Demonic Strongholds Must Fall! God’s Strategy for Mental and Spiritual Freedom
Excerpted from Radical Healing.
To fully enjoy God’s will for them in the Promised Land, the Israelites had to clear out everything and everyone who opposed it.
Our hearts are similar. Think about it. We have access to the Kingdom of Heaven and the authority to bring it to earth (Matthew 16:19). Yet many Christians surrender that right and let the enemy trample them in their own domain.
The Bible makes it plain that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person (2 Corinthians 5:17). However, every Christian knows that our old nature doesn’t automatically disappear when we accept Jesus into our hearts. Our spirit is born again, this time from the incorruptible seed (1 Peter 1:23), and it becomes one with the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17), and it is perfect, lacking nothing. However, Romans 12:2 tells us that one of the ways in which we experience transformation is through the renewing of our mind. Meaning, we still need to be transformed, perfected, and matured. There is a journey to walk out with the Holy Spirit. We need Him. That’s why we need to have a relationship, not a religion. If I have a religion, I have a book of laws; but if I have a relationship, I have someone to walk with me every day and through every situation of my life.
When we are born again, we still might struggle with the same sin, addictions, and thought patterns as before. So, the key is to recognize there is a process of transformation we need to start, with the leading of the Holy Spirit, in order to drive out the original inhabitants of the land of our hearts.
Let me break down this process in a simple way. Thoughts become seeds to our hearts. In order to experience heart transformation instead of just behavior modification, we need to start changing the way we think. At the same time, we need to start identifying the places where it seems hardest to align with God’s Word and experience or see it manifested. This will really clue us in to the places where we have strongholds. That way, we will not be going on a wild goose chase. Instead, we’ll be led by the Spirit and by observing the fruit in our lives. That’s right, we’ll look at the evidence, the patterns, the cycles, and the habits that we don’t like and that are robbing us from abundant living.
Let me give you a silly example. If you have ever lost the remote control to your fancy smart TV, you might see eye to eye with me on this. You’re desperate and don’t want to pay $100 for a new remote so you buy a cheap generic one at Walmart. After ten hours of programing it to your TV, the only buttons that work are the power button and the volume! The rest of the functions aren’t compatible with each other. The generic remote cannot send the right signal to the fancy TV to do all the super cool things it’s built to do! This is what it is like when you’re born again. You have a powerful new perfect Spirit (the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead), the authority of the name of Jesus, and permission from Jesus Himself to do “greater works than these” (John 14:12 NKJV). However, your current belief system isn’t fully compatible with this powerful Holy Spirit. You can do a few things, but you don’t yet have access to all the supernatural features that you have inside of you. You’re still being transformed. You can’t just write the word settings on the button and expect it to work. Many people try doing this and expect it to work, but it is only superficial head knowledge. The new belief has to be programmed into the heart so that it can manifest what God already gave us through Jesus and the precious Holy Spirit living inside of us.
When we change the way we think about something and truly believe it and then quickly see it manifested, it’s because we probably didn’t have any underlying opposing beliefs about that matter. But when we don’t see the manifestation after changing the way we think about something, it is most likely we want to believe it but we have some opposing beliefs deeper inside our hearts regarding that matter. These opposing, sometimes unknown beliefs are the strongholds we are talking about. How do we deal with them? According to the apostle Paul, it is war!
We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).
According to the scripture, strongholds are obstacles that keep us from knowing truth and knowing God. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible defines a stronghold as, “A castle or fortress; anything on which one relies” (Strong’s G3794). In the ancient world, people hid in strongholds during wartime. These were places of protection that were difficult to tear down. Strongholds were also disguised, so the enemy would have a hard time locating them. Similarly, we have all built “strongholds of human reasoning” that are so hidden we may not even know they exist. Yet, they are so strong that they subconsciously drive most of our decisions and can stand in the way of our breakthroughs.
Strongholds are a collection of thoughts that all agree about some- thing. Each confirming thought or event adds a brick to the strong- hold, even if it’s false evidence. Let’s say someone told you that you were a mistake as a child. Then, your parents got divorced, and the enemy whispered the lie, “See? You are not enough for your dad to stay.” As other normal events happened in your life—you didn’t get picked for the team, a teacher forgot your name, or a friend rejected you—you began adding more bricks to the stronghold. Eventually, that stronghold would begin to grow on autopilot, and you would find evidence to support the lie on your own. As the smallest things happen, such as a good friend forgetting to text or call you, you automatically assign the false evidence to the stronghold you have been building since you were a child.
Here’s an example of how I built (and tore down) one of the most significant strongholds in my life. I grew up in Mexico City. My parents and childhood were wonderful, but we struggled financially. The lack I experienced as a teenager grew into a scarcity mindset. I was always afraid of not having enough. It was hard for me to cele- brate other people’s blessings and promotions because I did not real- ize there was enough for everyone. When someone else got blessed, I thought my blessing was gone. When an unexpected expense would surface, fear and anxiety were not far behind. The scarcity mindset became a stronghold that filtered how I saw the world and, more importantly, how I saw God’s willingness to provide for me.
Like root systems, strongholds grow deeper and spread further as you feed them new information and beliefs. If you are rooted in the Word of God, you can develop healthy strongholds that keep God close and the enemy far away. However, if you are rooted in the wisdom of the world and find protection apart from God, it becomes increasingly difficult to experience His presence and promises.
Remember, you have the power to “capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.” It’s important to note that the scripture says “their” rebellious thoughts. You have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). Thoughts that oppose the Word of God don’t belong to you; they are from the enemy. Yet, I see a lot of Christians make the mistake of identifying with the rebellious thoughts as if they are the ones who thought of them in the first place! Here are several examples I’ve heard from friends and people in my church:
I don’t deserve good things.
Fear will always be a part of my life.
I’m too emotional and too much for others to handle.
I am unlucky or even cursed. Everything I touch breaks.
I never have enough time.
Everyone rejects me.
I am poor and will be poor forever.
I am sick and my health will decline.
I can’t have what others have. I must watch on the sidelines as others succeed. God will do it for others but not for me.
You build strongholds when you repeatedly rehearse rebellious thoughts. You can tell when a negative thought has become a stronghold when you believe that it’s true in your heart of hearts. In other words, you know you are stuck in a bad stronghold when you can’t tell the difference between the inhabitants of the land and yourself. The process that we will talk about in the rest of this book—prayer, meditation, and declaration—is how you recognize and get free from those strongholds.
When the Holy Spirit revealed my scarcity mindset, I started to replace the lies with truth. I realized that God had always given me everything I needed, and that He always will. Verses like Philippians 4:19 (NIV) spoke to my heart: “And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.” I learned that when God blesses someone else, it means that He can and wants to do the same thing for me. Acts 10:34 (KJV) helped me solidify this truth in my mind: “God is no respecter of persons.”
This transition was not automatic. There was a tension between my old thought patterns and the person I wanted to become. Really, it was a contradiction between the new revelation and the heart beliefs I’d built throughout the course of my life. At the threshold between a new and an old mindset, you must make a conscious choice. Do you want to heal, or do you want to stay in the enemy’s stronghold?
