Demolishing Strongholds
The message that I want to bring today is about strongholds. The first question that I want to ask is what is a stronghold? A stronghold is a fortified place. It can be a place that is fortified by either its location, its construction, or usually both. Throughout history strongholds are usually made of the strongest materials and are located in raised locations. At the same time they are places that are easily accessible by their inhabitants. They are places that provide their occupants with a highly defendable position against an opposition that wants to get rid of them.
Whether a stronghold is a good thing or not, all depends on who it is that is inside defending them. If we or our allies have access those strongholds, then they are a place of refuge in times of trouble. If it our enemy that has a stronghold then they are places of great danger. The apostle Paul talks about such strongholds in the book of Corithians.
2 Corithians 10:1-6
1 By the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you— I, Paul, who am timid when face to face with you, but bold when away!
2 I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be towards some people who think that we live by the standards of this world.
3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.
4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.
5 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.
6 And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.
Clearly the strongholds that Paul is talking about here are not physical locations, instead they are destructive, attitudes, mindsets and thinking patterns, that are in opposition to God. These kind of strongholds can exist on a personal level or corporately.
There are many strongholds in this nation. The advance of Islam, attitudes towards sexual practice, the turning of many people towards illicit drugs to overcome feelings of low self esteem, the acceptance of evolutionary teaching as fact, and many others. These are all things that oppose God and His desire to see His Kingdom come on this earth. The great adversary, Satan, is trying to set up as many of these strongholds as he can in order to turn this nation completely against God.
A church can also have strongholds. They can be ideas of how things should be done, or fixed traditions. These things may not be morally wrong, but are certainly not Biblical commands. Churches can often be so fixed with these preconceptions of how church should be, that they become strongholds, preventing the church from moving and growing in the way that God wants.
A stronghold can also affect the individual. Many people have strongholds in their life’s including those that they don’t even recognise. Alcohol abuse, pride, pornography, and many others are areas in which Satan has got a stronghold in his or her life?
Paul had recognised a lot of these strongholds when he wrote to the church in Corinth. Paul had stayed in Corinth for eighteen months and in that time had set up a church. From reports that Paul was receiving after he had left, he had started to recognise certain strongholds creeping into the church. He had already written to them once before, warning them of, amongst other things, divisions, and the acceptance of sexual immorality. Corinth was a very sinful city, and some of that immoral behaviour, was gradually creeping into the church.
Paul recognised the need to demolish these strongholds. Demolishing strongholds is a messy, and often painful process. It often requires the exercise of discipline. Because of the painful nature of that process is must be tempting to put as much distance between yourself and the person receiving the discipline. It can be easier sometimes to tell somebody off in writing than it is to do it in person. This is exactly what Paul’s critics accuse him of doing.
In the chapter we have just read, Paul starts by quoting his critics, ’I, Paul, who am timid when face to face with you, but bold when away!’ Paul is being accused of being a coward. They are saying that he is bold in his letters, but afraid to raise his voice when he is with them. Paul is forced to explain why he is so gentle with the people.
In verse one and two Paul makes clear that he is appealing to the people so that he might not have to be tough with them when he arrives. The word appeal, in the Greek, commonly refers to one who has the authority to command but chooses not to. It is like a judge who is lenient in judgement or a king who is kind in his rule. Paul is giving the people a chance pull down the strongholds that they have allowed Satan to erect in their lives and their church before he has to come and forcefully do it himself.
If you have strongholds in your life then this is exactly what God does. He gives you time to pull them down yourself. Paul refers to himself as acting in the same meekness and gentleness that Christ shows. This is the same way that God deals with us now. He appeals to us to deal with those strongholds that he might not have to do it for us, that he might not have to be so bold.
The weapons we use to do this are not weapons of the world, instead they are weapons of divine power. The world has various weapons it uses in its fight against strongholds. They will use new legislation to try and deal with the stronghold of terrorism in this country. They will open up needle swap schemes to prevent the strong hold of aids amongst drug users. They will give out contraception to try and prevent the strongholds of rising teenage pregnancy.
These are the weapons that the world uses. They can be effective to a point, but the trouble is they only deal with the symptoms and not the strongholds. It is like a decongestant will on deal with one of the symptoms of a cold, it won’t get rid of the cold. The weapons that God makes available to us, don’t just deal with the symptoms, but actually have the power to demolish the strongholds themselves. The word for power, used here, is the same word that we get dynamite from.
Paul doesn’t actually name these divine weapons at this point, but from his other writings we know that they include ’the Holy Spirit’, ’sincere love’ and the other things mentioned in 2 Corinthians 6:6&7. They would have also included the Christian armour that Paul mentions in Ephesians 6:13-17. I am not going to go into each of these today, but if you are a Christian and you are struggling with spiritual strongholds in your own life, then start to read these passages and plan how you are going to use these weapons in your own life.
Paul tells us that these strongholds are arguments and pretensions that sets themselves up against the knowledge of God. If we allow strongholds in our lives then eventually cause us to doubt God. I backslid for a number of months when I was about 20 years old. I had started to doubt God, even doubt His very existence. It wasn’t because I had suddenly read something, or had been influenced by somebody, that had caused my faith to fail. Instead it was because I had allowed strongholds into my life. It was because I was entertaining thoughts and desires that were contrary to what the Bible states are true. Eventually the only way that we can justify not dealing with these thoughts and not demolishing these strongholds is by starting to doubt God’s Word. I thank God, that through people praying for me, those strongholds were eventually destroyed.
Sometimes God has to get tough with us to break those strongholds down. One stronghold that I deal with a lot in my job as a police officer, is that of depression and low self worth. I used to come across daily people who felt that life wasn’t worth living any longer. A couple of months ago I came across a woman who had one such stronghold in her life.
I was just coming to the end of one of the busiest weekends of my policing career. I had been on since the Wednesday and had worked over every night. I had had very little sleep. I had dealt with an attempt murder the night before and I had just been to another attempted murder that morning. In-between these incident I had been sent around from job to job. It was nine o’clock on that Sunday night and I was due to finish at ten. All I wanted to do was to go home, have some fellowship with other Christians, and then go to bed and catch up on my sleep.
It was at this time I got a call to got to Crewe, to a report of a woman who had turned on all of the gas in her house, and was threatening to blow it up. I have got to be honest, my first thoughts were not very Christian, they were something like, ’Why could she have waited until ten o’clock when the night shift comes on?’ Still I had a ten mile journey in order to repent of my thoughts.
When I got to the house a colleague was already there and was talking to her. She lived on the top floor of a two storey apartment. My colleague was shouting in through the front door to the woman who was standing at the top of her stairs. As I approached the door the smell of gas was overpowering. She was threatening to set fire to the house if we approached her. With the amount of gas in the house we feared that there could be an explosion if she did.
For about half an hour I tried every method I could think of trying to talk her around to coming out of the house. I spoke kindly to her, offered to take her to her families, and even tried shouting at her. It didn’t matter what I did or said, this depression was such a stronghold in her mind that she was refusing to listen.
After a while another colleague turned up, and in the meantime, this lady kept disappearing from the top of the stairs in and out of view. A few moments later my colleague went around the back of the house and confirmed that she had done what we feared she was going to do. She had set one of the curtains alight in the kitchen area.
My colleague and I looked at each other in despair before deciding that we we going to have to go in. We ran up the stairs and kicked open the kitchen door to find her sitting in the corner of the room on a chair, next to the cooker which was pouring out gas. The curtains were now fully ablaze and the ceiling was starting to melt. I shouted at her to come to us, so that we could all get out, but she was insistent she wanted to stay where she was and die.
We had to run in. My colleague tried to turn off all the gas and put as much of the fire out as he could, while I dragged the woman to the top of the stairs. My colleague help me to get her down the stairs and out of the house by giving her a push from behind. Unfortunately, he pushed a little bit too hard and she ended up sledging down the stairs on top of me.
This woman had got such a stronghold upon her life that gentle persuasion didn’t work. Like Paul, we had tried the gentle approach in order to try and avoid having to to use the force. In the end we had to take hold of her and drag her out. It was the only way to deal with that self destructive stronghold that had captured her mind.
God sometimes has to do the same. There is one stronghold that the enemy has that is incredibly powerful. It is a stronghold that he holds on every human life. That stronghold is death because of sin. Paul tells us that we all are held captive by this stronghold.
Romans 5:12
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.
Paul tells us that this, the greatest stronghold, has captured the life of every human being since the time of Adam. Throughout history however, God has tried to gently persuade people to demolish the stronghold in their lives by obedience to him. If you read the Bible, even the very people who knew God the best, the nation of Israel, refused time and time again to deal with this stronghold.
Just like Paul’s critics ridiculed him for being weak, when really he was just being patient and gentle, people have ridiculed God in the same way. Time and time again you will read throughout the Old Testament, the people often rejected the prophets message of judgement saying, ’God is not really going to judge us, look at how the wicked prosper.’ That same cry is heard today. This stronghold sets itself up against the knowledge of God. People often retort, ’How can there be a God when there is so much death and destruction in the world?’
We need to remember, God is no coward, he is simply appealing to us to avoid having to be bold. Take note, the power of that stronghold has already been broken for those who take every thought and make it captive to Christ. One day God did say enough is enough. Just as we had to take hold of that woman and physically drag her out of the house, God in the same way has already taken that stronghold and smashed it, by sending His very Son.
When Jesus, lived 33 years without committing a single sin He took of the stronghold of sin and death. When He died on the cross for us who are guilty, He had started to wrestle with that stronghold. When He rose again three days later, He completely demolished that stronghold. Sin and death no longer have the power to hold every human captive.
Romans 5:21
21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
If we take our every thought and make it captive to Christ then we too we demolish that stronghold over our lives.
John 20:31
But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Take every thought captive begins with simply believing in him. It is at this point that we too can have life. Of course we are still going to die. But the Bible promises us that that is not the end. If the stronghold of death is removed from our lives then we will have eternal life with him.
Pray
The great news is that not only can God remove all of these enemy strongholds from our lives, but he can also become our stronghold. I said at the beginning that a stronghold can be both good and bad, it depends who holds them.
Psalm 144:2
2 He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me.
Make God your stronghold tonight.
