Today, we finish the series 5 Worthy Transformations as we talk about Breaking Strongholds. If you have begged, pleaded, and prayed for deliverance from a stronghold in your life, this is for you. Discover a path to shattering the limiting strongholds of ingrained thoughts, behaviors, and emotional patterns in your life.
If you are ready to become the woman God says you already are, you have to join me in Clarity+Courage, my cost-effective coaching group for Christian women.
Learn more and enroll at www.myhappyvault.com/clarityandcourage
Questions? Email Jill directly at Jill@thehappiestlives.com
Today, we finish the series 5 Worthy Transformations as we talk about Breaking Strongholds. If you have begged, pleaded, and prayed for deliverance from a stronghold in your life, this is for you. Discover a path to shattering the limiting strongholds of ingrained thoughts, behaviors, and emotional patterns in your life.
If you are ready to become the woman God says you already are, you have to join me in Clarity+Courage, my cost-effective coaching group for Christian women.
Learn more and enroll at www.myhappyvault.com/clarityandcourage
Questions? Email Jill directly at Jill@thehappiestlives.com
You're listening to the Happiest Lives podcast with Jill Lillard, episode number 31. Welcome to the Happiest Lives podcast, where you'll learn to think better, feel better and become the woman God says you already are. Here's your host, jill Lillard. Hello and a warm welcome from the Happiest Lives podcast. It's always a joy to have you here, eager to learn, grow and be inspired, and, as always, it's my privilege to be your counselor and coach for a few minutes each week. So thank you for allowing me to be on your playlist.
Speaker 1:Today we will complete the series Five Worthy Transformations, where I'm giving you a sneak peek inside the Happiest Lives Academy and the five transformations awaiting you starting January 1. In this episode, we are going to explore this final transformation offered in the program Breaking Strongholds. If you want to join me in the academy, now is the time to enroll. I'm going to be taking a small group of women through these five transformations, surrounding you with everything you need to succeed, including weekly coaching. I will be with you every step of the way. I'm getting ready to snail mail some fun packages for those scheduled to join me in January, and I hope I can send one out to you too. Now I know this program is not inexpensive. In fact, it is the most expensive program I offer because it is so very involved, as I put so much into and offer so much of myself to you on a daily basis. And I know this program is not for everyone. Not everyone is ready to make that sort of investment in themselves, but this is for some of you. You may be one of those sub ones If you are so ready for change, you're ready to do the work, you're ready to use all the supports offered to you, and maybe you just don't know how to do it. You don't know how to create the change. You don't know how to apply the things that you have learned, that you have learned. But you know you are tired of as is and you want to inject your life with some inspiration and motivation and want some help along the way. Then this is for you. And if you're not in a place to commit to this journey, that's okay too. We can keep hanging out on this podcast every week, which is completely free. You also might consider getting supported and coached inside my cost effective coaching program, clarity and Courage, which does offer you support, even though it's on a much less intensive level. That may be where you are right now. So let's get started, as we overview, breaking strongholds.
Speaker 1:Strongholds are deeply ingrained thoughts, behaviors or emotional patterns that have been repeated over and over. The neural pathway in your brain is like a trail in the woods that we've discussed before. The patterns seem so established and entrenched that you keep finding yourself on this same path. When discussing strongholds, we often think of the thoughts and habits that limit or negatively influence our lives. These strongholds can hinder our relationships, personal growth, our emotional well-being, our spiritual progress. We feel bound by them.
Speaker 1:I also want you to consider, though, another type of stronghold. In Psalms 18, 2, we read the Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer. My God is my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. Proverbs 18, 10,. The name of the Lord is a fortified tower. The righteous run to it and are safe. Psalms 91, 2, I will say of the Lord. He is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. In Psalms 144, 2, he is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me Rather than holding you hostage. Here we read of a stronghold that brings freedom.
Speaker 1:When the Lord becomes your stronghold, you find a place of protection and deliverance. In ancient times, a stronghold was designed to resist enemy attacks. It might be a hill, a rocky outcrop, a fortified wall that was created to be a place of refuge, safety and defense. During a battle, the stronghold of refuge often became a stronghold for the enemy, so people would retreat to this stronghold for safety, but then the opposing force was so strong that this safe place became a prison, as the enemy surrounded it and cut off communication and supplies. Though large fortified walls are not as relevant in our present culture, this concept helps us to better understand spiritual, mental and emotional strongholds. When we make the elements of this world our place of refuge, that very spot designed for protection may ensnare us. So the idols that you turn to when you experience unwanted feelings, those can become strongholds. You thought they would help you feel better, but in the end they imprison you. We are always let down when we explicitly trust carnal resources to improve things. God wants to be your stronghold, offering protection, strength, guidance, comfort, deliverance, security. He wants to be a sure foundation in your life. He invites us to find refuge and strength. Through trusting Him, by obeying Him, we can find this place of refuge in His unwavering love and presence.
Speaker 1:So you may say that you have been a Christian your whole life, that you've sought the Lord regarding a particular stronghold in your life, and yet you feel entrapped and imprisoned by a certain mindset, an emotional trap, maybe a physiological stronghold. Maybe it's to a habit that you keep doing, over and over actions you keep taking. It may feel like a sort of dependency. It seems others are walking in the freedom of knowing Jesus, but you feel so trapped by your past. You feel shame for choices you keep making over and over. Maybe you feel discouraged by ongoing depression, anxiety or sickness in your body. Your marriage feels miserable and no matter what you do, you just don't see things changing. Now we will face hardships and difficulties, but we can be encouraged because his grace is always sufficient. Always His power is made perfect in our weakness. God has promised to strengthen you and to help you. He has promised to uphold you and deliver you from your troubles. He is close to the brokenhearted. He saves those who are crushed in spirit. He hears your cries, in the words of Isaiah.
Speaker 1:I encourage you to forget the former things not to dwell on the past, but rather to look ahead to the new things God wants to do. He is making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. He promises you a new beginning. The past does not define your future. And yet how many of us keep wandering around in the wilderness looking at the past, romanticizing the past, a place of slavery, romanticizing it, thinking it was better, even though we wanted to be delivered from that, because we don't want to obey what God is calling us to do now? I encourage you to keep turning toward Jesus, day after day. That is the process. Ask him to create a pure heart in you daily. Ask him to search your heart, renew your mind, and he will fulfill his promises in your life as you turn toward him. He has plans for you. He wants you to prosper and thrive. He wants to be your strong tower in place of safety, even if your mind keeps wanting to return to the past.
Speaker 1:If we want to break strongholds that bind us, we must fully surrender to God. Now. We're not surrendering to our circumstance or to our sin. We are yielding to a powerful God who loves us and is faithful. So to surrender is to let go of what you can't control. Let go of what you've been holding onto and trust the Lord to take care of you. Surrendering is getting your mind, your will and your emotions in step with the spirit, removing any barriers to what stands in the way of his spirit moving. That can be unforgiveness, resentment, bitterness, thoughts about the past, thoughts of how people should be behaving right now, self-focus preoccupation with yourself.
Speaker 1:So how many of us have prayed, pleaded and begged for God to break a stronghold in our lives and yet we have not done what he has asked us to do? Sometimes we're holding onto our idol, our pain, our familiar thing, all the while we are crying out to God to deliver us. When we're looking backward or holding onto today rather than obeying God, throwing off all that hinders running the grace set before us. When we are doing that, we cannot move into the new. To break a stronghold, we must fully surrender to the work of Christ. This is the key for our deliverance and this is the process that we are engaged in during our lives here on earth. We are engaged in a relationship with him as we face the trials, as we face the weeds and the thorns. We want to constantly be engaging with our deliverer.
Speaker 1:In the previous series the Heart Scan process I talked about the sea of suffering and surrender. This is the place in between, where you are and where you want to be, and that is where we want to be, willing to step into the middle, the uncomfortable. We want to struggle a little bit. We want to move into the struggle. We want to move into the suffering and release that struggle so that we can surrender. This is taking action and letting go, and it starts with a willingness.
Speaker 1:So it can be hard to let go of old habits and past offenses. It can be hard to give up what satisfies our ego. We worry about the pain we will experience when we stop doing things like we always have, though we may worry that our efforts to change and surrender will fall short, or that we may not want it enough or do it right. We may worry that we could fall flat on our face in failure and not finish the race we started. We can be encouraged because Philippians 2.13 reminds us that God works in us, both to will and to do what pleases Him. He dwells in us and he is working to complete this process of surrender. So if you ever worry that you won't surrender right or your efforts or your desires won't be enough. Remember that God promises to do the work within us. He does the work. We just have to be willing. He will not force Himself on us, but we must participate in our deliverance. He invites us to participate. So we have to take some action so that he can do the work. So sometimes you are going to doubt and lack determination to fight the battle. But even in your weakness God will work. In fact, when we are weak, that is when he really likes to show off the most, because we get out of the way.
Speaker 1:Even Jesus came to a point of despair and brokenness as he cried out to God in Gethsemane. He felt forsaken by His Father, but he continued to trust in Him, to turn toward Him, to yield to His power, to trust and obey. He was willing and in His desperation he walked through His fear. He walked through His weakness, keeping His eyes on the prize before Him. We can get so consumed and concerned with ourselves. This is the stronghold of self and ego. We think we must be self-sufficient, self-competent, self-directed, and yet this is part of the process of letting go of this to die to our own ego.
Speaker 1:We may go through periods of waiting because God is doing a work in us, behind the scenes. In fact, to wait means to bind together. He is binding our hearts to His as we wait on Him and turn toward Him in our despair and weakness. Waiting is not a passive place. It is an active place. A lot of work is happening in the waiting. God is reminding us that we need Him. We are not meant to be self-reliant. He wants to partner with us. He does the work dwelling in us, and sometimes we have to get out of the way. We have to be willing to let Him move through us. When we become occupied with Jesus and less with ourselves, then he becomes our stronghold. You don't have to be perfect, you don't have to want it more or work harder. You just have to be willing to surrender. When we do, when we are willing to trust and obey Him, we will abide with Him, we will stay in His Word, we will turn toward Him, we will walk in obedience. We are then positioning ourselves to let Him work. We are waiting on Him and he's binding our heart to His. We can press on and let go.
Speaker 1:I love that prayer a friend introduced me to Father your will, your way, your time. This is a prayer of surrender. It is a prayer that breaks strongholds. I'm so thankful that God enables me to carry out this surrender as I submit to him with childlike trust, as I obey him and come to him in my weakness, as I am patient and wait upon him. He waits upon me. Steady, consistent surrender, turning toward pressing on letting go, willing to step off the shorelines of the familiar sin and sea of struggle where I surrender to my father. That is the only way to freedom.
Speaker 1:So, to break strongholds, we must first name and acknowledge the stronghold. What is it? What is the thought, what is the feeling? What are the actions you feel imprisoned by? Next, seek God's guidance through prayer. What is his promise? What is he asking you to do? Invite him to search your heart and show you any offensive ways that you're walking in, that's, any rebellion and disobedience. And as you ask for his forgiveness and help, he will show you what is good and right. Remember, this is a relationship with the Lord. It's not a one and done thing. We will go through seasons of planting and the seasons of harvest. All of the seasons are essential to create a harvest. Make sure you surround yourself with support and encouragement. You are not alone on this journey called life. We are part of one body where Christ is the head, and we can support and encourage and build up one another.
Speaker 1:Romans 7 reminds us that in our flesh there dwells no good thing and nothing will help us, but another life that must come and live inside us. Denying self-will, self-sufficiency and ego is required to make room for the Holy Spirit to work. This is your daily practice laying down yourself and making room for him to work in you. The power of the living God to dwell inside of you and to do his work. The power is found in his spirit dwelling inside of us. It is not found in our flesh. Second Corinthians 10 says for though we live in this world, we do not wage war as the world does. Weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. Use your spiritual weapons. He has given you battle weapons. If you want to break strongholds, don't need me, you need Jesus. However, the Lord can use whatever avenue he wants to bring deliverance. Throughout the Bible, god asks groups of people, he asks individuals to demonstrate their trust and faith in him by taking specific actions or steps.
Speaker 1:Many instances of healing in the Bible involved individuals demonstrating their faith and trust in God's power to heal by obeying his instructions. Second Kings five illustrates how Elijah instructed Naaman to dip himself seven times in the Jordan River to be healed of his leprosy. Not just one time, seven times. And Naaman obeyed. He followed the instructions and he was delivered from the stronghold. In John nine, jesus spat on the ground and rubbed a mixture of mud and saliva on a blind man's eyes. He then instructed him to go wash in the pool of Salom. Other times, deliverance was associated with repentance from sin and seeking forgiveness. Turning away from sinful behavior and seeking God's forgiveness was seen as a path to deliverance.
Speaker 1:Though God does the work, in His Word he instructs us to seek the prayers of others, as we read in James 5, 14 through 15. If anyone among you is sick, let him call on the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil In the name of the Lord. In the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well, the Lord will raise him up. So the Lord makes him well, the Lord raises him up. But he invites us to engage. He gives us a process. He gives us actions that we must take to demonstrate our faith In the battle of Jericho. God instructs the Israelites to march around the walls of Jericho seven days. Following their obedience, the Lord fulfilled His promise and the walls of Jericho fell down. They were delivered from this stronghold. Though God is our deliverer, we see that our actions play a role in our deliverance. The Lord shows off His grace and power in many ways. He calls us to engage with Him.
Speaker 1:Strongholds can encompass physical, emotional, spiritual and relational aspects of a person's life. Keep seeking God's will have faith in His power and he will set you free. Trust in His timing and plan for your life. Thank you, guys, for listening today. I pray you have a blessed week and experience the Lord's power in your life as you keep walking with Him. He is faithful, he is good and he wants to do amazing things in your life. I want to close with this scripture from Isaiah 43, 18 through 19, which I referenced earlier, and this really is our declaration inside the Happiest Lives Academy Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it I will make. Go away in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Let God do the new thing he wants to do Get out of the way, quit wandering around in the wilderness and disobedience and trust in Him, turn toward Him, wait on you, he is working, he is moving.