I wanted to create a space where folks access the Bible Study notes - especially when they were not able to attend the meeting.
Here are the notes from our Thursday, September 17 Bible study on Spiritual Warfare/Prayer - Lesson 1: Strongholds.
THEME VERSES: 2 CORINTHIANS 10:3-5
What is a stronghold?
Fortress with difficult access (Judges 6:2, 1 Sam 23:14)
The Israelites hid from their enemies in strongholds. O/T writers like David compared their physical experiences of strongholds to their spiritual experiences with the Lord – Psalm 27:1
In the O/T, the Hebrew word for stronghold is ‘misgav’. It means: refuge, too strong for, to be lofty, be exalted, to lift high, to protect, to be kept safe.
Unfortunately, when we have a stronghold, it is not God.
We have Satanic or false strongholds: Is any argument or pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. (2 Cor 10:5)
In other words, it is ANYTHING that exalts itself in our minds, pretending to be bigger or more powerful than our God
- it steals our focus
- makes us feel overpowered
- makes us feel controlled
- makes us feel mastered
It consumes so much of our emotional and mental energy that it strangles our abundant life.
- callings remain unfulfilled
- believing lives become ineffective
You are at a crossroads here: You have to decide whether or not you believe Satan is real.
IMPORTANT TRUTH 1: Nothing or anyone is bigger or more powerful than God.
His strong holds invade our lives whenever we allow something to appear bigger than God – and these strongholds come from false ideas.
IMPORTANT TRUTH 2: The primary battlefield in Satan’s war against us is the mind.
Why would the mind be the chief target?
The most effective way to influence behavior is to influence thinking.
What is the goal of our warfare that is in 2 Cor. 10:5?
To steal back our thought lives and instead of letting Satan use them as a playground – we take our thought lives captive to Christ.
It’s easy to let the stronghold take root:
We make a wrong decision and the stronghold is planted. Then,
- Struggle with a pattern of thoughts, words, or actions
- We promise ourselves that we’ll never do it again
- We genuinely hate the behavior involved
- We re-offend and we feel horrible
The basic mistake here is that we assume our BEHAVIOR is the battleground. We make it our goal to change our ACTIONS.
Remember: we act out what we believe, not what we know. We decide what we do, but at a deeper level we act out what we really believe.
Satan knows NOTHING is bigger or more powerful than God – but if he gets you to believe his lies – he wins. And it is all about winning with Satan.
IMPORTANT TRUTH 3: Satan lost all rights to presume authority over a believer’s life at the Cross (Col. 2:13-15)
- He is not just a defeated enemy; he was publicly humiliated in front of the heavenly host at the Cross. (Jesus’ temptation)
Satan does an awesome job of making us believe our stronghold (addiction, rage, etc) is bigger than God – but it is not so.
We have to DOWNSIZE anything that has a hold on us until we have it bending under the authority of Christ.
The word ‘demolish’ and ‘weapon’ is used twice each in 2 Cor 10:3-5. That is for a reason:
We have to DEMOLISH arguments and pretences – lies and false arguments. And we can only do that by CHOOSING TRUTH.
Paul doesn’t say:
- Choose the best option
- Choose the better course of action
- Choose to do what is right
Strongholds have too much fortification for these options. We must choose to tear down Satan’s lies and we can only do that through Truth.
When we talk about tearing down lies and strongholds, we have to get rid of any false teachings that are lodged way back in our minds. One of these is:
GOD’S LOVE IS BASED ON OUR PERFORMANCE
This is why so many people think they can’t come to God in the middle of their struggle and defeat – WRONG! This is when God most wants us to come into His presence.
God does not love conditionally – He operates differently than we do.
Isaiah 55:8
Look at 1 Cor. 1:18-25 – Mark the word that describes the human way of thinking.
The word moron comes from the greek word used here for foolishness.
Ever since the fall of man when sin entered the world, we’ve been recreating God in OUR image. We turn the reality upside down. We try to box Him in – make Him fit our paradigms.
The truth is: God wants us to act, feel and think the way He does.
In our humanness, we think if God answers our prayers ina miraculous way, that He loves us. But if He answers ‘no’, we question God’s love and His goodness. The reality is that God loves us no matter what – His answer has to do with God’s purposes and plans.
If you ever question God’s love for you just turn to John 13:1
If we are to ever have freedom in Christ, we have to abandon the belief in human effort – we can do nothing without God.
2 Cor. 10:3-5
Identifies 4 vital details about the weapons of our warfare:
1. They are not weapons of the world
2. They have divine power
3. They are associated with the knowledge of God
4. Their purpose in warfare is to take our thoughts captive
Ephesians 6:13-18 – This talks about the armor of God. There are 5 DEFENSIVE items listed:
1. Breastplate
2. Shoes (shodding your feet)
3. Shield
4. Belt
5. Helmet
There is 1 OFFENSIVE ITEM:
1. Sword – the Word of God
Going back to 2 Cor. 10:4 – it mentions weapons – plural. What other weapons are there?
What immediately follows the words ‘Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.’?
With all prayers and petitions, pray at all times in the Spirit
These are your 2 major weapons with divine power:
- The Word of God
- Spirit-empowered prayer
Virtually nothing that we come up against has more power than a stronghold. They can’t be swept or swatted away with a ‘spiritual broom’, you can’t fuss them away, you can’t ignore them until they disappear. Strongholds are broken only one way:
2 Cor. 10:45 tells us what must be done to strongholds: they must be demolished.
How is a building demolished?
- the demolition crew comes in and places strategically positioned explosive charges
- Standing and yelling at the building won’t make it fall
- Only the explosive charges will bring it down
What have we tried in the past to demolish our strongholds?
- trying harder
- punishing ourselves for failing to live up to God’s standards
- feeling depressed for days over an act of sin
- promising God we’ll do better
- Any others?
All of these things are just like us yelling at the building to fall down. We have to use our ‘explosives’: The Word and prayer – strapped together. 2 sticks of dynamite is more powerful than 1!
PRAYERLESS LIVES ARE POWERLESS LIVES
IMPORTANT TRUTH 4: THROUGH GOD’S POWER WE CAN OVERCOME OUR STRONGHOLDS.
We have to remember though: It is never the will of God for warfare to become our focus. The fastest way to lose our balance is to rebuke the devil MORE than we relate to God.
So how do we start tearing down the strongholds?
Remember our 2 sticks of dynamite: Let’s take the Word ‘stick’ first.
2 Cor. 10:3-5 says we’re suppose to cast down ANYTHING that exalts itself in our thought lives and to take our thoughts captive.
We have to take them captive and make them obedient to Christ. We do this every time we CHOOSE to think Christ’s thoughts about any situation or stronghold instead of Satan’s thoughts or our own.
Where do we find Christ’s (God’s) thoughts? IN THE WORD OF GOD
Our second ‘stick’ is the prayer ‘stick’. And we want to combine these two things – we want them wrapped very tightly together. We do that by praying Scripture.
This is a very powerful thing that we have privilege of doing.
1. It gives us an extremely intimate communication with God – you are using His thoughts and words to communicate with Him!
2. It retrains and renews our minds
3. We start to think His thoughts and God gains the proper place in our thought life
Now the fight begins – Satan doesn’t want you to do this. Remember, that Jesus used Scripture to rebuke Satan during His temptation.
We have to maintain our FOCUS.
Remember: we become like the object of our focus;
- focus on our needs – we become more needy
- focus on the harm others have done to us – we become harmful and angry
- focus on material things – we become more grappling and greedy
Look at Phillipians 3:13-14 – what was Paul’s focus?
Look at Phillipians 4:8 – what does it tell us to focus on?
Look at Hebrews 2:1 – Paul gives us a warning and in Hebrews 12:2 He
‘tells us to FIX our eyes on Jesus (or look upon Jesus)
Look at Peter 3:5 “SANCTIFY the Lord God in your hearts” (sanctify means to set apart, make holy 1 Pet 3:12-13)
Satan is making his plans on how to best make us lose our focus:
2 easiest ways to move our focus is:
1. have us become focused on the problems of others
We will remain in bondage by focusing on someone elses’ stronghold rather than our own. Scripture tells us that we can help others with our prayers but we can’t fight their battles for them. (2 Cor. 1:10-11)
Strongholds are nearly always broken between the individual captive and God
2. have us focus on Satan himself
We can become unbalanced in our approach to warfare and strongholds
by becoming obsessed with Satan.
REMEMBER: Satan’s utmost goal is to be worshipped (Isaiah 14:12-17).
Much of worship is focus. If we focus more on Satan than God, we give
him the victory and satisfaction of diverting our focus from God.
This is another reason why we need to center our warfare on God’s Word and on prayer. It gives us the proper focus.
You are going to have to verbally rebuke Satan – he is tenacious and he doesn’t play fair. We need to know God’s Word – especially be equipped with specific Scriptures so that we can rebuke him (Remember Jesus’ temptation)
Can a stronghold be instantaneously removed or does it always take a long process?
- some can be resolved quickly – but even though the stronghold is removed, the mind is still going through a renewal process that could take years.
- Or the resolution may be a very long time
- Some strongholds will never threaten to take our minds again, while others may demand our attention every, single day.
No matter: God equips us to over – but remember – none of us are beyond failing. We need to remember this and not use ourselves as a yardstick to measure others. Especially when they seem to relapse over and over for awhile. (Matthew 7:1-2)
Renewing the mind means learning to think new thoughts. Before you do that, you must use your weapons – taped together: God’s Word and Prayer.
HOMEWORK: Write a prayer based on Psalm 86:1-13
