Unseen Battles (3)
Unseen Battles • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Demolishing Strongholds
Demolishing Strongholds
For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds,
lest Satan should take advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices.
It is obvious Paul and God want us to be aware of the devil’s schemes. His schemes and tactics have never changed. What he did in the garden is the same thing he is doing today. His entire strategy is dependent on deception.
Deception is a lie that is believed. Someone can tell you a lie, the devil can lie to you but once you believe the lie, you fall into deception. Satan lied to Eve. He twisted the Word of God and she believed him. That deception caused her to disobey God.
The building of a stronghold is a lie that becomes deception. The deception leads to thought patterns. The thought patterns lead to behavior. The behaviors become habits. The habits become cycles and the cycles become bondage.
The enemy starts with a lie and each brick that builds the wall is another lie. You can be a Christian and still be in spiritual bondage because of strongholds in your mind. Many Christians have been in spiritual bondage for so long that they begin to believe that is just the way they are meant to be. They do not see a way out or see any chance of freedom. But for many, the greatest obstacle to freedom is pride. We do not want to admit we have been deceived. We do not want to admit we struggle with things. We refuse to recognize the stronghold that is keeping us from reaching our full potential in Christ.
For others, they have become so accustomed to living in bondage, they are afraid of being free. They are not even sure they want to be free. They have relied on fear, anxiety, depression, and anger for so long, they have forgotten what it is like to be free and the thought of change is more terrifying than staying bound.
Do you want to be made well?
In John 5, Jesus comes to a man at the pool of Bethesda. The man has been lame for 38 years. He spent every day lying near the pool but never getting healed. He saw countless people get in the water and be healed but he stayed lame. Jesus comes and asks him, “Do you want to be made well?”. Rather than say he wants to be healed, the man begins telling Jesus all the reasons he cannot be healed. This is just like so many in bondage. Jesus is standing and asking, “Do you want to be free? Do you want to be free from addiction? Do you want to be free of anxiety, worry, fear, depression, anger, unforgiveness? DO YOU WANT TO BE MADE WELL?”
And all we do is listen to the lies of the enemy and begin to give all the reasons we cannot be free.
“I have always been like this. My parents had anxiety and anger issues, so it is just the way I am. I can’t help being afraid. I can’t help but worry.” Sometimes we have more faith in medication than we do in God. Maybe you have been on anxiety medicine and you are afraid if you stop, you will fall back into greater anxiety or deeper depression. But what if God wants to release you from all of that? Will you let him or will you let the fear of the unknown stop you?
It is time to break the chains of bondage and tear down the walls of strongholds!
Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.
Jesus did not set you free from sin just to leave you in spiritual bondage. He does not just give you a partial freedom. The freedom Jesus offers is complete freedom.
The language Paul uses when he says “the pulling down of strongholds” does not convey the message of just knocking over a wall. It means to utterly demolish. There will not even be a brick remaining.
The key to tearing down strongholds is not simply positive thinking or working on behaviors. Behaviors are just symptoms, you must get to the root, the lie you believed that Satan uses to keep you bound.
It does not always feel like we have power over the enemy to defeat him. You do not have to defeat the enemy. He is already defeated. The Bible just tells you to “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” As a child of God, the only power the enemy has over you is deception. He can only take the ground you give him. You have the Holy Spirit of God living on the inside of you and Satan is no match for the power of God.
The key to destroying the lies that have kept you bound is to replace those lies with the truth of the Word of God. Just like deception is not just a lie but a lie you believe, they will not be torn down simply by reading the Word, you have to believe the Word and hold to it.
Let’s attack some of these strongholds
Depression - most depression rests on three deceptions. Depression is very real and can attack anyone. To come out of that depression requires you to recognize and reject the lies the enemy is telling you and respond with the Word of God.
3 Lies of Depression
I am unloved
I am unwanted
I have no purpose
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
God loves you. God wanted you so much that he was willing to sacrifice His Son for you. And you have a purpose. Your purpose is to experience the eternal life that Christ has to offer.
Breaking depression is not always as simple as quoting a verse or thinking happy thoughts. It goes much deeper than that. The way you break depression is a renewing of your mind. It is not just knowing what God says but to allow His truth to penetrate the walls of your mind and to allow Him to transform your way of thinking.
It may sound too simple but that is the enemy telling you it can’t be that easy. He wants you to believe your freedom is much more difficult to attain than it is. That is how he keeps you bound.
The Bible tells us that the shield of faith is our defense against the fiery darts of the enemy. His fiery darts are the lies he tries to get you to believe. It is your faith in Christ that stops those lies from becoming deception.
Anxiety and Fear
When you live life full of anxiety and fear, you have believed the lie that something bad is always waiting around the next corner. That is why fear and anxiety go hand in hand. You are afraid of what might happen so you become anxious, always expecting the worst. You are not able to enjoy the blessings of God because you are always afraid of the next bad thing to happen.
People who live in fear are also huge worriers. Worry is a symptom of fear. Fear is the root. If you want to get rid of worry, you have to cut it off at the root and the root is fear.
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
This verse of Scripture makes it very clear where fear comes from. Fear is a spirit and it does not come from God. If it does not come from God, where does it come from?
Fear, at its core, is a distrust in God. It is a belief that God will let you down. Fear tells you that God will not take care of you. Fear will tell you if Satan wants to attack you or something bad is coming your way, God will just step aside and let it happen. Our God is a good God and He takes care of His children.
Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’
Much of the fear in the life of a believer is tied to legalism. The lie is that God is against you and is always looking for a reason to turn his back on you. The lie tells you that you are not good enough, that you didn’t read your Bible enough this week, or that you missed church too many times, that you did not give enough, that you messed up too many times and now God wants to punish you.
Legalism seeks a way for man to do what only God can do. Legalism makes your salvation about what you can do rather than what Christ has already done. Legalism makes you think you have to earn the love of God and always makes you think you have not done enough.
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
We cannot earn the love, mercy, grace, and favor of God. You did nothing to earn your salvation. Christ did all the work. All you had to do is believe and receive his grace. We could never do enough good works to earn salvation. We do not do good works to be saved. We do them because we are saved.
Grace does not mean we can live however we want. God still calls us to live holy lives. But when we do mess up, grace is there to pick up where we left off.
The greatest fear for people who are fearful is the fear of death. They are always afraid that something is going to kill them. Why are they so afraid of dying? They are afraid of having to face God. That is because legalism has taught us that if we haven’t done enough or if we have messed up too much, we will face the wrath of God. That fear causes you to constantly question your salvation. Today you are saved but tomorrow you might not be, then the next day you are saved again but if you mess up, then what? This thought pattern leads to shame and anxiety and eventually self-hatred. You think of yourself as a failure because you mess up so eventually you quit trying.
We should live holy lives. We should desire to please God, not out of fear of punishment or losing our salvation but out of love and devotion to him. We serve him out of a thankful heart. But you should not live your life always questioning your salvation and wondering if God is out to get you.
The reason you live in fear is because you have not truly received and surrendered to the love of God.
1 John 4:18 “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.”
John 1:12 tells us that as many as received him, he gave the power to become sons of God. You should be able to say, “I know I am saved. I know if I died today, I would be with Christ not because of what I have done but because I have placed my faith in what He has done.”
The Lord is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; Of whom shall I be afraid?
The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?
Torment
Torment - voices, nightmares, sense of darkness, intrusive thought
Can seem like demonic possession and at times can be. Most often, in the life of a believer, it is the enemy tormenting your mind with the lie that he has over you. Many believers are terrified of demons. That is because Satan has convinced you that he has power over you, that you are powerless against him, that he can harm you any time he wants and there is nothing you can do about it. This fear often comes from a Hollywood understanding of the demonic and not a biblical understanding.
Smith Wigglesworth story
How would most Christians handle that situation. Most would scream in fear and would probably not sleep for days.
The enemy uses torment to cause you to panic. That panic, if left unchecked will lead to anxiety and fear and you will create more torment in your mind.
Paul talks about being tormented by a “messenger of Satan.” He says he asks God 3 times to remove it and God replies, “My grace is all you need.”
Your power over the enemy does not rely on your own strength. It relies on the grace and power of God. If you belong to Christ you are a new creation, a child of the Most High God and indwelt with the Spirit of God. The enemy is limited in what he can do to you. That is why he uses the tactic of making you believe he is stronger than he is. But if the Spirit of God lives inside of you, you can look him in the eye and declare, “Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world. Satan, you are under my feet because Christ has given me the authority to trample on Scorpions.” You can stand firm and say, “You come at me with your fiery darts but I come in the name of the LORD. You do not have authority over me.”
Lies vs truth
Lie - you are supposed to be depressed and anxious
Truth - Romans 16:20 “And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.”
Lie - You should be afraid. Everything is bad and getting worse. Nothing will ever work out for you
Truth - 2 Corinthians 3:18 “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
God is not taking you from defeat to defeat, from letdown to letdown, from disappointment to disappointment. He is taking you from glory to glory as you are being made into the image of Christ. You may be in a valley now but that does not mean you have to stay there. The valley is just a place of rest between two mountain tops.
Lie - you will always be sick. It is just part of life
Truth - Isaiah 53:5 “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.”
Lie - You will always struggle, you will always have these thoughts. You cannot change who you are.
Truth - 2 Corinthians 3:17 “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
You were never meant to walk in bondage. You are made to be free in the name of Jesus Christ.
Trade the strongholds built on the lies of Satan for the truth of God. Let God be your stronghold.
Psalm 103:5 “Who satisfies your mouth with good things, So that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”
Psalm 91:7 “A thousand may fall at your side, And ten thousand at your right hand; But it shall not come near you.”
Psalm 18:2 “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”
Psalm 118:17 “I shall not die, but live, And declare the works of the Lord.”
Prayer of Deliverance: Heavenly Father, I know you are good and all good things come from you. I know you love me and gave your only Son as a ransom for my sins. I believe you are for me and not against me. Your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. Today I ask you to renew my mind. I rebuke the lies of the enemy that have held me bound and cling to the truth of your Word in the name of Jesus Christ. Thank you Father for delivering me from the snares of the enemy. I place my life in your hands. In he name of Jesus Christ, who is the King of all kings and the rock of my salvation, Amen.
