Titus 2 Men And Women

Definition Of Strong Hold
by Marquita Wilson

I was asked to look up the word strong hold. I was not prepared for what I found. In the Word of God the words strong hold are used 22 times. I have listed all of those verses for you:
I Samuel 23:14, 19, 29
II Samuel 5:7; 24:7
II Chronicles 11:11
Psalm 89:40
Isaiah 23:11; 31:9
Jeremiah 48:14, 41
Lamentation 2:5
Daniel 11:24, 39
Micah 5:11
Nahum 1:7; 3:12
Habakkuk 1:10
Zecharaiah 9:3, 12
2Co 10:4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;
2Co 10:5 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;
2Co 10:6 And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.

verse 4 strong hold===Strong's Concordance
3794 ochuroma {okh-oo'-ro-mah}
from a remote derivative of 2192 (meaning to fortify, through the idea of holding safely); TDNT - 5:590,752; n n
AV - strong hold 1; 1
1) a castle, stronghold, fortress, fastness 2) anything on which one relies 2a) of the arguments and reasonings by which a disputant endeavours to fortify his opinion and defend it against his opponent

I took the word strong and the word hold and looked them up in the Webster's Dictionary:

Definitions:
Strong: physically powerful: muscular, healthy robust or strong, as in a strong constitution.
Resolute: courageous, mentally powerful or vigorous especially competent or able, strong in math. Abundantly supplied, strong in trumps. Solidly made or constituted strong walls. POWERFUL AS A RIVAL OR COMBATANT. Easy to defend a strong position. Powerful in effect-strong poison.

Hold: To take up and keep in the hands, arms, etc. to grasp. TO PREVENT THE MOVEMENT OR ESCAPE OF: hold the bus. To restrain from acting or speaking. Hold your tongue. TO KEEP IN A SPECIFIED PLACE, POSITION OR STATE, to hold one's arm up. To regard in a specified manner. To hold someone dear. To require to fulfill as in the conditions of a contract. To support or keep in position to be capable of enclosing or containing, the barrel holds 3 gallons. TO MAINTAIN IN THE MIND, HOLD AN OPINION A CONTROLLING FORCE OR INFLUENCE, A PLACE OF CONFINEMENT.

With all of the above applications of the words strong hold let's consider again the partial list I gave to you in the first lesson:

Now, I invite you to look and feel for band aids you have placed over any of these…or some other sin in your life that Satan has used to build a strong hold in your life. Is their a sin or sins that have you in captivity--in bondage to them?
Do you want God to break/tear down these strong holds and heal the sore spots with His Balm of Gilead-His Word?

How do we break these strong holds?

From the book Reclaiming Surrendered Ground by Jim Logan I quote the following:

"It is likely that any sinful activity that the believer does not deal with by the power of the Spirit can be exploited by the devil and turned into a means of control over a believer's life. Therefore, Christians need to resist. For Paul there is no middle ground. There is no nominal Christianity." -Clinton Arnold

"Eph 4:26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:
Is the immediate context of Paul's warning and a wonderful example of how we can give spiritual ground to Satan. This verse clearly allows for proper anger. That is beyond dispute. But what happens when anger simmers unchecked in our soul? It degenerates into bitterness-a sin that gives Satan an opening into our lives by enough to drive a truck through!" -Jim Logan

Eph 4:26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:
Eph 4:27 Neither give place to the devil.
In verse 27 God says "neither give place to the devil." Can we help doing so? Oh yes, for God, in this verse, tells us not to give place….it is our choice.
The word PLACE in this verse is the word that we get our word topography from.
It literally means ground, specific spot, or location. By our choice to give Satan a spot in our lives (creating a sore spot that we want to cover over with a band aid instead of taking to God to heal) we surrender ground that God created, bought with His shed blood, and desires for us to use to glorify Him.

Mr. Logan points out that the key for believers is the word "INFLUENCE".
Demons can only influence believers as much as we allow them to do so.
This is called giving ground, a foot hold, opportunity, a chance. Once we are saved we can no longer be controlled by Satan but we can be influenced and it is our choice as to the ground we surrender to his control…for him to build strong holds on. It is also our choice how long we allow him to maintain them. It is our choice how long we allow Satan to keep our sore spots all walled up and protected/shielded from exposure to the truth of God. It is the truth of God that allows us to tear the strong holds down.
2Co 10:4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;
2Co 10:5 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;
2Co 10:6 And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.
The weapon of our warfare is truth-God's truth
Joh 8:32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Joh 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
Joh 8:36 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

The truth of God enables us to tear the strong holds down and reclaim the ground that we willingly surrendered to Satan. This allows us to change our lives and thinking with the word of God-and change the patterns in our family that have been created by our not dealing with sin in our lives. This breaks the generational passing on of those sore spots/ sin problems.

God allowed me to catch and change my daugther's struggle with insecurity by showing me that it was first my problem and I had made it hers. As I worked with her God worked with me. Today she is an asst. pastor's wife and more than confident to tackle any and every project and give 150% to them all!

There is something in closing that I want to add from Jim Logan's book Reclaiming Surrendered Ground:
"I want to keep coming back to this idea of influence because it is so important to waging successful spiritual warfare. No Christian is a helpless pawn of Satan! That's why we don't ever want to become fixated on the enemy and his power. Our focus is to be on Christ (Hebrews 12:1-2).

You might say, "It's odd that you say you don't want me to concentrate on Satan and his ways, since your're writing a book on that very subject."…

You see, my greatest problem is not Satan, but myself. If I desire and decide to hold on to sin, I give the enemy ground he needs to launch his destructive attacks against me. If I cherish sin in my life, Satan will seek to exploit it. Since I must serve someone (see Joshua 24:15), the fact is that any area of my life I don't yield to the Holy Spirit's control, Satan will control."

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