Facing Our Strongholds

[HKHaugan]

Facing the Deeper Strongholds

When we live in close quarters for an extended time there is no question that relationships are strained. But that could be the best time to allow the Lord to do what only He can do. He can heal past conditioning, the kind of conditioning that is attitudinal. They are called strongholds, attitudes we developed apart from God, based on how we responded to our past pain and pleasure experiences. These are deeper strongholds embedded in our hearts coming from our early home environment. There is nothing more ‘cause-and-effecting’ than parental influence. The relationship of mother and father touches the depth of the growing heart in a child. If that relationship is founded in the Lord, a child has a chance at a balanced life. If it is filled with conflict, emotional tension and disillusionment with one another, the child will develop strongholds (relational survival attitudes) that last for life. We have to say too, even in the most balanced families where children are loved, children can feel they need to be different from their parents and will rebel. Sin is very powerful and its instigator, the devil, works relentlessly to use sin to keep us separated from the Lord. But you have a much better chance when the Lord is central in a family. “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it (Prov.22:6).”

 Before we continue with this subject it is important to understand that all of us are born sinners, imperfect and self-centered. We have a tendency to be self-indulgent and self-protective. Parents and their children are sinners. Everyone from infancy to death needs the Savior to bring them out of self-centeredness to experience the treasury of growing relational experiences. We have been designed to be open and ready to enjoy the hearts of others, to be involved in their lives and they in ours. This is what God intended when we were created. Therefore, it is a spiritual experience and one that can only be realized in a relationship with Him. We need Him to walk with us and counsel us along the way. This is what the risen Jesus does through the Holy Spirit (Jn.14:16).  

 We live in an unfriendly world and without Him, everything is influenced by fear and pride. Thus, strongholds are our only spiritual reality until we have a relationship with the Lord Jesus. That relationship changes the way we see the world. Like it or not, religious systems do nothing but increase our self-justifying tendencies to escape God and true spirituality, the relationship with God He has offered in His Son Jesus. Religion can be a block, a stronghold to hide behind, so we can feel good about ourselves and feel justified in the presence of others. It can also induce guilt, making us more institutionally bound and self-centered trying to correct our past that is a past past, unrecoverable and irretrievable. A relationship with Jesus reminds us that on the Cross our past was forgiven. When we accepted Him we confessed it. He forgave us and we were free to grow into each new moment, a looking-forward moment. That’s what a new person in Christ is. spiritually free to grow.

 Having said all this it follows that when two people marry they don’t come into that marriage with perfection. They come into it with strongholds, attitudes, that need to be surfaced and faced. This makes marriage what most people don’t realize, a healing relationship with the Lord directing the traffic. A married couple in Jesus are always growing forward. When strongholds arise in the way they deal with each other, and they will, the Holy Spirit is there to make them aware of them and the forgiveness that takes place as they are led by the Lord. Let’s spell that out.

 First, we have two parents. Each may love their children and be loved by their children in return. But along the way strongholds from their past effect how a child is raised. Take a couple of ‘for instances’:

If a mother or father is the dominant figure, a child will grow up influenced by that dynamic.

A man may expect his wife to become something like his mother or the wife expecting her husband to be like her father. Expectations are strongholds that will slow the intended personal growth of a marriage. Also, there may have been an abusive parent that causes him to react to his wife on that basis. He will hear sounds or phrases or see actions that reminds him of his past and take it out on her without realizing that is what he’s doing. The same is true for the wife’s reactions based on her past.

 These are classic strongholds in a marriage. There are many more. I’m sure you could add a few. They may not be apparent to either one, but they will surface at one time or another. Already deeply embedded, they will become a block to what the Lord intended for them. Another stronghold---a man can never live up to the ‘great’ father of his wife nor can a woman live up to the ‘great mother’ he had.

 Then another said in anger, ”You’ll never amount to anything” “You were born stupid and always will be” “Why can’t you be like your brother?” which have a lasting effect. This reveals strongholds in the parent that only God’s love can heal.

 Also, children may feel guilty because they hear their parents arguing about them and try hard to be the good child or the bad child because they feel guilty that they may be the cause of their parent’s problems. Check the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis and Jesus telling the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15.

 Before anyone marries they must be awakened and embrace two basic facts, uniqueness and sin.

First, they are unique persons building a new and unique relationship unlike any that ever were or ever will be. They are not the other’s mother or father and must grow into their own unique relationship.

Second, as sinners their relationship is totally dependent not on how much they love each other but on how much the Lord God loves them, forgives them and frees them to be open with one another with God’s Word; Scripture, being their guide.

 The problem is that most people start a marriage not aware they are viewing each other based on strongholds from their past. Keep in mind that strongholds are attitudes. After they marry, they have children who are unconsciously taking notes and recording in their growing minds and hearts how their parents communicate and will develop strongholds they carry into their future. That’s how strongholds are passed on and precisely why we need spiritual grounding. We are all stronghold victims and need a spiritual source to heal strongholds as they emerge. Jesus did this with the woman He met at Jacob’s well (John 4) and with Matthew the tax collector (Matthew 9).

 You can put all of this in the context of the wedding feast in Cana where Jesus turned water into wine. It’s there Jesus begins His mission and ministry for the restoration of mankind. He changes the whole focus of marriage from a traditional religious ceremony to a relationship that grows with Him as their Lord. Note the changing of water to wine. He was declaring Himself as the personal stronghold for the man and the woman and their marriage. Jesus starts with the water and transitions to the wine. It would be sustained by each receiving Him in the water of Baptism (dying to self) and the nourishment of the pure wine signifying His blood (each receiving His resurrected life). Their manhood and womanhood would be raised into the spiritual dimension and reconciled with the Lord through His presence in their life together. Their love would be raised to His love, their consciousness to His consciousness, their concern to be His concern, their children to be His children given to them to manage spiritually. Their family would be His family and the blessing would be theirs and the glory His.

 Now that was and is the ideal. Realistically, we have to see that many of us become disciples of Jesus after we’re married. Some accept Him early, some later. And there are always rough patches along the way. Regardless, He is that point where spiritual life begins.   Recovery is always possible, and many women and men have turned their lives over and experienced that recovery change. Recovery not only in themselves but in their children as well. This is why marriage can be recovered with Him at any time and children touched in a spiritual atmosphere.

 There are other deeply embedded strongholds that follow the parental ones like how we react to childhood squabbles, sibling rivalry, teenage rejection, internal confusion, identity struggles, failures, temptations, disillusionment, disappointments, ethnic and cultural pressures and the personal sin that muddies them even further. Many of these take physical form like criminal behavior, alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness, anti-social behavior, rioting, meaningless demonstrations and whatever it takes to gain notoriety and acceptance. Again, it is sin, with its spirits of fear and pride, that is the source of all the others. “God made man simple, but man complicated it (Eccl.7:29).”

 The whole world needs a Savior and we know that Jesus is the One no matter how the world, secular society, works against Him. “Surely, it is God who saves me; I will trust in him and not be afraid.  For the Lord is my stronghold and my sure defense, and he will be my Savior (Is.12:2).”