Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 98
TRANSCRIPT
There are two very common strongholds that are probably affecting your life. In this week’s and next week’s podcasts we are going to unpack these two strongholds to help you experience more freedom in your life.
I’m Lee Whitman from Restoring the Foundations and I welcome you into this Hope Healing and Freedom podcast. We are going to be talking about two strongholds that are so common I can almost guarantee that these strongholds are affecting your life, and you may not even be aware of them. This week we are going to talk about how Shame, Fear and Control team together to create a very powerful stronghold.
Let’s start by talking about strongholds. I am going to be taking much of this teaching about strongholds from Chester and Betsy Kylstra’s wonderful book called Restoring the Foundations An Integrated Approach to Healing Ministry 2nd Edition. If you want more information about why the ministry of RTF is so effective, I highly recommend that you read this book. It is available on our website at restoringthefoundations.org under the Store tab at the top of the page.
This teaching on strongholds comes from pages 328-329 of their book.
How do you know that you are dealing with a stronghold? Here is some evidence of a stronghold.
- Someone with a besetting sin that they cannot stop no matter how hard they try.
- A person living below their potential and destiny.
- A person who has already received much counseling and ministry yet is still in bondage.
- When there is strong resistance during deliverance.
- Failure to see significant freedom and healing using traditional deliverance methods.
- Failure of the ministry receiver to retain their healing and freedom following the ministry.
The Kylstra’s use this word picture to describe a Demonic Stronghold.
“We sometimes visualize a stronghold by imagining a large grassy plain with a castle sitting on it. The Sins of the Fathers and Resulting Curses provide the foundation, representing the starting point or the set up into which each of us is born. In more severe cases, some of the superstructure may also be in place at our birth. These would represent dedications or commitments that our ancestors made. If they worshiped or served other gods, or engaged in blood covenants, considerable structures and interconnectedness could exist between various parts of the castle. All of this could be in place at the time of our birth.
Then as we commit our own sins and others sin against us, curses result. The structure then grows and becomes more mutually reinforcing as different parts of the stronghold intertwine. The mortar between the bricks or stones may represent our Ungodly Beliefs and Soul/Spirit Hurts. The bricks or stones may represent demons. As a result, our Ungodly Beliefs and Soul/Spirit Hurts hold the structure of demons together while the Sins of the Fathers provide a place or foundation.” End of quote.
When we talk about the Shame-Fear-Control stronghold, picture the castle the Kylstras referenced with three towers, the Shame tower, the Fear tower, and the Control tower. Each of these towers works together to strengthen and reinforce the other towers. Then our Ungodly Beliefs and Soul/Spirit Hurts are the mortar holding the bricks of these towers together. It forms a very strong structure that must be dismantled using RTF ministry to be removed.
We have previously recorded two podcasts that describe Shame so I won’t spend a lot of time talking about shame. Those podcasts are available on our website at restoringthefoundations.org and click on the Resources tab at the top of the page and click on the Podcast dropdown where you can view the entire library of Hope Healing and Freedom podcasts. If you have not listened to the two podcasts on shame, I encourage you to do so.
Shame is almost always inherited from our ancestors who inherited it from their ancestors Adam and Eve. The iniquity of shame is resident in our bloodlines in a dormant state until an event in our lives activates it. The activating event can be a very common event like wetting your pants in school that causes you to feel shame. Or it could be something horrific like being sexually abused. Then once shame is activated it takes every opportunity to tell you that there is something wrong with you. As Chester Kylstra says shame tells you that you are uniquely and fatally flawed. As you begin to look at life through the filter of shame, you develop shame based Ungodly Beliefs about yourself, about other people, even about God. Many of the shame-based lies we believe about ourselves are aimed at our identity. Messages like I am a mistake. I am flawed. I am bad, I am dirty and many many others.
Other shame-based lies are meant to keep us in bondage and add more mortar to the stronghold. Lies like “If you knew the real me you would reject me.” Or a lie like “I am the problem. When something is wrong, it is my fault.” Or “I am not worthy to receive anything good from God.” All of these lies, and many others are part of the mortar that holds these strongholds in place.
Shame often is the generational curse that opens the door through events like the ones I’ve just mentioned but it almost always brings fear with it. It can also be that fear is the generational curse that opens the door and it often times brings shame along with it. Fear says “What if others find out about my shame. They will not like me. They will reject me.”
If you wonder, why shame and fear and control go together the answer is found in the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, everything changed. Instead of walking with God in the cool of the evening and having a face-to-face relationship with Father God, they hid from Him. In Genesis 3:8-10 we see that after they ate the fruit God came to walk with Adam and Eve as He normally did, but Adam and Eve hid from God. In verses 9-10 it says, “The Lord God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ Adam said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid (fear) because I was naked (shame); so, I hid myself (control).” Adam’s shame told him he was naked. Before they sinned, being naked was not a problem. In fact, it says in Genesis 2:25, “And the man and his wife were both naked, but they were not ashamed.” Now shame said being naked was a shameful thing. It was more than just not having clothes; it was the realization that something was wrong with them.
This is also where fear entered the world and took hold of Adam. Adam said I was afraid because I was naked. Notice how sin changed everything. They went from having an ideal life which included having face to face talks with Father God to a life of shame and fear and control. Prior to this they lived a life without shame and without fear. Can you imagine what that was like? But sin opened the door for shame and fear to enter Adams life and ours, and as we will see in a moment control also came in at that moment as well. Adam’s sin caused a huge mess. And it was a mess that God never intended for mankind. In Genesis 3:11 God said to them “Who told you that you were naked?” In other words, He was asking where the shame from being naked came from because it did not come from God? Shame was never God’s idea or intention.
Can you just see the glee that the enemy took in persuading Adam and Eve to sin by eating the forbidden fruit? The bible says that Satan was kicked out of heaven for his pride and rebellion, and he used that pride and rebellion to deceive Adam and Eve into eating the forbidden fruit and rebelling against God. That rebellion, that disobedience against God, opened the door for sin to enter the perfect world found in the Garden of Eden.
When fear entered this world, it not only brought with it the fear of being rejected. No. The door was opened to fears of all kinds. The enemy has used this open door to bring fears of every kind into our lives.
Samantha grew up in a wonderful home. Mom and Dad were solid believers in Jesus, and they raised their three children with faith in God. Her home was secure and filled with love and proper affection and security. Yet Samantha was filled with fears of all kinds. She started out being afraid of the dark. Then she was afraid of being by herself. Then she was afraid to talk to people other than her family members. No one in her family could understand why Samantha was so fearful because fear was not part of the way the family operated. When Samantha came for RTF ministry as a 20-year-old young woman the ministers began to delve into the fear. What they discovered was that Samantha had what seemed like a very innocent event that caused shame to be activated when she was in elementary school. This event opened the door to the stronghold of fear. Her class was having a spelling contest. When it came her turn to spell a word, she had been distracted by talking with the girl next to her and misunderstood the word the teacher asked her to spell. She spelled the wrong word which caused the class to laugh at her. This event activated the generational curse of shame in her life, and along with it came the generational curse of fear.
When asked if her parents struggled with fear, she said no. They walked in a lot of faith and fear was not a part of her upbringing. Yet she was afraid of almost everything. Why? The door of fear was opened along with the door of shame. These two generational curses go hand in hand and support and reinforce each other on a regular basis. Then the third part of this stronghold, control, promises to protect from more pain. Control says, “I need to be in control to protect myself from pain.” Adam and Eve’s method of control was to hide their nakedness from God by sewing fig leaves together to make clothes. I want to say to Adam and Eve nice try with the fig leaf fashion statement, but really how long does a fig leaf that has been removed from the tree last before it dries up and crumbles? Control told them that this would cover their shame. If you read on in the story in Genesis Father God took pity on Adam and Eve and killed an animal and took the hide and made them clothes that would last. Notice how God does not shame them for their failed effort to cover themselves, rather He took one of His precious creations and shed its blood to make clothes that would last.
Some of the lies that control tells are things like “I have to plan every day of my life. I have to continually plan/strategize. I can’t relax.” Or another common control lie is “I must isolate myself so that I won’t be vulnerable to hurt, rejection, etc., anymore.” Have you found yourself believing lies similar to these? Sometimes control becomes very aggressive making it seem like you can’t do anything but what it tells you to do in order to be safe. In fact, fear will energize the desire to control making you believe that if you are out of control, you will not survive.
This three-towered castle works in unity to hold the other towers in place and provide reinforcement and strength. When you open the door to one of the three, the other two almost always come along to create this stronghold of Shame, Fear, and Control.
To get rid of this stronghold the three-tower castle must be disassembled by confessing the sins of our ancestors and applying the blood of Jesus to each generational curse inherited from our ancestors. This must be done to each of the towers individually using a strategy given by the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we dismantle the tower of shame, then the tower of fear and then the tower of control. Other times we take them in a different order. The key is following the specific strategy given by the Holy Spirit.
Once the blood of Jesus is applied to the towers of this stronghold and you have repented for your own sin and for your ancestors’ sins, then your Ungodly Beliefs must be replaced with God’s truth. This removes some of the bricks and mortar that is holding the stronghold together. Then the heart must be healed by taking away more of the mortar from these towers. Once those steps are accomplished then it is much easier to evict the demons of shame, fear, and control which is energizing and empowering this stronghold resulting in freedom. It is important to minister to generational curses, Ungodly beliefs, and Soul/Spirit Hurts before evicting the demons in order to take their strength away.
If you recognize this stronghold at work in your life, please don’t hesitate to contact one of our RTF ministers and get rid of it. You will find a directory of RTF ministers around the world on our website restoringthefoundations.org.
Prayer
Father God you never intended for us to live with shame or fear or control. If this stronghold is operating in the lives of anyone listening today, would you reveal it by your Holy Spirit and give them the courage to reach out and get ministry. Amen
