May 11, 2025 Rooted Wk. 3 Demolishing Spiritual Strongholds

Music.

So a few weeks ago we began a new study on

rooted and our goal

is that as we look at scripture is we want to equip ourselves uh with scripture

so that we are able to now equip yourself now with truth so that you can fight

like jesus later and jesus fought the evil one with with scripture,

And so what we want to do is we want to look at truth, what God says,

and our core text that we keep on going back to that God reminds us as we look at this in Deuteronomy.

Listen, Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one.

He tells us to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,

with all your soul, and with all your strength.

These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart.

Repeat them to your children.

Talk to them when you sit down in your house, when you walk along the road,

when you lie down and when you get up.

Bind them as a sign on your hand. Let them be a symbol on your forehead.

Write them on the doorposts of your house and your city gates.

So God remind us we are to love God with our heart, all of our soul and all our mind.

And he has given his word that

we cannot just come to church and pretend

like christians pretend religion god gives us his word so we can understand

who he is the way he thinks down down to the roots of our lives and how we even

put together our thoughts so today we are going to be looking at strongholds,

strongholds in our lives and if you don't know what a stronghold is yet hopefully

by the end And if today you will be well versed and well understanding what

a stronghold is and be on the look for them.

So let's go to, if you have your Bible or you can go on your phone or just read

on the screen, 2 Corinthians 10, and we'll read 1 through 6,

but really we're just going to be focusing on verses 3 and 4 today.

So Paul is writing here to the church at Corinth in his second letter to them.

In the first letter, he dealt with a lot of issues that they had going on in the church.

And now in his second letter he is

uh he encourages them he was encouraging them because they

listened to the first letter but then there is this there is this group that

were trying to attack him and his personality they were trying to attack his

way of ministering to the church so they're saying you write so well,

but when you're in person, it's weak sauce.

It's not matching. And so Paul is having to basically go in there and say,

look, you need to retrain the way you think.

And so he starts here in verse one.

Now I, Paul, myself, appeal to you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ.

I, who am humble among you in person,

but bold toward you when absent, right through his writings,

he says, I beg you, excuse me,

that when I am present, I will not need to be bold with confidence by which

I plan to challenge certain people who think we are living according to the flesh.

For although we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh.

Since the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but are powerful through God,

through the demolition of strongholds, we demolish arguments and every proud

thing that is raised up against the knowledge of who God is.

And we take every thought captive to obey Christ.

And we are ready to punish any disobedience once your obedience is complete.

Jesus, I pray this morning that you, through your Holy Spirit,

would cause our attention to focus on your word.

So Jesus, I ask your Holy Spirit to bring to light areas in my life,

bring to areas to light in the folks who are sitting here today listening.

And I pray that they would understand your word through the power of you, not of me.

Jesus, I just pray that you would do a work today.

As we looked last week, God, that we need to be looking in areas of our lives

to find the sin in order to confess it, in order to deal with the sin that's in our lives.

So Jesus, I pray today that you would help us as we begin even wrapping our

mind around strongholds.

That the evil one would not win, but you would.

So Jesus, we thank you for your love. We thank you for your kindness to us and

your truth. In Christ, we pray.

Amen. So we're going to focus in on verses three and four.

So Paul is talking here. He's saying, look, so the context again is that the

church at Corinth, there were people trying to diminish him,

talk him down, where he wasn't helpful.

And they were trying to assert their control in the church.

And so Paul responds not

by calling a bunch of idiots he responds and

say look you know what actually this is a good opportunity verse 3 for although

we live in the flesh and this this word there flesh means that these these are

like the what appears to be real right the outside physical thing.

So we live in this flesh. We live in this world.

So we have a reality of our world, but you know what? That's not what we're waging war against.

We do not wage war against the flesh.

What? So Paul is saying, look, yeah, these guys are mocking me and they're saying

that I'm not eloquent. I'm not a very good speaker.

We're not sure exactly what, but he did not have the presence that a Joel Osteen might have, right?

So it was super polished in all this external things.

And he said, you know what? It's not about me, but I'm going to have to redirect

your thinking and kind of help you to understand exactly God's way of doing things.

And he uses this word to talking about strongholds.

It's a military term. Remember we talked before about Our allegiance to Jesus

A few weeks back We talked about The kingship of Jesus What that means Is that.

There are only two options. It's full allegiance to Jesus and making him king and Lord of your life.

Or if you don't do that, you're automatically a servant to the evil one, Satan.

The accuser of the brethren, the one who is the chief adversary,

the chief person trying to undo God's plan. There is no in-between.

And so when we talk about the kingship of Jesus, making Christ more,

this means that in every area of our lives, we need to have Christ as Lord.

And so Paul is saying here, look, you have some things in your life,

and I'm going to give you a word that's going to help you understand.

I'm going to use this terminology that's going to help you understand this battle,

this war that we are in with the evil one.

The evil one, his desire is to rip us apart.

His desire is to tear away everything that God is doing in your life.

That's what he wants to do.

And so when we look here now in verse two or in four, since the weapons of our

warfare are not of the flesh, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds,

we demolish arguments.

So Paul is saying here, there are strongholds that you have in your life that you don't even realize.

And so we have a few words here, and then we're going to continue on.

But just so you understand, the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh.

So these weapons that we have at our disposal. So when Jeremy goes into battle

with the evil one, he is not using something that's physical.

When Jeff is going into battle with the evil one for his family,

he's not gonna take something that's physical.

When Dusty goes and battles the evil one, he does not bring with him the swords of this world.

When James is going there and trying to build up his walk with Jesus and get

deeper in God's word, he's not gonna do it in any kind of worldly thing.

But instead, God says through Paul here, since these weapons of our warfare

are not of the flesh, okay, so they're not temporary, but instead they are powerful through God.

These weapons that God has given us at our disposal, they are from him,

and he is able to break down and demolish, demolish these strongholds, okay?

What is a stronghold?

A stronghold or a fortification. Paul uses this word picture here.

These are all strongholds, all of them.

Stronghold, stronghold, stronghold, all over the place. And when he would talk

about this idea of strongholds, he says, you have strongholds in your life.

And it's not just thoughts that Paul's getting at.

The word here actually goes way deeper than thoughts. It's actually how our thoughts are created.

What? Yeah, we're a little bit philosophical. We're going to get a little bit

focused here, a little bit brainy.

But what God is saying here through Paul is like, look, no, this is how you

actually formulate down to your core.

This is the core way of thinking, which actually produces your thoughts and how you think.

Let me try to break that again. And God is telling us that we need to look for strongholds,

these fortifications that the evil one is using in your life and my life. Why?

Because the evil one, the evil one does not desire you to win.

Remember, the evil one has been doing this for over 2,000 years,

right? He's been doing this for thousands and thousands of years,

trying to undo God's plan. And he's really good at it.

And so his desire is to undo it through strongholds.

So these are these strongholds. These are these fortifications that Paul is

using, this word picture, that are way down to a core level.

I labeled one that all of us struggle with at the center.

It's been there from the From the first sin till now Satan the evil one Wanted to be like God.

Wanted to be like God. He didn't want to be alone, so he tempted Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve sinned.

And so we have this idea of pride stronghold that's there in all of our lives.

And let me just add here real quick, just because you and I have strongholds,

that doesn't mean that we love God any less.

The idea of understanding our strongholds is that we need to deal with these

strongholds and we'll deal with them one at a time.

Remember last week when we talked about David and when he was confronted,

right? He was confronted about his sin. He had committed this immorality.

He wasn't where he was supposed to be.

He saw a woman. He cheated on, he cheated against her husband with him.

And then he tried to cover it

up, ends up killing many men in the process just to cover up his desires.

And then when God confronts him, he says, you're the man.

And God took great offense because he even told David, he's like,

look, if you needed something else, I would have given it to you.

But you didn't, you didn't ask for anything else. And you have done this evil.

And he said that you did it in private. Now I'm going to make it public.

He's going to make this public down to the fact that he judged him that this

adultery that he committed.

He said, you know what? Your offspring is going to do that, not just in private,

but it's going to be in front of everybody.

And that literally happened on

a rooftop. What he did in private now was broadcast so everyone could see.

His son did that. And God used this whole thing God used this and said Look,

you know And when David is confronted with this sin He begins to confess And

that's what we have Psalm 51,

And he's like Against you and you only have I done this evil in your sight You

are completely just when you judge When you give that sentence I totally deserve it.

David had strongholds in his life that he needed to deal with.

So do you and I. We have strongholds in our lives that we need to be actually looking for.

And God tells us here, it's not just enough to talk about them and define them.

But he says, since the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh,

but are powerful through God, the demolition, excuse me, of strongholds.

And that word there, it's not just about blowing it up, but the word there literally

means to completely destroy and demolish,

but then also deport them, get rid of all of it.

And so that's what God wants us to God wants us to look for strongholds in our

lives where the evil one is winning.

And he gives us these tools. God says that his, through Paul here,

my tools are not child's things.

But God actually gives us the tools that we need to develop and to demolish

these strongholds in our lives.

God gives us the tools exactly what we need, and it's through his word.

I'll have these things afterwards we can hand out. and this is scripture that

literally talks about our thinking.

Let me give you an example of a stronghold that God's been working on me,

and maybe it'll help you to look for strongholds in your life.

God has been working on me in many different areas, right? There's lots of strongholds,

right? They're all over the place.

Some are more obvious than others.

And one of the things that through the years I've noticed is this fear of man.

And this idea Christine pointed out to me a while ago, and I was like,

no, I'm not, I'm not afraid of people.

And the more I thought about it, looked at it, the fear of man is really at

its core saying that God is not enough.

Right? When we fear man and what the opinion of people, If I elevate to what

Jeff thinks of me over God, I'm wrong.

If I elevate what Liz thinks of me over what God thinks of me, I'm wrong.

Do you get it? Does that make sense? That when these things that look like symptoms

are actually, if you trace them back, they go back to a stronghold.

And the stronghold is where maybe it's that God is not enough.

Or maybe it's God makes mistakes,

God makes mistakes because God, if you didn't make mistakes,

then I would look this way or I wouldn't be, this thing would not be happening in my life right now.

So therefore, you must make, you must be wrong and you must have made a mistake

somewhere and you make mistakes, God.

That's a fortification. These other things that we may see, these are symptoms,

but that symptom is going back to that stronghold or fortification is this is

our core way, remember, of thinking way down to the roots.

Say, God, you made me and school is just difficult for me. Learning is difficult for me.

Therefore, you must have made a mistake. This is not fair. Life is not fair, God. Life is not fair.

And it may seem like life is not fair. And you know what?

Life is not fair And that's okay because of sin, right? The fall.

At that root of that idea is that God makes mistakes.

The reality is God doesn't make mistakes.

Do you and I have to understand all the whys and know God's perspective? No.

All we know is that God is more than enough. God does not make mistakes.

Let's say you struggle with, let me have the little yellow things there.

These are supposed to be like little bricks, little areas or symptoms.

Maybe you're a control freak. I can empathize or I have to do it or only I can

do it or I struggle with, maybe you struggle with perfectionism or you don't trust people.

You have a hard time trusting.

So what's at the core of that? What's at the core of that whole way of thinking

that creates these issues in our lives.

It's that God is not enough.

That's the core lie. Or maybe for you, it's something different.

These are just examples, but the reality is we need to be looking for strongholds

in our lives because we're gonna see patterns over and over and over again in

our lives that the Holy Spirit is going to do.

Remember last week we talked about confessing?

Confessing is good.

When we met on Tuesday, Dusty was talking about when someone at some point at

camp had pointed out an area of sin in his life that he was just angry,

just seemed really angry.

And Dusty's like, I haven't changed anything. I've always been angry.

I just hid it, not hiding it anymore.

And he said, whoa, when he actually verbalized that, God used that to smack him with conviction.

That he had been hiding something too, that yeah, that he had an anger problem

that he needed to deal with with God.

And we need to, part of the idea of confessing your sins one to another,

it's not that you're asking Jeremy or Zach for forgiveness, that they have anything to do with that.

No, it's when you confess your sins out loud, you're confessing,

you're saying out loud your way of thinking.

And guess what? You and I, we have jacked up ways of thinking.

Whether you want to say it out loud or not, it's there.

I know that I am not alone. We all, doesn't matter how old you are,

whether we are zero or 95, we all have messed up ways of thinking. How do I know that?

Because we're all fallen and the evil one is trying. He's a chief adversary.

He's trying to get at our way of thinking and he knows how we think.

So these are our cores that we have to go back to scripture.

And what God is telling us here is one, you identify it, that God is not enough.

And we replace that with truth. And you find scripture, God,

and this is a word here, that the Lord your God is mighty.

The word that's used there in the Greek.

He says God is, it's another name for God. Actually, God, the mighty one is

actually more than enough.

And you begin to demolish it.

And you take truth of scripture and you begin to demolish these truths and you

go back and say, okay, you know what? I struggle with perfectionism.

The reality is, you know what? Yeah.

Struggle with this. I need to give you control, God. I need to give you control.

You are more than enough.

We attack it with scripture, attack it to the point where it's demolished, but not just there.

We don't leave it there. Actually, we need to get rid of it completely.

Another one, maybe you struggle with judging.

Maybe you struggle with judging. Samuel did, right? When Samuel was called to

choose the next king of Israel, he was looking for a tall, muscular guy to replace Saul.

But that wasn't God's plan. He looked at the outside.

He was trying to control. Maybe he was perfectionist as well.

He was judging. He was looking on these external things.

And the fortification there, the

strongholds that God cares more about the outside than he does the inside.

God cares more about the outside than he does the inside. That's a lie.

That is a lie. Otherwise, he wouldn't have used David and he definitely wouldn't

have left all of the crap that David did in the Bible because some of it was not that great.

A lot of it was. But yet, God tells us that David was a man after God's own

heart. That means that you, Steve, who are flawed, James, you're flawed, right? Ben is flawed.

God still can use you. God can still use me.

Ladies, God can use you.

You say, oh, Josh, I worry so much. That must mean that I don't trust God.

Well, probably so, right? It's difficult.

You have kids that are under your responsibility. Possibility.

Cause lots of issues and you worry about them and you worry if you're going

to be enough, if you're going to mess these kids up.

You have all these things going through your mind of fear and of,

you know, how am I going to do this? Am I not doing it enough?

Am I not good enough for them? I don't deserve these kids.

I don't know how to, I don't even know. I don't deserve this guy.

He annoys me. They annoy me. And you got all these thoughts swirling around in your head.

And those thoughts come from a stronghold. And instead of just worrying about the thoughts,

if you eradicate and attack that stronghold, the rest of this stuff is much

more easily managed and you deal with.

I'm not here to tell you what your stronghold is. That's not my job.

That's another one of my strongholds that somehow I can control you.

Somehow I can, as a pastor, My worth is based on how our body is doing spiritually.

That's something that I have to deal with. I know it's stupid. I can't change you.

I can't change the way you talk to your wife. I can't change what you look at.

I can't change anything about you.

But in my mind, I'm like, okay, God, I'm not doing enough. I'm not doing enough.

I'm not doing enough. And what's at that core?

That core is, yeah, you're trying to take my place.

God is saying you are trying to usurp me

And that's not your job Your job is just to take truth from my word Present

it and let my holy spirit deal with the ears and hearts of people And that's

a battle I gotta deal with all the time And it's annoying and it's a stronghold

and I know it's there And I have to retrain my way of thinking,

Just like you have to retrain your way of thinking,

We'll close with this Yes.

Deal with the strongholds, you need to demolish them.

And not just demolish them, but you also need to remove everything.

It literally is the way of saying, what Paul is saying here is like,

that you just don't need to blow them up.

You need to blow that up. And then once you've blown them up,

you need to take that crap and you get rid of it.

Because guess what? It's going to rebuild itself so we need to completely change

our core we have thinking how we think down to its roots,

down to its base we need to do that so my my goal for you not to discourage you and say ladies,

men are my goal is not to discourage us but to say look paul was trying to help

us understand that we need to be looking for strongholds.

And if for some reason you are so prideful that you don't think you have strongholds

in your life, I'd start there, right?

If you don't think you have strongholds, start with pride and then you just

start working on the rest of them because God is gonna, he will show you,

he will show you and he's more than enough and he'll be gracious.

He'll be gracious as he shows you truth.

Jesus, I pray today, that your Holy Spirit would fill in the gaps where I screwed

up, that your Holy Spirit would help your truth to hit home.

Jesus, I confess that I am not able to stand up here and anywhere that I'm able to share your truth,

but somehow you have sovereignly decided that that's what I'm supposed to be doing.

So Jesus, I submit to you. I submit to your control. I submit to that.

And I confess that I care more sometimes about what people think of me than

what you think of me. And that is a stronghold.

Jesus, I pray for my sisters and brothers today.

This idea of fortifications and strongholds, I know it's different.

It's a different way of thinking.

And you've been working on me over the last couple of weeks on this.

So I know you're not gonna do it right away. Maybe you will, I don't know.

But God, I pray that you would help my sisters and my brothers to look for strongholds.

God, maybe there's someone here today, a friend that just says, you know what, Josh?

You're talking, you know, Greek. You're talking this weird stuff that I heard you were saying.

And maybe there's someone here, a friend today, that just trying to learn a

little bit more about you, God.

I pray that your Holy Spirit, I pray that you would show yourself real in that

person's life this week and today.

That you do care about them.

You cared about them so much that you gave them breath.

That they woke up this morning and they took a breath. and I took a breath because

you decided that we needed to and we are here for a purpose,

for a reason. You don't make mistakes.

You don't make mistakes. So Jesus, I pray that you would help the one that maybe

is just searching to not stop,

but that you would use your Holy Spirit to bring that person to know who you

are and that you gave your life for them.

Jesus you gave your

life for the enemies who are

cursing you spitting at you even running

a sword through your side you died

for that guy you showed

love like no man could ever possibly

show because you're God and you gave your

life for us so Jesus I pray today for our friend who may just just searching

I pray that you would you would do work and if they have questions then they

come to talk to me or Ben or Dusty or anyone here they would love to talk about

you and how you changed us because you know what.

That they'd understand that none of us are perfect.

We may look like we got all our stuff together, but the reality is that's so

far from the truth and what you did to save us and change us.

It's all about you. It's nothing about us.

And Jesus, for my brother and sister today, I pray that you would start turning

those lights on this week of the strongholds and really get at the core,

and that we would replace our way of thinking with your truth In Jesus' name I pray Amen,

Let's stand and we'll sing One final song Jeremy can you and James hand these

things out These are just verses that I would like to If you want one take one

with you It's just scriptures on Truth and how we're supposed to think,

It's just one page Front and back,

Alright have you guys had a chance to meet Jeff yet Jeff Gerhard he's like super

tall over here he's super shy.

Jeff has an amazing story of how God saved him he would tell you 15 years ago

if you saw him he would never be in this church right,

and God saved him God changed him and it's incredible so Jeff would you please

pray for us as a body please,

thank you again for your grace your sovereignty and i don't know if you hear this today,

you're transparent but lord this is not about the outside it's about what's

in our hearts so god i prove each person in this room i have no idea where they're

at with you but i pray right now god that they're just not doing church i don't

care about what age you are i don't care if you grew up at piet lake i don't

care if you grew up with me so.

This is a bonded relationship with you and you're dying

to sin so i pray right now for each person in this room

that they know that when they die there's two rows and i'm not going to sugarcoat

there's a heaven and there's a hell the reality is this i've had many of my

family die in the last six years and the reality is they're in hell and it breaks

my partner for people that on the church,

that come here on Sundays of then Sunday evening through Saturday, they do nothing.

When you're born again and you have new desires, you want to get the word.

It's not because we have to, but we get to. We want to hear more from the truth.

So I pray for, if you will hear that, R.C., maybe you're just going through

the motions the last years or centuries. I don't know.

But I pray, God, you give them new desires, like maybe starting reading and praying.

See, you, I pray right now for each person in this room that if you're doing

church because you want to look good and ain't working, that someday all of

us in this room are going to be held accountable.

Yeah. So I pray right now, in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you, brother.