind and heart will be defended against the strongholds of the enemy are
through the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, enlightening our minds
to the word of God. His thoughts are not
our thoughts, and more importantly…our thoughts are not His thoughts!
So how do we know that our enemy has “set up camp” in our spiritual
life? How do you recognize a spiritual
stronghold? That’s a topic for another
blog (they just keep coming!), but here’s one example that most women can
relate to. JOY.
Perhaps you have been dissatisfied in your own life, feeling
discontent with your circumstances.
There’s nothing you can really put your finger on, but there’s no joy in
your mind and heart. Life has become
rote and mundane. You only see what is
wrong in your life, and what you might be missing, instead of seeing the
blessings of what God has given you.
Your thinking has been “skewed.”
You have begun to believe that you deserve more. You have lost the joy of daily walking with
God.
What might be the root of this thinking? Examine what thoughts you are allowing into
your mind.
What are you reading?
What are you watching?
Are you feeding your mind and heart a steady diet of HGTV
where everyone ends up with their dream home?
Are you consuming the beautifully laid out pages of the
latest issue of House Beautiful, where every room is perfectly staged, and the
dream kitchen never shows a sink full of dirty dishes?
Are you devouring the pages of a fitness magazine, where
every person depicted is perfectly shaped and toned?
Are you following Pinterest pages that tell you continually
what you need to look beautiful, be perfect, be happy?
I can speak of these things because I personally know how
they can influence your thoughts! (…says
the person with over 7,000 pins on her 56 perfectly organized Pinterest
boards!)
In the example above, there’s nothing inherently wrong with
beautiful houses or renovation shows, but a steady diet of them can infiltrate
our heart with dissatisfaction and before you know it, our enemy has set up
camp, stealing our joy!
So how do we combat it?
We ask God to help us change our thoughts.
We consider how much “seemingly innocent” input we really
need, and “take it captive”. This might
mean evaluating how much time we spend in those activities compared to how much
time we spend taking in God’s word.
We obey. Is God’s
Spirit gently convicting you? Then act
on it. Set aside those activities, or at
least put them in their proper place.
Find someone to serve or bless; that has amazing impact on your own
level of contentment, when we begin to see the needs of others.
The example I gave is not a heavy issue; but it’s probably
one that most of us can identify with. I
used it just because it’s easy to see how our thought life influences us. But you may discover that there are
strongholds which are a lot deeper and more spiritually challenging to your
life and faith that you need to deal with.
God’s Word is the resource to expose those strongholds.
In Part 3, we’ll look at Ephesians 6 and see even more
practically how to defend against the enemy, as well as go on the offensive
against spiritual strongholds before they ever take hold in our heart.
For some of us, it may take years of learning to “think
right” and “feel right” before we really feel victorious over a particular
stronghold. But the word of God assures
us that we can live in freedom through the power of Christ in us.
John 8:31-6 – So Jesus
was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word,
then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the
truth will make you free.” … “So if the
Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
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