I am writing this the day after a teaching evening on Spiritual warfare.
One of the things I came away with is how we all manage to harbour
Strongholds of the enemy in our life that are not fully surrendered to
God. These are the recurrent temptations and sins that we
persistently succumb to in our daily life and try as we might they persist just
making us feel more weak, guilty and useless and fuelling a persistent cycle of
sinning repentance resolving not to do it again and yet again falling. To quote St Paul in Romans chapter 7 21
" I
have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I
inevitably do what is wrong. 22 I love God’s law
with all my heart.23 But there is another
power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave
to the sin that is still within me."
So what is the big problem? Why are these lusts and desires
so powerful? I think the answer deep
within our brains. The things that we
struggle with are highly pleasurable, they activate structures deep inside our
brain which fire pleasure and reward centres. The more we activate these centres
the more we crave; we become addicted as we need more and more stimulus to
attain the same level of pleasure, eventually patterns of behaviour become
learned and imprinted on the more ancient areas of our brain which only are
partially controlled by our neocortex (our conscious minds).
So how do we break out of the stronghold? Paul has the
answer, Rom 7: 24 …Who will free me from this life that is
dominated by sin and death? 25 Thank God! The
answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord…
We stop having a love affair with sin and start having a
love affair with the person of Jesus Christ, to invite Him into our very beings
through the power of the Holy Spirit flooding into every corner of our lives. We discover (Romans 8) that there is no
condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus and because we belong to him,
the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed us from the power of
sin that leads to death. As we fully comprehend the amazing love which dies on
a cross for us we are enabled to put to death our sins and live for Christ and our deepest desires are to please Him
and serve Him. Daily desiring to bring His Kingdom into our lives and
neighbourhoods by acts of compassion and servant-hood empowered by the inner
workings of His Holy Spirit. As we abandon the strongholds of Satan we discover
complete rest in the loving arms of God.
Psalm 91 (NLT)
1Those who live in the shelter of the Most High
will find rest in the
shadow of the Almighty.
He alone is my refuge,
my place of safety;
he is my God, and I
trust him.
3For he will rescue you from every trap
and protect you from
deadly disease.
4He will cover you with his feathers.
He will shelter you
with his wings.
His faithful promises
are your armour and protection.
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