PULLING DOWN STRONGHOLDS AND OVERCOMING OBSTACLES

PART 2 

II CORINTHIANS 10:1-6 

            Last week we talked about the fact that in Bible days a strong hold was a city fortified with defensive walls, towers and gates to protect the city from being attacked by its enemies.  After talking more about the Biblical strongholds we said that there are fortified areas in each of our lives. However, since this scripture talks about tearing down these strongholds we must understand that they were not set up by God to protect us from the devil.  In fact when we consider the strong holds that have been established in our lives we must understand that they were designed by our enemy (the devil) in an attempt to keep out his enemy (God).  With this in mind we said that in the lives of Christians, strong holds are obstacles or fortified areas designed by the devil to keep the Spirit of God and the Word of God from being effective in our lives and thus block us from developing the character of God. 

          We all recognize that there is a variety of obstacles that we must endure and fortified areas that can imprison us.  But Paul says here that the weapons that we use to fight and pull down these strongholds, or overcome these obstacles are mighty.  So we tried to make the point last week that there are a variety of weapons to be used, some of which God has been instilling in us as we have grown up.  We just don’t recognize these traits as weapons.  Finally, last week, we defined a weapon as anything that God uses to attack and pull down the strongholds of the enemy or to cause us to overcome the obstacles set up by the enemy.  Moving on from that point we want to look at 3 more examples today.

NUMBERS 22:1-6

          Balak who is the King of Moab and the people of Moab, being afraid of the Children of Israel, have sent for Balaam the prophet to come and curse the Children of Israel.  If you will read through verses 7- 21 on your own you will find that God instructed Balaam not to go; telling him that he could not curse the Children of Israel because they were blessed..  So Balaam says no to Balak.  But Balak will not give up.  Balak send chief officials and authorizes them to offer Balak anything he wants.  Balak goes to ask God about it and God tells him to go with them.

NUMBERS 22:22-35

              I want to deal with why God was angry at Balaam in another message.  As Balaam is going on his way the mule begins to act up.   First he will not stay on the path, then when going through a narrow passage he rams up into the wall.  With each incident Balaam beat the mule.  Finally the mule just sat down under him and would not get up.  It did not matter what Balaam did, he could not make the mule do as he wanted.  Sometimes in life we come up against situations that no matter what we do, we can not make things happen the way we want them to.  Balaam knew where he was trying to go but the mule was an obstacle preventing him from achieving his goal.  Sometime we know what we want to do and we may even have a plan for how we want to do it, but there just seem to be obstacles in the way preventing us from achieving the goal.  We keep addressing each obstacle and a new one pops up.  We change directions and still there are more obstacles. 

          In Balaam case how is this obstacle confronted?  Two weapons are demonstrated here.  First is divine intervention.  God had to make a mule talk and then he had to open Balaam’s spiritual eyes so that he could see what his true obstacle was.  Balaam was trying to overcome the wrong obstacle.  He did not have a clear picture of what was going on.  The mule was trying to help him and Balaam was fighting against his help because he did not comprehend the real obstacle in his way.  This is so like us.  Sometimes we fight the people who are trying to help us and run unknowingly right to those who are trying to harm us.  We are fighting trying to move one obstacle, but fighting against the wrong thing.  We need God’s intervention.  We need for God to show us the real obstacles to our progress.  We need spiritual insight.  Ephesians 6:12 says, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”  Many of us and most of the time we find ourselves fighting with someone we can see.  We fight with our bosses, our children, our spouses, the pastor, other members, the bill collector or anyone else that is irritating us.  We fight against flesh and blood.  But in doing so, we are fight against the wrong enemy or trying to overcome the wrong obstacle.  We need the weapon of spiritual insight so that we can identify our obstacle and overcome it.  The battle is not fleshly but rather is spiritual.  We must use the weapon of spiritual insight to track down and spot our enemy; the weapon of spiritual knowledge in order to analyze his strategy, the weapon of spiritual wisdom to determine how to counteract his plan, and the weapon of spiritual power to fight against him.  Through receiving the baptism with the Holy Spirit, all of these weapons are available to us. 

II KINGS 6:8 -19

          Elisha’s servant saw the Syrian army as a huge obstacle.  There was no way that these few residents of Dothan would be victorious against this great Syrian army.  Surely their life was in jeopardy.  There was no way around it.  They would be dead before the end of the day.  Of course the attack on Elisha’s life is being initiated by the devil, but he is using humans to carry out the task.  These humans are an obstacle or roadblock to the life and well-being of Elisha.  What weapon was used?  Again spiritual sightedness.  One place that many Christians are lacking is in the use of our spiritual senses.  Some don’t even know that just as we have the physical senses of seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling and smelling, we who are born again also have spiritual senses.  David said,  in Psalm 34:8 “O taste and see that the Lord is good.”  Jesus said in John 10, “my sheep know my voice” and in John 8 he said, “He that belongs to God hears God’s Words”, or hears God speak.  This is not nature hearing, but spiritual.  There are times when we can feel the presence of the Lord.  It is a spiritual feeling.  Here God allowed the servant to see into the spirit realm.  This eased his stress and let him know that the obstacle being face was not insurmountable.   God used spiritual insight as a weapon against panic and fear.  Once the servant saw the army of God he no longer felt alone, helpless and afraid.  He had a new attitude and knew that not only was victory possible but that it was inevitable.  Spiritual insight can be a powerful weapon in our lives.  It allows us to see the battle from a different viewpoint.  You see our enemy wants us only to see things in the natural because in the natural it looks like we are losing and have no way of being successful.  But looking at things from a spiritual viewpoint allows us to see the victory that has already been won on our behalf and thus assures us that no matter what happens in the natural, we are already the winners.

          Along with spiritual insight, God used an army of angels.  Though it does not appear that these angels had to do very much, they were on call if they were needed.  I preached a message a couple of months ago on Angels and how they work for us.  God uses them to fight off the enemy’s attacks and anything or anyone that God uses for this purpose is a weapon.

2KINGS 6:24-31

          Though the King of Syria forgot about trying to kill Elisha, he was still determined to invade Israel so he surrounded Samaria the capital city of Israel.  The people were trapped inside for so long with food that they began to cook their children and eat them. 

2 Kings 7:1-8

          The enemy’s intent was to starve the Children of Israel until they got too weak to fight and then go in and kill them all.  The plan seemed to be working until God intervened.  He caused the Syrian to think that they were under attack from an army greater than themselves.  This caused them to run.  But that is not what saved the Children of Israel and caused them to overcome this obstacle.  What saved them was the shear desperation of 4 lepers.  They were desperately hungry and knew they were dying anyway.  They decided that it would be better die quickly rather than slowly and who knows maybe the enemy would feed them first.  Sometimes desperation will cause us to muster up strength that we did not know that we had.  It will push us into stepping outside of our normal pattern of doing things.  Desperation will take us out of our comfort zone.  Sometimes it will cause us to face and overcome longtime fears.  The possibility of losing life or losing someone we love can cause us to stretch beyond ourselves and do what we ourselves thought it impossible to do.

          However, we must be careful when looking at desperation as a motivating factor.  When desperation is allowed to replace faith, it will drive us to make terrible mistakes.  But desperation mixed with wisdom can be a powerful weapon.  Wisdom said to these men we are going to die one way or the other.  What do we have to lose?  If they had not gone out to surrender to the Syrians, the Children of Israel would have continued to starve and kill their own children.  Their desperation led them to take a chance, which in turn led to food for everyone.  If these men had not taken a chance many and possibly all who were in this city would have died from starvation.  God used their hunger and their desperation as a powerful weapon to push them to taking a risk.  We humans don’t care too much for taking risks, but when forced to, we oftentimes will do so.  If the risks we take cause us to overcome the enemy’s obstacles then whatever motivated us to take the risk still must be seen as a weapon. 

God will use every skill and even every weakness that we have as a weapon against the enemy if we would only yield ourselves to him.  He is an expert at making something out of nothing and changing the one who thinks he is the least into someone who believes in himself.  God will use whatever and whomever as weapons to bring about victory over his enemy.  When we surrender to Him he will tear down the strongholds in our lives and cause us to overcome the obstacles that hinder our growth.