Copyright by Freedom in Christ, used with permission.
For though we live in the world we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5
When Joshua was leading Israel, God asked the Israelites to do something rather strange in order to conquer a city. They were given instructions to march round the city of Jericho for seven days, with various additional instructions involving priests and musical instruments. If you don’t know the story, you can read it in Joshua chapter 6. They must have felt pretty silly most of the time they were doing this. Everyone knows that walking around a city wall doesn’t make it fall down. But as God promised, on the seventh day, when they followed his instructions to the letter, the walls did come tumbling down and they conquered the city.
What happened with Jericho is very similar to what defeating a stronghold is like. Often, people find that their feelings don’t change at all for the first few weeks. Sometimes they stop halfway through because “it isn’t working”. It can feel very much like walking around a wall expecting it to fall down. As that verse from 2 Corinthians says, the weapons we fight with are not weapons the world would recognize as such. But take heart! If you commit yourself to choose to believe the truth no matter what your feelings are telling you, and carry on with your stronghold-buster even when you feel that it isn’t working, the stronghold will fall.
