I was doing some superficial maintenance on my website today and as I
checked some things, in one area, this article, and testimony of inner
healing, caught my attention.  I read it again, although I wrote it, because
it so clearly illustrates, and outlines, the things we face in daily life
that try and keep us from walking in liberty with Christ.


Pulling Down Strongholds


By Phil Scovell



2 Corinthians 10:4-6

4  (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty
through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)
5  Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth
itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ;
6  And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when
your obedience is fulfilled.



     He was in his mid fifties and had been using illegal drugs,
of one type or another, for the majority of his adult life.  Now
his desire was to walk clean before the Lord.  Raised in church
from childhood, he should have started with a solid foundation but
due to physical and emotional trauma, resulting in anger and hate
and guilt, his ability to walk with the Lord was spiritually
frustrated.  Hence, the drugs he used killed the pain.  The
problem, of course, with drugs, or sexual immorality, and any
other form of habitual behavior, is the artificial generated
mechanism that becomes the synthesized substitute for a complete
catharsis of human behavior and thus is easily expressed by
profligacy.  This is especially amplified into the acute range of
woundedness when physical abuse is part of the trauma.

     We opened with a basic prayer and asked the Holy Spirit to
direct us.  Then I prayed about the feelings he had at the moment
he decided to go get high and the specific emotions he had at that
very moment of stress.

     "I'm in a cave.  I see some light," he reported, "but I can't
get out because there is a large black thing, dressed in heavy
battle armor, blocking the exit to the cave.  It won't let me
out."

     "Ok," I said.  "Lord Jesus, does this lying spirit have a
right to be here and blocking his exit?"

     "It says it is his job," Keith reported.

     "Lord Jesus?  What is the source of this lying spirits job,
as he calls it, which gives him license, as he thinks, to stop
Keith from experiencing total freedom and is thwarting your
healing process in his life?"

     Keith then said, "Well, I'm back to where we have been
before.  You know, when I was being physically beaten by my father
with a belt.  No.  Wait.  Now I passed beyond that memory and I'm
in the woods with that girl I told you about before.  Remember?"

     I did remember that prayer session.  Keith had noticed boys
and girls were different, as so many of us did, long before
becoming a teenager.  He and a little girl in the neighborhood
began sexual experimentation as childhood preadolescence.  This
was, without a doubt, what the lying spirit was attempting to
guard in order to keep this adult man from now walking free, thus,
a stronghold had been created by a pubescent act of preadolescent
behavior.

     "Lord Jesus?" I asked, "did you know about this experience
Keith had with this little girl?"

     "He is there," Keith said, "and appearing over and above us.
He saw everything.  He is fully aware of what I did."

     "Ok," I replied, "good."

     At this exact moment, I felt an unholy covenant, an evil soul
tie, had been established between Keith and the little girl.
Otherwise, how could a battle harden and armored lying spirit be
able to keep him trapped?  I asked Keith to pray these words after
me and he did.

     "Heavenly Father, in the name of the true Lord Jesus Christ,
I break this evil soul tie that keeps me attached to this girl.  I
confess it was sin and ask you to forgive me.  Create in me, the
attitude toward her, that you want me to have.  I take back all
the ground I have given the Enemy, and I give it back to you for
your honor and glory.  I pray this in the name of the true Lord
Jesus Christ."

     I then prayed something like this:  "Lord Jesus, I call to
attention, the lying spirit keeping Keith trapped.  I dismiss him,
and all those working under his authority that we may not see
right now, from their assignments against him.  I bind them all
together as one.  I strip them of their armor and weapons.  I bind
all their words and utterances, and everything they have spoken
against Keith I bind back to them.  I remind them that the blood
of Jesus Christ, and the finished cross of Jesus Christ, stands
between them and Keith.  I now command then to go to the place
that the true Lord Jesus Christ wants them to go.

     "Lord Jesus?  Is there anything you want Keith to know or see
or feel right now about what we are praying about?"

     Note.  I did not wait to see if the lying spirits had obeyed
because I knew they had to according to Scripture.

     "I'm free," he suddenly announced.  "I feel His presence and
peace.  I feel it deep down in side of me.  This can't hurt me any
more."

     "What about the armored lying spirit back at the cave where
you were trapped inside?" I asked.

     "He's gone," Keith reported with confidence, "and I see even
more light than before.  I'm not fully out of the cave yet but I
see much more light than before and nothing is blocking my exit."

     There is a great deal more that occurred during this prayer
session than time would permit to explain but these are the main
components.


STRONGHOLDS

     I wanted you to see how we can be tormented by lies guarded
by lying spirits.  These particular types of lies are strongholds,
in my opinion, and they are guarded often, by lying spirits who
attempt to hide themselves to make it more difficult to locate the
very lies they are guarding.  The mind will attempt, in severe
situations, to suppress, or repress, the pain and thus even the
true nature of the memory can be morphed into something other than
the original memory event.  It makes little difference because
Jesus knows exactly where they, the lying spirits, and the lies
are hiding, and He is more than willing to expose the lies for
what they are.

     Strongholds, relative to the severity of the trauma, can be
block, suppressed, from the conscious mind, or repressed, hidden
excluded, and even altered.  Although the damaged emotions can
surface, the actual event can become metamorphic; only looking
something like the original in vague terms.  This makes the
horrible memory emotionally and intellectually manageable.


EXAMPLE OF METAMORPHIC MEMORY EVENTS

     For example, I was praying with a woman one time who had been
sexually molested multiple times during childhood.  During one
prayer session, one in which we had been to before, something
changed in the context of the memory event itself.  She, at the
age of six, was left home alone with a house guest living with the
family.  She had always said he molested her, as others had, but
this time, due to her Dissociative Identity Disorder, or multiple
personalities, one of her alternate personalities spoke up during
the heinous encounter, and offered to assist us in becoming aware
of what was really going on.  In the midst of the worst of the
memory, she now admitted she truly had been raped by the man and
described the complete details of how she was treated by him
before and afterwards.  This included his promise to take her to
the store to by a chocolate candy bar if she kept their little
secret.  In a very literal sense, from that day forward, she
became addicted to chocolate.  In fact, she admitted that it made
her feel better and more pleasant and calm whenever she ate
chocolate but she was under the impression that her love for
chocolate was tied to her father who awarded her often by buying
her chocolate.  The lie was finally exposed, the truth was made
known by the Lord, and now she can eat chocolate as she wishes and
doesn't feel the emotional and psychological addictiveness to the
candy.  I personally consider this another classic example of a
stronghold; so well hidden by the Enemy, that the psychological
trauma, which created the pain and woundedness, is emotionally and
intellectually manageable.  You can see how the event was changed
just enough so that she could psychologically manage the trauma,
not to mention the tremendous physical pain and bleeding that
occurred, which she experienced as a six year old little girl.
Since her "helpers," alternate personalities had been created as a
very young child due to other events, she had learned to cope with
prior acts of sexual molestation.  Since she was already multiple
personality, one of her helpers, who was assigned to assist in
keeping the secret in order that the authentic child could live
with the pain that the trauma created, assisted her in hiding the
real truth that she had been brutally raped.  Thus, the literal
memory event was changed to something she had learned she could
tolerate emotionally and mentally at that young age.


RENEWED MIND

     Now, once the lies are exposed and removed and the truth of
God is spoken by the Holy Spirit, they do not return and that
specific area of woundedness is eternally healed.  That's right;
the healing, renewing of the mind, is final.  No, the memory is
not modified, or changed in any way, other than the application of
the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ when unveiled.  Thus, when the
memory does come to mind, as commonly as any other memory we may
recall, there will be no pain, fear, guilt, or suffering
associated with the memory.  There can, of course, be sadness, as
is the case with grief.  My father died forty-five years ago when
I was eleven and I still miss him and feel emotional sadness to
this day as a result of that void in my life.  Such sadness is
natural and not destructive nor has the sadness distorted the
memories of my dad.


FOOTHOLDS

     Footholds, as I see it, are lies easier to locate and are
generally on the surface, that is, they can be seen because they
are not suppressed or repressed.  Lying spirits may attempt to
block the healing power and authority of the true Lord Jesus
Christ but it makes little difference because they are no match
against the Master Healer; Jesus The Christ.  Besides, the True
Lord Jesus Christ is master of all spirits; good and evil.  Lying
spirits, of course, don't like the fact that the True Lord Jesus
Christ is their Lord and Master, too, but they will obey His
Word; like it or not.


HANDHOLDS

     Finally, what I call handholds, are nothing more than lying
spirits attempting to invade our thoughts and feelings to implant
lies.  The use circumstances, mostly, to attempt to invade our
thoughts.  Learn to pray, and becoming God aware, easily exposes
these attempts and impede their intrusion, thus, taking every
thought captive.

     Most of us suppress, or manage, our woundedness by activity.
In psychological terms, we modify our behavior and activities to
control the pain we feel when it attempts to surface.  We become
overly busy, for example, or involve ourselves with hobbies to the
extreme, body building and exercise becomes paramount, we focus
excessively on what we eat, or don't eat, we may decide to
volunteer for everything, church meetings and specialized Bible
conferences and cruises become an outward expression of
spirituality, Scripture memorization becomes addictive, and even
our financial giving to ministries can be used to keep that guilt
buried deep.  Long hours of prayer also can become a substitute
for peace.  I used to read the Bible through, from cover-to-cover,
once a month until I passed the 100 mark.  Some even use fasting
as a God-arm-twisting exercise to get His attention.  No, there is
nothing wrong with any of these things unless they have become
behavioral substitutes for the authentic peace of God.

     Of course, there is always the old fallback, legalism, which
we have fine tuned theologically to perform better than a well
trained circus animal.  You know the Christian drill: Not going to
movies, not renting, God forbid, recorded movies, only watching
Christian programming, giving your computer away, fasting,
(there's a good one), and even winning more people to Christ than
anybody in your church.  If you don't think any, if not all, of
these things can indeed become a spiritual mechanism to bury
woundedness even in the life of a Christian, then you already are
living with deceitfulness.  No, silly.  It doesn't mean you aren't
saved; it means you are deceived and likely don't know it.  No, I
didn't say you are less of a Christian as a result; you just want
to walk free, don't you?  Me, too.  So let's work together.  Let's
become God Aware and know His voice better than any other so we
can walk perpetually free and spiritually conscious of His
presence in our lives.


The Curse That Works Is The One We Believe
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