Mon, 11 May 2020

Demolishing Strongholds

‘The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.’ 2 Corinthians 10:4 NIV

God called David ‘a man after My own heart.’ (Acts 13:22 NKJV) But David struggled with a weakness in his life. What was it? A lustful spirit that surfaced from time to time, and the people closest to him knew about it. When he grew old and his body cold, they brought a young girl to lie beside him in bed so he could ‘get warm.’ (1 Kings 1:1 NKJV) They figured if that didn’t get David’s circulation moving he had to be dying!

That’s a sad indictment. But there’s something even sadder going on here. David had passed on his weakness to his son Amnon, who’d ended up raping his sister. And although David was angry about it, he didn’t confront or punish him. After all, what could he say? Like father, like son?

Lust isn’t just a whim or a passing fancy, it’s a sin. And when it passes from one generation to the next it becomes a ‘stronghold’. Today psychologists refer to it as ‘a genetic predisposition’. Maybe somewhere in your family tree there’s a workaholic father, a mother who was emotionally unavailable, or a brother or sister who drank too much, and now you’re wrestling with the same issues. Don’t be discouraged! Paul says, ‘The weapons we fight with… have divine power to demolish strongholds.’

So before you run off to a divorce court or a rehab centre, name your stronghold, then pray, believing God to break its stranglehold on your life. Do it before it infects the next generation. Don’t pass it on—call on the power of the Cross and say, ‘This stops with me!’