Most of the time we hear this word in relation to scripture, we think of a negative connotation. Right?

By definition, a stronghold is a fortress with a difficult access, a defensive structure, sometimes like a cliff, or other lofty or inaccessible place, a high fort, a refuge. 

I’d get a little dread myself hearing the word… 

Only because I had a lot of what scripture would call ‘strongholds,’ wrong beliefs of who I thought God was, and who I thought I was. 

For example, I did believe God was good all the time, and all the time God is good…for you and your family. 

I did believe that God was a healer, and could heal anything for anyone, any moment, anywhere, for you and your children. 

I did believe that God is love, and He love never would run out, He loved more than you could ever comprehend, for your life. 

But in the depths of my heart, I didn’t believe that His love was for me. 

In my heart, I refused His love for me, rejecting it, seeing my carnality and humanity as bigger than what Jesus did on the cross. 

This lack of knowledge, refusal on my part, was allowing the enemy, and my own unbelief, to steal, kill and destroy from my life. 

These strongholds, wrong thoughts and beliefs, were keeping me walled and trapped — and not in a good way. 

Those thoughts needed to be taken captive, and made obedient to Christ, just like 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 talks about… destroying every thought, every sophisticated argument, that exalts itself against the true knowledge of God. 

Destroy those things… anything that exalts itself over who God says He is, who we know God is, as well as who God says we are, from His Word. 

A really cool thing happens when we take the divinely powerful weapons God gives us and tear these things down… when we take the Romans 12:1-2 approach, and allow ourselves to ‘be ye transformed,’ by the renewing of our mind, and offer ourselves as living sacrifices. 

As we take the Word of God and replace our wrong thinking with His truths, new walls form.

A Good Stronghold comes and replaces the bad ones. 

You can’t have both, you see. 

God’s strongholds, fortresses prevent the lies to create bad ones, and bad strongholds of lies and misunderstandings about who God is, prevents God’s strongholds, fortresses from becoming established in you.

The bible talks about how God is our Stronghold. 

I’d call Him the Ultimate One.

2 Samuel 22:3 says, “My God, my Rock, in whom I take refuge, my Sheild and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge; My savior, You save me from violence.”

Psalm 144:2, Joel 3:16, 1 Corinthians 10:13, Psalm 27:1, Nahum 1:7 among many others, talk about the Lord is our stronghold…our defense, our refuge, our protection, our safe place. 

Don’t feel scared if you have some unhealthy strongholds. 

It’s no big deal to Jesus. Go get your sledgehammer, He’ll show you just what to do.

Rebuild what needs to be rebuilt.

Labor to rest within the Strongholds of God. 

He’s so much more than worth it. 

Isaiah 28:15-17:

“Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death,
And with Sheol (the place of the dead) we have made an agreement,
When the overwhelming scourge passes by, it will not reach us,
For we have made lies our refuge and we have concealed ourselves in deception.”

¹⁶ Therefore the Lord God says this,

“Listen carefully, I am laying in Zion a Stone, a tested Stone,
A precious Cornerstone for the [secure] foundation, firmly placed.
He who believes [who trusts in, relies on, and adheres to that Stone] will not ^[a]be disturbed or give way [in sudden panic].
¹⁷
“I will make justice the measuring line
And righteousness the mason’s level;
Then hail will sweep away the refuge of lies
And waters will flood over the secret [hiding] place.”