God Wants You Well Page 1 LESSON 1 CHANGING STRONGHOLDS

Transcription

1 God Wants You Well Page 1 LESSON 1 CHANGING STRONGHOLDS 2 Corinthians 10:4 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) KJV HCSB the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds. 1. We all have mental strongholds. 2. Some strongholds need to be pulled down. 3. Changing strongholds is spiritual warfare. 4. We cannot win without weapons from God. There is a silent battle going on in our minds. Satan has gained territory in our minds by constantly deeply establishing more and more thoughts that are contrary to God s Word. If we do not establish the Word of God strongly in our minds, we will be defeated without even knowing why. Our victory is assured when our actions and reactions are automatically directed by the Word, regardless of our circumstances. A. Define Strongholds: 1. Strongholds exist in the mind. They are made up of thoughts, images, knowledge that your brain strongly holds to as: a. Being absolutely true. b. Being the established way to go, do, think, react or be. c. It is your mindset (a set of beliefs or a way of thinking that determine somebody's behavior and outlook) d. That s the way you think or act automatically or without giving it a second thought. 2. When those established thoughts are negative, carnal, and fleshly, they become your addiction, habit, compulsion, or obsession that controls, torments and defeats you. 3. We usually think of a stronghold as being negative. a. As in pulling down strongholds. b. We usually think that we should always get rid of it casting it down. c. But, not all strongholds are negative or undesirable. B. God created our mind to have strongholds. 1. We are born with this natural mental process. God created us with the ability to have strongholds in our mind and to operate from these. 2. He didn t intend for us to hold strongly to wrong information that contradicts His truths, but to strongly hold to right information. C. The strongholds mentioned in our text are negative strongholds lies and wrong information that we hold strongly to. 1. Imagine, what would happen if we filled our mind with God s knowledge, and our mind was able to hold that knowledge really strong!

2 God Wants You Well Page 2 2. The problem in getting that knowledge in there is that wrong knowledge has usually already gotten established there first! a. Wrong information is homesteaded there! It got there first. b. Your brain thinks this old knowledge is the right way the only way. c. When you see something new in the Word, your wrong information stronghold resists giving up to it. d. Your reasoning judges the truth as right information, but wrong information is already more strongly and deeply established as truth and is reluctant to be replaced. Example: When newly married changing from it s all about me to its all about us. e. The right information should have been there first, but most of us were not raised that way. Modern day example of proper raising of children and the establishing of right strongholds is the Duggars family on TLC in 19 Kids and Counting. D. Your brain constantly processes information. 1. Our life consists of our brain constantly processing incoming information. a. Our ears and eyes are gateways into the brain. b. The stronger the emotions accompanying the incoming information the more deeply it is implanted and the stronger it holds. 2. That s what the enemy is doing today bombarding you with so much wrong information, hoping that his knowledge and information will be overwhelming and your mind will do the rest and hold on tightly to it. a. The more often your mind hears the same things over and over it holds it more strongly as right information. b. Have you noticed that in the world the things that used to be wrong immorality, dishonesty, and homosexuality is no longer recognized as wrong. c. Have you noticed yourself watching movies on TV that years ago you wouldn t tolerate and now you are not even uncomfortable watching it. d. The media has the greatest influence in forming negative strongholds in our mind. 3. Everyday life has its strong negative voices because things talk. Circumstances, problems, checkbook balances, worn-out cars, worn-out washing machines, and aches and pains do talk loudly to you. E. How do you change your life situation? 1. Ephesians 4:22, 23 says, that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. 2. This verse states that we are to change from the way we used to live. a. We then acted wrongly, being controlled by our selfish (wrong) thinking. b. We change the way we act and react by changing our programming change the way we think and automatically respond.

3 God Wants You Well Page 3 c. The way you do this is we renew (ananeoō make new again) the spirit of your mind. d. Renew means to re again make new, like in redo to do it again. Our car engine oil was once new, but with miles becomes polluted and must be renewed made new again. We don t just add more new oil, we replace the old polluted with the new clean oil. The information in our mind which gets polluted must be removed and replaced with right clean information. e. If you do not renew the spirit of your mind renew your thinking your life will continue as it is the rest of your life. f. If you don t replace those strongholds of wrong information with strongholds of right information, your life, your world, your prosperity, your health, your relationship with God, will continue just like it is from now on. You cannot improve your status without changing your strongholds. F. What is the spirit of your mind, 1. God didn t inspire Paul to write that we are to renew the spirit of your mind by mistake instead of writing to renew in your mind. 2. This indicates that there is a difference between the mind and the spirit of the mind. a. Spirit of the mind is a place where the deeper thinking takes place. b. We also call it the subconscious. c. It is the place in your mind that controls your actions even when you are not conscious of it. It is a regulatory apparatus. d. It is a built-in judge watching and recording and evaluating our every move. e. Examples: i. Driving from my house to the church. My subconscious or the spirit of my mind was driving while my conscious mind was listening to Arizona Public Radio. Learning to drive with a manual transmission and clutch is another example. One doesn t learn that overnight, but over months and years it becomes so automatic that it is done without conscious thought. It got into the spirit of your mind. 3. The spirit of your mind is able to assist in life without you giving much thought to it. 4. Now, if someone tries to teach you new concepts, your mind does not automatically grab and hold it and it does not immediately become the new way you operate, even if it sounds right and you mentally agree it is good. It takes time and effort for the new information to become a permanent stronghold. 5. For it to go deep and stay strong you don t just review that information once you review it, and renew it, and renew it over and over with diligence and consistency. This allows your subconscious the spirit of your mind to hold it strongly and then control your life. 6. Negative strongholds, or addictions, were formed that way a. One doesn t become addicted with the first lie, the first smoke, the first drink, the first theft, the first curse word, the first pain reliever, the first outburst of anger or the first time they over ate.

4 God Wants You Well Page 4 b. Neither do you quit addictions the first time you try. Something stops you your strongholds! c. To replace the negative thing with the right thing you have to repeat it over and over and over sometimes as long or longer that it took you to form the wrong habit/stronghold. 7. That deep part of your mind is the spirit of your mind. a. The sub-conscious, the automatic, the established way, the way without thinking, the real you. b. It controls everything you do. c. It is so powerful so silent you are so unconscious of it. d. To change the spirit of your mind the sub-conscious you have to renew your conscious mind over and over and over until finally it goes deep into the spirit of your mind and is held strongly there as truth, as the right way a positive and right stronghold. e. The spirit of your mind which has been given wrong information so long so often will fight any change of mind that you have, and you must wear it down with repetitious, right information. G. Why is this so important? Because negative strongholds separate us from God s provisions. 1. The story of Adam and Eve. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. Genesis 2:16-17 a. This is more about the knowledge than it is about the fruit. God was saying don t take in this knowledge. b. God was with Adam and Eve in the Garden giving them all the knowledge they needed. c. Every day, day after day, they would walk and talk God intending that knowledge would go deep into the spirit of their minds. d. I believe that if Adam had asked God to give him the knowledge of good and evil, He would have explained it to him. e. God said, Don t eat of that tree of knowledge because it was wrong knowledge. (We started eating of wrong knowledge from birth from our parents teaching) f. God said, The day that you take in this wrong knowledge, you shall die. i. To die means to be separated. i They ate of that wrong knowledge and they were separated from the provisions of their Father that were in the garden. Wrong knowledge will separate us from God and His provisions that He has for us. 2. The story of the Prodigal Son. a. The father said for this my son was dead (Lk. 15:24), but his son had not stopped breathing. b. He was separated from him.

5 God Wants You Well Page 5 c. His father had every provision the son needed, but, because he was dead separated from his father, he didn t have these provisions. d. When he came to himself. ; When he came to his senses...he thought I will leave and return to my father.vs i. Wrong knowledge led him away from his father and his needed provisions i A change of thought right knowledge led him back to his father where the provisions were. Now he is alive no longer separated from the father s provisions! 3. The process is that God provides man with right knowledge and repetition of that information creates a stronghold from which man operates. a. Then, when wrong information comes up the positive stronghold resists and prevails against anything that goes against God s knowledge. H. Why we are where we are. 1. Currently the reasons why we are where we are is because we have gotten wrong knowledge from the wrong source. It is wrong knowledge about marriage, about prosperity, about health, about our source of any needed provision. a. We go to church for one hour it sounds good we agree it is true it doesn t go deep we don t think much about it we don t concentrate on it we don t major on it it is soon forgotten and it doesn t change our life. b. The majority of our hours and hours and hours of incoming knowledge comes from the wrong sources and we neglect our Higher education. i. We are smart in the knowledge of the world system that can kill us and we are stupid in the God system that can deliver us. We have been duped into thinking that the more important knowledge is from another source. 2. That s why we don t have the Father s provisions: a. That s why we don t see the miracles, the healing, the deliverance, and the blessings that are recorded in the Gospels and in the Book of Acts. b. We have strongholds in our mind that healing, prosperity, protection, etc., can t happen to us. We think that it is unscriptural now, or that we don t deserve it, or that we re just not that lucky. c. The stronghold in our mind has accepted our condition. We believe that is who we are and who we will continue to be! (I am a diabetic. I am a cripple. I am an alcoholic. I have a bad temper. I can t get a job. I will always be in debt. I will never amount to anything.) These are all negative strongholds. d. Satan has gotten us to eat of the knowledge of the wrong tree the tree of our past religion, the tree of the world s media TV Radio newspaper, the tree of past failures, the tree of our parent s teaching about life and the world we live in.

6 God Wants You Well Page 6 3. We, like the prodigal son and Adam and Eve, are separated from the provisions of our Father not by the devil, not by demons, but by our choice to repeatedly continue getting wrong knowledge from another source rather than from God. 4. The Prodigal changed his thinking and said I have sinned. a. He repented. b. He had a renewed thought. I wonder how many times he thought about home. c. I am going back to the right source the source of the father. d. Then, and only then, did his circumstances change! I. If you don t renew your minds and establish strongholds of truth, the time you spend in church and in Bible class will not change your situation. 1. You can hear a thousand sermons and lessons but unless you form positive, strong holds of God s truths, you will still be separated from the provisions you need. a. How many have been duped into thinking that if they just look like they have the knowledge of God that they do have it in the spirit of their mind. b. How many raise their hands and sing songs of praise to God and are still in need still in need because they continue to repeatedly get the majority of their knowledge from the wrong source. 2. It s time to change what we listen to, change what we think about, so we will always be able to determine what God has for us. Romans 12:2 a. Don t become like the people of this world.(don t think their thoughts) Instead, change the way you think (Think the way God thinks). Then you will always be able to determine what God really wants (for you). GWT b. Do you live my Murphy s Law or God s Law? God wants you well, He wants your needs supplied. 3. It s time to renew and renew and renew and renew your mind and thereby replace the old wrong information stronghold and replace it with a new stronghold of truth. a. The task of keeping healthy strongholds is (i) the duty of consciousness and (ii) the act of affirmation. i. You must use your conscious mind to get to the spirit of your mind through repetition and urgency (with emotion) For affirmation to be effective, it needs to be personal, in the present tense, positive, and specific such as in I (personal) am (present tense), blessed (positive) with a wonderful spouse (specific). How different this affirmation is from I just don t know what is going to happen to be in this poor economy. b. Get rid of: 2 Corinthians 10:5 casting down... every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. We are to cast down those high things, those things the world holds at high value. These are against the knowledge of God, against what God has said in His Word that He has already made available for you..

7 God Wants You Well Page 7 c. Replace with: Ephesians 4:23 and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. We replace wrong information (things the world holds high in importance) with right information (knowledge from God s Word of the provisions He has waiting for you) by the process of renewing our knowledge and thoughts. d. Then you will know and enjoy: Romans 12:2 be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God. You will then know and enjoy the good that God wants and wills for you.