This is the Chip Ingram Sermon Podcast, brought
to you by Living on the Edge. In this podcast,
you'll hear Chip's teaching unedited and from
beginning to end. Now here's our guest teacher,
Kyle Eidelman, with a message 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 rustle 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 when
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 gotta understand,
I've always been an anxious person. It's just
the way I'm wired. Stronghold. I know I shouldn't
be so critical. I can't help it. It's just the
way my mind works. 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. I don't feel like I can't really do anything
about it. 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. 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 right. 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's word 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 control, 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. 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 clear in 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. 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, 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 super
highway 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. And it helps you understand,
like right now, why you respond the way you respond.
Like why you react the way you react, why anger
surfaces the way it surfaces, why you feel like
you're at the mercy of your desires the way you're
at the mercy of your desires. It's because of
some ways your thinking was shaped when you were
young. Proverbs 22 verse six says, train up a
child in the way he should go and when he's old,
he won't depart from it. It's not a promise,
it's a principle that's generally true. And when
taught, Proverbs 22 is usually taught, rightly
so, in a positive context. but you can flip it
and it's also true negatively. Like that foundation
that's built when a child is young has a way
of holding it, keeping a grip on that child as
they get older. And so if when you're young,
you're trained and you're taught, you can't trust
anyone. Well, it's gonna be really difficult
to break that as you get older. You have to be
perfect to be loved. You can't control your emotions.
This is how you express your anger. Like all
of those things, are strongholds that are oftentimes
passed down to us when we're young. They literally
shape us and structure our brains and they need
to fall. 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. So if the
stronghold is people are always gonna let me
down and you're married, what you're gonna find
yourself doing is just subconsciously, you're
not doing it on purpose, but you're gonna look
for ways that that's true. You're gonna look
for evidence. See, I knew that this was true.
The neural pathway in your mind is gonna look
for evidence that reinforces that thought and
it's gonna ignore the examples that would challenge
it. And so part of taking your thoughts captive
and my thoughts captive is to recognize how this
is happening. Social media has intensified cognitive
reinforcement because algorithms, essentially
what they are, algorithms pay attention to what
you're thinking and reinforce it. That's what
an algorithm does. So if your thinking is, I
am so overwhelmed, the world is falling apart,
your algorithm has picked up on that, even if
you don't know that's what you're thinking. It's
picked up on your anxiety. And you know what
it does? It gives you a lot more reasons to think
the world is falling apart. It fills, your algorithm
gets filled up with evidence that says, yep,
you're right, the world is falling apart. If
the stronghold in your life is everyone is against
me, I'm a victim, everybody's against me. Then
the algorithm has picked up on that and it's
just gonna reinforce that thinking. It's gonna
give you all kinds of evidence of yep, everybody's
against you and here's communities that you can
be a part of where everybody's against them too.
Strongholds only get stronger when we don't pay
attention to what our thoughts are thinking about,
to the content that we're exposed to. 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.
That 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. And I'm not gonna be angry. I'm not gonna
react in anger the way that I experienced growing
up. But when you get angry, it's what you find
yourself doing. And I'm not gonna turn to some
substance when I feel stressed out or overwhelmed.
And yet when you feel stressed out or overwhelmed,
you find yourself doing that. These generational
patterns. There's an old illustration. It's been
around for a while. But 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. 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,
why? I don't know exactly, but that's the way
my mom always did it. So the next day he calls
grandma, says, grandma, when you cook a turkey,
how do you cook the turkey? Do you cut off both
ends and put it in the 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. That you've received some strongholds
that are like twisted family heirlooms. Here's
grandma's china. Here's your dad's watch. Here's
three generations of trust issues. Good luck.
It's just gotten passed down from one generation
to the next. Somewhere back in your family line,
someone started believing a lie. They didn't
mean to. They didn't even know they were doing
it at the time. They certainly didn't realize
they'd transferred it onto you. But maybe it
was because of their circumstances or maybe because
of their pain or maybe because of their limited
perspective. But that lie got passed down from
one generation to the next. Ezekiel 18 though
says that these generational patterns These generational
strongholds can be broken. And it's one of my
favorite things about being a pastor in this
church. As almost every week I witness 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 of 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. And Joe deals with anger
because of this stronghold. Why? Well, because
what he learned as a boy is it's not okay to
be sad. Being sad is a masculine. But it's okay
to be angry. And so every time he's sad, it shows
up as anger and he's been angry a lot. Around
the table we go, Mike identifies his stronghold.
I thought of women as objects. Mike's parents
divorced when he was six and he would stay at
his father's house. He had easy access to his
dad's collection of porn. He was hooked by the
time he was 11. When he got married, he thought
marriage would break that stronghold in his life,
but it didn't. Instead, what he did was, without
meaning to, is he sent his wife down that neural
pathway of objectification. And he looked at
her as someone who existed to satisfy him. He
put pressure on her, was demanding with her.
She became bitter and resentful. They divorced
after three years. Around the table. Scott Stronghold,
I thought my worth was determined by how much
money I made. He grew up thinking that success
in life was determined by the income he made,
the car he drove, the house he lived in, the
vacations he went on. And look, he was surrounded
by kind of real life algorithms, real life examples
that reinforce this thinking that the measure
of his worth was determined by how much he was
worth. And what he could see now as a man in
his mid fifties is that that stronghold has directed
every major decision of his life. Like every
major decision has been filtered through this
lie that my worth is determined by how much money
I can make. He wasn't thinking about legacy or
eternity or God's will or God's kingdom. And
on around the table we went, the next one that
got identified, the next stronghold that got
identified is, I thought I couldn't ask for help.
And that one was mine. And I've shared this with
you before, but I don't remember ever intentionally
thinking this. But somewhere along the line,
I picked up on this idea and thought it and then
kept thinking it, that it's okay to help people,
but it's not okay to ask for help from people.
My thinking, this stronghold convinced me that
asking for help was the same as admitting failure.
And so if I ask for help, I'm calling myself
a failure. I didn't want to do that. This thinking,
this stronghold convinced me that it's okay to
be someone who rescues. It's okay to be a rescuer,
but you don't want to be somebody who needs rescued.
And that seemed to work okay. Like that stronghold
seemed to work okay until it didn't. And I can
tell you in our early years of marriage and we're
working through some things and trying to figure
some things out, my young wife would say, hey,
why don't we just ask somebody for help as we
navigate this? And in my mind, that wasn't an
option. No, we can't. I got this. I can fix this.
We'll figure this out. I'm not gonna ask somebody
for help. When we're in the thick of parenting
and we're trying things that just clearly aren't
working. And my wife says, why don't you just
ask someone for help? At your job, you're surrounded
by people who can help you with this. Why don't
you just ask someone for help? I'll figure this
out. It's fine. I've got this under control.
And here's what I finally had to recognize is
that this thought, I can't ask someone for help,
it wasn't just holding me captive. It was holding
my wife captive. It was holding my children captive.
It was holding people I lead captive. Around
the table we go. What's yours? What's a stronghold
that has had its grip on your life long enough?
And how do we fight the strongholds? Go back
to 2 Corinthians 10. The weapons we fight against
are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary,
these weapons, divine weapons, have the power,
divine power, to demolish strongholds. Okay,
what are we talking about, God? You got a nuclear
arsenal up there? You've got some weapon that
I don't know about where you just push that button
and this stronghold just explodes once and for
all? What weapons are you talking about? Well,
you keep reading. Weapons he gives us, thoughts
and prayers. Thoughts and prayers. This is the
Almighty's strategy for breaking some strongholds
in your life. Thinking differently. Why? Because
he created your brain. He understands concepts
of neuroplasticity. He knows that if you can
change the way you think, it'll change your brain,
it'll position you to experience his transforming
power. That when you start to take biblical truth
and scriptures and replace the lies with his
truth, transformation happens. So how do we take
our thoughts captive or to borrow a term from
neuroscience, cognitive repraisal? How does cognitive
repraisal happen? Well, here's how it works.
First, you recognize the lie. You have to identify
the lie. Now look, what most of us do is we identify
the behavior rather than the lie that's led to
the behavior. Like even as I've tried to ask
you to identify a stronghold in your life, likely,
and this is what I would do too, likely what
you've done is you've tried to identify a behavior.
a way you react, a way that you respond to people,
an addiction that you've been struggling with.
And you think the stronghold is the behavior,
but the Bible would say the stronghold isn't
the behavior. The stronghold is the lie that's
led to the behavior. It's identifying the lie.
Secondly, replace with truth. You find God's
truth that directly contradicts the lie. It's
not about positive thinking. It's about identifying
a scripture that speaks truth into that and then
aligning your thoughts with God's thoughts. Recognize
the lie, replace with truth. Number three, you
reinforce the truth with community and content.
Strongholds are reinforced in isolation. The
moment you share your struggle with a trusted
Christian friend or in a small group, the moment
that stronghold will lose some of its grip on
your life. So you reinforce the truth with community
and then with content. You pay attention to what
you're thinking about, to what you're exposing
your mind to, to the algorithms that are establishing
these pathways in your brain. And so I just wanted
to end by getting real practical. I don't know
what stronghold you've identified, but I tried
to pick a few common ones and walk through what
this looks like. So let's just start with the
stronghold of control. If you're not in control
of something, you feel anxious, you feel overwhelmed,
you're constantly concerned with the what if
and what might happen, And all these things you
know you don't have control over, whether it's
circumstances in life or global events or whether
it's the emotions of the person sitting next
to you. It's a stronghold of control. So recognize
the lie. Don't pay attention to the behavior
as much as you pay attention to the lie. I believe
the lie that I have to manage every outcome or
everything will fall apart. And if I don't control
it, it won't work out. And I don't know where
that lie came from. Maybe because of some people
who've let you down and you just recognize that
unless I'm in charge of it, it's gonna fall apart,
but that's a lie. And so you recognize the lie
and then you replace it with truth. You find
a scripture and whenever that thought starts
to take root, you replace it with scripture.
Proverbs 3, 5, trust in the Lord with all your
heart and lean not on your own understanding.
1 Peter 5, 7, cast all your anxiety on God because
he cares for you. Romans 8, 28, God works all
things together for good for those who love him
and are called according to his purpose. And
then you reinforce that with community and with
content. What's that look like? Well, it means
that you share your struggle with control, your
anxiety with a trusted friend who can call you
on it when you start spiraling or you start micromanaging.
It means that you're gonna limit the content
that reinforces the idea of all these things
that might happen. reinforced with community
and with content. Second, stronghold, as an example,
would be one that I think almost all of us have,
although we're often unaware of it. It's the
stronghold of shame. And so you recognize the
lie. I believe the lie that my past mistakes
define my worth and that I'm too broken for God
to use me or to love me fully. You recognize
the lie that says, I'm too broken. And then you
replace it with truth. Romans 8 .1, there's no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
1 John 1 .9, if we confess our sins, he's faithful
and just to forgive us our sins. Isaiah 53, he
took our shame upon himself. As I told many people
who were baptized a few weeks ago, the shame
that you've been carrying stays in this water.
You don't walk out of here carrying the same
shame that you came in here with. Jesus has taken
it upon himself. 2 Corinthians 5, I'm a new creation
in Christ. The old is gone, the new has come.
And then you would reinforce that with community
and with content. That means that you find safe
Christian community where you can be honest about
your struggles without feeling fear of judgment
or condemnation. And then it means that you pay
attention maybe to some testimonies. You listen
to testimonies of how God has redeemed people's
shame and guilt and brought good. And his grace
has been demonstrated in the lives of others.
Let me give you one more. It's the stronghold
of victimhood. Where you're at the mercy of your
thoughts that says, look what somebody else has
done to me. And you recognize the lie. I believe
the lie that I'm powerless to change my circumstances
or my responses because of what happened to me.
I have no choice but to stay stuck because of
what this person did to me or because of life
circumstances. And you replace it with truth.
Philippians 4, 13. I can do all things through
Christ who strengthens me. 2 Peter 1. He has
given us everything we need for life and godliness.
1 John 4, verse 4. Greater is he that is in you
than he that is in the world. And again, Romans
8, 28. God causes all things to work together
for good. And you reinforce that with community
and content. You surround yourself with people
who will encourage you and your growth rather
than enable your excuses. They'll challenge you
when they hear you start making excuses. And
you seek out stories of people who've overcome
difficult circumstances because of God's strength,
and you remind yourself that's true for me too.
Scripture, through the power of the Holy Spirit,
will bring down strongholds in your life that
seem impossible to tear down. Strongholds are
built through repeated exposure to lies. They
are demolished through repeated exposure to truth.
Dr. Caroline Leaf, a Christian neuroscientist,
talks about how it takes a... 21 days -ish to
begin breaking down a toxic thought pattern.
And it takes about 63 days to establish a new
healthy pattern. God can tear down some strongholds
in your life supernaturally. And then in the
days ahead, as you take your thoughts captive,
he replaces them with new life -giving truths.
I believe God is calling some people in this
room to say, it stops with me. to be a generation
that breaks strongholds. Some of you right now,
you don't know it, but you are sitting on the
edge of either passing down some strongholds
or breaking them. The lies that have held you
or held your family captive for generations must
fall. Patterns of anger and addiction and anxiety
and control, they don't have to be true for you
and they don't have to define the next generation.
So I just wanna challenge you, in the next few
minutes to identify a stronghold that needs to
fall. Write it down, not the behavior, the lie
that you've been believing that's led to it.
Find one scripture verse that speaks truth against
that lie. Share it with a trusted friend who'll
help you fight the battle because that stronghold
has had enough time to rule your life. And this
morning, by the power of Jesus and the power
of the Holy Spirit, it's time for that stronghold
to fall once and for all. Let's pray. Jesus,
this is not a message about the power of positive
thinking or it's a message about surrendering
our thoughts to you, of recognizing how the enemy
has set up camp and built these strongholds maybe
over the years, maybe since before we can even
remember that has had so much control over our
lives and over your plan for who you want us
to be. So Jesus, would you give us the humility
and the courage? Would you give us the eyes to
see these strongholds that have been built? God,
if we hear some of this and we're immediately
defensive and we're immediately feeling threatened
and the things that you've brought to the surface
in our minds over the last few minutes, we don't
wanna think about, would you help us to recognize
that that's all the more likely that it's a stronghold
that needs to be dealt with? And so Jesus, I
just ask you that you would, work supernaturally
in this room over the next few minutes, that
we would experience your power as you break strongholds
that have been passed down and that we find freedom
in you, supernatural freedom. We fight with your
divine weapons and we do it together. We help
one another along the way. Would you work in
that way through the power of your son, Jesus,
in his name we pray, amen. This is Living on
the Edge with Chip Ingram. Friend, for over 30
years, Living on the Edge has been committed
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channel when you're there. Well, that wraps up
today's episode. Don't miss the next Bible teaching
message coming up here on the Chip Ingram Sermon
Podcast. Today's program is produced and sponsored
by Living on the Edge.