7/64 Deeper Cleansing as Sons and Daughters of God
We have been tracing the concept that we all come out of our own spiritual slavery to ‘Egypt’ when we 
become Jesus Followers. We all begin messed up – we are not born perfect, Psalm 51:5.
- Everyone has a system of personal strongholds
As we have said in past posts, the vast majority of Christians come into God’s kingdom with worldly mindsets, ingrained bad habits, deep set judgements, biases, undealt with hurts, old forgiveness issues and other assorted heart stuff. These ‘fortified structures’ of false beliefs are what Paul refers to as ‘strongholds’.
We inherited some of these strongholds through our foundations from Adam and Eve. We acquired both God-given traits and after the Fall, their self-centred, independent Sin-nature. We then added generations of ethnic, cultural, national and historical attitudes and thinking patterns. Next, we developed more complex networks of attitudes through our family of origin (FOO) traditions, their values and expectations. Finally, we personally added more ‘bricks’ to our personal strongholds by our own faulty choices and behaviours. What a mess!
- Our generational inheritances are both Godly and ungodly.
If we have Godly parents or ancestors, the “blessings” will flow to the next generations as well as those who practice ungodly behaviours.
- So we all come into the Kingdom with ‘baggage’
We can develop both God approved strong-holds as well as cursed, ungodly demonic strongholds. It’s good news that we also have an angelic network around us, aiming to protect and serve us believers. Some people have seen their angels but we are not to seek them out (Hebrews 1:14, Matthew 18:10).
God’s way of dealing with the un-godly strongholds is described in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5: “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.”
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
4. Our heart and spirit are affected by circumstances.
Believe it or not, our past still affects us today. Our heart is like a sponge; it soaks up hurts and wrong motivations when we are young. Our parents are supposed to guard our vulnerable child heart. However, if they were not well parented themselves, their heart hasn’t been guarded either. We can trace this all the way back to the Garden and Adam and Eve’s sin.
Question – how is this different than what the world believes?
The Bible says that if we raise children properly, then they will have the underlying skills to deal with Life in a Godly way (Proverbs 22:6). Of course the opposite is also true – when we get emotionally or spiritually injured in some way as a child, we will be stunted in our growth.
5. The Elephant Story: Young elephants are trained with ropes around their legs to keep them in their place. Even when they are grown-up, strong elephants, they still ‘feel’ as though the same rope holds them. They are well conditioned to do as their masters dictate through their baby elephant beliefs about their bondage.
If a bumblebee is dropped into an open glass, it will never see the means of escape because it will try to find ways of escape through the sides of the glass – even if the top is open! How do these truths illustrate our own strongholds?
Our mind and heart can still keep their ‘ropes’ from childhood and family belief systems, long past being a child. We are still controlled by what we believe is ‘truth’, even when it is long past its due date.
Our personal growth aim is not to help grown-up ‘elephants’ cope better at living with the chain around their leg, but to come to realize that the chain is no longer there because of Jesus’ work! This is our inheritance in Him!
6. The progression of stronghold power:
A hurt heart —> makes a judgment —> becomes an angry heart —> turns into an unforgiving heart, bitter —> some faulty coping methods develop —> we believe the lies from the enemy —> spiritual bondages results —> other problems, including physical illness begin to manifest. We talked about strongholds in our earlier posts.
7. The heart can make a ‘friend’ with the wrong source of help.
If children aren’t healed or comforted in Godly ways, their hearts can make ‘spiritual friends’ that seem to provide comfort or security. We could also describe these as coping methods. For children, this often includes fantasy, withdrawal, rescuing, etc. The real problems begin when we believe the lies that go with the “friend” and allow the demonic to help keep these coping methods in place and providing so-called “comfort” when the need is gone.
To get free, we need to surrender these ‘friends’ and the heart lies that keep them there. We need to learn to deal with the demonic on a heart level.
8. The answer comes when we renew our mind in Christ, Romans 12:2.
The mind is not instantly changed when we come into the kingdom of God. In fact, deliberate effort is needed to tear down twisted beliefs, faulty filers and misinformation that have formed these sorts of strongholds in our lives. We do not have to think all the thoughts that come into our minds! We do have the power of the Holy Spirit to change – the same resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead and brought Him into the presence of our Father in Heaven is available for us today!
Very few of us were taught how to handle the traumatic events from our childhood in healthy ways. All of us have learned faulty coping methods, such as denial or bravado. They are ways to keep the trauma from ‘leaking out’. Remember part of “Soteria” is for this healing to happen for every one of us.
Susanne Fengler, Blog Author
www.christianfoundations.jesus-treeoflife.info
Tags: growth, strongholds
Filed under: From Slave to Sonship
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