Does Our Freezer Need Emptying?

[HKHaugan]

Does Our Freezer Need Emptying?

Hearkening back to our discussion on strongholds there are lots of ways strongholds can appear.  A close look at Paul’s words in 2^nd Corinthians 12:7-10 about his thorn in the flesh and Romans 7:7-25, about his sinful condition, tells us an awful lot about strongholds.  As we have already said quite a few times, strongholds are attitudes and attitudes are spiritual reactions to circumstances that cause our minds to find a way to handle them.  When we make a conclusion about them without God, our conclusion is survival driven, believing we can control through that conclusion.  In essence, we try to save ourselves, or think we can.  That’s the stuff of strongholds.

What is interesting about the Law is its goodness because what it does is reveal the nature of strongholds.  If we take just the 10 Commandments, place them over our personal events and decisions past and present, they expose our inability to obey them perfectly.  In fact, we really don’t ever get any of them right.  If we claim closeness in even one of them, it was only good but never better, nor best.  If we want to use the word best we would be deceiving ourselves.  We plead reason, Well, I tried. I did the best I could.’ We all know that doesn’t cut it.  It wasn’t perfect.  Our stronghold there was the attitude, “Trying justifies.”  That makes it all about me.  That’s the problem.  That’s sin.  What made the Law so good was its ability to show the nature of sin, how spiritually weak and lost we are and our need for a Savior.  The evidence of sin is our strongholds, the attitudes we built that have such a strong hold over us.

What is the good, better and best?  The good is faith.  The better is faith in Jesus.  The best is faith in Him as we choose to follow Him in every next moment.  If we replace our strongholds with Him as our only stronghold, letting Him hold us strongly, the simplicity of one cancels the complexity of the many.  Sin dooms us to take control, build our own strongholds, attitudes for relational survival.  It’s not matter of choice there.  What is a matter of choice is whether or not we will choose someone we can trust to be our stronghold or will we rely on self?  Can we hear the request across the ages, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.  If any man hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and will sup with him and he with me (Rev.3:20).”

This brings us to Jesus who teaches us about judgmentalism.   “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it (Mt.7:13-14).”  When we consider Jesus as our single stronghold, it makes sense that faith in His life beats all the internal strategies we make up for self-defense in the fears each moment brings.  If He is our focus we will discover that we are being led to see His focus as pleasing His Father.  His Father was His stronghold.  He didn’t need to make any, nor did He design momentary safeguards for every emergency.  He simply obeyed His Father’s will.  If we are following that example then we will see everyone as an object of His Father’s love and their need to be treated as such. 

Knowing we have an eternal Father eliminates our tendency to construct a technique for momentary social survival, in other words, a stronghold.  Strongholds are attitudes we develop to play it safe.  If we deify ourselves, which is the devil’s goal, there are never enough.  A good friend once said to me that he was a heavy drinker due to the social demands of the business he was in.  But one day he woke up and discovered that he couldn’t outdrink the supply because they were making it while he was asleep.  So, he just quit.  Strongholds are like that.  They are our major spiritual epidemic.  Without God they multiply on their own. 

Strongholds are addictive too.  If one works you hang on to it.  The proof that strongholds actually work is the number of people you don’t have to deal with anymore.  It’s the number of people for whom you are not responsible, who don’t get your love and care, whom you will never be able to help, who would love to know you, relate with you and enjoy you. People you can be honest with and those who can be honest with you.  It’s simple to prove by the fear you feel when you have to deal with a relational demand you don’t like.  Anything that is self-induced like desires, hang-ups, a fixation, an unbreakable habit, beliefs you use to escape reality, anything that triggers impetuous anger, lust, greed and envy, these are strongholds that need to be replaced by Jesus, the living stronghold. 

But if you want to continue in making your own, the recipe is quite simple.  A quart of judgmentalism, a gallon of avoidance to which you add a few dashes of fear, then six ounces of concentrated self-justification, a few ounces of a friend’s support, generously sprinkled with excuses.  Slowly bring to a boil until you feel aloneness set in.  Let it cool and put it in your memory freezer and take it out when needed, let it thaw and you have an ongoing supply.  Be sure to keep your freezer locked to prevent spiritual intrusion.

I guess we all need to ask that question again, “Does Our Freezer Need Emptying?”