January 31

Strongholds and Strangleholds

“No weapon formed against you shall prosper,
And every tongue which rises against you in judgment
You shall condemn.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
And their righteousness is from Me,”
Says the Lord.

––Isaiah 54:17 NKJV

The strongholds in our heads are strangleholds that choke out the love of God in our hearts.

The fullness of God’s love is available to us, but streams of bad thinking about ourselves and God have been flowing unabated for months, years, or perhaps decades. When anything is allowed to flow so forcefully for so long, it creates an emotional rut—a habit or pattern of thinking and behaving that is dull, unproductive, and hard to change.

The Bible calls imbedded patterns of thinking “strongholds.” The strongholds in our lives manifest themselves in psychological and emotional ways. They aren’t hard to spot. These mental ruts come in all shapes and

Notice Jesus’ appeal to Scripture. Jesus wasn’t a big user of religious words when interacting with people or talking about how the Kingdom of God works. He spoke simply and directly in everyday language, but he also recognized that certain situations demand the full force of God’s Word—especially when something precious is threatened. Jesus could have given two possible responses to the Deceiver’s suggestion that Jesus worship him.

Response A: “You’re right. That’s true. I need to act on what you’ve suggested.”

Response B: “You’re wrong. That’s a lie, and I forcefully reject it. Let me tell you what God thinks of that suggestion of yours.”

That’s how you destroy a potential or existing stronghold.

There was a time in my life when mental suggestions were left unexamined and weren’t passed through the filter of my relationship with God. Like letting terrorists in through a porous, undermanaged security checkpoint, my mind didn’t inspect thoughts for approval or call in for questioning some long-held beliefs about myself that prevented me from living free and secure in God’s love.

In hindsight, I see what a horrible message my laziness and lack of diligence were sending to God. In essence, my message was, “Our relationship and the love you have poured into me aren’t worth seeking out, experiencing, or defending.” It makes me shudder now, but God’s patience with me was just as limitless, long, wide, and deep as his love.

Gently, lovingly, graciously, and tenderly, he invited me into the process we’ve been discussing in this chapter. He helped me see the many lies I believed about myself and how his love was uniquely able to destroy the dysfunctional thought patterns preventing me from having the heart-level experience with his love that I wanted so desperately. His love had yet to take the elevator all the way down into the deep parts of my heart and emotions. Because of fear and the embedded strongholds in my mind, I was still protecting myself. My guard was up, but my experience with God’s love was down.

It was a head game, and I was losing.

How about you? Perhaps there are places in your life that you haven’t let anyone, including God, into because you can’t control what happens next, or you don’t know what it means for you not to protect yourself. You’ve thought this way for much too long. It’s too familiar. It’s what you know. It’s a stronghold.

You might hear a familiar tape playing in your head that says, Why rock the boat now? This is who you are, man.

Those are flat-out, Grade-A lies from the pit. Reject them. It takes discipline and work to build a “filtration system” in your mind that filters out the wastes that Satan throws at us, but it’s essential to our spiritual survival.

Father, help me learn to discern your voice from the enemy’s and to reject his lies completely.