Today, from guest teacher Kyle Eidelman. The
stronghold in the ancient world was this fortress.
It was built on the highest and most defensible
point in the city. It had thick walls, reinforced
gates. It was designed to be impenetrable. It
was considered to be too strong to be brought
down. And Paul uses this language to talk about
the thoughts that are on repeat in our minds.
Is there a lie you've believed for so long it
just feels like who you are? I've always been
an anxious person. I'm not worthy of love. I
always mess things up. Well, those thoughts aren't
just habits. They're strongholds. The good news
is they can be torn down. Today on Living on
the Edge, Chip Ingram brings to the stage guest
teacher Kyle Eidelman for an important lesson
on keeping every thought captive and why strongholds
must fall. Here's Chip Ingram to introduce today's
guest teacher. This whole series is about something
that happens inside your mind and my mind, and
that life change actually happens, and the root
of all life change is in our thinking. And so
we need to get the truth in our mind. What I
love about Kyle's teaching in this series is
I know Kyle. He's authentic. He's real. He's
sharing real life stuff that you struggle with,
I struggle with. And then he helps us learn through
scripture and science how to put into practice
taking every thought captive so that the Spirit
of God can take the Word of God in the context
of community and see those areas that need to
change in your life and my life become a reality.
Today's message from Kyle Eidelman is titled,
Strongholds Must Fall. There are some strongholds
in your life that maybe you didn't choose. They
were handed down to you. Maybe it wasn't purposeful,
but here you are. There's some thoughts you've
been thinking that control so much of who you
are. Your emotions, your relationships, your
spiritual journey in ways that you don't fully
see are being controlled by a stronghold, a lie
that you've believed and you're living your life
by. But because of the power of Jesus and the
power of the Holy Spirit, that stronghold can
fall today. Paul writes about this in 2 Corinthians
chapter 10. He says, for though we live in the
world, we do not wage war as the world does.
So there is a war we're a part of, may not seem
like it, it may not feel like it. You might be
treating your life like it's on a playground,
but it's really on a battleground. And the weapons
we fight with are not the weapons of the world.
On the contrary, the weapons we fight with, they
have divine power to demolish strongholds, these
spiritual weapons that we've been given. So we
demolish arguments and every pretension that
sets itself up against the knowledge of God.
And here it is, we take captive every thought
and we make it obedient to Christ. And so we're
in this series called Every Thought Captive.
And what we're learning together is that our
thoughts shape our lives. They determine so much
of who we are and God will transform us. when
we align our thoughts with him. How do we do
that? Well, we take our thoughts captive. It
doesn't just mean we stop thinking certain things.
It means we identify thoughts we've been thinking
and we wrestle them to the ground and we interrogate
them and we ask ourselves some questions about
the thoughts we've been thinking. Where did that
thought come from? Why do I think this way? What's
the result of this thought in my life? Who do
I know that maybe thought this way where I picked
up on it from them? And we start to interrogate
our thoughts so that we can take them captive.
Because otherwise, our thoughts form these neural
pathways that become strongholds. And that's
the word Paul uses here as a word picture. A
stronghold. And in ancient days, that word picture
would have been immediately understood. A stronghold.
In the ancient world was this fortress. It was
built on the highest and most defensible point
in the city. It had thick walls, reinforced gates.
It was designed to be impenetrable. It was considered
to be too strong to be brought down. And Paul
uses this language to talk about the thoughts
that are on repeat in our minds. These lies that
we are living our lives by. Strongholds that
are so entrenched. And so fortified, they seem
impossible to defeat. And so what we're gonna
do in the next few minutes is we're gonna diagnose
some strongholds in your life and in my life.
And I'm gonna spend a little bit more time doing
some diagnostic work than I might usually do.
Because the thing about strongholds is they've
been a part for many of us. They've been a part
of our lives for so long. We have a hard time
seeing them. We have a hard time identifying
them. They just feel a part of who we are. So
first let's talk about some. characteristics
of a stronghold, how you know you're dealing
with a stronghold. One, they feel unassailable.
You know you're dealing with a stronghold, but
you'll use language like this. You'll say, nah,
it's just the way I am. It's just how I feel.
I've always been this way. It's just how I think.
And when you find yourself using identity language
to excuse a behavior or routine in your life,
it's a good chance you're dealing with a stronghold.
So here's what it looks like. You say, I know
I shouldn't worry so much, but you got to understand,
I've always been an anxious person. It's just
the way I'm wired. Stronghold. I know I shouldn't
be such a slave to some of my sexual desires,
but I just feel like that's the way God made
me. Stronghold. When you hear yourself making
statements like this, you are identifying a stronghold.
It's something that's become so entrenched in
your identity that changing it feels impossible.
It's just who you are. Second characteristic
of a stronghold is they're built on lies. A stronghold
is a lie that we live our lives by. And so every
stronghold has at its foundation, a lie that
we've bought into. And I'm gonna give you just
three categories of lies that tend to make up
strongholds. These are broad categories and I'll
give you some examples for each category of lies.
There are lies about God. He doesn't really care
about me. Look, if you believe this lie, if this
thought is a stronghold for you, I mean, it's
gonna affect your spiritual life in every way.
If you are convinced that that, yeah, there's
a God, but he doesn't care about me. Or if God
loved me, my life would be easier. Or I've messed
up too much for God to forgive me. So there's
these lies about God. Another category would
be lies about yourself. Just thoughts that you've
thought about yourself so much, it's created
the stronghold. Like I'm not worthy of love.
And maybe that comes from some abandonment or
some rejection when you were young and that got
established in your life. And now that stronghold,
I mean, you filter almost everything through
this. Lie, I'm not worthy of love. Or I always
mess things up or I'm too broken to be used by
God. Stronghold of shame. Another category of
lies would be lies about life. I have to control
everything or it'll fall apart. Like if it's
not done my way, it won't be done. I've got to
be in charge of everything. And the thought of
you not controlling something. Just has created
all kinds of anxiety. My desires are meant to
be satisfied. I wouldn't have this desire if
it didn't have to be satisfied. It's just how
I feel. I can't trust anyone. You have these
lies that have become a stronghold in your life.
Now look, the enemy is brilliant at mixing just
enough truth with lies to make it believable.
So yeah, you've made mistakes. That's true. What's
not true is that that means you're worthless.
Yeah, life can be difficult. That's true. Life
can be really hard. What's not true is it doesn't
mean God doesn't care about you. And yeah, people
will disappoint you for sure. They'll disappoint
you. That doesn't mean that nobody can be trusted.
And here's what a stronghold will do. A stronghold
will take a kernel of truth and then build a
fortress of lies around it. Third characteristic
of a stronghold is they resist truth. One of
the ways you know you're up against a stronghold
is you hear a truth that should be freeing and
instead it feels threatening. And so you hear
these truths about God's provision and you're
threatened by it. You're immediately defensive
and you're like, well, that's not how it's gonna
work for me. That's not gonna apply that way
in my life. Or you hear somebody give a testimony
about God's faithfulness and you immediately
say, well, he can't work things out for the good
in my life and things are too broken. It's too
late for that. You hear God, God's words speak
on a subject that's really personal, like sexuality
or money. And you're immediately defensive about
it. You immediately resist. That's how you know
you're up against a stronghold. Truth should
feel liberating. The truth is what sets you free.
Truth should feel liberating. So when truth feels
threatening, stronghold. It's because it's coming
up against this stronghold in your life. Four,
they govern our behavior. Strongholds don't just
affect how you think, they determine what you
do. You'll find yourself acting out in ways that
you don't even want to. You're not even sure
where it came from. And it's obvious it's against
what's best for you, but you're still doing it.
And that's because you've got this stronghold
that needs to be torn down because you're trying
to deal with behavior modification to change
your behaviors. But this stronghold, this way
of thinking that has just gotten reinforced again
and again is what's dictating the direction that
you're going. And so if you've got a stronghold
of rejection in your life, well, you'll end up
doing things that make no sense. Like you'll
sabotage really good relationships because you're
expecting to be rejected. You're expecting to
be abandoned and you're not gonna put yourself
in a vulnerable place to be disappointed in that
way because of this stronghold. If you've got
the stronghold of, then you'll micromanage everything
and create the very chaos you were so desperate
to prevent. If you've got a stronghold of unworthiness,
it'll show up in your life by you working yourself
to death, trying to earn love or by giving up
completely because what's the point? You're just
gonna blow it anyway. And Paul, I think understood
all of this. I think it's what he's talking about
in Romans 7 when he says, I don't understand
what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do,
but what I hate, I do. He's recognizing that
sometimes his behavior and his actions go against
what he wants. Why? It's because there is this
stronghold in his life, in my life, that we are
living from without even recognizing it or knowing
it. And neuroscience helps us understand this.
So this is how neuroscience and strongholds in
scripture come together. What Paul calls a stronghold,
neuroscience would call a neural pathway. That
your mind has some trails that have been established.
And the first time a thought goes through that
trail, it's not gonna weigh bushes and trees
and clearing space, but every thought you think
is like a new hiker going down that trail. And
the more thoughts you think, the more times you
think it, the more hikers go through that trail
and eventually that trail becomes a road, becomes
a highway because the more a thought is repeated,
the more that neural pathway is established or
scripturally, the stronger that stronghold becomes.
You're listening to Living on the Edge with guest
teacher Kyle Eidelman. There's more just ahead,
so stay with us. Today we continue our journey
through a fundamental series called God's Dream
for Your Life. And if you've missed any part
of this study or want to find more Bible lessons,
just go online to livingontheedge .org. There
you'll discover a wide array of teaching content,
downloadable materials, and daily discipleship
with Chip Ingram. Find it all at livingontheedge
.org. Well, now let's get back to our lesson
with guest teacher Kyle Eidelman. Dr. Donald
Hebb, a neuroscientist, discovered a principle
that's known as Hebb's Law, to help us understand
this. Hebb's Law would say that neurons that
fire together wire together, meaning that every
time you think the same thought, you are strengthening
a neural pathway. And if you think that thought
enough times, it's where almost every thought
you have gets sent down that pathway. So let's
say... You have this thought that gets seeded
in your mind, maybe before you even remember,
that says, I'm not enough. I'm not enough. And
you think that thought and you think it again
and you think it 10 ,000 times. And now that
thought has created a highway that is affecting
everything you do. every relationship you have.
It's affecting all the emotions that you're trying
to monitor and understand. It's all coming from
this one superhighway that God established. And
so I wanna spend some time just identifying some
of those strongholds. And so as I talk through
this next section, what I'd love to do is just
challenge you to identify one or two strongholds
in your life, some lies that you've believed,
maybe you don't recognize it as such, but just
some things that have been determining the direction
of your life, some thoughts that you think subconsciously
that you're gonna really pay attention to. I
just wanna talk about where these strongholds
come from as a way to help us identify them in
our own lives. First, they come from early and
frequent thinking, early and often thinking.
When you are young, your brain, my brain, is
when it's the most plastic, it's the most moldable.
And there's some strongholds that were passed
down to us that we never wanted and we didn't
intentionally choose. Second is cognitive reinforcement.
This is how some strongholds in your life have
been formed. It's your instinct and my instinct
to surround ourselves with voices and opinions
that reinforce thoughts that we've had for a
while. Cognitive reinforcement or sometimes confirmation
bias would be another way to talk about this
is what we naturally do when we start looking
for information and interpretation that reinforces
a thought that we've had. And we stay away from
information and interpretation that might challenge
a thought that we've been thinking. So, okay,
let's say the thought that you've had is people
always let me down. If that's a stronghold in
your life, then confirmation bias will lead you
to, in a relationship, look for ways that that's
true while ignoring ways it's not. Thirdly is
emotional association. Our thoughts are strongly
connected to emotions when it comes to forming
lasting patterns. This is why thoughts that you
have during a time of trauma or rejection or
intense loss or intense grief will create, without
you even knowing it, will create a stronghold.
A thought that you have during an intense time
of loss or grief or something traumatic will
create a stronghold. Even though you haven't
thought it repeatedly, it gets connected to that
emotion and that pathway gets established. And
so one painful rejection can create a stronghold
that says, I'm not lovable. And it will have
a grip on your heart. One traumatic event can
build a stronghold that says, people just don't
understand me. Nobody understands me. And it'll
cause you to build walls around your life. Fourth
is generational patterns. Some strongholds are
passed down through families, not genetically,
but through repeated patterns of thinking, of
speaking, of believing. And it just gets transmitted
from child to parent, from child to parent. This
is why some of you, you said to yourself, I can
tell you one thing, I'm not gonna handle stress
the way my mom does or the way my dad does. And
yet when you're stressed, you find yourself doing
it. There's an old illustration, it's been around
for a while, that I think perfectly illustrates
what it looks like when strongholds get passed
down generationally. The story goes like this,
that there was a young couple. on their first
Thanksgiving together, the new bride was preparing
the Thanksgiving turkey and the husband was watching
as she did it. And he watched as she cut off
both ends of the turkey, stuck it in the pan
and then put it in the oven. The husband says
to the wife, why did you do that? Why'd you cut
up both ends of the turkey? It's perfectly good
turkey. She said, I don't know. That's just how
you do it. That's how you cook a turkey. That's
how my mom always cooked a turkey. You cut off
both ends, put it in the pan, stick it in the
oven. And the husband thought, well, that's really
weird. but maybe he's wrong. Like maybe that
is how you're supposed to cook a turkey. And
so he called his mother -in -law and said to
his mother -in -law, when you cook a turkey,
do you cut off both ends of the turkey before
putting it in the oven? The mother -in -law said,
well, yeah, that's how you do it. That's how
you cook a turkey. You cut off both ends. Why
do you do it that way? The mother -in -law says,
well, I don't know exactly, but that's the way
my mom always did it. So the next day he calls
grandma and says, grandma, when you cook a turkey,
how do you cook the turkey? Do you cut off both
ends and put it in a pan and stick it in the
oven? And the grandma laughed and said, well,
yeah, that's how I cook the turkey because my
oven is really small. And so I had to have a
small pan. So I had to make the turkey fit the
pan to fit in the oven. And you've got three
generations of turkey cookers wasting all kinds
of perfectly good turkey. And this is where some
of us are. Ezekiel 18 though says that these
generational these generational strongholds can
be broken. And it's one of my favorite things
about being a pastor in this church is almost
every week I witnessed it of someone saying,
by God's grace and with the help of the Holy
Spirit, it stops with me. It stops with me. A
person recognizes the way their family has operated
under a stronghold of fear, under a stronghold
of addiction, under a stronghold of control or
anger or rejection. And they say, not anymore.
It stops with me. And part of this is understanding
the fifth factor, and that is it's spiritual
warfare at its heart, spiritual warfare. The
Bible calls our enemy the father of lies in John
8. His job from the time you were born is to
get you to buy into a few of these lies. Because
if he can get you to believe this lie and establish
a stronghold in your heart by the thoughts you
think, then his job is done. He doesn't really
have to do anything else. The stronghold will
do what the stronghold does. Think about this.
If Satan can get you to think, God doesn't really
care about me. If he can get you to say that
out loud and think that over your own life. then
it affects everything. It keeps you from prayer.
It keeps you from believing God's promises. It
keeps you from having a relationship with God.
If he can just get you to focus on a few failures
or inadequacies or insecurities and convince
you to believe this thought, you're not worthy
of love, then he can create a fortress around
your life that will sabotage you from all the
good God wants you to have and walking with him
and sharing life with others. And so this is
why when we talk about taking our thoughts captive,
we're not so much talking about psychology, we're
talking about spiritual warfare. So what is a
stronghold in your life that needs to fall? Can
you identify it? I was at a men's conference,
speaking at a men's conference a few years ago,
and I sat down at a table with a group of men
and we were focusing on this idea of strongholds
and trying to identify them specifically looking
at these. strongholds that we'd had since we
were perhaps boys that were affecting our lives
now as men. And we just went around the table
to share the strongholds. And so Joe went first
and Joe said, I didn't think it was okay to be
sad. And he grew up in a home where the expectation
was to be happy no matter what, all the time,
real men aren't sad. Being sad is for weak people.
And so when his family dog died and he cried,
he remembers his dad teasing him. And now Joe,
because of the stronghold of it's okay not to
be sad, he deals with lots of loneliness in his
life. Why? Because when he's sad, it doesn't
feel like it's okay to share that with anybody.
So he keeps his sadness to himself. And that's
really isolating. And it's really lonely. You're
listening to Living on the Edge with guest teacher
Kyle Eidelman and a lesson titled Strongholds
Must Fall. Chip Ingram will join us to share
some of his own thoughts on today's lesson in
just a moment. A stronghold is a lie you've believed
so long it starts to feel like the truth. Maybe
it was passed down through your family. Maybe
it was planted in a moment of rejection or loss.
But here's what Kyle made unmistakably clear
today. Because of the power of Jesus and the
Holy Spirit, that stronghold can fall. And if
you're one of the faithful friends who already
gives to support Living on the Edge, Thank you.
Sincerely. It's because of your partnership that
teaching like this reaches people who are quietly
carrying strongholds they've never told anyone
about. You may never know this side of heaven
the lives your generosity has touched. What you're
doing matters deeply, and we're grateful for
you. And if you've been on the fence about giving,
today is a great day to join this team. Your
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Well, now here's Chip with some final thoughts.
Man, that is a subject I never get tired of digging
into. Today, my buddy Kyle taught about strongholds.
Those fortified lives we've believed for so long,
they actually become a part of our identity.
The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10 that
we have divine weapons to demolish these strongholds.
They are not impossible to defeat. You know you're
dealing with a stronghold when you start saying
things like, well, you know, that's just the
way I am or I've always been this way. When you
start using identity language to excuse patterns
in your life, that tells you it's a stronghold.
Here's the good news. These strongholds can be
broken. You can be the generation that breaks
the pattern. Ask God to help you identify. What
are the strongholds in your life? And even more
importantly, what's the lie behind them? I have
to tell you, for years, I was a prisoner of pleasing
people growing up in an alcoholic family until
I identified the real issue behind my workaholism
and pleasing people was a lie that I didn't measure
up unless other people gave me approval. That
was a stronghold. You have yours. I have mine.
I'm here to tell you, they can be broken. I'm
Dave Drewy. Tomorrow, Kyle Eidelman continues
with the next step after identifying your strongholds.
How do you actually begin to tear them down?
We'll find out next time here on Living on the
Edge. Today's program is produced and sponsored
by Living on the Edge.