3 Characteristics and Strategies for Overcoming Strongholds
We’ve been talking about strongholds and God’s plan for victory in your life. I’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback from people on this subject. You can read Part 1 of this series here.
Here are a few points to consider as we dig deeper into this fascinating subject:
- How does the enemy gain access to your thoughts? What does the word devil mean? It comes from the Latin root diabolos, which means to thrust through, like a rock. It’s like the enemy is doing a David and Goliath on you. He’s hitting and hammering you with thought patterns, circumstances, and emotions that create a framework of bondage and confusion within your brain and heart. The devil intends to break through the barrier of your will, your mind, and your emotions in order to penetrate your personality. These bents and inclinations toward fear, mistrust, abandonment, depression, and even suicide can be generational. Some of your battles didn’t start with you. We will explore this subject more in the next blog post.
- What can you do to combat this attack? Take every thought captive at the point of a spear (2 Corinthians 10:5). Interrogate your thought life to see whether it lines up with what the Spirit of God says. How do you know if a thought is coming from God or the devil? How do you know if it’s a stronghold? If it’s not peace, if it’s not energizing, if it’s not love—it’s not from the Lord.
- Are you making God your stronghold? David said he wanted to make the Lord his stronghold and his high tower (Psalm 61:3). You see, a stronghold can work both ways. To build a godly stronghold you must tear down what you have built that militates against God's Word. This is the warfare involved with renewing the mind—but it pays off in a new mind garrisoned with God's way of thinking. Getting clear on who He is for you is one of the most important steps to freedom. I want to encourage you to begin the process of renewing your mind, by recognizing that in many cases, the méthodos or the roadway that the enemy planted in your life came before you knew what he was up to.
Test and discern your life according to the Holy Spirit to begin to shut down those ramps and build up new highways that lead to victory, anointing, and deliverance.
Question: What negative patterns is God revealing to you as you read this post? What are some strategies you can employ to renew your mind daily? Comment below to share about it!
As One!
Lance
Dr. Caroline Leaf’s teaching and protocol have been very instrumental in my life to overcoming negative strongholds in my life. She is a Christian neuroscientist who has researched this area and the effects our thoughts have on our brains and shows us how, with the help of the Holy Spirit, how to renew our minds to align with God’s thoughts. I highly recommend looking her up!
God has reminded me that the Advocate, the Spirit of truth, sent from the Father is inside us. (John) He told us these things so that we will not “fall away”. My spirit man had shriveled to the size of a bee from the past years of hardship. The above truth released breath into my spirit man again and it grew within minutes- after years of being defeated. He is IN us, He has never left us. I was able to breathe Him up from within me and let Him out! Satan seeks to shut down our spirit man but there is no way he can do this – no one can kill the Spirit within us. He just wants our soul defeated so that we experience death.
Tom and I have been studying Dr Caroline Leaf’s 21 ,Days to Detox Your Brain this goes hand in hand Lance, and the “Thrust Through” really paints a picture o arrows by night, when we have our guard down in our uncoucious mind, thaks again Lance
Do you read Ps 91 aloud?
AWESOME!
After pouring through pretty much everything Lance has made available, both on Lance Learning and numerous Vimeo and YouTube teachings, I have to say my level of self-awareness as well as my discernment of what others are possibly feeling (let’s call it empathy for now – Lance calls it Spiritual WiFi) has increased substantially. I have to say, the divine appointments and favor he says will start to show up really have done that in profound ways over the last 4 to 5 months as I have been putting them into practice. His methods get the results he claims they will, and the understanding of how to blend the natural with the supernatural that really can pull down Kingdom blessings and the needed authority to start impacting and expanding the sphere (mountain) God has put you in will take your breath away, make you hungry for more, and yet humbled that you are being used in ways you would have never imagined and that what you thought were your own goals for success are subsumed by an awareness of God’s greater purposes that are so far out beyond just you and into the Kingdom realm for his purposes for many around you that you will fall even more in love with God and His outpouring of the Holy Spirit as He accelerates your cycles and raises you up to ever challenging but rewarding heights. Bless you all at Lance Learning – and please know your work is having substantial impacts for the Kingdom by giving us the power tools and instruction manuals on their use.
Yes my husband and I have just been through an experience where the intention clearly was just to wear us down to the point of exhaustion so that we’d have no resistance to the suggestions that are only half based in truth. To get us to of our own free will, put the ball down or disqualify ourselves in some way.
But I am speaking out the truth as I see it when I see it as declarations to myself, my husband and the powers that be. The battle is real and it is messy, it is personal to us and our destiny in God, to stop us fulfilling His plan for us and in us. Knowing that all that comes can ether ruin us or empower us is what enables us to chose life most of the time. This understanding has come from our walk, but also Bill Johnson, Bob Mumford and more laterly crystalised in Lances particular way of looking at the empowering meaning of everything in Him.
The Prophecy through Julian Adams struck some chords with me; Particularly the aspect of those placed over me in the past trying to squash and contain me. I’ve been noticing this pattern again and God is showing me to recognise what is happening through revelation but He is also teaching me like Lance mentions in this teaching not to react in anger, hate or vengeance. In fact, He is teaching me to ask for more Love and also showing me how I need to be wise as a serpent but harmless as a dove. I must admit, it’s not easy but Christ is my Wisdom and the Power of God. Thanks for this teaching Lance. It has been an enormous Blessing.
Lance, Thank you! you reminded that I used to do a lot of teaching on taking thoughts captive. lately, I find I have been being taken captive. The physical pain leads to weariness, that leads to negative changes in my thought life. Then another rock gets thrown into my emotions and so on. Well, NO MORE! I am taking those things that are not from the Lord captive, chaining them up and evicting them. I want the JOY of the Lord back. I want to feel His Spirit wrap around me. I am going to have to stay focused on. The Lord and fight. Once I quit actively warring against the enemy of my soul, I opened a door to get hot over and over again. How woefully easy it can be to get lax. Bless you for your, teaching. I love your spirit. I’m going for joy again, cause if I’m laughing at, the enemy, he doesn’t have much of a chance And I’m taking my inheritance back too! Love you guys!
Hi Lance..
So I get your email on a day where things where I work at had not been going well.. Had a conversation with my boss earlier in the day that caught me off guard in a moment where I was frustrated about something (& I knew my response wasn’t right).. In the midst of this, I started getting bombarded with negative memories about my previous job & all the things that went wrong while I was there (was a place I used to do training at, but haven’t since I left in June 2008)..
I joined in with you and everyone else via periscope that night and was encouraged. Even so, I had quite a battle late into the night wrestling with a lot of questions and almost to the point of having a panic attack..
One thing I’d determined no matter what was I had to talk to my boss in the morning and not let that get away from me. Conversation turned out way better than imagined although I had prayed beforehand.
I also have begun to finally stop my own negative speech towards myself.. Slow process and an area the enemy has loved to attack in as well..
But last night’s periscope took the cake.. You started off talking about what you’d broadcasted in the morning (at Charis Bible College which I saw also) but then you repeated something from the night before about seeking the Lord and what pleases Him as well as just sharing what you’ve been feeling lately and having Andrew Wommack pray for you. The kind of questions I’d had the night before literally went right along with what you were talking about..
..Just writing all of this is kind of a discovery process. I’ve realized how hard the enemy had been hammering and pressing on me in key areas, and why..
Thanks for these emails and videos Lance.. These are so helpful..
Good thoughts from Lance….I believe that half the battle is won the moment we stop thinking under the law and start thinking under grace. The law is summed up in two commands: (1) Love the Lord with all your heart…(2) Love your neighbor as yourself. But grace is summed up in two commandments provided in 1 John: (1) Believing God loves you and sent His Son…(2) Loving the other as Christ loved you. The difference is evident…under the law, the onus is on ourselves to love, the measure is ourselves by which we love others…which is weak since the flesh is weak. Under grace, the focus is not us loving God but believing God loves us…and loving others as Christ loved us. This is strong, since the object of standard is outside us…In Colossians, it is said, that Christ spoiled principalities and powers…but how? The previous verses tell that He did it by nailing the law that was against us (since we were sinful under the law but receiving by faith the righteousness of God apart from the Law by Jesus Christ- Romans), against Himself on the cross. Its so simple….it works for me powerfully. All I have to do is to think that I am blessed not because of what I do but because of what Christ is to God. This is grace and not law. The devil completely loses power over a Christian who is saturated with thoughts that God loves him unconditionally….and who loves others unconditionally. What the devil tries to do is: make us do things as flowing out of a contractual relationship with God i.e. under the law. He knows this for sure, that we will fail…and when we do, he has an array of instruments against us- depression, hatred…But when we do things with the confidence that we are simply proving that which God has already blessed us in Christ….it ceases to be contractual and the devil finds himself with no clue. I do this everyday, and I openly say this: I live in complete triumph. Praise be to God!