The Origin of Strongholds

[HKHaugan]

The Origin of Strongholds

One of the great gifts coming from the Hebrew Scriptures we call the Old Testament is its physical presentation loaded with spiritual meaning.  Scripture was opened to new understanding when Jesus sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  Instead of just the localized history of a small tribal group in the Mideast who believed in a single god, their Scripture turned out to cover everyone’s personal history from Creation to as long as people live, in the context of the One God.  

The central figure in that Scripture was and is the Messiah, a long expected ‘specially-picked-by-God’ person who would change the world for this particular people.  So, for a period of time, He was narrowly viewed only as an exceptional human being, half of the real Messiah if you will, lifting the Jewish people into a protected prominence.  After Jesus comes, we see the whole Messiah, God’s eternal Son, in human form who makes every piece of Hebrew history come alive.  He leap-frogged human expectations to be everyone’s Messiah.  He personally gives each person individual purpose, meaning and significance. He is God defined, not expectation defined. Every event and story mentioned in Scripture is about His Father restoring His Creation through His Son.  If we take just the story of Joshua’s victory over Jericho, we see a physical stronghold as the symbol of the crippling attitudes, the strongholds in the heart, that keep us from being free, confident and productive spiritual beings right where we live.  Then, when we die, He takes us into the Promised Land, the Kingdom of Heaven.  He was and is a personal God for Jew and Gentile alike.  He tears down strongholds of ethnic, social, and relational differences that the devil, with his spirit of fear, plants to take us away from God.  His personal plan for us is to experience eternal life now and in the ultimate Promised Land, the Kingdom of Heaven. 

In Jesus, we see the Lord God coming into our hearts and dismantling strongholds, the attitudes we built to protect our hearts against the confusion we encounter trying to make sense out of who we are in the world.  When we received Him as Lord it was the beginning of a relational journey through the wilderness of the world with Him as our constant companion.  The world is people and the atmospheric problem of sin that separates them from their Creator and one another.  Strongholds are those mind, heart and spirit hang-ups, attitudes, sin uses to lure us away from who we are in Him (2Cor.10).  Where do they come from and can they be lifted from us?

Back to Jericho.  Its inhabitants heard about the Hebrews coming their way.  The same Hebrews, whose God opened the Red Sea for them to cross.  They locked their gates, afraid of them. (There’s a parallel after Jesus’ Resurrection when the disciples were locked in an upper room ‘for fear of the Jews (Jn.20:19).’ Jericho was the first symbol of a stronghold the Hebrews faced in their beginning trek into the Promised Land.  It would be one of many.  They were to take them while they were on the way.  This is just one example of the kind of spiritual meaning their physical experiences would give us as individual believers growing in the Lord. And, it was “While they were on their way…” applying to us as well ‘while we are on our way’ from one moment to the next.

What does this mean for us?  When we first accepted Jesus there were issues, attitudes, we had to face as we began our walk with the Lord.  What happens in our daily life “While we are on the way?”  We’ll get into that.  But consider that they were to traverse the wilderness before they could enter the Promised Land.  That points to the wilderness of the world in which we live and traverse every day. Just as there were many strongholds to be taken in Judea, there are even more in the human heart.  Another thing about the Jericho event is Joshua was probably speculating a variety of his own strategies for taking Jericho but God met him on the way and gave him His plan.   

So, Jericho (Joshua 6) and all the fortresses the Hebrews would face, were symbols of the attitude replacement plan a relationship with the Lord means for us.  Perhaps we are going through a dry spell or we seem stalled in our tracks or frozen by circumstance. That’s why it’s necessary we ask ourselves “What walls, attitudes, do I have locking my heart for fear of intrusion by what is going on around me?”  Could it be fear of losing my job, getting along with a neighbor or a boss or people I avoid on purpose?  Maybe a breaking relationship or sickness or a loss of vitality.  Perhaps I fear my inability to give a right answer if someone asks me a puzzling question.  Maybe I have a challenging time getting along with people who don’t agree with me.  

But the issue of attitudinal strongholds goes much farther back; right to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Gen.3).  When we see the devil tempting Adam and Eve he was very direct.  He offered the idea that they could analyze any situation and solve it without God’s counsel.  There in the middle of the Garden was a good example, the tree upon which grew a forbidden fruit in the middle of the Garden, forbidden for a reason.  If they ate it God warned them they would die.  It was the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the only off bounds tree in the Garden. 

Yet, they chose to eat some because Eve was willing to listen to the devil who told them they wouldn’t die if they ate it.  After all, as Eve assessed, consistent with God, it was pleasing to the eye (appearance), good for food (health) and desirable for gaining wisdom (perfect decision making).  Not only that but Adam was right there and did not object.  He just stood by and watched.  Could he have possibly thought that if she ate and didn’t die then he could eat it too?  She ate. She didn’t die. She gave him some.  He ate anyway, knowing as Eve did, that God had warned them not to.  But being created first, he had the responsibility to look after her and didn’t.  He fell for the temptation.

They did die, but not the way they expected.  They were stunned by what was taking place inside them.  They had what they wanted, but in a moment’s flash each found themselves alone in an unknown internal dark valley without God.  It was knowledge alright, but without God.  They lost contact with Him.  They were spiritually naked.  Their mind, heart and spirit were thrown out of balance.  Now came the real shock, they felt empty for the first time.  Each felt alone for the first time.   To their horror they had the knowledge of good and evil but couldn’t handle it without God.  As soon as they started thinking without Him, their mind, heart and spirit lost balance and they tumbled into self-centeredness.  Sin, the devil’s spirit, took over. 

They were in a perfect environment but felt lost in it.  Knowledge was spiritual, demanding a spiritual relational perfection.  They had it, but lost it. They were spiritually hyperventilating.  There was no turning back.  Until that moment of self-absorbing choice, their one attitude, their one stronghold, was God.  Separated from God with no spiritual bag to breathe in, they found themselves each alone, pondering their condition.  It was their internal separation, feeling naked, alone, afraid, and hiding themselves from God and one another.  Without God they were personally, spiritually and relationally naked.  When God confronted them, it was then, for the first time, they felt shame, guilt, remorse and regret.  So, they tried a new stronghold, self-justification, giving a defensive reason for their behavior.  That led to another new stronghold, blame; blaming God, blaming the devil and blaming each other.  Cover-up, hiding, seeking a dark place.

With a hiding cover-up comes the multiplication of strongholds.  They put fig leaves (plural) over themselves.  They started making conclusions about their experience minus God.  They were internal conclusions used for a cover-up, covering up their feeling of inadequacy, lost self-worth and secure identity.  We’ve been doing the same ever since.  Our clothing fads, car styles, fancy neighborhoods, occupations and entertainment choices are all fig leaves and we’ve been putting fig leaves on ever since.  Fig leaves are the strongholds, the attitudes we us to cover our heart.  Adam and Eve were physically alive but numbly aware of a different kind of death, spiritual death, personal emptiness, relational emptiness, conflict and separation.   

What happened then?  God, in His mercy, made temporary clothes for them and banished them from the Garden and placed cherubim and a flaming sword to keep them away from the tree of life for a very basic reason.  If they were to eat of the tree of life they would live in aloneness, fear, blame, shame, guilt and self-justification forever. 

Sin, the devil’s spirit, had taken over.  Spiritual rebellion’s fear spread quickly.   Genesis 6:5 tells us not long after their banishment, every intention of a man’s heart was only evil all the time.  Every, only, all sums it up.  The rest of the Old Testament records the sordid details of the effect of these two persons’ deviation from God’s perfection.  Strongholds multiplied.  Then everyone, including us, put their own spin on the ones they devise.  No wonder we need the One to rid us of the many.

God was right. 

Each took fig leaves and covered themselves; external covers for internal pain.  That didn’t work either.  They were stuck out in the spiritual cold.  Since then, nothing has changed.  We still cover our fears with the fig leaves available; ‘fitting in’, status, money, clothes, fads, degrees, plaques, trophies, ethnic profiling, redefined masculinity and femininity with all its various depravities and justifying their behavior apart from God.  Add your own.

Again, they fell into themselves.  Again, the word that covers what they were experiencing is sin.  This is when sin entered the world.  That self-centering spiritual vacuum that drives a continual wedge between man and God and everyone else.  Sin drove them out into the wilderness ‘East of Eden.’  Now, even the ground we stand and live upon can become a stranger in the moment of a lightning flash, a thunder clap, a flood, a drought, an epidemic, a climatic change or even mishandling its tiniest parts.  They are ridden with suspicion, distrust and hostility toward one another.  The devil got the intrusion he wanted.  He was and is after the individual images of God.  He struck them within and then slithered into the dark cave of his eternal aloneness, now spending his entire time trying to victimize us into the same eternal aloneness. 

The lonely individual heart is where the real human problem lies.  If the world is to be changed from its fear, division and evil, it can happen only if individual hearts are changed from within from their personal fears, divisions and evil and receive the one stronghold, the Lord God, to replace all the others.  He is an eternal personal fortress against which nothing can prevail.

Therefore, the world can change but it has to happen one heart at a time, because it fell one heart at a time.  That’s our task, our mission, to introduce Jesus to the hearts of those where we live.  Our mission is to offer each heart restoration through a personal relationship with God’s Son, the Lord Jesus.  Change starts with each heart receiving Him by faith.  God is that personal and that specific.  The heart conquered, not by fear, but by love.  If we want a way to look at the process in modern terms you could call it replacement therapy, a fancy but accurate term for what the Holy Spirit produces in us, our spiritual restoration (salvation), which we are blessed to work out in a good kind of loving fear and awesome trembling, the Lord leading the way to our recovery (Php.2:12).

First, it’s got everything to do with attitude.  We’ve got to put on the shoes Adam and Eve wore, realizing our basic lostness without the Lord.  When we dress our heart with the attitude of Jesus who humbled Himself before the Father that’s the cross of faith we bear in every next moment (Mt.16:24).  This is the one stronghold Jesus has with which He was born.  He knew no other.  We are born in sin enabling us to think, feel and do anything we want.  Attitudes less than the one attitude of Jesus are what a sin-led heart manufactures to adjust to whatever any moment brings.  

Second, the devil is their instigator (Gen.3).  He’s the real enemy.  He uses the spirit of fear to harden our hearts into Godless self-confidence.   Attitudes born in fear die in fear.  They are sinful adjustments to save ourselves in any given moment.  Here’s the truth about strongholds, godless attitudes: they only save us for a lonely death.

Third, we develop a cadre of attitudes and pass them on bringing others into our fallen world.  Hebrew Scripture is full of the events, songs, poetry and experiences generationally recorded for which we can be thankful.  They help us identify our attitudinal issues.  All of them speak personally to every heart no matter the time or culture in which any person lives.

As we scan the history of Israel we see the amazing descent of mankind into the devil’s valley.  Kingdom after kingdom rose and fell due to sin and the strongholds each generation developed.  The prophets were right.  They exposed them and the religionists and political forces were threatened.  But also wonderfully exposed were the promises of God that a Savior would come, a deliverer, a heart transformer, in whom every heart could find release from the devil’s attitudinal strongholds.  In Him there was a way to live with one attitude reuniting one heart, one mind, one spirit in every next moment.  This personal relationship with the Lord restores them to Him with grace, truth and love through faith in Him; the most profound belief for the mind, the simplest trust for the heart and the most promising moments for His Spirit motivating our spirit through faith.

What we have covered is a lifetime program of replacement therapy in which every individual everywhere, regardless of ethnic background, social position, religion and occupation, can find eternal life right now.  This program has begun and continues as you share your testimony while you are on the way from one moment to the next.  “If you say with your lips Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart He is risen from the dead,” you will be personally restored to the Lord God (Rom.10:9).” Healing and sharing the Lord go hand in hand.  Like scales dropping away we shed strongholds and the One Stronghold, the Lord, with His will, His Word and His presence, becomes the saving driving power in our lives.