…but mighty to the pulling down of strongholds.” The best way to get rid of a stronghold, is to first of all … identify it! There are some things that we can quite cheerfully call habits, or traits, or mindsets, that are against God’s greater purpose. The tragedy of that kind of scenario is that then we are often quite reluctant to part with the very thing that is holding us back from going deeper into the Lord’s plan for our lives. 

It is very easy to use the temporal things of this world to explain the stuff in our lives that has not changed, or the things we do not want to change. That’s called having a stronghold. Those things start in the mind and work their way into our everyday attitudes and actions. We dare not normalise these thingsby explaining them away, or by calling them our own personal individual attitudes … the things that make me, me! Judas did that and look at where that got him!

Sadly, strongholds mean that selfish, heartbreaking, soul destroying stuff is allowed to roam free through our lives, because we justify these things and wreak havoc on other people. Our own thought life, and internal reactions are also affected. A temper is a temper, that’s still a temper … even if your great grandfather had one too! It is not a family trait to be proud of or laughed off! Or what about having to be in control all the time? Control uses manipulation to maintain it. It avoids the personal discomfort of making different choices. At the same time as we are toddling along resisting transformation, other people are judged and crushed by our sinful decisions to remain the same.  

Because of the stronghold, we think to ourselves, there is nothing wrong with me … it’s YOU! You are, and you have the problem. If you didn’t bother me and resist my way, we’d be fine. We can hide behind our severe, sometimes judgmental thoughts, because we can’t face the truth – WE have sinned. Thinking like that is a big fat clue that we are resisting the Holy Spirit’s work in our heart and lives. If we have to exert our will to make it happen – that is the wrong spirit. Over a lifetime, we’ve learnt to dismiss and excuse destructive things, as momentary aberrations, and we’ve distanced ourselves from the very real consequences in other people’s lives.

However, our whole purpose is to be changed to be like HIM … not carry with us the details of death that have strangled and destroyed us, plus other people along the way. None of that is LOVE — and LOVE MUST ALWAYS BE OUR AIM. That Love is described in 1 Corinthians 13 and Colossians 3:13-15. Now, here is the same verse as the one above, but this time it is from the Passion Translation. I really like it, it inspired me today. 

“For although we live in the natural realm, we don’t wage a military campaign employing human weapons, using manipulation to achieve our aims. Instead, our spiritual weapons are energised with divine power to effectively dismantle the defences behind which people hide.We CAN demolish every deceptive fantasy that opposes God and break through every arrogant attitude that is raised up in defiance of the true knowledge of God. We capture, like prisoners of war, every thought and insist that it bow in obedience to the Anointed One. Since we are armed with such dynamic weaponry, we stand ready to punish any trace of rebellion, as soon as (we) choose complete obedience.” 2 Corinthians 10:3-6 TPT.

We cannot and we dare not, avoid obedience. Obedience is essential. Otherwise we will spend our lives protecting me, myself and I, and forget about poor old Fred who is half dead in the corner! If Jesus Christ chose to obey and He never sinned in thought, attitude or deed, don’t you think we need to follow His example? Telling ourselves we are OK and we don’t need to change anything, is putting another nail into the coffin, they will eventually carry us off in! Metamorphosis is part of our mandate from Almighty God. 

At the same time, if we are this careless, we are denying the power of Christ to make our old life, new. There is not one of us alive that does not need heavenly correction or change. I can’t talk for everywhere in the world, but where I live obeying the gospel means nodding your head and hoping someone else will do it for you! That’s not transformation – that’s avoidance. We avoid the opportunities God sends us to make different choices. Dying to self hurts. It is meant to, but it provides the impetus to drive us further into His ways.

We pull down personal strongholds by our choices. That means we continually choose to seek out the Holy Spirit’s correction and believe that He is bigger than our ability to resist Him.” …our spiritual weapons are energised with divine power to effectively dismantle the defences behind which people hide.” And the best place to accomplish that, is to read the book and do what it says! Read Peter, Paul, Jude, James, Philemon etc … and take what they said seriously. Don’t read it and think “I don’t do that” ask the Lord …”Where do I do that? Please show me Lord.” Then we make it our personal aim to check out our behaviour and motivation toward others as we go along.

We live this new life that we have been given, alert, asking the Holy Spirit to highlight to us where we are living out of order with His words. And we value knowing Him over our own comfort. Lastly, let’s get ready to change … because you and I are going to get VERY busy. We are about to demolish some strongholds. Bye 👋🏻